Z:gnu-www-ja-sco-v-ibm--43591a-SCO's confusing use of names m/en

SCO's confusing use of names makes the basis of its claims unclear: has SCO alleged that trade secrets of Unix's originator, AT&amp;T&mdash;of which SCO is by intermediate transactions the successor in interest&mdash;have been incorporated by IBM in the kernel, Linux, or in parts of GNU? If the former, there is no justification for the broad statements urging the Fortune 1500 to be cautious about using free software, or GNU programs generally. If, on the other hand, SCO claims that GNU contains any Unix trade secret or copyrighted material, the claim is almost surely false. Contributors to the GNU Project promise to follow the Free Software Foundation's rules for the project, which specify&mdash;among other things&mdash;that contributors must not enter into non-disclosure agreements for technical information relevant to their work on GNU programs, and that they must not consult or make any use of source code from non-free programs, including specifically Unix. The Foundation has no basis to believe that GNU contains any material about which SCO or anyone else could assert valid trade secret or copyright claims. Contributors could have made misrepresentations of fact in their copyright assignment statements, but failing willful misrepresentation by a contributor, which has never happened so far as the Foundation is aware, there is no significant likelihood that our supervision of the freedom of our free software has failed. The Foundation notes that despite the alarmist statements SCO's employees have made, the Foundation has not been sued, nor has SCO, despite our requests, identified any work whose copyright the Foundation holds&mdash;including all of IBM's modifications to the kernel for use with IBM's S/390 mainframe computers, assigned to the Foundation by IBM&mdash;that SCO asserts infringes its rights in any way.