SCO memo: They knew Linux doesn't infringe
SCO's CEO Darl McBride was told that the Linux kernel contained no SCO copyright code six months before the company issued its first lawsuit, a memo reveals.
An outside consultant Bob Swartz conducted the audit, and on August 13 2002 Caldera's Michael Davidson reported the results. "At the end we found absolutely nothing. Ie no evidence of copyright infringement whatsoever," wrote Davidson.
"There is, indeed, a lot of code that is common between UNIX and Linux (all of the X Window system for example) but invariably it turned out that the common code was something that both we (SCO) and the Linux community had obtained (legitimately) from a third party," Davidson concluded.
SCO's insistence that Linux did infringe its IP formed the basis for subsequent licensing deals with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, lawsuits against IBM, Novell and two Linux customers, and an investment push which netted over $30 million.
