
SCO's
lawsuit filed in Utah last week claims that IBM integrated computer code belonging to another company into the Linux operating system, touching off speculation that
the lawsuit could hurt other Linux companies, including Red Hat, the country's largest distributor of the software. Red Hat isn't involved in the dispute, but some analysts say that the Raleigh-based company won't be able to escape the fallout. "
It's kind of irrelevant who wins the lawsuit," said Victor Raisys, analyst with Soundview Technology Group in San Francisco. "
You can't take back the fact that someone has tried to claim intellectual property on Linux. The genie is out of the bottle."
First: how could such a lawsuit affect a Linux vendor that includes GPLed only software in its distribution?
Second: in the worst case, IBM will be revealed as stealing non-GPL code from SCO, but how this can possibly affect Linux as such?
Obviously, I am not a lawyer and my questions sound naive, but maybe more legally educated people can provide some clarifications.