Linux developers unmoved by SCO lawsuit

Linux developers are "overwhelmingly unconcerned" about SCO's lawsuit claiming intellectual property rights to Unix code are included in Linux, according to a recent study.

The survey of 400 developers, conducted by analyst company Evans Data Corporation, revealed that 70 per cent of respondents said that the SCO lawsuit will 'probably not' or 'absolutely not' influence their company's decision to use Linux.

Only 12 per cent indicated that the lawsuit will affect adoption plans, while 17 per cent had no opinion.

More than three-quarters of developers who believe that Linux is ready for mission critical applications are not going to have their adoption plans hindered by the SCO lawsuit, the survey found.

"Developers seem unimpressed with the SCO lawsuit," said Nicholas Petreley, Linux analyst at Evans Data.

"They are certainly not concerned enough to change their plans for Linux, since only one in 10 are considering it a factor in their adoption plans.

"It is also interesting to note that KDE has taken a statistically significant lead in use and deployment after running neck and neck with Gnome for the past three years."

The survey also found that Linux users are finding it as easy to migrate their applications from Windows to Linux as from Unix to Linux.

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