SCO Turns a Profit, Renews Threat Against IBM

SCO Turns a Profit, Renews Threat Against IBM
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After posting its first-ever profit for the quarter, ended April 30, SCO reinforced its threat to revoke IBM's legal license to sell AIX if the two can't reach an agreement. The SCO Group on Wednesday again threatened to revoke IBMs legal license to sell AIX, its Unix operating system, on June 14 if Big Blue does not reach an agreement with SCO regarding its alleged intellectual violations of SCOs Unix code.

In a media telephone conference to announce its second-quarter fiscal results, SCO CEO Darl McBride declined to say how the company would enforce this action against IBM. He also declined to say whether he thought a resolution was likely before that point, referring the matter to IBM for comment.

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SCO recently sued IBM for $1 billion and sent a letter to 1,500 global CEOs warning them that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of Unix and that by using Linux they could be legally liable for the resultant violations.

"As the owners of the Unix operating system, we are continuing to move down the path of protecting and asserting our rights as they relate to Unix. SCO has over 6,000 licensees who have signed up with us on the source-code level for Unix. We are on a journey and are still at the front end of that journey.

"As we continue to focus on this we will continue to be rewarded in the marketplace, starting with customers and moving onto shareholders," McBride said.

That reward was evident in the fact that SCO on Wednesday also reported net income for the first time in the companys history, he said. In the second quarter of fiscal 2003, ended April 30, SCO reported net income of $4.5 million, or 33 cents a diluted share, on revenue of $21.4 million.

That compares to a net loss of $6.6 million, or 47 cents a diluted share, on revenue of $15.5 million for the year-ago quarter. The company also reported a net loss of $724,000, or 6 cents a diluted share, on revenue of $13.5 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2003.

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