Is the Govt ready to face the SCO threat?

BANGALORE: Despite the threats made by SCO and its letters to Linux users flying all over the place, various governments, including India’s, have shown no signs of worry. One reason for the apparent calmness could be the reassurance given by Linux vendors like Red Hat. 'We are assuring our customers that they have nothing to worry. We will defend the use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux by our customers', says Sachin Dabir, Head-Enterprise Sales, Red Hat India.

'Yes, after receiving SCO’s letters, some of our customers have contacted us with queries, but they have been reassured that we will stand by them', Dabir says.

'We respect and take effort to maintain the legal and technical integrity of valid intellectual property, including patents, copyright and trademarks. We welcome inquiries on the inferences made by competitors on Red Hat's software development practices. Just like Red Hat software, once the source is in the open, the facts become evident to all', says Matthew Szulik, Red Hat CEO.

Will the Govt find itself in a spot by the IBM-SCO spat after all the Linux-friendly initiatives that it has taken? The Karnataka State Government and IBM have recently signed an MoU in a move to advance e-learning initiative within the state based on Open Source. Samuel Palmisano, IBM chairman had campaigned for open source software adoption in government departments, during his meeting with Arun Shourie, ICT Minister and Indian President Abdul Kalam.

And soon after, Kalam pulls out all stops and speaks in favor of open source and decries proprietary software (like SCO and Microsoft).

So far, the central and state governments have made the right noises about embracing Linux for e-governance. State governments such as Madhya Pradesh have been among the fastest to adopt Linux in the public sector. The IT ministry has been working with companies like HP, IBM, Sun and TCS, government agencies like BARC and CDAC to provide a level playing field for Linux vis-a-vis proprietary software.

The Karnataka government remains non-committal about the proprietary software vs. open source spat and maintains the stance - 'we will work with everyone and are equidistant'. In tandem with the Linux-friendly noises, the Karnataka Govt and Microsoft have been cozying up to each other of late. Microsoft has brought multi-million-dollar investment to Karnataka through its decision to open its global product support services center in Bangalore.

In a major win for open source, the government of Munich, Germany has said that it plans to migrate 14,000 PCs from Windows to Linux. If that wasn’t enough, the city will also replace MS Office with the free OpenOffice package.

SCO anti-Linux tirade continues

Meanwhile, SCO has kept up its incessant anti-Linux tirade. It even threatened to sue Linus Trovalds, the founder of Linux — but hurriedly issued a (half-hearted) denial. SCO maintains its stance that its proprietary source code is appearing in many Linux versions. SCO’s threats are attracting continual vitriol from the open source community and Linux-friendly forums such as slashdot. Linux supporters are also believed to have caused a hack attack on SCO’s website in May.

What if...

SCO is believed to be raking up a controversy to attract a possible buyer for itself. After Microsoft bought a Unix license from SCO, allegations of a Redmond-hatched conspiracy are also cropping up.

It’s a slim chance - but what if SCO is right and manages to notch a legal win? The consequences - to say the least - would be far-reaching. If SCO wins, Linux vendors like Redhat will have to pay compensations to SCO and their customers will be left struggling in the middle of the legal soup.

Are the center and other states who have implemented Linux ready to face the music, in the face of the unlikely (but possible) scenario of SCO pulling of a legal victory?