Red Hat Strikes Back At SCO, Saying "It's Time To Act"

T he fur continues to fly in the SCO vs. Linux brouhaha as Red Hat, a major provider of Linux, filed a lawsuit against SCO this week. The C|Net report says that Red Hat is seeking to get the courts to state that its version of Linux has no copyright violations.

SCO is in the process of suing IBM for US$3 billion for what it says is violations of both its copyrights and patents for Unix in Linux. Though Red Hat is not named in that suit, SCO has been sending letters to Red Hat corporate customers, along with customers of IBM and other major Linux vendors, demanding that they pay a licensing fee to SCO to prevent litigation from SCO. Red Hatis new suit seeks damages from SCO for loss of revenue due to SCOis campaign against IBM in particular, and Linux in general. From the C|Net News report; Red Hat files suit against SCO:

Red Hat escalated the legal war over Linux on Monday by announcing that it has filed a lawsuit against the SCO Group.

The seven-count suit seeks, among other things, a declaratory judgment that Red Hat has not violated SCOis copyrights or trade secrets, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik said at a news conference here Monday.

"We have asked the courts to declare, iNo violation of intellectual property and trade secrets have occurred,i" Szulik said. "Weive been patient, weive listened, but when our customers and the whole open-source community are threatened with innuendo and rumor, itis time to act."

SCO rebuffed Red Hatis assertions. "SCOis claims are true, and we look forward to proving them in court," the company said in a statement. "SCO has not been trying to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt to end-users. We have been educating end-users on the risks of running an operating system that is an unauthorized derivative of Unix. Linux includes source code that is a verbatim copy of Unix and carries with it no warranty or indemnification."

You can read the full article at C|Net.