Apparently, Sun's license from SCO a few years ago actually included a right-to-use license for Linux, after all. This appears to contradict Chris Sontag's statement in his deposition that MS and Sun were not Linux license customers, but then again as Groklaw already noted, that deposition seems to conflict with one of his own prior depositions in the IBM case, so who knows what to make of what Sontag says.

Luckily, many corporations keep records, and these records become exhibits in court cases - then, we can finally get a handle on what the truth is:

According to the court exhibit, Sun bought a "right to use license" for its commercial Linux end users. In addition, Sun was buying "a UnixWare source code license to developers," and both licenses "contained a covenant not to sue, which provided that the licensee would not be exposed to liability for the use of SCO's intellectual property in Linux."

Looks like I need to update our Usual Suspects Game, and we may need to really take another look at Sun's actions towards Free Software ever since their dealings with SCO and Microsoft...

Update: In somewhat related news, Matthew Aslett notes that SCO's IP revenue has hit $0 for the most recent quarter. As I say in the comments on his blog: "Of course it hit $0, Microsoft is now directly selling their Linux/FOSS right-to-use licenses and no longer requires SCO to act as a proxy."