Slashdot Mirror
The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326
The Peanut Gallery writes "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's 'mountain of code' is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren't owned by SCO in any event. Above and beyond that, IBM has at least five separate licenses for these elements, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it repudiated the GPL."
100 lines, 12000000 lines, 10 lines, SCO wasn't flat out lying. They found something. That something might be enough to win the suit (maybe not a billion).
They only win the suit if they can somehow convince the judge that none of IBM's licenses apply, including the GPL. And if they convince the judge that the GPL doesn't apply, then they are now liable for the 700,000 lines of IBM code that SCO has appropriated.
So, no, they can't win.
I wonder how much sco.com will be sold for. Somebody should make it point to kernel.org, just as a lesson to the patent trolls.
The internet version of severed head on a pike. I like it!