Marsh's comments follow weeks of public disapproval from the Linux community, which believes that by purchasing the UNIX licenses, EV1 is supporting the SCO Group's claims that UNIX code found in Linux violates its intellectual property rights.

SCO has said that EV1 paid a seven-digit figure for the licensing, although Marsh has disputed that.

The EV1 CEO had already expressed some remorse to theWHIR about the purchase earlier this month, calling it a huge disappointment to be "thrown into the same bucket, so to say, with the SCO Group.

"Our public position is certainly not to support that, and our intent was simply to take us out of the loop, not to make us public enemy number one."

Marsh maintains that he believed he was looking out for the best interest of his 42,000 customers when he made the purchase, to protect them from ever being sued. While he had been expecting some disapproval, he said EV1 had miscalculated how large the backlash would be.

The negative response appears to be abating, however, as some EV1 customers applaud Marsh's most recent announcement that he regrets the decision to purchase the licenses. "It takes a lot of guts to publicly announce you did the wrong thing," one person wrote on the EV1 Server Forum. "The $1 million will certainly help SCO in its battle against Linux, but your public admission (that) you made a mistake has probably hurt SCO way more than the $1 million benefited them. All in all, a net loss to SCO."