... even if SCO can prove that its intellectual property was added to the Linux kernel, its case is moot, according to Columbia Law School Professor Eben Moglen, pro bono publico general counsel for the Free Software Foundation. The Free Software Foundation maintains the GNU General Public License, under which Linux is distributed.

"There is absolute difficulty with this line of argument which ought to make everybody in the world aware that the letters that SCO has put out can be safely put in the wastebasket," Moglen told internetnews.com, noting that SCO distributed its own version of Linux with a kernel that allegedly contains Unix-derived code.

"From the moment that SCO distributed that code under the GNU General Public License, they would have given everybody in the world the right to copy, modify and distribute that code freely," he said. "From the moment SCO distributed the Linux kernel under GPL, they licensed the use. Always. That's what our license says."