Martin Veitch

Maybe the sceptics were right about Linux after all. Not to say, as Microsoft's executives did, that Linux is a "cancer" or an "intellectual-property destroyer", but to cast doubt on the stability of the open-source bandwagon. For last week was the week when, temporarily at least, the wheels came off.

For those who have so far ignored the kerfuffle, SCO alleges that UnixWare source code, to which it has rights, has found its way into Linux. Not only is it suing IBM for $1bn to test this contention, it has warned firms that use Linux that they also could be liable and may face extra payments.

By accident or on purpose, SCO's code might be in its rivals' operating systems. But SCO has left itself open to the sniping that is the evening job for many in the Linux community - first by not offering a shred of evidence to support its case, and second, by not working through the issue with its fellow citizens.

This is a remarkable failure for a company that signed up to the UnitedLinux alliance just last year in a move that many observers believed would bring solidity to Linux development by grouping together four leading distributors - SCO, Suse, Turbolinux and Conectiva. Far from UnitedLinux guaranteeing peace in our time, however, SCO now finds itself at daggers drawn with its biggest partner, Suse.

SCO has always been a company fond of changing horses in mid-stream.

Originally known as Caldera, it moved from desktop to server Linux, then agreed an acquisition of SCO's operating system assets. Later it changed its name to SCO Group and moved its focus to Unix. Now, it seems to be aiming for another target - the courtroom.

By any standards, SCO's latest moves constitute bizarre behaviour. Threatening your partners and customers doesn't figure large in most business texts.

Caldera/SCO has always been a firm that was more significant for the broader changes it characterised than the size of its actual business. The most important result of its recent capers is that Linux as a serious deployment option now becomes a two-horse race.

MandrakeSoft, Debian and others are marginalised, Turbolinux retains its strength in Asia, but for European and American businesses, only Red Hat and Suse have anything like the solidity required of a datacentre partner.

How quickly things change. Until now the fear for Linux was that it would splinter Unix-like into various user interfaces, code bases and so on. Instead, Red Hat is emerging as the default distribution option with Suse the obvious alternative. And even these two are in some ways Goliath and David respectively. Red Hat is the only Linux firm that has persuaded Wall Street to buy into its story and was last week valued at over $1.2bn. Suse, which is privately held, cannot compete with these resources even if its revenues may not be far short of Red Hat's.

Depending on where you stand, this situation represents a classic business rationalisation where the strongest firms survive, or a worrying situation where Red Hat effectively monopolises Linux distributions in the way that Microsoft monopolises desktop operating systems. Enterprises pondering major Linux deployments may well pause, and with IBM and others in a position to acquire, the rationalisation may still have some way to run.

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