[CLUE-Talk] Why SCO still sucks...

[Jed S. Baer]

On Fri, 02 May 2003 20:00:18 -0600
Dennis J Perkins <djperkins at americanisp.net> wrote:

> >>>What I expect is that they will go to court and largely claim that
> >>>someone "stole" particular ideas from UnixWare and re-worked them.
...
> >>"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux
> >>kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an
> >>interview. In addition, he said, "We're finding code that looks likes
> >it's>been obfuscated to make it look like it wasn't UnixWare code--but
> >it was.">
> >>http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=4239
...
> >Of course, if SCO/Caldera shipped the same kernel code, wouldn't that
> >make it fair game under the GPL anyway? 

No, why would it? Now, if SCO decided to use already GPL'd code, yes, but
that isn't what they're saying happened. Also, the owner of any piece of
code can, in fact, release under multiple licenses, even withdraw later
versions from the GPL.

> If their case is so ironclad, why not prove it?  And how do we know that
> Caldera did not contribute some code?

Uh, I think that's what the lawsuits are about. Prove it, in court, and
collect your damages, or whatever you get out of it.

As far as whether SCO/Caldera code being in the kernel makes it
automagically GPL'd, I'd say that would depend a great deal on how it got
there. Certainly, anyone with legal rights to a chunk of code can release
it under the GPL. What if someone didn't have the rights, and re-used the
code anyway? As someone else said, now we have a mess.

-- 
I wouldn't even think about bribing a rottweiler with a steak that
didn't weigh more than I do. -- Jason Earl