SCO eyes iTunes-style software marketplace

The SCO Group wants to use its controversial court case with IBM to fund a software marketplace, which it said could work in the same way as Apple's iTunes.

SCO chief executive and president Darl McBride explained that this would be a development of its SCO Marketplace initiative, which will see developers bid for work such as developing drivers for SCO products.

McBride said that the expanded Marketplace would be one of the plans SCO could put into action if it is successful in its legal fight with IBM.

"My vision is that the operating system gets back on track and Legend [the next version of SCO OpenServer] and Diamond [future versions of SCO OpenServer and UnixWare] is a big deal and Unix continues to be one of the top two operating systems," he said.

McBride added that the icing on the cake would be the extended SCO Marketplace initiative.

"My ultimate vision is that you have this platform where it is really easy for independent software vendors to publish [software] and for users to download and use [it]," he said.

"You do not have to limit it to [software] running on our operating systems; that is clearly the starting point."

Having its own operating systems and wide user base makes SCO one of the few companies that could do this, according to McBride.

"[It is] what [Apple chief executive] Steve Jobs has done with iTunes for music," he said. "My goal is to get our damages recovered and get these projects implemented."

The legal battle between SCO and IBM over intellectual property is yet to be resolved.