SCOs McBride Heads to Japan to Explain Linux Stand

Darl McBride, CEO for The SCO Group, is in Japan this week for a weeklong visit where he will meet a number of the Lindon, Utah, companys OEM partners in that country to explain his stand on Linux as well as to brief the Japanese press.

SCO in March filed suit against IBM for more than $1 billion in the State Court of Utah alleging that Big Blue made “concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of Unix, particularly Unix on Intel, to benefit IBMs new Linux services business.”

It also sent letters to 1,500 CEOs around the world, including some in Japan, warning them that Linux is an unauthorized Unix derivative and that they could face potential legal liability for using it.

But Blake Stowell, SCOs director of corporate communications, told eWEEK on Monday that McBride does not intend to use his trip to threaten legal action against those Japanese corporations running Linux, but rather to educate them on his position with regard to the open-source operating system and Unix.

The trip is not a precursor to legal action against a Japanese company, he said, adding that McBride wants to fully explain his position to the Asian business leaders, many of whom already pay SCO to use Unix, he said.

McBride speaks fluent Japanese after living in Japan for five years when he helped start Novell Inc.s Japanese operation.

He is not being accompanied by Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager for SCOs intellectual-property division, and also has no plans to travel elsewhere in Asia or to any other country at this time, Stowell confirmed.

Last month SCO said it had terminated Big Blues right to use or distribute its Unix-based AIX operating system. SCO asked the court 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. The court has not yet responded to that request.