Linked by Roberto J. Dohnert on Tue 10th Jun 2003 01:06 UTC
On March 7th 2003, the SCO Group filed a lawsuit against IBM for misappropriation of tradesecrets and contractual agreements. The scope of SCOs complaint is that IBM introduced parts of Unix System V and Project Monterey into the Linux kernel. Project Monterey was a effort to port IBM's AIX 5L onto the Intel Itanium platform, IBM withdrew from that project for reasons unknown according to the press, I believe that it was because the Itanium is a bomb. 
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"..but there still could be repercussions for anyone that distributed the code without SCO's consent."
SCO included. They continued to distribute the offending code after they sued IBM, so surely they're as liable as the rest. Their excuse that "we didn't know" is a joke. The source code is/has been there for the world to see since the beginning and it is up to each distributor to know exactly what it is they're selling and promoting.
Could you imagine any another company, Ford for example, saying "Yeah... the part is flawed, but we didn't know it was even in there". Gimme a break.
SCO's product, SCO's responsibility....now released under the GPL.
I fear we're now entering an era where innovation is getting strangled by big business. There are so many 'software patents' that are so vague that it makes writing software next to impossible in the future without having to pay someone, somewhere a royalty. This is only the beginning I'm afraid...