I believe the way the open-source community works right now has some fundamental flaws that have got to be addressed. We need to address how this open-source intellectual property is developed, routed, and sold. Thousands of software developers send code to contribute to open-source projects -- but there isn't a protective device for the customer using the software to ensure they're not in violation of the law by using stolen code.

Basically it's a "buyer beware" situation. The one holding the hot potato is the end-use customer. If the process can't provide more guarantees for customers, I don't think it will pass the long-term test at the customer level. You need some comfort level other than "We can warrant none of this, we don't know where it came from. And because you got it for free, you shouldn't complain about it."-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23

In the last 18 months, we found that IBM had donated some very high-end enterprise-computing technologies into open-source. Some of it looked like it was our intellectual property and subject to our licensing agreements with IBM. Their actions were in direct violation of our agreements with them that they would not share this information, let alone donate it into open-source. We have examples of code being lifted verbatim.

And IBM took the same team that had been working on a Unix code project with us and moved them over to work on Linux code. If you look at the code we believe has been copied in, it's not just a line or two, it's an entire section -- and in some cases, an entire program.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23

Our feeling is that if our intellectual-property rights have been violated, then all parties need to recognize that and work out some form of compensation or action. The majority of other vendors are stepping up in a positive fashion.

We want to protect our rights, but our goal is not to litigate with anybody. In IBM's case, they came back and said, "If you go down this path, we are going to disengage. We are not going to do any more business with you, and we are going to encourage others not to do any more business with you." That was in fact what happened. The impact was immediate and swift. No doubt, we lost some business and some revenue.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23

The tipping point for us was at Linux World this year, when an IBM executive stood up in front of a large crowd and essentially said, "We're moving our AIX expertise into Linux, and we're going to destroy the value of Unix."

Those comments alone would have been a direct violation of our AIX contract with IBM, under which they license our Unix intellectual property. That's what caused us to start digging [to] find out what was going on. And the deeper we dug, the more we found. When we tried to resolve things with them, we reached an impasse. This lawsuit is the final extension of the negotiating process.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23

They [Microsoft] agree with our approach to intellectual property. They've taken a patent license on our technology to build better integration between Unix and Windows. I believe that sends a statement to others with respect to what it means to honor intellectual property.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23

We would be happy to sit down and get a resolution on this so we can all live together peacefully. But when we file a legal claim and then someone does a denial-of-service attack on our Web site to try to shut us down, it creates concerns for us as to how can you work with this community.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-23