The SCO Debacle
Back in 2003, SCO Group (holder of certain IP rights in the Unix operating system) sued IBM for more than $1 billion, claiming that IBM by having a Linux product had misappropriated SCO's Unix.
But SCO has never produced any real evidence that, in fact, its copyrights have been infringed. The litigation has been plowing on and on, and a trial is scheduled for some time in 2007.
Now the estimable Pamela Jones, author of Groklaw, has obtained an August 2002 internal SCO email that makes it clear that SCO commissioned an extensive external audit that revealed ”no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever.”
The SCO suit has made many people worry about the future of open source. It was, from the beginning, a business model masquerading as a lawsuit — SCO really has nothing to offer other than litigation threats. Now it's even clearer than it was before (and it was pretty clear before) that the copyright portions of the lawsuit were based on less than nothing.
As Pam Jones put it yesterday, “If this doesn't make your blood boil, see your doctor right away.”