August 18, 2003
HP, Intel Withdraw Support for SCO Forum
By Peter Galli
LAS VEGAS—The immense distaste and anger of the open-source and Linux
community, as well as of some enterprises, for The SCO Group's attack on
Linux appears not to be going unnoticed by some of the major vendors.
Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum
2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all
marketing and press material for the forum.
Sources told eWEEK that Intel, bowing to pressure from the major Linux
vendors, the open-source community and some of its largest customers, backed
down and withdrew its sponsorship of the event.
Not so, SCO CEO Darl McBride told eWEEK here on Sunday.
While he was "not familiar with all the intricacies of the matter," it
appears that SCO took to advertising and promoting Intel as a sponsor even
before the deal was signed. As the deal never actually took place, Intel was
removed as a lead sponsor of the event, he said.
It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week,
SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the
forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to
attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote.
The keynote that was to be given by an HP executive is now scheduled to be
made by Maggie Alexander, a vice president at SCO partner Progress Software.
This development is interesting as many members of the open-source and Linux
communities, as well as many Linux users, were enraged that HP would consider
giving a keynote at SCO's Forum 2003. HP had found itself between a rock and
a hard place, as it has long claimed to equally support three operating
systems: Windows, its HP-UX Unix operating system and Linux.
But SCO's claims that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of Unix and its
threats of legal action against users put HP in a difficult position. Neither
SCO nor HP could be reached for comment by the time this article was
published.
However, whatever the reason for the withdrawal of its keynote speaker, HP
still sponsored the Sunday night welcome reception at the MGM Grand for Forum
2003 attendees, which was well attended and included food and drinks.
Copyright (c) 2003 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Steven W. Buehler | swbuehler@yahoo.com
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