<< There's a bigger issue out there and SCO is now an irrelevant irritant which should be dealt with swiftly.

Novel, as the uncontested owner of System V would be in a great position to eliminate any FUD coming from Redmond that might cause some potential Linux adopters to pause. It would be a big win and you're right of course, the regrettable cost is letting Datyl & Co off the hook. But look at ti this way - these creeps are unlikely to be allowed to work in our industry again.>>

I know that many others have said this same thing, but given that none have resonded to this post, your idea may seem reasonable on the surface, but it is a victim of short-term thinking.

If SCO gets anything from IBM, then it is possible that Linux uptake would go up in the short-term. I do not think that would be the case, but for the sake of argument, I'll grant that it is.

However, if SCO makes money via an IP attack at Linux, then it will be a precedent for every other company on the ropes and about to go under. It will open the floodgates for more and more attacks.

The only way to close those floodgates is not to pay SCO a dime. And a way to weld those floodgates shut so no one else thinks of opening is not just to make sure that SCO makes no money but to grind SCO into the dirt, salt the remains and leave the heads of those involved on a spike with a sign for all to read.

Pleasantly enough, it looks like IBM is pursuing not just the closing, but the welding. The way things are going now, after IBM wins, it looks like the following court activities actually will have a better chance of succeeding than SCO ever had:

1. shareholder lawsuits, possibly against a veil-pierced Canopy Group.

2. Disbarment procedures against some of the lawyers involved.

3. Criminal charges against some of the principals involved.

Because of the SCO outcome, I fully expect the next attacks to be patent based and not to come via any software company proxy, but to come from lawyer organized patent holding companies. There is no product to attack with cross-licensing. The only way to defeat that will be to fight on the patents, and that is something that few companies will be able to do. The only way to attack such a company would be to try to have all their patents thrown out, but it will cost considerably more cash to toss out each patent than it would for that company to simply acquire new ones.

However, this same approach can be used to attack proprietary software just like it can be used to attack F/OSS software--and the damages have the potential to be more since there is a clear commercial use of the patents. So, maybe we should be funding a few consortiums to collect patents and go after any proprietary company that seems to be encouraging or directing similar attacks on F/OSS entities.