IBM case to steal limelight at SCO conference

The SCO Group kicks off its customer and partner conference next week, but its legal case against IBM is likely to overshadow its product announcements.

SCO public relations director Blake Stowell told vnunet.com that the two main areas of focus at the event in Las Vegas will be on new product releases taking place during the next six months, "and the protection of our intellectual property, especially our case involving IBM".

The company is currently embroiled in legal action against Big Blue, which SCO claims has contributed AIX source code to Linux without authorisation.

"The main theme at this year's SCO Forum event will be around the 25th anniversary of Unix on the Intel/AMD platform," said Stowell.

"Obviously, SCO has been squarely focused on that environment since its beginning and we will be taking a look at the past, present and future of Unix computing on Intel/AMD."

Stowell said that the company will be focusing on product news around the next release of SCO OpenServer (code-named Legend), the release of its email and collaboration product SCOoffice Server, and "a unique concept for embracing the Unix developer community around the SCO Unix platforms".

Other highlights at the event, aimed at reseller partners, developers, and enterprise customers, include a keynote by SCO president and chief executive Darl McBride discussing "SCO: past, present, and future" and briefings on SCO's product roadmap.

There will also be a keynote entitled Protecting SCO's Intellectual Property by Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of the SCOsource Division, which aims to persuade Linux users to buy a licence.

Because SCO claims that Linux is an unauthorised derivative work of the Unix operating system which SCO owns, it offers an SCO Intellectual Property Licence for Linux for commercial use of Linux 2.4 and later versions.

SCO's website states: "The licence ensures that Linux end users can continue to run their business uninterrupted without misusing SCO's intellectual property."

But in June it was revealed that this part of the business managed to rake in just $11,000 during its last financial quarter.