Francois wrote to Lawrence at 14:39 07 Jun:

 LG> Unfortunately, there's always the possibility that IBM /did/ 
 LG> convert some AIX code into the Linux kernel, and if so -- if that 
 LG> really did happen, I'd want to be as far away from a Linux 
 LG> installation as possible until I see exactly who the SCO Group is 
 LG> going to aim their poison darts at after IBM.

 FT> Don't forget that there is another possibility: that SCO, when it 
 FT> was still called Caldera, put it in there itself.

While I agree, it's possible, it's not likely. Caldera was formed to create
a /distribution/ of Linux. I'm skeptical that anybody at Caldera actually
did any kernel-level programming work.

 FT> If you look at the press release, the publicly avowed goal of 
 FT> Caldera when they embraced Linux was to "blend the two 
 FT> technologies together".

Blend what two technologies? When Ray Noorda left Novell, and funded the
creation of Caldera, the only "asset" that Caldera had in their
portfolio was the rights to DR-DOS, which Novell had divested themselves
of. All of the AT&T/USL Unix code went to the Santa Cruz Operation in
Santa Cruz, California, and became Unixware. Caldera, nee SCO Group, never
had any access to any AT&T Unix code, or the SCO OpenServer code, until
Caldera bought the products and the names from the Santa Cruz Operation two
years ago.

 FT> As for IBM putting AIX code in Linux, I personnally doubt it. The 
 FT> two systems have rather different underlying philosophies as far 
 FT> as design goes. 

I agree with you Francois. I find it highly unlikely that there's any code
leaking from the AIX (written for the PowerPC) group down to the Linux
(written for the Intel Pentium) group. Even IF it was shared, at best it
would have been shared only conceptually, because the code would have, most
likely, needed to be rewritten for the differing processor architecture.

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