Editing SCO–Linux disputes (section)

===The Michael Davidson E-Mail===
On July 14, 2005, an email<ref name=md>{{cite web|url=http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-459-22.pdf|title=Data|website=groklaw.net}}</ref> was unsealed that had been sent from Michael Davidson to Reg Broughton (both Caldera International employees) in 2002, before many of the lawsuits. In it, Davidson reported how the company had hired an outside consultant because ''(spelling as in the original)'':
{{cquote|...of SCO's executive management refusing to believe that it was possible for Linux and much of the GNU software to have come into existence without *someone* *somewhere* having copied pieces of proprietary UNIX source code to which SCO owned the copyright. The hope was that we would find a "smoking gun" somewhere in code that was being used by Red Hat and/or the other Linux companies that would give us some leverage. (There was, at one stage, the idea that we would sell licences to corporate customers who were using Linux as a kind of "insurance policy" in case it turned out that they were using code which infringed on our copyright).}}

The consultant was to review the Linux code and compare it to Unix source code, to find possible copyright infringement. Davidson himself said that he had not expected to find anything significant based on his own knowledge of the code and had voiced his opinion that it was "a waste of time". After 4 to 6 months of consultant's work, Davidson says:<ref name=md/> 
{{cquote|...we had found absolutely *nothing*. ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever.}}