SCO Attorney Declares GPL Invalid

chrullrich writes "According to heise (German, fishbait), SCO's chief counsel Mark Heise (unrelated) of Boies, Schiller and Flexner has declared that the GPL violates the US copyright law and is thus null and void. SCO's legal position is actually a little too crazy to believe: The GPL allows unlimited copies, the copyright law allows one. Therefore, the GPL is invalid. Apparently, they try to argue that the copyright law, in giving consumers the right to make one backup of their software without any permission from the copyright holder, outlaws any contractual agreement that allows users to make more than one copy." There's an Inquirer article in English. Apparently SCO is now using the Chewbacca Defense. Other SCO news: SCO reports a profit, examining SCO's contributions to Linux, an attorney summarizes the case.

Comments

Boies is hexed

[blamanj]

Apparently, after Boies tangled with Microsoft, they hired some major voudou priestess to hex him good. First there was the Gore recount fiasco, now this.

Reply To Mr. Heise

[Helios808]

Mr. Heise, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this world is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. ** FULL DISCLOSURE Yeah, it's a repeat of a previous post of mine. So sue me...

Re:Hmm

[dasmegabyte]

Acutally, I'm kind of hoping that the end result of this is exactly what you're saying: you can either copyright something, or you can release it into the public domain. That you can't release something into the public domain with restrictions, even well meaning ones like community licenses.

Yes this invalidates the GPL. Good. I hate that viral piece of shit. The lack of "copyleft" has not hurt things licensed under Apache or BSD. In fact, all the GPL has done, really, is restrict the commercial viability of open source.

Think about it, man. Software companies need to make money, but software is very complicated. If you can grab the framework for your product for free without being restricted in how you release said product, you win. And free software wins, too, because it's DEVELOPERS and not LICENSES that make OSS great. We actually had a standing order here NOT to use OSS because of licensing questions, until I got the rule whittled down to exclude BSD, Apache and a few other licenses. The managers here thought that the money spent on exploring the legality of products based on top of GPL'd code was not worth the time they saved developers.

And it's not like non-GPL OSS is faltering. Postgresql is easily on par with (i'd say better than) the GPL'd MySQL. The BSD OS is easily on par with (and many say better than) Linux itself. Apache makes some of the best software on the PLANET. Lack of a GPL is not preventing people from using software and it's not preventing them from extending it. Fear of this was the reason the GPL was emitted from beneath RMS' tinfoil sombrero...making the GPL illegitimate would put a stop to all this stupid OSS license squabbling, and let us get back to what's important: making software.

Re:Witty, lightly sarcastic headline

[s20451]

Good one, but at least give credit where it's due. (Any earlier examples?)