Thus far, SCO has not actually substantiated any of their allegations
in any substantial way. IBM had asked for a summary judgement, and the
judge essentially asked IBM if there was any information they wanted
before he rendered his decision - essentially asking if IBM would like
to look for deeper pockets, since a judgement against SCO would pretty
much leave the company worse than bankrupt.
IBM has spent something like $300 million in legal fees and related
costs to indulge SCO in this "fishing expedition" and the best SCO has
come up with is that some people who worked in the same building as the
OS/390 group *might* have been able to share information with those
working on the Linux port to Z-Series.
There doesn't even seem to be a smoking gun here. Ironically, the one
peice of proprietary code which SCO is contesting was code that IBM
developed and used long before they signed their contract with AT&T in
1983.
SCO has not been able to prove that IBM has given any proprietary code
known to be the exclusive property of AT&T, which is still owned
exclusively by SCO, to Linux.
In every case where they have made public accusations, citing contested
code, source have come forward to show that this code was legally
included in Linux. It may have been BSD code, which has been "adopted"
by AT&T then passed to Novell and then to SCO, or even GPL code, which
has SCO shouldn't be using.
IBM has requested more information, citing both known contributers to
Linux and Unix, as well as communications between Microsoft and SCO,
possibly looking to go after Micrososft to recover some of their legal
costs.
SCO may not have understood what it was getting when they bought Unix.
By the time they purchased the rights, Novell had pretty much given
away the goodies. What wasn't given away was simply because it wasn't
worth giving away.
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