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More reader ire over SCO licensing news

Opinion
Nov 03, 20032 mins
Enterprise ApplicationsLinux

* Your thoughts on SCO's latest licensing policy

News of The SCO Group’s attempt to enforce the intellectual property rights and copyrights it claims to have over Linux continues to draw strong scorn from readers of this newsletter.   Last week, we discussed SCO’s latest policy shift to only offering its $1,400 license to “Fortune 500” companies. The one-time license, charged for each processor on which a user runs Linux, exempts the licensee from any legal trouble regarding future court rulings on the pending SCO/IBM Linux lawsuit.

News of The SCO Group’s attempt to enforce the intellectual property rights and copyrights it claims to have over Linux continues to draw strong scorn from readers of this newsletter. 

Last week, we discussed SCO’s latest policy shift to only offering its $1,400 license to “Fortune 500” companies. The one-time license, charged for each processor on which a user runs Linux, exempts the licensee from any legal trouble regarding future court rulings on the pending SCO/IBM Linux lawsuit.

One reader says SCO’s licensing policy changes are proof that the firm’s motives are not altruistic.

“This seems like a ploy to ‘encourage’ corporate management to buy now or pay more later,” the reader says. “The fact that they are not offering this ‘relief’ from the threat of a lawsuit for the smaller companies sounds like they are not holding them in violation. In reality I think it is more that they want to get large corporate management to ‘just buy it’ [the licenses] and avoid the headaches [of] going to court against SCO.”

Another user wrote that the news about SCO’s legal and licensing maneuverings are getting old, and making it lose credibility with users. The reader calls the firm “a pathetic company that doesn’t innovate and lowers itself into predatory tactics like most companies nowadays.”

This reader, also a consultant, gives advice on how enterprises should proceed.

“I have advised all my clients to turn to Apple for most of their needs, only upgrade certain Windows computers … and run Linux and – guess who’s back? – FreeBSD on their servers.”

CORRECTION: Last week’s newsletter “Red Hat debuts its latest heavy-duty Linux OS” incorrectly stated the memory limits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3. The product supports up to 64G bytes.