Recently a US based company Santa Cruz Operation Inc. (SCO) has started a hostile legal attack on Linux users. SCO has sued other US software companies and sent letters to around 1500 corporations claiming that anyone who utilizes GNU/Linux systems must buy a license from SCO because the system includes so far publicly unidentifiable "intellectual property" owned by SCO. Because Turré Legal Consulting advises many clients whose business is based on the free utilization of GNU/Linux systems we provide some general information on what a company using or distributing GNU/Linux systems should now take into account.

1. It is highly unlikely that anyone would be obliged to pay anything to SCO. The free software and open source communities unanimously reject all SCO claims: by distributing GNU/Linux under GNU GPL license until this date SCO has allowed anyone to utilize everything in GNU/Linux including their contributions without charge. To our understanding, SCO can not revoke their distribution. Not surprisingly, a number of leading software companies including IBM and Red Hat Inc. have countersued SCO for the infringement of GNU GPL license which seems quite obvious. Therefore, we recommend not to buy any "Linux"-licenses from SCO.
2. However, it is likely that some parts of GNU/Linux operating system or Linux kernel particularly include SCO's copyright or other intellectual property. This is entirely possible because the development of Linux kernel is distributed and there is no single copyright ownership. Linux kernel is jointly owned by a number of developers, both individuals and corporations, who have donated their source code into the project without giving up copyright. While distributed development may be technically a powerful way to create new complex software, the recent dispute would have been avoided if the copyright to Linux kernel were in single hands. Therefore, we recommend companies to recheck their licensing policies and make sure no third party code is used before its rights have been "cleared". Code clearing may require project auditing with a competent lawyer and updates to internal license usage policies.
3. Finally, we want to stress that GNU GPL - and GNU LGPL alike - are probably the most controversial free software licenses from legal perspective. There are many lawyers who believe some parts of these licenses are unenforceable in some jurisdictions or that they should not be used because of too many uncertainties and legal risks. While much of this popular discussion would prove to be hypocrisy, we urge companies to make individual judgement of possible legal risks and uncertainties before they engage in an imporant business activity which involves or depends on software under GPL or LGPL such as GNU/Linux operating system, GCC development tools or MySQL database. These risks must be evaluated in the event of due diligence, mergers, acqusitions and other financial transactions. It is better to know beforehand what is to be expected.