Caldera Open Linux - Copyright Infringement Allegations

Copyright Infringement Allegations

In 2002, the Caldera board of directors, including Ralph Yarro, brought in the CEO of Franklin-Covey Darl McBride. Almost immediately he saw the value of Caldera as being primarily the value of SCO. The company was renamed The SCO Group. Ransom Love was reassigned to work exclusively on United Linux. After he completed this, he left the company to join Progeny Linux Systems which was aiming to create a professional Debian. He remained there in the capacity of a board member and advisor until April 30, 2007 when Progeny ceased operations.

McBride began to focus on SCO's copyrights. One of McBride's first acts as CEO was to collect $600,000 in back licensing fees that were owed due to Caldera. He cleaned up various Linux-related licensing issues allowing for a new round of financing. Soon thereafter he made strong accusations that Linux had infringed copyrights SCO held on Unix; they claimed to have purchased these copyrights from Novell. Novell denied selling them Unix, prompting them to sue for slander of title. SCO also initiated lawsuits against IBM and AutoZone, alleging copyright infringements through the use or distribution of Linux; none of these lawsuits have been resolved. SCO has created a division, SCOSource, that owns and licenses their intellectual property; a desktop license is $699.