SCO site still flat out on the canvas

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 2 Sep 2003 at 12:13

Access to the SCO's website remains intermittent as denial of service attacks continue to blight the domain.

The website of SCO is still out of action this morning, more than a week after having been hit by a denial of service attack.

The motivation behind the ongoing attacks can only be attributed to anger in the open source community, fuelled by SCO's intention to squeeze Linux users for a licence to use its code that it claims has been misappropriated into the operating system.

Indeed the initial attack has already been attributed by Open Source Initiative (OSI) President Eric S. Raymond to one of its own.

In a posting to the Linux Today website, he said: 'I had been hoping, and actually expecting, that the attacker would turn out to be some adolescent cracker with no real connection to the open source community other than a willingness to stand down when one of its leaders asked. But no; I was told enough about his background and how he did it to be pretty sure he is one of us and I am ashamed for us all.' However, he maintained that the identity of the attacker remained unknown to him.

An article on Australian news site The Age posted yesterday revealed that SCO may not have the stomach to drag every Linux user through the courts to extract its licence fees.

Responding to a request as to whether it planned to sue all these companies, the answer was: 'SCO has never planned to sue Linux companies.'

During the teleconference following SCO's announcement of its Linux licence CEO Darl McBride said: 'Our goal is not to litigate.'

But SCO's attorney David Boies quickly followed this up: 'If people do not come forward - there's the possibility of case by case litigation.'