It is unfortunate that the SCO lawsuit against IBM may have a big impact on Open Source. I think I would be a little pissed myself if I found line after line of code that was exactly the same down to spelling mistakes in a product I am making money on in someone else’s product.
If someone at IBM deliberately did the old cut and paste routine I think there is going to be hell to pay regardless on how people think about SCO actions. I like Linux and I like how it has developed. I just hope that people are not trying to take the easy route on product development. As a open source community I think people will be more proud and have a higher sense of ownership if they dig deep into the trenches and improve the product as a collective team and police from within to make sure all code is original and not the proprietary work of another company.
I know that there will be several camps on this and I do not have the answer but in the mean time the litigation is a wake up call to all Open Source projects. [Cnet]