Linux, the movie

BY COINCIDENCE, a day after it came out that SCO/Caldera is suing IBM over alleged misappropriation of UNIX trade secrets, a neat visual aid tipped up that can help IBM's lawyers counter SCO's allegations.

SCO's complaint argues that IBM unfairly assisted Linux development by providing it with proprietary UNIX source code. A crucial element of SCO's case depends on establishing the following claim:

"86. It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach UNIX performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of UNIX code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance, and coordination by a larger developer, such as IBM."

Linux development started in 1991, but IBM didn't become interested in supporting Linux until almost ten years later. Most of the underlying structures and essential characteristics of the Linux kernel were coded long before IBM started to pay attention and decided to contribute. Now a clever researcher has parsed much of the Linux kernel source code and its evolving development sequence into a series of 3D visual animations and posted these on a high bandwidth website hosted by a French ISP.

These animations should make it clear to even a technically challenged jurist that Linux development proceeded quickly and incorporated great complexity throughout many successive versions, long before IBM became involved in making contributions of its own code (not UNIX) to Linux.

So, if the SCO legal team hasn't yet read all of the Linux kernel source code, they might want to just watch the movie instead. It should provide them with some idea of what they'll be up against in arguing that Linux evolution was somehow unsophisticated until IBM "came to its rescue": the source code...

Plus thousands of fighting mad penquinistas.

Linux, the movie, can be found here. µ

See Also
SCO acts out of sheer desperation
Caldera sues IBM for giving Unix secrets to Linux community