Article from Heise.de NewsTicker (German)


Babelfish translation

Tarent.de press release


LinuxTag press release (English and German)


Evidently, Open Source developers in Germany don't think SCO's recent action is very funny. Tarent, a German company devoted to OS solutions, filed a procedure requesting that SCO be fined for breaching the order established last week. The fine specified in the order was euro 250,000 (USD 295,000).

Hans Bayer, president of SCO Germany, said the breach was a mistake, that they had done everything "humanly possible" to obey the order.


This is the English version of the LinuxTag press release:


Prohibited Claims by SCO -- Plaintiffs Raise Contempt Charges

In spite of the interlocutory injunctions issued by district courts in Bremen and Munich, a German SCO web site still displays the prohibited statement that Linux contains illegally obtained SCO property.

"For them to ignore the court orders is outrageous. Evidently they intend to continue their strategy of intimidating GNU/Linux users and the Linux community," said Michael Kleinhenz, spokesman for the LinuxTag association, about the behavior of SCO's German subsidiary.


The letter has now been removed from the www.sco.de website.

After a first injunction against SCO had been obtained by the system supplier univention GmbH in Bremen on May 28th, 2003, the software and consulting company tarent GmbH obtained another injunction in Munich's first district court on June 5 in spite of a caveat filed by SCO.

"The Munich I district court determined that SCO had not plausibly demonstrated that the Linux kernel violates SCO's rights," said attorney Dr. Till Jaeger of the firm of Jaschinski Biere Brexl, which represents tarent GmbH in this matter. Because SCO continued to publish the disputed claims, tarent GmbH requested that the company be fined. "We can't simply allow them to confuse GNU/Linux users, causing damage to Linux businesses," said tarent's Managing Director, Elmar Geese. "We hope our initial success will help to demonstrate that Linux can be used dependably. As a company that profits from Free Software, we feel it is our duty to take action against SCO."

Klaus Knopper, developer of the GNU/Linux distribution Knoppix, criticized the strategy behind SCO's claims: "What kind of respect is SCO showing for the intellectual property of the many Linux developers who have worked to develop an operating system that is free and open to all -- on which SCO's own Linux distribution was based, by the way? You can read on the SCO website that they have used and continue to use other GPL software in their products," Knopper added.