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There seems to be a lot of sueing going on recently. In recent memory there was the JPEG IP issue (which seems to have died down recently). RIM sues anyone who implements mobile email on a device as they have patents on the Blackberry. and so on & so on. Looks to be that a lot of failing dot-coms are looking in the patents locker, hoping to find an excuse to sponge off somebody else.
SCO Unix has been around a while & looks a bit tired. The competition from linux rather undermines their business, so they have to resort to lawyers. The code in dispute seems to be written by IBM, applies to multi-processor systems & is in kernel 2.4 & onwards. Surely in the worst case scenario, the offending code would get re-written by someone & we would move on.
SCO also have produced a linux-compatiblity module for SCO Unix. It is quite possible that this could contain linux code. However since the compatibility module is not open source, this would be difficult to prove.
Just to stir a bit more, SCO have entered into a cross-licensing deal with Microsoft.
Alan
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