Red Hat said Thursday that its second quarter fiscal 2004 results show that its business is continuing to thrive despite attacks by SCO Group on Linux, though it is not unaffected.
"We"re able to continue to grow our business, and our customers are continuing to deploy our products despite the noise that"s being generated in the marketplace," Kevin Thompson, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Red Hat, told analysts during the company"s quarterly results conference call Thursday.
However, Thompson conceded that the business has been affected by SCO"s claims that Linux is an unauthorized derivation of its Unix intellectual property, upon which it has based further claims that enterprise Linux users must buy a license from SCO or risk copyright infringement liability.
Thompson said that Red Hat has had to spend a "significant amount of time walking customers through the issues." He also noted that potential customers who have been sitting on the fence concerning Linux deployment are using SCO"s claims and its multi-billi on dollar lawsuit against IBM as an excuse to continue sitting on the fence.
"It is in our customers" interest and the industry"s interest to have this case resolved as soon as possible," Thompson said.
He also noted that Red Hat does not know when SCO"s motion to dismiss Red Hat"s lawsuit against it will be heard. However, he said the company is confident that the lawsuit will continue to move forward.
"Clearly we believe that we have a compelling set of facts in the case that we brought," he said. "We believe that case will continue to move forward."