After weeks of Linux-baiting, the folks at SCO Group finally managed to light Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik's famously short fuse.
On Monday, Red Hat slapped SCO with a seven-count lawsuit that Szulik said was designed to head off a "campaign of innuendo and rumour".
SCO earlier this year filed a billion-dollar suit against IBM for alleged copying of its proprietary Unix intellectual property into Linux. The case has ramifications beyond these two companies. If SCO can make its claims stick in court, customers may be on the hook for damages. Indeed, the company has sent letters to about 1,500 Linux customers, warning that they may be infringing on SCO's intellectual property.
Taking a breather during LinuxWorld this week, Szulik sat down for a roundtable discussion with CNET News.com's Editorial Board to provide details about this escalating legal battle whose outcome is destined to indelibly mark the future of the open-source software movement.
Q: On a gut level, what was your reason for filing the lawsuit. Were you simply fed up?
A: Seeing the sacrifice at Red Hat and in the open-source development community, it finally got to a point where we just said enough was enough.
What do you think is at stake for the future of Linux?
I don't know if I have that kind of insight into the future of Linux specifically. There are a couple of important things going on. One is a challenge to the question of intellectual property as it relates to the development paradigm, as it relates to the physical code base and most important, the association with patent law and copyright law to be reviewed within the context of open source and the development process.
Certainly, we felt this was a leadership opportunity and felt a responsibility to step up. At the same time, we would like to find out which companies are truly committed to seeing open source and Linux software advance and which ones will not step up and instead simply exploit it because of the economic association with it. I think that's really important for the public to see.
In other words, you expect to see who are the participants and who are the parasites?
Maybe I would choose a different word. But that should be clear. There are a lot of people who claim to be open-source companies, and Linux may be the strategy du jour. This represents much more than a cute little product and so let's make money on it.
Do you think there is a conspiracy between SCO and Microsoft?
I've heard and read that. For me, the issues that I'm personally focused on are starting with our customers and making sure we continue to execute the way we have.
But what do you think?
What do I think? Well, Tom Clancy -- there are a lot of people out there who make their money from this kind of speculation. Nothing would surprise me.
Do you think Microsoft would take the chance considering what it went through during the antitrust trial?
Well, speculation runs wild. Roughly three and a half weeks ago, our name was mentioned by SCO management in a conference call. We will defend the brand aggressively when confronted by rumours, innuendo or unsubstantiated statements.
