SCO "maliciously" attempts to kill off Embedded Linux

EMBEDDED LINUX company Monte Vista described SCO's attempt to wrest a $32 royalty out of systems using its technology as "malicious".

Officials at the company explained that attempts by SCO to get this amount of royalty for each instance of embedded Linux would pare its margins to the bone, plus the attempt to wrest money was unrelated to the facts of the Open Source case, anyway.

The chief lawyer at the company told the INQUIRER in a conference call that SCO would only discuss the situation if Open Source companies first signed a non disclosure agreement (NDA). That, he said, is clearly a condition too far.

Plus, the bill of materials (BOM) for a $32 software licence that SCO is demanding, is between five to seven times the cost of other software licences for embedded systems.

And the dispute between SCO and IBM is nothing to do with the code embedded Linux uses, he added. That relates to SMP, to Numa, to IA64 and to binary emulation, he claimed. IA32 code could also be part of such a case, he suggested.

"SCO is demanding all discussions be under NDA," a situation that possible contravents US laws.

"It's a malicious attempt to kill off embedded Linux", he claimed. Microsoft might benefit from such an attempt.

A "cloud of confusion" surrounds the litigation, said the Monte Vista lawyer. It probably wasn't a coincidence Microsoft had signed up with SCO early. µ