Just for fun -

SCO was engaging in shakedown tactics to rob corporations. The first claim was that Linux contains code from UNIX and owes SCO big bucks for stealing this code. The whole copyright thing came up as a tactic by the IBM and Novell lawyers to kill the issue quickly - if SCO didn't own copyright, then it had absolutely no case.

SCO had no case anyway - Darl was bitching Linux stole millions of lines of code and yet couldn't even produce a single line as evidence. Although SCO would have eventually lost on that front (actually, I think they would have gone bankrupt first - they chose lawyers who really suck them dry), judges and jurors know virtually nothing of computer programming so it would take years to explain the issues etc. Copyright and Contract Law are things a judge does understand well, so if you could make the case that this is first and foremost an issue of contract or copyright, you have a good chance of settling the matter quickly. I can't remember when SCO started its shakedown campaign - maybe it was 2003 - so almost 5 years had gone by before this 'simple' matter was settled.

As for Novell turning around - yes, that can definitely happen and all it takes is the appointment of a loud but incompetent CEO (as in the case of SCO). What happens then? That's easy - remove any remaining UNIX source code from the kernel. I don't know if there is any UNIX source code at all (or if there ever was) - some headers, for interoperability and also standardization issues, may have come from one of various UNIX, but it is difficult to convince a judge that copying a header file is an infringement of copyright. Such a situation is easily avoided anyway - if someone whines about their copyright on a header file, someone else can simply rewrite the header file. Even if the two header files are very similar, there is no copyright violation (plagiarism anyone?) because the file simply describes an interface. It would be like one lock company suing another because they also created a lock with a doorknob (although this might have been possible under Patent law at the time the lock with doorknob was first invented).