As for Linux dying, that's ridiculous, for all the various reasons cited by others, and besides, if Linux does get hamstrung by some ignorant judge, there's always BSD which has a very nice legal precedent that will make pursuing legal action against the BSD crowd a very difficult task.
What's dying is the industrial age. The industrial model of software production never really worked, and the open model that resembles a collaborative effort among cottage craftsmen is proving itself to produce higher value software at a lower cost and thereby undercutting the industrial producers. They absolutely cannot stand this because they are adherents of the myth of industry and progress. IBM seems to actually "get it" and they seem willing to adapt their business to changing market conditions, something remarkable for a company of their size and age.
I remember reading a rather telling quote from Darl McBride in a recent article (a couple weeks old). He basically said that he has to protect the shareholder value of his company (i.e. the stock price), and in order to do so, he has to protect their intellectual property. In other words, he's saying that he knows that they can't make money doing their core business of selling software, so he's got to find a way to generate income, or at the very least to jack the stock price up. Well, he apparently has succeeded at the latter, though how long will the stock price remain buoyed by their allegations and lawsuits?
I think it's a mildly clever short term tactic, but he'd better have an exit strategy that doesn't involve being bought out. That is his ultimate goal here. It's pretty transparent, really. This is why he's suing IBM, one of the richest companies on the planet, and threatening legal action against Novell, another company rich enough to buy SCO outright.
I read the other day that Steve Ballmer sold about $102 million worth of his stock. (He still has about $10 billion in stock, don't worry he's not going broke any time soon. ;-) I know what I would do if I had that kind of dough: I'd buy SCO and release all of their "intellectual property" into the public domain. SCO probaly doesn't think $10 billion is enough to buy the company, but just wait 6 months to a year, their stock price will be back down to $.60.
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