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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Let face up to reality the following is true (probabilty 99.99%) That any common code in between the Linux Kernel and System V is as follows.
1. Derives from BSD and therefore has no copyright restriction (except for the acknowledgment "certain portions of this code copyright the Regents of the University of California")
2. Derives from code otherwise in the public domain, for example older versions of the Unix codebase that have been made publicly available by SCO and previous owners of the Unix copyrights.
3. Was provided by Caldera/SCO during the Caldera plan to unify Linux and Unixware and was legally placed under the GPL by Caldera management.
4. Code was developed for Linux and has been stolen in breach of the GPL by SCO.
In addition by distributing the GPL Linux kernel until after its legal action was launched it has knowingly placed any SCO copywrighted code in the Linux kernel (0.015 probabilty of SCO owned code present) under the GPL.
Futhemore if SCO does hold the System V copywright not Novell they have not yet legally been transferred. They cannot easily claim damages for infingement prior to their legal transfer.
Im addition the development of SMP for the Linux kernel was partly financed by Caldera (they gave Alan Cox a dual processor machine for this purpose) prior to IBM involvement with Linux involvement with linux.
Probability of SCO winning the court case 0.001%. IBM knows this. They have current access to all the code involved and are just as capable as SCO at running diffs. This is why they are not running in with buyout or settlement offers and adopting a "See ya in court" approach. Furthermore they don't want to encourage others to line up at the trough with other dubious legal claims.
SCO's stategy is FUD, FUD and more FUD in an ever increasing crescendo of press conferences. Why ? - in order to intimidate IBM into a buyout or settlement as the FUD scares customers away from Linux and threatens IBM's multibillion dollar Linux strategy. And if this fails they can still make money on their previously worthless stock options by selling them at the inflated stock price caused by speculation resulting from the legal action.
As for MS they licensed SCO Unix as a means of funelling money to SCO to stop them from going bankrupt too soon so that SCO can keep the anti Linux FUD going.
And thats all there is too it folks.