To try to get a handle on how the MS TCP/IP stack worked I downloaded the BSD Unix TCP/IP code and tried to compile it in Visual Studio C++ 6.0. I found the order of the functions in the BSD code was the same as the MS TCP/IP stack code. I also found the only thing missing from the MS Winsock dll was the raw socket data struture. If the data address was passed to the rawsocket function (not documented in MS) and called as if it were the BSD raw socket fuction the dang thing worked. I think the Winshoes components that shipped with delphi 5 or perhaps 6 had this component.
Perhaps I am wrong but my conclusion was someone at MS just lifted the BSD Unix TCP/IP Stack code and did what it took to get it to compile in windows. Then put that windsock dll in NT 4.0 SP3. The one diference from the BSD code was you had to allocate the data structure and pass its address to the raw socket function in the Winsock dll. ICMP.Dll just contained the data structure and a call to the windsock dll.
Could windows NT contain UNIX code? Could be.
I have heard others wonder aloud the same thing. Given MS's history, certainly it is not beyond the possible.
But I think, interestingly enough, this license may have been a big mistake. Without that, MS could have sat back and claimed to be completely clean.
Yet with that license, even those few left who don't believe MS orchestrated this from the beginning are convinced that at the very least, MS is using this license fee to SCO to 'support' this legal attack, at a minimum MS is trying to destroy Linux thru the courts because they can't compete against it.
A quick, informal look around suggests to me the industry doesn't seem to think there is any weight behind this case.
You are both right and wrong. Yes it is the BSD stack more or less, but no Microsoft didn't lift it they bought and paid for it.