Nevertheless, Donald Christie of Catalyst IT Ltd. in Wellington says SCO is now largely ignored by the free software community. 'This has been a watershed case, as it's forced some of the world's largest IT companies to take a stand in favor of open source. SCO's beef turns out to be contractual issue with IBM, and not an intellectual property issue at all.'

Gill says she isn't sure how relevant the SCO action is to New Zealand businesses and how much notice they're taking of it. 'It's complicated, it's very political and it's on a completely different scale from what most businesses experience in New Zealand ... [which] has a culture where people look at the risks, are mindful of them, and then make a decision about whether they're prepared to accept those risks.'

Some lawyers, such as US law firm Thelen Reid & Priest, recommend that Linux users don't buy licences such as those offered as a remedy against SCO taking legal action. Not only was there a very soft response in the US Linux user community to the licence offer, even New Zealand users are cynical about SCO's opportunism.

'I feel it's part of a general problem. Generally, there are far too many attempts to stifle developments through spurious claims to 'own' particular ideas when those ideas are clearly in the common domain,' says Neil James, information technology strategy and policy consultant, and executive officer of the New Zealand vice-chancellors' standing committee on information technology at the University of Otago.