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RSS feedsThe final part of our interview discusses SCO's future plans for Linux, its chances of winning the $3bn lawsuit and life after the case is closed.
Would you actually like to be bought?
No. Absolutely no. A few months ago that may have been an interesting notion, but from where we sit right now we are very strong. Our employees are strongly engaged on what we are doing. We are making record profits and see huge opportunities because of the licence rights we have around the Unix business.
Why do you think IBM hasn't pounced to buy you already?
I think it is trying to throw some shots at us. It threw Novell out in front of the bus a couple of weeks ago and Novell got run over.
It's a unique situation when a company as powerful as IBM has somebody coming at it with such strong claims as we have in a very public forum. So maybe its supercomputers haven't spat out an algorithm yet on how to respond to this kind of situation. I don't know.
Have you got any plans to sue any other company in the near future?
Right now we're focused on IBM. It's not that there's a shortage of companies in violation but, in terms of our resolve issues, we are not trying to announce a litigation path. For now, we are trying to get things resolved with IBM.
So there's nobody else lined up immediately?
Not currently.
Nobody at all?
No. We want to get a resolution to this. We are working very assertively with a number of industry leaders and we are trying to work through the issues. People absolutely, 100 per cent, now understand that there are problems.
Our belief is that we can get a fair amount of the resolution without having to resort to litigation from here on.
So what do you plan to do when the case is resolved?
Well, we have about 330 employees in the company and only about six are involved in SCOsource. We have two flavours of Unix ourselves that are doing well: UnixWare and Open Server.
Seven of the top 10 retailers in the world run on UnixWare or Open Server software. The Nasdaq stock market runs on UnixWare.
We have a new SCO-X web services platform that we announced a month or so ago. We have around two and a half million servers in the marketplace today, and with SCO-X we see a great opportunity to add web services components to our user base to give them additional value in running a server in a web-oriented world.
So we have a business that is running very nicely and we are pleased with the prospects. As we see money coming out of our SCOsource side we are going use that to fuel growth in the SCO-X business line.
Do you plan to sell Linux ever again?
We haven't made a comment on that yet. We expect to make some directional comments as we get into July. That's when we'll talk about how we will move forward with our potential licensing programmes as they relate to Linux.
At that point we will also make some directional statements about how we see ourselves in relation to Linux going forward.
Have you considered what would happen if you lost the case?
I haven't spent much time thinking about it because the claims we have are so strong. We're pretty clear about how this is going to play out.
But we think our claims are very strong. It is not a matter of reeling in compensation for this. It's a question of what form it takes - the form of settlement - if it goes all the way to litigation. Those are, to me, more the unknowns.
Click here to read part one of this interview.
Click here to read part two of this interview.
Have your say on the SCO/IBM showdown at our forum here.
See also:
SCO seeks additional damages after terminating AIX licence 18 Jun 2003
Big Blue Linux boss dismisses claims that AIX licence will be revoked on 13 June 22 May 2003All Operating Systems
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