A SCO loss would clear the air

For corporate Linux users, open source developers, and IBM, The SCO Group’s lawsuit remains a dark cloud on the horizon, threatening to spoil the party. Alleging its Unix code was illegally used in IBM’s Linux, SCO has cast a pall over the industry. But there is always hope, and these groups see a good prospect for SCO losing its case, affirming open source principles in the process.

A SCO loss could clear the air and allow enterprise IT managers to feel more secure about using Linux. But according to some analysts, there is also a danger that, with a SCO loss, IBM will feel emboldened to pursue its own patent strategies.

One party that will not be breathing a deep sigh of relief — and may not be breathing at all after an IBM win — is SCO. Many believe the company will be driven into bankruptcy, be acquired, or slowly sink beneath the software waters without a ripple.

“They have effectively destroyed themselves as a Linux supplier because the open source community is so outraged with them and won’t step in to help when they lose this,” says Dan Kuznetsky, an analyst in charge of system software research at IDC. “Their Unix revenue streams are already in sharp decline from the assault by Windows. My sense is, SCO will be gone — with people squabbling over their remaining assets.”

Should SCO lose, the big winner will be IBM and, by extension, the dozens of small, underfunded open source companies who benefit from Big Blue’s deep pockets. With the legal millstone taken from around its neck, the company will be free to pursue its ambitious, across-the-board Linux strategy against archrivals such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.

“Frankly, if SCO loses, IBM takes the poll position, with a number of different parties from the open source world cheering them on. And this nation of small companies with limited resources has a chance to get lifted up with IBM’s economic and technical help,” says Chris LeTocq, an analyst at Guernsey Research.

Many corporate users who depend on Linux-based servers and open source applications will benefit enormously from SCO losing. Otherwise, they will have to pay handsome licensing fees for their software or reimplement their Linux-based servers as far back as Version 2.2 of the Linux kernel, something that is not technically feasible to do.

“[SCO] feels the offending code is now so interspersed with the 2.4 and 2.5 kernels that it will be impossible to effectively remove it,” says Al Gillen, vice president of systems software research at IDC. “They believe the only way for it to be rectified is to go back to the 2.2 kernel and start all over again from there, and that is never going to happen.”

But even as open source advocates anticipate an IBM victory, others are already warning that IBM itself may become the next threat to open source in the aftermath of a SCO legal defeat.

Some believe the SCO-IBM suit is essentially a contractual dispute and will do little to alter IBM’s traditionally strong advocacy in favor of software patents. The company continues to make close to $1 billion a year from its software-patent portfolio and is continuing to patent  software whenever possible.