IBM is confident because IBM already knows...

IBM is confident because IBM already knows...

Those of us in the user/developer community have the source for gnu/linux and all of the parts and pieces, but we do not have access to the SCO source code. So we cannot directly run the analysis to compare what may be similar and why it is that way.

However, as an SCO licensee, would not IBM have the SCO source code and be able to do a full analysis as to the similarities and where exactly they occur? They most certainly have the computing horsepower to check it every way possible, and in a flat hurry. Assuming this to be true, we can safely assume that IBM knows of each and every match and similarity, and has already done considerable analysis on the results. Perhaps this accounts for their apparent unruffled confidence going into this legal battle. Something tells me that they know what SCO sees, and already know better than SCO where it all came from. 4.4BSDLite? FreeBSD? Caldera during the cooperative period? Hardware manufacturer driver code? Sample code from Knuth? The Dragon Book? Some issue of the ACM Proceedings? We may not know, but IBM probably already has the paper trail to prove the source for every similarity that good software tools could find. IBM is nothing if not thorough in legal matters. Thus, their confidence in the outcome. IBM knows, and is keeping that as a closely guarded secret to be released in due time.

This also explains SCO's strained unwillingness to point out in public the specific parts of the code which they accuse of being copied. The distributed institutional memory of the entire UNIX/GNU community will find the true source of any similarities in due course (and rather quickly). If the common source is from some published literature, it will be found. If it is from some third party, that will come out. Someone remembers, and the truth will come out. SCO needs the theater to push stock prices up, and so does not want an early resolution.

(By the way, could this access to the SCO source code apsect be another reason Microsoft recently bought the SCO license? They are most assuredly curious to know the outcome before the trial, and this would give them a leg up. This foreknowledge requires access to the SCO source code, which Microsoft has just purchased.)

Current SCO management does not appear to understand software development particularly well. (The modern business schools seem to teach that a good manager can manage absolutely anything - a naked lie, but a lie which many of us have witnessed firsthand - i.e. the PHB.) There has arisen a generation which knows finance better than technology,. and this crowd is in control. As such, the possibilities of what actually happened are not apparent to them, and they can only see one-way transfers of their precious code to the unworthies, and not that it well could have occurred the other way around. The fact that CVS repositories could actually prove such a thing has escaped their notice. Discovery should be a hard time for this crowd.

All we see now is posturing and bluff. But in this battle I would say that IBM is actually the cat and SCO the mouse. IBM now gets to choose whether to go for the quick kill, or play with their mouse for while first. SCO will go down - and will not need to be bought off to do so. It is merely a matter of what torment they will endure in the process.