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OSDL Releases Q&A on SCO Legal Actions
craigoda writes "OSDL released a Q&A today written by Lawrence Rosen, noted expert on technology and intellectual property law. The Q&A points to serious flaws in SCO's claims that end-users have to pay for Linux licenses." The press release is a little more diplomatic, saying that the document only helps one determine whether or not one should buy a license from SCO.
Here:
Scox isn't selling anything anyway. All scox earnings are fud money from msft and sunw. You need to boycott scox's controlling company: Canopy Group. I urge you to email these companies and explain that you will not do any business with them. I have included the letter that I sent to these companies as a sample.
v enueme.comr 7.com
s ales@communitect.com@ devicelogics.comp ipeinc.comf o@homepipeline.comd ustrialtrainingzone.como m@ mi-corporation.com,c .com,t hTools.com,l es@caldera.com,c om
B oycotting all companies affiliated with SCO/Canopy
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salesinfo@altiris.com
help@customercare.a
support@culturegrams.com
sales@cente
sales@cerberian.com
sales@cogitoinc.com
yslew@datacrystal.com
info
info@directpointe.com
info@fat
info@geolux.com
sales@helius.com
in
sales@iArchives.com
sales@in
brutledge@linuxnetworx.c
tyler@luxul.net,
sales@maxstream.net,
jclary
info@mti.com,
pr@myfamilyin
info@perimeterdata.com,
ProTools@SaberToo
ronastarns@aztecenterprises.com,
sa
info@trolltech.com
info@tuglet.
sales@viawest.net
Sales@wrenchead.com
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I have worked in IT for 25 years, and have been involved in several major purchasing decisions.
I am infuriated at SCO/Canopy's attempts at fraud and extortion. As well as SCO's FUD campaign against Linux.
As such, I will no longer purchase, or recommend the purchase, of any products or services from any company that is even partially owned by SCO/Canopy. I intend to encourage my colleges to do the same.
Step 1: SCO sues IBM over supposedly contributing confidential, proprietary SCO information to Linux and thus disclosing it. IBM tells SCO to shove it.
Step 2: SCO starts FUD campaign to scare people into not using Linux. Part of their FUD is to sell a license for their intellectual property that has been included in Linux which they have also distributed. Selling this license violates the GPL.
Step 3: SCO now finds itself in the position of having made probably unproveable claims about copyright infringement against IBM and Linux and having committed very public and thus proveable violations of the GPL. The only way SCO can continue their FUD campaign and charge people to use Linux is if they can now also get the GPL declared invalid.
The original lawsuit between SCO and IBM had absolutely nothing to do with the GPL. SCO brought the GPL into the mess by asserting they could sell licenses to Linux users for the portion of Linux that was based on their IP. This violates the GPL becuase they had distributed Linux with the offending code which makes it subject to the GPL.
If the issue had been strictly about copyright violations, it would have burried on the back page of some legal journal. SCO and their behind the scenes backers (think about who benefits from Linux and open source being discredited) have turned it into a public attack on Linux and free/open source software.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Wow, so many wrong answers. It's not a Chewbacca defense.
In addition to licensing their code to IBM under whatever license they used, but they ALSO licensed the entire Linux 2.4 kernel, including things they claim to have IP rights over, to their customers under the GPL.
Any of SCO's customers, under the GPL, has the absolute right to commit those updates into the main Linux kernel tree. So in a way it's irrelevant if SCO has any rights to the code in question at all--even if they did, they gave it away.
Thus the GPL challenge. If the GPL is declared invalid, *nobody* would have any rights to use Linux except the copyright holders of the original code. Luckily, most things in Linux have their copyrights ascribed to the Free Software Foundation. If, however, SCO proves that it owns the copyright on this code, AND they invalidate the GPL, that would be the only way to successfully remove the code from Linux (legally speaking).
Just because it's a dumb-ass defense doesn't make it a Chewbacca defense.