Linux Community Scores

A Utah Judge ordered the SCO Group to show the Linux code it claims infringes on SCO's Unix intellectual property.

So far, the SCO Group's case has been a lot of bluster and very little substance. The company is well-funded, has hired a lot of high-priced lawyers and has cranked out a lot of press releases. Until now, the snippets of code which SCO has shared with the public have failed to prove, one way or another, whether SCO has a case -- Linux experts say that the code does not demonstrate that Linux stole SCO's code, but this is not apparent to non-programmers. Moreover, SCO claims that the code it has shared is not its best example of infringing code -- that it's keeping its best examples secret until the trial, due to begin in 2005.

But pretty soon we won't have to speculate on what code SCO claims was stolen. Pretty soon we'll know. Assuming, of course, that SCO can't get the decision overturned on appeal.

And Linux won a significant desktop customer on Monday when Sun Microsystems unveiled an agreement with the U.K. government to distribute its Sun Java Enterprise System and the Linux-based Java Desktop System for the country's public sector. Recently, Sun signed a contract with the China Standard Software Company (CSSC), a group of government-sponsored IT companies formed to deliver a standard, Linux-based desktop system for China.

(This piece was written for the InternetWeek newsletter for Tuesday, December 9. It has been edited for the web.)