The USENIX Association computer user group has attacked The SCO Group, accusing it of hypocrisy over its controversial legal claim to own parts of Linux.

President of USENIX, Marshall Kirk McKusick, said the best way to create better computer programs is by sharing code and ideas, rather than keeping them secret or charging large amounts of money for access to them.

And he condemned SCO's claim that open source developers threaten the viability of the IT industry as "intellectually dishonest".

"SCO's own programmers themselves use open source computer software tools, so it is difficult to explain SCO's position except by noting its hypocrisy," McKusick said in a statement.

"Indeed, the open source community's practice of sharing innovations and of making them available for free clearly stimulates development and invigorates the technology sector."

USENIX, set up in 1975, aims to advance the skills and contributions of computer researchers and developers. The association said it felt "compelled" to refute the position SCO has taken on open source software.

"Many of the most popular computer development tools are available to programmers worldwide for free through the contributions of the open source development community.

"If their developers were to charge substantial fees for their use or to withdraw them from distribution entirely, commercial programmers such as SCO and non-commercial programmers alike would be the worse for it," McKusick warned.

He also dismissed SCO's claim that open source licensing undermines the basic system of intellectual property rights.

"Society is better off when consumers have choices and when products compete with one another on the basis of functionality and price, and inventing is facilitated when inventors share their ideas," he said.