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SGI's Letter to the Linux Community

Posted by michael on from the hard-news dept.

_Upsilon_ writes "SGI has released a letter to the Linux community in response to SCO's recent threat to revoke the UNIX licence for Irix. The letter mentions that they inadvertently did submit some System V code into the Linux kernel, that has since been removed (and some more in the process of being removed). The article points out that the code fragments in question had already been released into the public domain as well."

5 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. This is also on by Sir+Haxalot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Newsforge

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  2. So that's where it came from!! by Noryungi · · Score: 4, Informative
    Since SGI seems to know what kind of "offending" code was contributed to the Linux kernel, I guess the whole situation will be corrected very soon...

    On the other hand, this also confirms that SCO is spouting non-sense and has no legal basis for its suits, since:

    1. The offending, potentially infringing code is being removed.
    2. That code may well have been in the public domain anyway.


    I predict SCO is therefore going to be squashed by IBM, SGI, Red Hat etc. Good riddance.
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  3. How hard can SGI fight? by TopShelf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unlike Big Blue, SGI might not be well placed to fight a drawn-out legal battle with SCO. Revenue is declining, cashflow is negative, and the share price is circling the toilet bowl. And since the IBM/SCO case doesn't look like it will be resolved soon, you have to wonder how much resistance SGI can put up...

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  4. Re:Uh-oh... by 47PHA60 · · Score: 5, Informative

    In any organization this will happen. SCO is saying that IBM moved the code into Linux on purpose to destroy UNIX.

    This is very different from an inadvertant violation. If you took me to court and I could present evidence that I did not include your code purposefully, that I removed the offending code as soon as I knew about it and presented documentation that the code was public domain, but that I thought it would be better to remove any possibility of violation, chances are that would be the end of it. The court would see that I performed due diligence to detect and fix the problem.

    That is why Linus and others keep on challenging SCO to show them the code so that they can perform their legal obligation and remove it. These people have also said that the fact that SCO won't show the code probably indicates that there are no violations, and certainly not on the grand, purposful scale SCO alleges. Look, if somone walked into your place of work and said "you are running unlicensed software," they'd be right. I have never seen a business that was NOT running unlicensed software. Does that mean they did it on purpose to destroy the maker of that software?

  5. End user liable? by deragon · · Score: 4, Informative

    A bit off-topic, but in all this SCO issue, I never understood why the end user would be liable.

    If I buy say a Ford, and it turns out that Ford stole intellectual property from GM, would I, as a Ford owner whose car specifications have been improved by the stollen IP, have to pay say $200 to GM? I think not. GM should only sew Ford, not Ford car owners.

    Now why a Linux user would be liable? Contributors to Linux and other open source project should be liable, but not end users. If SCO limited its action against code contributors, I could understand it (assuming that there are some merits). But can they actually ask end users to pay up? Can this really stand in court?

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