"Since you're a veteran of the AT&T vs. BSD legal
battles, could you draw some parallels between that battle and
SCO's suits?
"Marshall Kirk McKusick: In the 1990s, the IT people at
AT&T, which was USL [Unix System Labs] by that time, had not
been around when their software's code was being developed and
integrated during the 1980s. The AT&T people who had brought
the code in had deleted the Berkeley (BSD) copyrights. So those
folks in the 1990s started comparing their code base with the
Berkeley code base, and they found lots of the same code in the
Berkeley code base and the USL/AT&T code. They didn't realize
it hadn't originated at AT&T. That is what caused the whole
thing to start in the first place..."