THE open-source community has launched a broadside against the SCO Group's claim to own part of Linux's code.

Linux users have started a petition suggesting defiance and have labelled SCO's move as "unjust, ill-founded and bizarre".

The Open Source Initiative, a peak body of the open source movement, has released a detailed position paper attacking SCO's management.

The initiator of the Linux system, Linus Torvalds, also joined the fray, more diplomatically saying he was waiting for SCO to detail its claim.

The OSI, headed by Eric Raymond, staked out the high moral ground: "Unix, Linux and the open-source movement are vital components of the internet and the World Wide Web.

"SCO's attempt to assert proprietary control of these technologies is an indirect but potent threat against the internet and the culture that maintains it."

OSI said SCO would be unable to sustain its claim that IBM misappropriated SCO technologies for enterprise scalability.

"On public evidence, not one of the five key technologies for enterprise scalability in Linux can plausibly be traced to historical Bell Labs code through IBM."

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