IBM to follow HP? Do be serious: that would give SCO ammunition that IBM agree there is a risk. Oh no, instead, IBM have instead taken a leaf from SCO’s own Law book.
Yep, IBM filed a fresh round of counterclaims against SCO. Indeed, these are becoming the stuff of legends: amongst other things, IBM claim that SCO Violated IBM’s copyright: they distributed IBM’s contributions to Linux after having breached the GPL.
Of course, SCO consider this nonsense, nevertheless, IBM’s claims have some merit: The GPL requires Linux distributors to permit customers to freely copy the software. Once SCO stopped doing this, they effectivly breached the GPL and left themselves vulnerable to copyright suits by ALL Linux Copyright holders.
As you can imagine, I’m not suggesting that all Linux contributors should immediately sue SCO: risky at the best of times. It does bring yet another interesting twist though.