SCO Yanks IBMs Unix License

The SCO Group on Monday terminated Big Blues right to use or distribute its Unix-based AIX operating system.

SCO, which is suing IBM for $1 billion, said it was going to file an amendment to the complaint against IBM with the U.S. States District Court of Utah, where the case is currently pending, for a permanent injunction requiring IBM to cease and desist all use and distribution of AIX and to destroy or return all copies of Unix System V source code.

In the amended complaint, SCO is also seeking additional damages from IBMs AIX-related businesses. These damages began accruing Friday, June 13th at midnight, the company said. Asked by eWEEK how much that would be, SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said they estimated IBM earned between $30 billion and $50 billion a year for services, software and hardware sold around its AIX business.

Stowell also confirmed that SCO has named Sequent Computer Systems in its amended complaint, alleging that Sequent contributed part of its Unix-derivative Dynix, specifically the non-uniform memory access (NUMA) technology, to Linux.

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As Sequent was acquired by IBM before the NUMA technology was released to the open-source community, Sequent and IBM are "one and the same for the purposes of our lawsuit. We have code to justify this claim," he said.

In 1999 IBM and Sequent announced a merger agreement under which IBM would sell Sequents product line worldwide and integrate Sequent technologies into IBM products. Sequent would then become a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM, they said at that time.

If the permanent injunction SCO is seeking is granted and allowed to stand, it means that IBM will not be able to sell AIX and those companies already using AIX will have no rights to do so anymore.

IBM is expected to challenge any the injunction in court. Spokeswoman Trink Guarino told eWeek that there is nothing new in the press release SCO issued on Monday.