CA blasts SCO, disputes Linux license claim

IDG News Service - Computer Associates International Inc. yesterday blasted The SCO Group Inc. for allegedly harassing Linux users and misrepresenting the terms of a software licensing arrangement between the two companies.
SCO Chief Financial Officer Bob Bench on Wednesday confirmed that CA was one of four publicly named companies to sign up for SCO's Intellectual Property (IP) License for Linux -- a $699-per-processor license that SCO says Linux users must purchase in order to avoid violating SCO's copyrights (see story).
Yesterday, however, a CA executive said his company had purchased no such license, but had instead acquired a large number of licenses for SCO's UnixWare operating system as part of a $40 million breach-of-contract lawsuit settlement in August 2003 with SCO investor The Canopy Group Inc.
Around the time of the settlement, SCO announced that it had signed up the first customer for its Linux license. Though SCO didn't reveal the identity of this customer, industry speculation centered around it being CA.
By acquiring the UnixWare licenses, CA indemnified itself against a possible Linux lawsuit from SCO, said Sam Greenblatt, the senior vice president and chief architect of CA's Linux Technology Group. "We did an agreement with the Canopy Group, and in the agreement with the Canopy Group, we acquired UnixWare licenses," he said. "For every UnixWare license you acquired, you got indemnified for that number of Linux licenses."
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell disagreed with Greenblatt's characterization and said CA had indeed obtained an IP License for Linux. "UnixWare licenses allow SCO customers to run UnixWare, and the SCO Intellectual Property License allows Linux end users to run our Unix intellectual property in binary form in Linux. Today, CA has a license in place to run our Unix IP in binary form in Linux without fear that they may be infringing on our intellectual property," he said in an e-mail interview.

Greenblatt strongly objected to the portrayal of CA as a SCO IP License for Linux customer. "To represent us as having supported the SCO thing is totally wrong," he said. Greenblatt had harsh words for SCO and the company's CEO, Darl McBride, whose tactics, he said, were "intended to intimidate and threaten customers."
"We totally disagree with his approach, his tactics and the way he's going about this," said Greenblatt.
Separately, another company mentioned as a SCO Linux licensee yesterday denied knowledge of any such agreement. Though SCO's Bench had confirmed Carthage, Mo.-based Leggett & Platt Inc. as a licensee on Wednesday, a spokesman for the manufacturing company said he had no