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More on IBM's Project Monterey and SCO
karvind writes "Groklaw has posted another interesting article about AIX/Monterey/POWER research. The primary purpose of Project Monterey was to provide a stepping stone to Linux. IBM clearly stated this in promotional and technical materials, some of which SCO participated in publishing. It was always the plan that Project Monterey would be for POWER and SCO knew about IBM using SVR4 on POWER as far back as 2001. The article asks (and answers) some interesting questions: 'Where is the monetary damage to SCO? Where is there copyright infringement? Was SCO fully aware how quickly Linux would develop, that it would replace Unix, or did it take them by surprise?'"
If SCO was so anti-linux, why would they make a move to incorporate linux into its own product. That step right there discounts any claims they might have regarding linux code source.
No it doesn't. They weren't incorporating Linux code. They were making a compatibility layer so you could run Linux apps; BSD has one too.
But the main thing is: SCO was not at all anti-linux until Darl McBride entered the game as new CEO after Ransom Love. SCO was a Linux distributor, forchrissakes!
(And that, however, may invalidate any claims they had on Linux code, since by distributing, they are bound to follow the GPL)
However in reality they don't have any claims on Linux. Despite what they've been repeatedly telling the press, they haven't claimed in court that Linux infringes on their Unix copyrights. What they claimed in court was that IBM couldn't contribute to Linux since they had a Unix license. (Although the contract seems to indicate otherwise).
They made some other claims, too, but in reality the SCO-IBM case has very little to do with Linux at all. IBM's counterclaims regarding SCO's public statements and GPL violations are actually the more directly Linux-related things in this whole mess.