Red Hat, the North Carolina-based leading GNU/Linux distribution developer, announced today that it has filed a complaint against The SCO Group, Inc. The complaint alleges that SCO has made “unfair, unsubstantiated and untrue public statements.”
According to Red Hat, the purpose of the legal action is to establish that Red Hat's software does not infringe on SCO's intellectual property. Mark Webbink, Red Hat's General Council, remarked, “Red Hat is confident that its current and future customers will continue to realize the significant value that our Red Hat Linux platform provides without interruption.”
The action also marked the unveiling of what Red Hat has dubbed the “Open Source Now Fund,” a legal fund to protect the developers (corporate or non-profit) of GPL-licensed Free Software in future infringement cases. According to Red Hat Chairman and CEO Matthew Szulik, “The collaborative process of Open Source software development which created the Linux operating system has been unjustly questioned and threatened.” He continued, “In its role as industry leader, Red Hat has a responsibility to ensure the legal rights of users are protected.”
The announcement marked the second major event in an interesting day for the GNU/Linux community. Earlier in the day, SCO rival Novell Corp., announced its plans to extend its GNU/Linux offerings by purchasing Ximian Inc., the developer of the Free Software Evolution personal information manager, XD2 derivative of the Gnome desktop project, and founder of the Mono .Net virtual machine project.