ESR: SCO’s Evidence: This Smoking Gun Fizzles Out

“At SCOforum on 18 July 2003, SCO displayed a piece of what it
called evidence that it owns huge portions of the Linux source
code. This is one of the central contention in its billion-dollar
lawsuit against IBM. The ‘evidence’ was two presentation slides
showing, side by side, code SCO labeled ‘System V’ and ‘Linux’. The
first is captioned ‘Line by line Copying–One Example of Many.’

“It’s now barely 24 hours since the slides leaked. There have
been a couple of early analyses published already on Slashdot and
Linux Weekly News. I’ve written this one because (a) none of these
were aimed at a general or journalistic audience, and (b) they miss
or don’t highlight some interesting details that bear on SCO’s case
against IBM and the legality of its licensing program. Also, I’m
doing what others have not dared: I’m publishing the differences
with the relevant System V code…”

Complete
Story