Linked by Roberto J. Dohnert on Tue 10th Jun 2003 01:06 UTC
SCO, Caldera, Unixware 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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IBM, for all its faults, has made one thing very clear during the development of Linux for its computers - it can't afford to get caught up in this sort of thing, so they have made it very clear that AIX will remain a separate project from Linux. whether it be Linux/390, Linux/POWER4, or whatever. Just ask any one of IBM's own Linux-hackers.

In this I trust IBM's sense of self-preservation.

SCO has made several comments on combining Unix with Linux
http://www.linux-mag.com/2000-11/love_01.html
- that seemed to go by the board with a corporate shakeout when Ransom Love left.
"LM: What parts of UnixWare do you plan to open source?
"Love: Let me back up first. We will provide open access to the UnixWare source under an open source license. Our commitment was, when we made the announcement -- for every product that we own and every component that we own -- that we will provide open access to the source."

So where the source came from - if it's not Linux added to Unixware, that is - it could just have easily have come during that period when Caldera was open to combining the two source trees.

And if that is so, it was deliberately released under GPL during that time, and so SCO has no call to recall that code. The stable door is open, the horse is gone, and firing the stable won't do anything useful.