[CLUE-Talk] SCO providing Linux licenses

[G. Richard Raab]

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On Tuesday 22 July 2003 05:14 am, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> 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.
>
obligitory IANAL.

After looking at this and the new news.com page about MS's offer of ip 
protection, I do not think that Linus will be getting directly involved. I 
suspect that this is really going to be a battle about GPL (as opposed to 
Linux) and a PR stunt. With MS's new ip protection, I also suspect that 
another company will be offering the same in the next few days, if they have 
not done so already quietly. 

I wonder though, could kernel hackers sue on defamation (or libel, or....)? 
SCO is simply a front-end for several companies, one being MS (the current 
thread on some sites indicate that Sun is the other major backer; possibly it 
is novell). By sueing for Libel, it might be possible to have corporate 
records opened up a bit more and at a quicker pace.  I would like to know who 
is a friend and who is a snake in the grass.





> > 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.

No. This affect all if it is an attack on GPL which it most likely is.


>
> 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.

Good point.

> Zonker

- -- 
cheers
g.r.r.
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