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Discussion of the SCO lawsuit against IBM is everywhere.

My observations:

• IBM has good lawyers. Not only will they put up a good defense, but I have a feeling that they have been vigilant all along -- that they have been careful in their Linux development effort to avoid legal problems like those SCO is asserting.
• IBM has very extensive OS knowledge. SCO's claim that the source of their OS knowledge, as applied to their Linux contributions, comes from SCO and Monterey is preposterous. IBM has experience in their mainframe OSes and OS2. Their expertise in virtual machine OS technology is unrivaled (that's the technology that allows a single physical computer to run multiple "virtual" computers that are entirely isolated from each other, and even run different operating systems).
• Having read the complaint filed by SCO, I think a good lawyer could argue that SCO's claims of unfair business practices are unfounded. The Unix code base is, what, 30 years old? It has outlived it's marketable lifetime. SCO claims the Unix code base cost over $1 billion to develop. That sounds like a lot of money. But it's irrelevant, and I'm sure that if you considered how much revenue was generated from that code base, you could conclude that Unix has been very successful, even if costly to develop. SCO also complains that IBM is trying to move its customers to lower cost Linux operating systems. How is that wrong? Competition in the marketplace has always been about finding ways to offer more for less. Sorry, SCO, it's nothing personal. Don't be so paranoid.
• SCO, under the Caldera moniker, tried to sell Linux as a server operating system. Now, they say that Linux is for personal or non-profit use. Their own actions betray them.

There's also talk that SCO is just setting itself up to make a nice acquisition. What else could they possibly be thinking, the reasoning goes. Would Microsoft really consider buying SCO for the purpose of fighting Linux on the basis of intellectual property rights? I find that highly unlikely. Microsoft doesn't want to be in the Unix business. So they wouldn't buy SCO for the technology. But would they buy SCO in order to prosecute lawsuits? No. Microsoft must be perceived as a company that is innovative. They know that if they had to move to defensive tactics, they have lost. 

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