Watching the SCO Group v. IBM (and Linux, and the rest of the civilized world) jousting match play out, my opinion is that the court will have to decide which holds sway: SCO's inherited System V copyright, the GNU Public License, or.SCO's contract with IBM. I have no doubt that some portion of System V, however small, has found its way into Linux. I also have no doubt that SCO and its predecessors in System V Watching the SCO Group v. IBM (and Linux, and the rest of the civilized world) jousting match play out, my opinion is that the court will have to decide which holds sway: SCO’s inherited System V copyright, the GNU Public License, or.SCO’s contract with IBM.I have no doubt that some portion of System V, however small, has found its way into Linux. I also have no doubt that SCO and its predecessors in System V ownership claimed copyright on code it didn’t invent.SCO has been praying that the GPL would not enter the picture. As the sole licensor of System V, SCO may have to answer for any GPL code that was ever distributed with any System V release. Univel got stuck in a strikingly similar position in the case it brought against Berkeley. In that case, it was not the restrictive GPL, but the wide open BSD license which is practically impossible to violate. AT&T/Univel found a way, then went to court and begged Berkeley to smack them for it. Such is the legal and technical brilliance apparent in the previous defense of System V’s copyright. The tendency of the GPL to, as Microsoft puts it, “infect” other code scares the hell out of SCO. The infection is the invalidation of copyright on modules that contain GPLed source code. The far more liberal BSD license has the same effect if code is used without attribution, which Univel had done.That settlement remains under seal, but I’d wager that it arose from a Berkeley threat to countersue Univel. AT&T, and Univel after it, made millions from selling unattributed BSD code. In any countersuit, the damages Berkeley collected would dramatically eclipse whatever Univel could win from Berkeley. More damaging than the lost cash would be Univel’s loss of copyright on substantial hunks of System V.IBM has filed a counterclaim against SCO Group. It states that the copyright coverage SCO asserts is invalid because SCO has, in effect, jumped the claim on Linux’s land. This is fascinating to me because it looks similar to the challenge Berkeley laid down. The difference is that while Berkeley whispered the threat in Univel’s ear during the trial, IBM skipped straight to the execution by filing the counterclaim. Perhaps IBM’s counterclaim started life as part of a settlement offer that SCO considered and refused. Whatever happens, SCO’s lawyers will be logging many more hours protecting its copyright, something SCO hoped would be stipulated instead of decided by a judge. If IBM successfuly challeges the copyright on any of System V, SCO is shark bait. Or GNU chow. And as hard as SCO tried to keep Caldera out of this, it has no hope of that now. The outcome isn’t clear by any means, but the cunning and determination of IBM’s legal team are no longer in question.Mr. Yager has never held stock in SCO, IBM or any company. All of his money is invested in his child who, to Yager’s knowledge, is in no way derived from the intellectual property of SCO Group. This isn’t investment advice, just informed conjecture and an invitation to stock speculators to quit being sheep and do some damn homework. ——– Technology Industry