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Is the SCO Lawsuit a Good Thing for Linux?
Jack William Bell writes "The National Post is running an essay by Wynn Quon entitled 'Linux's lucky lawsuit'. In it Quon claims that (A) SCO is going to lose (saying ". . . SCO is a toad about to face a steamroller.") and (B) the Linux community needs exactly this kind of 'inoculation' as the OS moves from a hobbyist platform to a real business tool. Good analysis or unwarranted optimism?"
Wouldn't we just be better off with all these companies putting this money into Linux instead of lawsuits?
What doesn't kill you can still leave you maimed and crippled. The same goes for Linux.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Like it or not, the courts have become the whipping boy for corporations....locking up development for years in the pharmeticul community, bullying individuals who can't afford a legal defense to pull down websites or stop distributing items that are legal... - One needs look no further then Scientology to see what a large organization with lots of money and no shame in suing/litigating their desires into existance. They even forced Slashdot to pull posts off it's server under the "threat" of action to see the courts are the big stick in today's society.
.68 cents a share, but it's a legitmate threat, and I'm glad we're starting here. Once we've established the validity of the GNU/Open Source License, no lawsuit like this will have any teeth again.
Linux is gonna have to be able to stand up to these guys if it's going to make further inroads into the corporate environment. Better that it start now, with an ally like IBM. What if they had gone after some real poor Linux distro manufacturer who would have had to cave under financial demands? - There would then be legal precedent for their claims...
Nope, I honestly think this is a ploy by the Executives of SCO to inflate stock price a bit so they are selling at $10 instead of
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Since SCO vs IBM lawsuit every newspaper I read had at least one story about Linux. My friends ask me if Linux is really worth over $1000? And I answer yes :) If you don't call it success than what?
...but only if we win.
This is it, it's the long-awaited test of the GPL in court. SCO isn't backing down, and IBM isn't forcibly backing them down. The GPL, before this case is over, will have been tested in court, and that is absolutely good... if we win. If the GPL is not upheld in court then this is very, very bad. Since none of us know for sure how it will go, this whole suit is very potentially-good.
But, c'mon, this is IBM here. If anyone can win a court battle, it's IBM.
One way or another we'll know whether the GPL is valid by, say, 2008.
I want my Cowboyneal
I agree with the author's assessment that this is just the first of many attacks. We will be forever defending Linux and Open Source from the individuals and corporations who want to own and control everything.
It will probably become more difficult for Joe Coder to just submit a patch to fix a bug. At worst, a lengthy background check will become required to verify that he hasn't worked on something similar for a corporation. At best, he'll have to complete some paperwork before he gains committer status.
These kinds of steps will help tone down the endless parade of future lawsuits that await us, but they will have an impact on the culture of open source, if you can call it that. We can't be innocent volunteers trying to help out anymore; open source processes will have to evolve to more closely match their corporate counterparts. Expect accountability and responsibilty to become new buzzwords, and expect the sort of back-stabbing politics that come with that kind of corporate climate.
There will be an impact on the meritocracy so often praised -- your work may be rejected for reasons having nothing to do with its merit. Or from another point of view, part of the measurement of your work's merit will be your ability to prove that it's original. "My patch doesn't fix the bug as elegantly, but you used to work for Company X, who developed a similar system five years ago, so we really can't accept your work."
I'm probably too much of a pessimist. But it seems that regardless of the outcome of the whole SCO mess, something will be lost. Maybe nothing terribly vital, but something.
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
Contrary to the popular belief, the SCO case never was and never will be about the GPL.
The original suit wasn't about the GPL. However, one of the specific points of of IBM's countersuit is that SCO distributed Linux under the GPL and thus removed any claim they may have otherwise have had to exclusive ownership of parts of the code in the Linux kernel. This IS a direct test of the GPL, and it will likely be one of the first issues decided since, if it stands, it makes all of the other issues in the suit irrelevant.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Many years ago, I wrote a little blurb about this one topic (to remain confidential), and published it on my web page, complete with copyright notice. It sat there neglected for a while, and eventually I took the page down.
Very recently, however, I discovered Encyclopedia Brittanica used my blurb for their entry on the subject. They stole my intellectual property.
I am hereby announcing my forthcoming lawsuit against Encyclopedia Brittanica. I am looking to enjoin them from distributing any further copies, either in paper or electronic form. I will also be seeking royalty payments from anyone owning a copy produced since 2001. And no, I will not disclose which entry it is they stole, since I do not anyone reprinting it even as a news article.
* * * * * * *
Yes, the above is fiction. It was written to illustrate how stupid SCO is being. Why no judge has forced them to disclose said infringing code is beyond me. Frankly, since if the code were disclosed it would be removed, it seems like they are ENCOURAGING further infringement, which I would take as their not defending their copyright adequately.
You're right that it's about the GPL, but wrong in the manner its being tested. Exclusive ownership of part of the code is actually necessary for the GPL to work; i.e., the code has to copyrighted, otherwise the grant of limited distribution (the code can only be distributed if the source and a copy of the GPL is included) is unenforcable -- because without copyright the code is in the public domain.
IBM's claim is that they have exclusive ownership of the code that SCO is contesting (RCU, NUMA, JFS, etc.), and that SCO is in violation of the GPL by:
A) distributing the code in violation of IBM's copyrights
B) requesting licensing fees in violation of the GPL, under which IBM permits distribution of its copyrighted kernel contributions
and
C) requesting licensing fees for code SCO has itself already licensed under the GPL.