March 30, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Less than a month after purchasing intellectual property licenses from the SCO Group, EV1 Servers (ev1servers.net) CEO Robert Marsh told IDG News Service that, if given a second chance, he would not have made the same decision.
Marsh’s comments follow weeks of public disapproval from the Linux community, which believes that by purchasing the UNIX licenses, EV1 is supporting the SCO Group’s claims that UNIX code found in Linux violates its intellectual property rights.
SCO has said that EV1 paid a seven-digit figure for the licensing, although Marsh has disputed that.
The EV1 CEO had already expressed some remorse to theWHIR about the purchase earlier this month, calling it a huge disappointment to be “thrown into the same bucket, so to say, with the SCO Group.
“Our public position is certainly not to support that, and our intent was simply to take us out of the loop, not to make us public enemy number one.”
Marsh maintains that he believed he was looking out for the best interest of his 42,000 customers when he made the purchase, to protect them from ever being sued. While he had been expecting some disapproval, he said EV1 had miscalculated how large the backlash would be.
