SCO yesterday dismissed claims that Linux can be rewritten to remove code allegedly taken from Unix V, claiming that replacing over a million offending lines would be impossible.

Speaking at the company's annual SCOForum conference in Las Vegas, SCO president and chief executive, Darl McBride (pictured), maintained that other companies would not be able to find the offending code because only SCO can see System V code and determine which lines have been illegally included.

"Taking out that code would be like trying to take out the middle 30 floors of a 60-storey building. The top floors will fall and crush those below," he said.

McBride also poured cold water on the notion that Linux customers would receive refunds for licences bought should SCO lose its pending case to prove that its intellectual property (IP) is in Linux.

"We have not built in any refunds in our licensing model. The product is there and it's being used," he said.

SCO maintains that its code is primarily found in Linux dealing with several key areas: Non-Uniform Memory Access, Read Copy Update, journalled file system, XFS, Schedulers, Linux PowerPC 32- and 64-bit support and enterprise volume management systems.

To cement support for its $3bn case against IBM from the 650 developers and channel partners attending the conference, McBride was joined on stage by Mark Heise, partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner, the high-profile lawyers that have taken on the lawsuit, to explain the contracts and legal precedents underpinning SCO's case.

In the first public showing of the controversial Linux code that SCO claims infringes its IP, keynote attendees saw just 80 lines. Previously, the code was seen only by those who had signed SCO contractual or non-disclosure agreements.

"This shows 80 lines out of 100 that are completely identical to System V code. This should not be in Linux," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager at SCO Source.

Significantly, the code shown was from a vendor other than IBM, and SCO is now determining whether to launch similar action against that firm.

Larger chunks of the offending code could also be viewed by attendees that agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

To enthusiastic applause from SCO resellers and application developers, McBride insisted that the fight with IBM and Linux was protecting their interests as well as those of the company.

"We are not asking you to get in our shoes," he said. "We are fighting the battle for you."