The new paper, entitled "SCO: Without Fear and Without Research," raises serious questions about the SCO Group's legal basis for attacking the GPL and reassures Linux customers that no evidence has yet been made public that shows software code was improperly copied to Linux.

Moglen is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software and OSDL says that it is disseminating the position paper to address issues of concern to its members and Linux industry customers as a result of SCO Group's ongoing litigation threats.

According to an anouncement released by the Labs, "OSDL believes Moglen's analysis will help its members, the Linux development community, and Linux users better understand potential legal issues and any business risks associated with using Linux."

Moglen initially presented his paper earlier this month in Portland, Oregon, at a meeting of OSDL's customer advisory council, comprised of CIOs and CTOs from Fortune 100 corporations. In his paper, he makes two main points:

SCO Group last August showed two examples of what it claimed were infringing literal copies of UNIX software code to Linux, but the demonstration - says Moglen - backfired, "showing instead SCO's cavalier attitude toward copyright law and its even greater sloppiness at factual research."  SCO Group has argued that the GPL software license offers the firm legal protections while at the same time it argues that the GPL is not valid. "SCO's legal situation contains an inherent contradiction," Moglen says.

"Linux momentum continues strong despite recent threats by SCO Group to sue end users," said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL. "We believe Professor Moglen's paper will help our members, Linux customers and others keep the legal issues in perspective," he added.

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• Plaintext version of the paper
• PDF version of the paper