The more difficult thing about SCO's argument is that the company has not provided any proof supporting it. "They've made a general claim of infringement," Eunice says, "but they have declined to say, 'Here are the sections where there are problems.'"

Many in the open-source community have echoed this complaint -- if SCO has found copied code, why won't it prove it? In response, Sontag says that the company will soon try to address the issue. "What we're talking about is showing Unix System V code, and we have strict confidentiality with that and it has to be maintained," he says. "But we do realize and understand that people want to see that we have proof, and we are going to be making that proof available as soon as we can. We'll probably make it available to some people" -- for instance, financial analysts or reporters -- "under NDA so they can make their own evaluations." On Friday, SCO spokesman Stowell said that the firm would be conducting these meetings "all through June." He said that people who sign a non-disclosure agreement and examine the code that SCO presents will be prevented from disclosing where in the Linux program the code in question appears; but the NDA would allow people to publicly say, in a general way, whether there was any merit to SCO's claims.

What would happen if SCO confidentially presented its code to a panel of experts who then concluded that, indeed, SCO was right and Linux did have some copied stuff in it? Don Marti, the editor of the magazine Linux Journal, says, "I frankly don't think that people are going to make that big of a deal of it -- as soon as the actual evidence of what SCO claims to have been copied is out there, then those sections of Linux are going to be replaced with unambiguous original code effectively immediately." This is, in fact, the beauty of open-source software -- if there are problems with it you can fix them. But SCO worries that if Linux is washed of any plausibly copied code, it could lose its courtroom claims. "And that's the apparent reason why SCO is sitting on the code," Marti says. "The kernel developers, if they find out what it is, they'll say, 'We'll re-implement it.'"

It might seem odd that SCO believed it could claim Linux to be an illegal derivative of its software without feeling the need to provide any proof. Did SCO really think that all those companies to whom it sent letters would change their technology without asking any questions?

Perhaps SCO really did think so. Not long ago, after all, when the likes of IBM, HP and other huge firms weren't standing behind Linux, it might have been plausible that Linux posed a danger. If you were a lawsuit-fearing tech officer at a risk-averse firm, wouldn't you shiver at the notion that your software was designed in such a way that "does not prevent inclusion of code that has been stolen outright"? Wouldn't the following phrase scare you: "Legal liability that may arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user."

What's intriguing is that, according to many people in the Linux industry, SCO's campaign has had no effect on the behavior of consumers. "I have not heard about anyone rethinking an order based on this," says Larry Augustin, the chairman of VA Software. "I haven't seen anyone express a fear. The only thing I have seen is people say we need to be careful about where source code comes from -- and that statement was true in the past and it's just as true now."

Research analyst Eunice says, "I don't think anyone knows how it's going to play out, and I believe in the end it may start to be troublesome in sales. But I have not heard of any sales where it has been a problem so far. And I can easily see that where the customer may get antsy and say, 'I don't want to get sued if I buy this thing,' what would happen in this case is it might only delay a sale. In the end I think IBM starts indemnifying its customers. It starts to say, 'Listen, this is bullshit but we understand your concerns about this and if anything happens, we'll take the hit for you.'"

And if IBM does do that, it would be quite a win for Linux; all those claims, so often casually mentioned by the likes of Microsoft, of Linux being somehow dangerous for business would be wiped away.

Raymond, the Open Source Initiative president, says that although he's not privy to IBM's strategy, he recently had an opportunity to speak to Dan Fry, who directs IBM's Linux efforts. "I didn't get the impression that they were going to settle this case," Raymond says. "And I told Dan, 'We want you to crush these guys. You go after them foot, horse and marines. And we will cheer.'"

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