[CLUE-Talk] SCO providing Linux licenses

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 18:40, Dennis J Perkins wrote:
> I wonder if they lawyers counselled for or against this?  The possible 
> consequences are very intriguing.  SCO is acting like they own Linux... 
> binaries only, no source.  Now what, will Linus et al. sue SCO for 
> violating the GPL and their IP?  SCO hasn't proved its case yet, after 
> all.  How would a judge view this, especially if another court rules 
> that SCO's IP was not violated?

I certainly hope that Linus and other kernel developers will sue SCO
once they get the licensing plan going... I also suspect there are many
other things that Linus and the kernel team could sue SCO for, but not
being a lawyer, I'm not entirely sure. 

> I think this was their intent all along.  Normally, a company would try 
> to buy a competitor, but that's not possible in this case.  So they 
> claim violation of their IP and attempt to hijack Linux.  And the GNU 
> project, XFree, KDE, GNOME, etc. as well, since they are not releasing 
> any source code.  They aren't even interested in the standard approach 
> of the offending party removing what was supposedly stolen.

Actually... this really only affects the Linux kernel. I believe they
have offered source code in the past for all these products, and they're
not claiming that XFree or whatever infringes on their IP -- just the
kernel. 

If nothing else, this should be a lesson on the dangers of proprietary
software -- you build your "house" on a foundation that belongs to
someone else, you can find yourself getting sued down the road when they
run out of money. 

Zonker
-- 
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
jzb at dissociatedpress.net
Aim: zonkerjoe
http://www.dissociatedpress.net