SCO and the GPL

SCO and the GPL

The other issue is that, if SCO is saying that they can distribute Linux because they own the IP but nobody else can, because it infringes SCO's copyright, then SCO is putting additional restrictions on their distribution, which violates the GPL (they might be offering the source, but not under the GPL), and anyone whose works were only available to SCO under the GPL can then sue SCO. Of course, into this category would fall some important organizations, including IBM, who would probably be happy to countersue at this point.

Of course, this situation would be pretty obvious to lawyers, so I doubt that SCO will walk into it in any official way. But it does pretty much remove the possibility that they'll go after Red Hat (e.g.) unless Red Hat never got a copy of Caldera with the important bits in it.