Re: On the one hand @bazza
The SCO case originaly hinged around SCO's assertion that IBM included parts of the source code obtained under IBM's UNIX source code license that they held for IX and AIX into the code they contributed into Linux (particularly LVM code).
What became apparent is that the only code that was in Linux that came from a UNIX source tree was from ancient UNIX (Edition/Version 7) which SCO themselves had put into the public domain under a fairly unrestricted license. When SCO, with full access to the AIX source tree, were unable to demonstrate anything else more than a general resemblance in the TTY and other device switch (which were basically a series of C switch [case] statements which made no sense to write any other way), that part of the case collapsed.
It then became muddied, because Novell successfully challenged SCO's claim to the the copyright holder of the UNIX source in the first place!
Apart from the entertainment value, I'm so glad that those cases has finally been put to bed.
In this case, I thought that Google had bee accused of directly copying the include files (and only these files) that essentially defined the API between the application and the runtime. I thought that Java had actually been published under a fairly permissive license by Sun (as they were very keen to get it adopted as a pervasive language), so I'm actually surprised that this case has come to this conclusion. But I suppose it's Oracle, so all reason goes out of the window as greed takes over.
Not that Google's any better these days,
Biting the hand that feeds IT
