Once documents in the lawsuits started to pile up, it was possible to draw hard conclusions based on the evidence presented to the court, rather than public-relations bluster. Which explains why so many analysts were able to tell their clients there wasn't much legal risk to worry about with Linux — and tell them that literally years before the hammer finally fell on the litigation. All thanks to the Groklaw crowd's desire to pile up every suit-related document they could find. Did Groklaw really have an impact on those court cases? Naaah. The impact was on the rest of us. That collection of documents gave SCO's suits a transparency that's impossible to come by with most IT industry litigation.

McBride says SCO is looking at filing an interlocutory appeal, which would deliver an immediate ruling even as the trial proceeds.