It looks like the financial community is finally noticing that the judge took IBM's side in the Motion to Compel arguments on December 5th. It is affecting at least some of them, judging from this article, entitled "Now is the winter of SCO discontent" on Vnunet, in which the chief analyst at Ovum expresses this gloomy view of SCO:
"Ten days ago, in its breach of contract dispute with IBM, a US judge ordered SCO to produce its evidence of Big Blue's alleged placement of SCO code into Linux. . . .
"Gary Barnett, principal analyst at Ovum, commented: 'The legal decision to compel SCO to detail any infringing code is significant and proves it hasn't done a good job.'
"He also thought it unlikely SCO would now sue a big Linux user enterprise. The judge in any such case would probably rule it should wait until after ownership of the code had been proved.
"But SCO has vowed to press on. 'The Linux end-user lawsuits will hinge on much more than our case against IBM,' said Stowell. 'These are preliminary hearings. The case won't come to court until April 11, 2005. I would hardly jump to any conclusions based on the outcome of a preliminary hearing.'"