Did SCO get Linux-mob justice?  September 10, 2007: 6:14 AM ET
Once in awhile a judicial ruling comes down that's so wrong at
such a basic level that you're just left scratching your head.
When U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball of Salt Lake City threw
out most of SCO Group's (SCOX) case against Novell (NOVL) on
August 10 -- effectively dooming most of SCO's claims in closely
related cases against IBM Corp. (IBM), AutoZone (AZO), and Red
Hat (RHT), too -- his 102-page ruling was greeted with
widespread rejoicing and I-told-you-so's. (I was headed out of
the country for vacation at the time and am only now digging out
from under.)  Understandably, few people mourned SCO's
humiliating defeat. In a series of incendiary lawsuits and
letter demands in 2003, SCO sought licenses from at least 1,500
companies that used or distributed Linux, claiming that, by
doing so, they were either breaching UNIX-related contracts or
infringing UNIX copyrights, both of which SCO claimed to own.
The demands enraged not just the