BIG BUSINESS VS. LINUX

Being the root of evil and all, whenever money is involved, things can turn nasty. So, when the big players in the enterprise and business markets began to see Linux distros as a threat, lawyers were called.

A series of leaked Microsoft memos from August 1998, known as the Halloween Documents for the date they were released, detailed Microsoft’s private worries that Linux, and open-source development in general, was a direct threat to its business, along with ways to combat its uptake. This private view was in direct conflict with the company’s public line on the matter; though Steve Ballmer famously called Linux a cancer in 2001. The documents are available at www.catb.org/~esr/ halloween, and in them Microsoft predicted that “Linux is on track to eventually own the x86 UNIX market….” It was correct.

There was little Microsoft could do to combat Linux, as it couldn’t be bought. The documents suggested extending open protocols with Microsoft’s own proprietary extensions (that didn’t work), and seeding the market with fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) also failed.

There was another angle, however: Help a company that’s suing over copyright infringement of the source code. In 2003, a company called SCO claimed part of its UNIX System V source code was being used within Linux, making it an unauthorized derivative of UNIX. SCO sued IBM for $1 billion (among many other companies), and demanded end users pay a Linux license fee. Microsoft leaped into action and paid SCO $106 million, as detailed in a leaked and verified SCO memo. After years of legal arguments, a code audit found there to be no evidence of copied UNIX code in the Linux kernel. SCO went bankrupt in 2009.