A senior Microsoft executive has labeled some of the media reports about its decision to license the rights to Unix technology from the SCO Group as "better suited to the plot of a movie".

Microsoft Australia's competitive strategy manager, Martin Gregory, who made the comment in a briefing with ZDNet Australia journalists on earlier this week, declined to elaborate on which movies he was thinking of, but acknowledged the area "was one of those subjects written around with emotion and combative language".

Microsoft licensed from SCO the Unix source code and a patent associated with the Unix operating system. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said when the decision was announced that acquiring the license from SCO "[was] representative of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to respecting intellectual property and the IT community's healthy exchange of IP through licensing. This helps to ensure IP compliance across Microsoft solutions and supports our efforts around existing products like Services for Unix that further Unix interoperability".

However, according to U.S.-based analysts, Microsoft's move lends prominent backing to SCO's intellectual property claims and helps the software heavyweight combat Linux, which poses a growing marketplace threat to its Windows operating system. SCO has sued IBM for US$1 billion for allegedly inappropriately using Unix code in the Linux operating system.

U.S.-based Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff told ZDNet Australia's parent company, CNET News.com, that the license allowed Microsoft "to leverage the fear, uncertainty and doubt that is moving around Linux".

Other open-source community representatives have charged that Microsoft is behind SCO's legal push.

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