SCO readies legal action against users

The SCO Group is insisting it will stick to its plan of taking legal action against Linux users within the next few days.

In November, chief executive Darl McBride said SCO would commence legal proceedings against a Linux user within 90 days. That date ends today.

SCO's director of public relations, Blake Stowell, told vnunet.com: "I can tell you that the company plans to hold to the claims that it made at Comdex on 18 November.

"I'm giving us until at least the eighteenth."

He would not provide details of which companies SCO would target.

But Gary Barnett, principal analyst at Ovum, warned that taking legal action against end users would be a high-risk strategy for SCO.

"Anything is possible," he said. "They might issue papers, but I would be absolutely astonished if SCO went to court.

"If the judge throws it out the game is over and its licensing programme is dead."

Others expected proceedings to have begun earlier.

Open Source Development Labs chief executive Stuart Cohen said he had expected action at the beginning of February, which is why it set up it a legal fund.

"[SCO] said it was going to be first quarter, and then in mid-January that it was going to be 1 February and that's why we set up the legal defence fund. They told so many people but it hasn't happened," he said.

In mid-January SCOsource vice president Chris Sontag told vnunet.com that proceedings could start "very shortly; within a couple of weeks".