Getting a glimpse at SCO's evidence

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are huge Star Wars fans. There have been several Chewbacca references on the show.
In the "Chef Aid" episode, Chef is accused of trying to steal the song "Stinky Britches," which he really wrote many years ago. The record company takes Chef to court, and they hire Johnny Cochran to prosecute Chef. The whole town is wondering if he will use his famous "Chewbacca Defense," which he used during the O.J. Simpson trial. Here's a transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: (pulling down a diagram of Chewie) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! (jury looks shocked)
Why would a Wookiee -- an eight foot tall Wookiee -- want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
But more importantly, you have to ask yourself: what does that have to do with this case? (calmly) Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Look at me, I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense.
And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Later in that same episode, Cochran has a change of heart and defends Chef when Chef sues the record company. Again, he uses the Chewbacca Defense, although with some minor changes:

Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, you must now decided whether to reverse the decision for my client Chef. I know he seems guilty, but ladies and gentlemen... (pulling down a diagram of Chewbacca) This is Chewbacca. Now think about that for one moment -- that does not make sense. Why am I talking about Chewbacca when a man's life is on the line? Why? I'll tell you why: I don't know.
It does not make sense. If Chewbacca does not make sense, you must acquit!
(pulling a monkey out of his pocket) Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! (one of the juror's heads explodes)

Eventually, Chef wins the case and all is well.

Once SCO's business territory got invaded, and they found the alleged theft, they litigated.

It's getting better every minute. Apparently IDG (Infoworld, etc.) got ahold of another code snippet. So here's another piece of Double Secret code that SCO claims to own. Only this time, the original author recognized his own stuff:

Jay Schulist, a senior software engineer with Pleasanton, Calif.'s Bivio Networks says he wrote the 500 lines of code in 1997 as part of a volunteer project for the Stevens Point Area Catholic Schools in Wisconsin. "I used it for helping a local school district in my home town to connect their old Apple Macintosh machines to the Internet," he said.

        
 Schulist wrote the code, based on the publicly available specifications created by Lawrence Berkeley Labs, he said. He has never seen the AT&T source code, he added.

Really? Where? I don't see it anywhere in your post

There will be no re-runs of yesterday. You're not worth the time.

BTW, the PowerPoint file for the entire SCO presentation in Las Vegas is out there now.

Also, it turns out that there was a judicial ruling on the copyrights in the old AT&T v BSD case, in spite of the fact that the case was eventually settled. The ruling came in response to AT&T's request for a preliminary injunction halting distribution of BSD.

1. Copyright Infringement
 Plaintiff claims that BSDI has violated Plaintiff's copyright in the UNIX source code and, unless I enjoin further violations, BSDI's continuing violations will irreparably harm Plaintiff. The first factor to be considered is whether Plaintiff has a reasonable probability of prevailing on the merits of this claim. 

    
 - cut to the chase - 

    
I find that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a likelihood that it can successfully defend its copyright in 32V. Plaintiff's claims of copyright violations are not a basis for injunctive relief.

The 'finding' was of course preceded by detailed legal reasoning as to why the judge reached that decision, but basically AT&T screwed up procedurally and allowed 32V to sit out there in the public domain for six years before realizing their mistake. It was totally cut-and-dried. AT&T widely distributed the stuff with no copyright on it. This was back in the days (pre-1978) when you had to actually put © on your stuff, or it wasn't copyrighted. By law, 32V had become public domain. Since that's the basis of the BSD code, there's no relief for SCO down that path.

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