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AUSTRALIAN corporate Linux users are rejecting SCO Group's attempts to wring money out of them over intellectual property issues.

Utah-based SCO launched a campaign in May to enforce its intellectual property claims over Linux and other Unix variants. Last week it offered businesses a safeguard against legal action if they bought a SCO UnixWare licence to cover Linux.

Some Linux users threatened by the action are watching developments, although SCO says legal action would be a last resort.

In March, SCO Group (formerly Caldera) launched legal action against IBM in the US, claiming it made unauthorised use of SCO code in its AIX Unix software.

SCO has not launched legal action against any Linux distributors or users.

In May it publicly claimed the open source operating system used some of its code in versions 2.4 and upwards, enabling it to scale to more than four processors.

Then, last week, SCO announced its attempt to sell UnixWare licences to Linux users, causing uproar in the open source community, most of which rejected the move.

SCO Group local representative Kieran O'Shaughnessy said he had been contacted by two corporate Linux users about the UnixWare licences in the past week. This was a small number, but it indicated "large commercial users of Linux are concerned about the issue and are watching it, as they should", he said.

SCO would not pursue legal action in the first instance, he said, but would approach large Linux users "in the normal commercial way, preferably through discussion, negotiation and coming to legal arrangements".

"The ultimate resort is legal action. I guess that's the worst-case scenario open to SCO."

The UnixWare licences had not yet been made available, pricing had not been released, and there was no deadline that he was aware of for Linux users to make the purchase, Mr O'Shaunnessy said.

AusRegistry, which runs Australia's domain name registry, uses Linux for its databases, email hosting, and some desktops.

Its chief technology officer, Chris Wright, said he had read widely about SCO's Linux claim before deciding there was nothing to fear.

"Now there are a lot of reports out there on it, you can see it's not really going to succeed," Mr Wright said.

Even if there was SCO code in the Linux kernel, the developer community was robust enough to replace it quickly, Mr Wright said.

"We wouldn't buy the SCO licence, that's for sure."

Con Zymaris, chief executive of Melbourne services company CyberSource, and a member of Open Source Victoria, said he had complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about SCO's behaviour.

"They're relying on people's absolute ignorance, just like the DNS scammers are," Mr Zymaris said.

Gordon Hubbard, managing director of Sydney SCO partner CustomTech, and treasurer of Unix user group AUUG, said he had not been contacted by SCO.

"I can't see us advising people to go down that track of buying UnixWare licences," he said.

SCO resellers, who number between 200 and 300, would probably fall into two categories: those who had embraced Linux and pursued business around it, and those who "wanted to turn the clock back", he said.

"The world has moved forward and the clock can't be turned back," he said. "I believe it will cause quite a bit of heartburn for SCO's channel if SCO tries to apply pressure."

However, AUUG president Greg Lehey said there were signs that some corporate users would limit or stop using Linux due to fear, uncertainty and doubt around the issue.

Mr Lehey said he also had complained to the ACCC, as he believed it was breaching the Trade Practices Act.

But he said the biggest concern was that unfounded fear would cause organisations not to deploy Linux.

Dieter Kletschkus, IT general manager at Adelaide-based manufacturer Gerard Industries, said his company's pilot deployments would be limited until there was more information about SCO's claim.

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SourceL AustalianIT