SCO (Caldera) vs. IBM

[Undeference]

When I first heard about it, I thought it was probably just a contract dispute between IBM and some other company I hadn't heard of (who apparently was dissing the GNU GPL). Because of my interest in open source development, I was a little concerned and tried finding more information (which was relatively simple because a Google search for SCO gives more information relavent to the court case than to the company itself). Apparently Microsoft has [indirectly] been paying SCO to say bad things about Linux and open source in general.
In reality though, it was SCO who sued IBM after the possibility (so Morgan Keegan & Co. thought) of an IBM buyout of SCO.

From the Timeline, here are important events:

•  Jul 2002 McBride is hired
  
• Aug 2002 Morgan Keegan is hired
  
• Aug 2002 Caldera changes name to The SCO Group
  
• Sep/Nov/? 2002 MS memo discussing using intellectual property as an attack against open source is floating around in Germany and later publically
  
• Oct - Dec 2002 SCO later admits to beginning to look at its own intellectual properties and first makes noise about UnixWare binary libraries.
  
• Jan 2003 SCO creates stronger language to indemnify its officers of criminal activity
  
• Dec? 2002 - Jan? 2003 At some point Boies is brought in, likely via Morgan Keegan, to negotiate license/stock deals with Sun and Microsoft
  
• Feb 2003 Morgan Keegan clarifies its arrangement with SCO and includes language indicating they are anticipating an IBM buyout, though without naming IBM specifically
  
• Feb 2003 Boies finalizes his agreement with SCO to sue IBM
  
• March 2003 IBM lawsuit
  
• Jul/Aug 2003 Anderer joins
  
• Oct 2003 Anderer e-mail penned
  
• Oct 2003 PIPE deal
  
• Nov 2003 Boies has no one from law firm at key press conference
  
• Nov 2003 Boies gets 20% of PIPE deal
  
• Dec 2003 PIPE investors get veto power over Boies payouts
  
• Nov/Dec/? 2003 16 to 20 million deal discussed by Anderer never happens

The Yahoo forums are where much of the court happenings in this case are discussed (there is a lot of legal information that might very well mean nothing to someone who hasn't studied law). Note that SCO pays very close attention to this board.

The Halloween X text might be useful in finding out more of what is really going on ("There you have it. At least a third of SCO's entire market capitalization, and their entire current cash reserves, is payoffs funnelled from Microsoft." - quote from link). You might also find the Mike Anderer interview interesting (I did).
And if you have a lot of time[/irrelevent], you can go to the site dedicated to the SCO v IBM issue which may clear some things up and provide links to other invaluable resources.

Those who feel that the GPL is incompatible with commerce suffer from reprehensible ignorance. The progress of open source software cannot be held back by such ignorance. And the importance of the GPL will be remembered long after SCO group and its apologists are forgotten.

-Hotsprings Inc. ([newly] owner of Hotline Connect).

[Thing]

Good job on providing some useful links.  One site that I favor is Groklaw.  There, you can find information on the other cases that SCO is currently involved in (Novell, Red Hat, AutoZone, DaimlerChrysler).  I've been following the saga like it was a bad "good" soap opera for almost a year now.    IBM appears to be on the offensive right now and SCO stock is plummeting.

[quasi-modo]

IBM rules, I have stock in them.