[CLUE-Talk] SCO releasing Linux under more restrictive license

[Dennis J Perkins]

Unless I am mistaken, doesn't this change things from being a civil suit matter 
to a criminal matter?  Only the copyright holders can change the license that a 
program can be released under.  

I know SCO doesn't even remotely understand the GPL.  For one thing, they 
confuse the concepts of copyright and software license.  They are not the 
same.  The license is merely the tool by which the programmer is allowing 
others to use and distribute his program.  Copyright, in contrast, is a right 
guaranteed in the Constitution.

It seems to be that SCO is now willfully stating that we are stealing your 
code.  They will try to justify it by claiming that Linux is an unauthorized 
Unix derivative, but there is nothing illegal about that, as long as certain 
rules are followed.  Imitation is a fact of life and business.  If it wasn't, 
the only graphical desktop would be from Xerox Park.

In addition, there are a lot of GPL packages in a Linux distro, including 
OpenLinux, that cannot be considered a Unix derivative.  Gimp and GNOME are 
good
examples.