Linux creator derides SCO letter

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 11 Sep 2003 at 13:00

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has responded to SCO's open letter, asking CEO Darl McBride to 'please grow up'.

Torvalds thanks McBride for his letter. 'We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter,' he writes, and continues: 'The others don't seem to make as much sense.'

He rejected McBride's call to create a new business model so that Linux vendors can start making money. 'We have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money... and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery,' he wrote.

SCO made money by doing an IPO as a Linux distributor, notes Torvalds, with not a small amount of satisfaction at the irony.

He denied that there was anything to be negotiated. 'SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about.'

SCO withdrew its own version of Linux earlier this year, while it investigated whether there were any issues. At the time, Gael Duval, founder of Mandrake Linux commented: 'It will be interesting to see how SCO Group can defend its claims of property on parts of code that they certainly released for years under the terms of the General Public License in their Linux products.'