Lisa Horton wrote:

> Will that be the end of Linux as we know it?

What if Joshua Singleton proves that he wrote the original script for Star
Wars?

Would anyone be responsible for compansating him? Would any Star Wars fan be
required to pay him? Would any Movie theater have to pay him? Would any
video store have to pay him? The only person that *could* be required to
pay him is George Lucas. The person that directly commits copyright
infringement is responsible, no one else.

In the case of the Linux kernel, it is a fact that it had been written based
on public sources of information. It has far more lines of code within it
than has been suggested has been copied. Proving infringement may be at
the whim of a jury, but at most, any remedy would be removal of any
infringing code. SCO's behavior will sour any jury from finding any wrong.
All along the Open Source community "Show us, we'll remove it" with SCO
refusing.

Since, however, SCO has all but dropped its copyright claims against IBM,
and the law suits, despite what SCO says publically, are about contract
disputes NOT copyright, it is unlikely to be able to do anything.

Novel is on excellent footing to disprove *any* UNIX copyright ownership.
RedHat is on track to get a legal answer. Caldera, the company now calling
itself SCO, contributed UNIX code to Linux under a move to "Unify UNIX and
Linux for business."

SCO's claims, like Joshua Singleton, are complete and total fiction.