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'Open Source offers [customers] the flexibility to change... It forces vendors to compete on innovating solutions for customers... It really is turning this whole industry upside down. Choice, I think will be the Open Source legacy,' he said.

'Customers need to be able to determine when to upgrade, at their pace, not our pace. Novell shouldn't tell you, Microsoft shouldn't tell you. None of us should tell you when to upgrade. You should have the freedom to make that decision... Proprietary software development forces you into a box,' he added.

Novell's Linux credentials include the recently completed its buy of the number two Linux vendor SUSE. It also acquired the Open Source Ximian desktop management suite.

Stone also debunked any theories from SCO that Open Source and Free Software is anathema to making a profit, although the money is not in the operating system

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per se, but rather the applications and services that run on it. 'The value is up the stack. That's where the money is, it's not in the low-level environment. And that's what the hardware vendors have figured out, which is why they're rushing to Linux at such a fast and furious pace. Their profit margins are going up because of their move to Linux.'

Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, a company which claims ownership of Unix and insists some of that proprietary code has leaked into the Linux kernel, has in the past branded Open Source and Free Software as unconstitutional because of the GNU GPL licence under which it is distributed.

However, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), which maintains the GNU GPL, says: 'We encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.' The only caveat the licence adds to that is that end users should have access to the source code of such software and the right to modify and redistribute that code.

Novell claims it has retained copyrights and privileges regarding Unix, as a previous owner of the platform. With Novell at the wrong end of a suit filed by SCO because of such claims, there is no love lost between the companies.

'Sorry, Darl, again. Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, and you didn't invent Linux or Intellectual Propety law. We still own Unix and we believe that Unix is not in Linux and that Linux is a free and open distribution and should be and always will be,' said Stone.