SCO Claims IBM/SGI Licenses are Revokable

shadow099 writes "SCO claims in an open letter writen by Blake Stowell, Director Public Relations SCO, that the Unix licenses to IBM and SGI can be revoked. " This is just the latest volley in the ongoing circus. It keeps getting funnier!

Comments

Re:Do not become complacent

[pknoll]

Invalidation of the GPL would mean that existing GPL'd software could be incorporated into commercial code without restriction or credit to the original author.

No, it wouldn't. If the GPL is found to be invalid, then normal copyright law applies. Nothing written under it could be distributed, extended, etc. without express permission from the copyright holder. The GPL doesn't protect code; copyright law does that. The GPL grants freedoms where normal copyright law would restrict them.

By the Original

[Shadow Wrought]

...any time terminate all the rights granted by it hereunder by not less than two(2) months' written notice to LICENSEE specifying any such breach, unless within the period of such notice all breaches specified therein shall have been remedied;...

So, by the original language, the license can only be revoked by specifying the breach. SCO has yet to specify the breach so much as point in its general direction.

The other proviso is that if the breach is fixed (ie the infringing stuff is removed) then the license can no longer be revoked. So, if the offending code in Linux is identified and removed- there is no breach.

Is it just me or are they no even bothering to hide their alterior agenda anymore?

Ammendment X

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Why would anyone in their right mind sign over a license to anyone that was not revocable?

Namely because there are other ways of enforcing your contracts. I haven't seen all of the SGI contracts, but here is Ammentment X to the IBM contract and it clearly states IBM has an "irrevocable" and "perpetual" contract. It also says that SCO is not otherwise limited from enjoining or prohibiting IBM in other ways.

Licenses really can be revoked

[Skapare]

Licenses really can be revoked under the terms of the license itself. The terms a government issues a drivers license under would include the specific laws involved. They cannot just arbitrarily revoke a drivers' license, but they can under those specific laws. If you commit certain actions the law says you may lose your license for, it can be revoked.

Likewise, a private license for use of some property can also be revoked under the agreed terms. Generally, if the agreed terms are violated, the license can be revoked. If SGI and/or IBM did release UNIX intellectual property to the public, that would be such a violation. And we do know SCO is claiming that.

The issue now comes down to whether such a claim is valid. Did SGI take XFS from UNIX and release it publically. That cannot be the case, however, because there is no XFS in UNIX. SGI developed XFS themselves. Arguably, pieces of XFS might have gotten some UNIX code in there, but once pointed out, that can be removed. Did SCO perform due diligence in pointing that out? Not until recently have they started pointing at any specific violations (while still making vague and unsubstantiated claims that lots of other violations exist), and those are weak due to previous releases in other forms.

And how the hell do we know there isn't any violations in SCO's non-Linux closed-source product ... violations of the GPL with code taken from Linux and put in there?