SCO final puts up

It's taken 2.5 years and a ton of posturing in the press but SCO has finally submitted to the court a document purporting to list what copyrighted material that was lifted SCO Unix and placed into Linux. The five page document and another placed under seal which contains the full detail of the 217 seperate violations. I don't doubt that Linux and SCO Unix have code in common. Both are based in part on BSD - certain components such as the X-Windows system are provided under a BSD license which means that SCO undoubtedly has exactly the some code as Linux. This is taken from their own filing as their attorneys state,

"Some of these wrongful disclosures include areas such as an entire file management system; others are communications by IBM personnel working on Linux that resulted in enhancing Linux functionality by disclosing a method or concept from Unix technology," SCO said. "The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code, from Unix-derived technologies in order to enhance the ability of Linux to be used as a scalable and reliable operating system for business and as an alternative to proprietary Unix systems such as those licensed by SCO and others."

The key quote here is "from Unix derived" technologies. SCO is once again asserting a rather strange copyright claim, namely that any work inspired by AT&T Unix is theirs. This dubious legal theory seems quite strange considering these issues were resolved in the case. UNIX Systems Laboratories against Berkeley Software Design. In order for SCO to claim these copyrights, they are going to have to overturn this settlement. For a while that was their legal strategy but apparently their attempts have fallen on deaf ears. By December 22, 2005 IBM will have a response to the sealed motion. I suspect that this is going to go as well as the SCO VS DaimlerChrysler