SCO licence available in Australia

Australian SCO channel partners would now be able to sell an intellectual property licence from the SCO Group. 

The SCO Group, which claims to own some UNIX code that has been incorporated into Linux, has started selling its intellectual property (IP) licence in Australia and New Zealand, according to a company media release.

SCO's regional general manager, Australia and New Zealand, Kieran O'Shaughnessy, said he would begin briefing the company's local distributors this week regarding the SCO IP License's introduction.

O'Shaughnessy claimed the SCO IP License would help organisations in Australia and New Zealand to 'protect and leverage the investments they have made in Linux' and allow them to 'continue day-to-day business without interruption'.

'By purchasing the licence, customers are properly compensating SCO for the UNIX source code, derivative UNIX code and other UNIX-related intellectual property and copyrights owned by SCO as it is currently found in Linux,' the SCO Group stated.

The SCO Group began the worldwide rollout of the licence in the UK, France and other European countries last week.

The licence costs $999 per server processor and $285 per desktop processor. The company was also offering the licence to embedded device manufacturers that used Linux to run their devices. The company said it planned to make the licence available to many more countries and regions by 1 February.

The vendor said the licence would be made available to selected SCO resellers in the near future.