Martin Banks

Thirteen years ago, a US judge made a clever decision in a licensing dispute between Motorola and Hitachi.

One Friday, after months of legal wrangling in a dispute over intellectual property for the 68000 family processors, the judge ordered that if the two parties could not resolve their differences by Monday morning, neither could sell any 68000 processors until they reached an agreement. The following Monday morning the dispute was resolved.

These are the tactics that should be adopted by the judge hearing SCO's case against IBM for allegedly infringing its Unix rights.

Ideally this case should end within a week, for the good of everyone, users included. Indeed, in an ideal world the judge would have the power to order IBM to buy SCO and put it out of its misery.

Let's face it, this case is going to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the only winners in such a farrago are the lawyers. They must be rubbing their hands with glee, because SCO is threatening not only IBM, but Linux users as well. That means every major, and not-so-major, user of Linux is a potential target for SCO's lawyers.

I dread to think how much money is about to be spent on legal advice on the matter.

There is also the question of where this leaves the industry as a whole, including SCO.

Two major investors in Linux licences from SCO are Microsoft and Sun. They may both hate each other with some vengeance, but they also hate IBM at least as much. Both have a strong vested interest in seeing IBM's promotion of Linux founder on the rocks. And so far, neither has been able to come up with rocks large enough to do the damage.

Microsoft has launched Windows Server 2003, but it's in the position of market follower. What is more, in rivalling the various proprietary Unix systems, it is not challenging products that it can lampoon as geriatric has-beens, but reliable enterprise-class workhorses with proven pedigrees.

Meanwhile, Sun would love to see Linux sidelined to make its own Solaris operating system the obvious choice for future enterprise systems. But recent sales of Solaris show that Sun may be deluding itself. Companies have not been rushing to either Solaris or to Windows, and they are unlikely to do so after the lawsuit, whatever its outcome.

Should SCO win, IBM may find itself damaged, but Linux as a whole would be damaged even more. But would firms then hurry off to buy Windows Server or Solaris systems? I suspect many would do absolutely nothing. Their current systems work, so they will stick with them. If Linux users go anywhere it may well be backwards, to the safe territory of a known environment without legal problems.

Irony of ironies, SCO's attempt to beat up IBM over Linux could lead to more success for IBM with its AIX platform.

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