Culture Clash: SCO, OpenLinux, Linus And The GPL

hobsonchoice writes "SCO has issued a letter saying SCO Linux customers won't be sued. The same does not seem to apply if using a non-SCO distribution such as RedHat." LightSail points to the SCO letter itself, and raises an interesting point: "If they approve the use of 'their' IP in Linux in a single kernel, then the GPL holds that IP SCO allows to be used by a select few must be freely released to any and all. It appears that all Linux users everywhere were just given a license to continued use of Linux even if SCO would win their suit with IBM." And Haikuu writes "eWeek recently posted an interview conducted by e-mail exchange with Linus Torvalds regarding his recent move to the OSDL and the SCO suit."

Comments

Re:SCO thinks the GPL is a joke

[tshak]

You're only right if MS distributed the code (which is what the GPL covers). However, I explictely mentioned internal use. For example, if MS used a modified version of CVS for it's source control, it would not have to give those modifications back to the community. Most importantly, they could have reaped all of the benefits of the work putting into CVS which could have saved them thousands of dollars.