Russell McMahon wrote...

> Not wanting to start a "religious" argument here, but I gained the
> impression, from the little I have read on the matter, that the SCO claims
> looked liable to have some merit. As I understand it, they are claiming
that
> specific code fragments that are clearly their IP are found within the
Linux
> kernel. This sounds like a readily provable claim in due course (or
sooner)
> and it seems unlikely (to me) that they would make such claims if they had
> no merit whatsoever.

Definitely, no one is arguing that SCO claims *can* have some merit.
However, their refusal to disclose the lines of code that they claim
infringe their IP, as well as their constant press releases reeking of FUD
over the last 9 or so months, have really diluted their position. The
general belief is that if they had something, they would have shown it,
instead of just releasing FUD, and driving their stock price up in what
clearly seems to be a pump-and-dump maneuver.

During a press conference some months ago, they showed some code they
claimed had been copied. A lot of it was "encrypted" by just changing the
font to "Symbol". Enterprising individuals decoded this from photos of the
presentation, and it emerged that the code existed in the very first
versions of UNIX, and IIRC, was put in by Ken Thompson (with Dennis Ritchie,
one of the original two programmers of UNIX), and was also a very common
textbook example. There goes that one...

IBM recently had a court order them to disclose the infringing code. SCO
only disclosed file names, gave no line numbers, and to top it off, the file
names/files attached were from Linux, not the SCO UNIX System V that they
claim infringed. A couple of days ago, the judge ordered SCO to comply
completely with IBM's request for discovery within 30 days, which means they
will have to present substantially more concrete information (if it
exists....), or risk being held in contempt of court.

So here's hoping the truth will emerge in a month.....

Cheers,
ishaan

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