The SCO Group has terminated IBM's right to sell its AIX operating system and is seeking $3bn in damages.

The company has also filed a permanent injunction that requires IBM to "cease and desist all use and distribution of AIX", and to return all copies of Unix source code to SCO.

SCO's lawsuit claims that IBM broke its contract with SCO by allowing parts of SCO's Unix V source code, licensed to IBM for use in AIX, to be used in the rival Linux operating system kernel.

vnunet.com spoke exclusively to SCO's chief executive, Darl McBride, about the court case, Linux and the future of SCO.

You've filed your injunction against IBM. When is the hearing due?
There's not a date set currently. The next action is really discovery, where we get a chance to go in and take a look at what has been going on at IBM.

It has said publicly that it moved, and is moving, key parts of AIX, and in fact is willing to move all of AIX over into Linux.

The problem with that statement and those actions is that SCO has a very strong contract in place with our software source code licensing agreement that has not allowed IBM to do that. So we are protecting those licence and contract rights.

We went to the 100 days of trying to resolve the issues. So in effect we pulled its contract and it doesn't have any authorisation to now use the software.

But in order to enforce that you have to go through the courts.
We have taken every step possible. Now it's for the courts to step up and enforce the contract rights that we have.

The people that have looked at this - both our legal teams as well as independent people coming from the outside - say: 'These contracts are bullet-proof. This is a very strong contract right you have.'

The way IBM is responding is very interesting. They haven't filed for an injunction; they haven't filed for the summary judgement enforcement to be dismissed.

When you have what people would call nuisance cases then you usually go in and try and knock those out with a summary judgement motion, or something to cause them to be dismissed. IBM has actually done none of that.

In fact, it took the opposite approach of not talking about it at all. So we're perfectly fine to go through whatever time it takes to get resolution on the legal path on this.Now, as of 16 June, we also increased our claims amount to include all AIX-derived hardware, software and services, given that they are now - in deriving that revenue - on an unauthorised route for use of the software.

So what are you going to do in the meantime? Are you just going to wait?
Well, not necessarily. We have been pretty assertive and pretty aggressive and we are going to continue that.

So as we move into discovery this will be very nice for us, because now we get to go in and talk to all their people, their customers. We get to really shake things up and find out what really is going on over there.

Now, by going into pre-discovery, we have strong enough claims. We'd be fine to go to court just on what we have before discovery.

Is IBM agreeable to this process? Does it have to be?
In a legal setting it doesn't have a choice. In discovery you get to go in and investigate the things that relate to the case, and there are a broad range of things that relate to Linux and AIX. We will be going in with a fine-toothed comb and coming up with every detail.

Wouldn't you like to get this resolved quickly?
I would love to have this behind us and move on. IBM has put the brakes on to try and slow things down. And to the extent that it wants to do that, I am saying that we are prepared to go the distance on this. But I would prefer to get this resolved and move forward.

Have you got any idea when the main case will happen?
Well, we are going into discovery now, starting in July. I suspect that will take us into the fall timeframe. Then, I think, when all the discovery is on the table, you start talking about actual hearings. Can this take a year or two? I suppose it could.

Your permanent injunction is supposed to have happened by now.
We amended our original complaint to include the injunction. We are asking the courts to now enforce our contract rights to prevent IBM from shipping AIX software, so this ties right back into the main case again, which means we'll build the due discovery and then we'll go to the hearing.

Click here to read part two of this interview.

Click here to read part three of this interview.

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