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. 
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
In my earlier days as a programmer I was tasked on more than one occassion to port and/or straight out convert software from one system to another or from one language to another and never did I find the need to copy verbatim the comments from the original system. Bear in mid that I have no idea what these supposed comments were referring to -- perhaps generic algorithms. However, typically comments refer to very specific behaviors and constructs within a system that cannot be copied over to another system. However, it may make sense to copy comments if you are using a system as reference for functionality for another. While the code may not be copied, the intent is, but is that illegal?