We're back in Wonderland, where up is down and it's off with IBM's head in SCO's happy dreams.

[Jerry Feldman]

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:00:33 -0500
Seth Gordon <sethg at ropine.com> wrote:
> I assume the SCO executives expected the IBM executives to say, "Heck,
> SCO's market cap is so low and the cost of defending this lawsuit is so
> high...let's just settle by buying out the company."
Very possible.

> Another possibility, of course, is that the SCO executives were so
> clueless about the IP issues surrounding Unix and Linux that they
> *really believed* they had a winning case.  Dumber things have happened.
That is much of what the SCO vs. Novell case is all about. 
Who owns the copyrights and associated IP? Remember that Novell
bought Unix from AT&T, and sold the brand to The Open Group, and the
sources and licensing rights to Santa Cruz. Novell is actually
counter-suing SCO over royalties.  Caldera's plan when it acquired the
Unix division from SCO (classic) was to move the customer base to
Linux. 

The real heart of the IBM vs. SCO case is whether IBM violated its
contract by contributing NUMA, SMP, and JFS to the Linux kernel. These
would be considered "derivative works" under the AT&T contract.  SCO
also claimed some copyright violations, but has never provided the
evidence, for which they were sanctioned. In the case of NUMA, SMP and
JFS, these were never part of the SCO Unix code base. 


In any case, Judge Kimball should rule on SCO's reconsideration motion
very shortly. if he rules against SCO and affirms his previous
affirmation of Judge Well's order, then most of SCO's case is thrown
out, and that would effectively end the case unless SCO's attorney's
find another way to reverse Judge Kimball. 

The bottom line is "don't buy SCO stock" :-)

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9