On Nov. 11, the same day that Forbes reported that IBM had sent subpoenas to investors and analysts who supported SCO -- and a day in which SCO shares suffered a 10% drop--SCO fired back, telling the court it would issue subpoenas to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux free operating system kernel, and Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation.

SCO won't say what it hopes to accomplish with the subpoenas. A SCO spokesman says he doesn't even know which subpoenas, if any, have been served. Torvalds says he got his Wednesday evening. Stallman says he hasn't received one yet.

In addition to Torvalds and Stallman, SCO told the U.S. District Court in Utah it would issue subpoenas to Transmeta, a chip-design company that employs Torvalds; the Open Source Development Lab, where Torvalds currently works, on leave from Transmeta; software maker Novell; and Digeo, maker of Linux-based TV set-top boxes.

Oddly enough, on Nov. 11, SCO Executive Vice President Christopher Sontag complained to Forbes about IBM's decision to send subpoenas to investors and analysts who supported SCO. Sontag called the move "an attempt to bully and intimidate" and said IBM was engaged in "legal gamesmanship."

So why didn't Sontag mention that, uh, SCO itself was about to target Torvalds and Stallman with subpoenas? SCO's spokesman says Sontag and Darl McBride, SCO's chief executive, did not know that SCO's lawyers were planning the move.