I cannot help but wonder how much of this derives from the poison spread over the
UNIX / Linux SCO law suits. Like the patent trolls of today, their close predecessor was SCO which threatened to sue EVERYBODY in hopes of a good payday. By casting the cloud of uncertainty of legal challenges by a very litigious and vexatious plaintiff at just the time when this could challenge the competition, one wonders if there were others in the shadows that benefited?
Just a "Yet another conspiracy theory!"