News IBM says SCO contract claims are an 'illusion'

McBride: "Is this System V code which I see before me,
The source file toward my hand? Come, let me license thee:--
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
source code of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"*

This from elReg:

IBM last week stepped up its attack against SCO by filing a motion to dismiss SCO's contract claims with the US District Court in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The 100 page document aims right at SCO's claims around the control of "derivative works" produced off of the Unix System V code base. SCO has long asserted that IBM did not have the right to make additions to Unix and then chuck them into Linux source code. In its filing, IBM says this line of thinking is absurd given its old Unix contracts with AT&T and given SCO's decision to ship its own version of Linux.

"Although SCO for months perpetuated the illusion that is had evidence that IBM took confidential source code from Unix System V and 'dumped' it into Linux, it has become clear that SCO has no such evidence," IBM says in the court filing. "Instead, SCO's claims that IBM breached its agreements with AT&T depend entirely on the allegation that IBM improperly contributed certain of IBM's original source code, contained in its own AIX and Dynix operating systems . . . to Linux."

More here

*GOO apologizes unreservedly to the Bard, who must be spinning at several thousand RPM in his grave at the moment...