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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.
if I bought a copy of Red Hat and it contained illegal code, there is no way I would even begin to consider paying SCO for the illegal code. Either Red Hat would pay SCO or Red Hat would refund my money and I would stop using the product.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Obviously, the employees at SCO read slashdot. With so much, perhaps unfounded, speculation going on at slashdot about insider trading, perhaps it's a good time to point out to our SCO readership the Insider Trading Bounty program. If there are any transactions going on by insiders that isn't listed here or here, the SEC, and slashdot, would like to know!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I read the Q&A and it doesn't seem like it's written for us, the poeple that understand what is truely going on.
But, it is written for all the bosses out there that are scared with what is going on. My boss is worried about this whole thing because of a major prodoct that we are releasing that will run on a Linux server. He is concerned that if SCO wins, can we still use Linux.
I for one am going to be sending him this Q&A.
Like I said, we all understand that SCO is full of crap, but our bosses don't.
Right. But if their argument stopped here, all of the owners of original Linux code would have the right to sue SCO into the ground for violating their copyright anyways -- except that we'd have the right to sue them starting with their first distribution of Linux code.
The only way around that would be to say that anything put under the GPL was actually put into the public domain. Once it's in the public domain, SCO would be able to do anything that they want with the code -- including asking for further license fees.
On the other hand, this would also mean that -- since their code was distributed by them (with their knowledge) under the GPL license, IT would be public domain as well... and they wouldn't have any legal force behind a request for more money..
In other words, the worst case of this argument would be that all of Linux (including the SCO code) is public domain, and nobody has to pay anybody for any of it. (but SCO would be free to relicense it in the future).
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
So how is this different from a typical commercial software license? I notice that the License that SCO recently published excludes indemnification against the incidental inclusion of IP they don't own, even in the code that they claim is all theirs. I don't think this is unusual. Nor is it unusual for the software to come with a statement that it isn't warranted to do *anything* at all useful and a warning that it may do something harmful. The only obvious risk to the vendor is that you might stop buying.