SCO Selective About Linux Licensees

cdunworth writes "According to the IDG news wire, SCO is now telling the vast hoardes of willing new Linux licensees that, unless you are a Fortune 1000 company, you can't buy a Linux license. Not yet. Why the delay? In return for your $699 payment, they don't have to send you anything more than a piece of paper." At least home users of Linux can take solace in knowing that they don't have to pay up yet. It doesn't always pay to have deep pockets.

Comments

Re:Fortune 1000 can't buy license either

[ajs]

You're blurring two very different things, here, and while your core point is correct, it does need some clarification.

You can buy a license for Linux. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with buying or providing a license. SCO's problem is that they are a licensee of Linux under the GPL, and under the terms of that license they have certain obligations and one of those is not to sue their licensees or their sub-licensees for the technology contained in that software.

SCO's counter to this is fairly weak, but let me state it anyway: they claim that they did not know that Linux contained this code, and they distributed their own version of Linux, essentially just as much in the dark as Red Hat. Only (again according to SCO) IBM had any clue what rampant duplication of SCO proprietary technology was being hidden away in the Linux source.

The reason this is weak is several-fold: 1) SCO has continued to distribute the 2.4.13 kenerl from their FTP site under the GPL even up to this date. 2) the interaction between the GPL and SCOs claims is not that clear-cut, though I would tend to side with them on this one point, I don't think the outcome is certain 3) SCO helped in the development of some of the IBM technology in question, so they dang well DID know it was in there.

Ok, now on to you as a user.

If you use Linux, the GPL says you can keep using Linux even if the code is found to be proprietary and the GPL goes into its "failsafe mode".

Now, SCO will say that you cannot continue to use it, and they can press that case if they want, but that's their assertion independant of the GPL. The GPL does not stop you from using the software just because the GPL was nullified by the discovery of a conflict between it and other terms.

However, Red Hat (for example) cannot ship an encumbered version of Linux (they can use it, they just can't ship it). So, they would have to remove the encumbering code, which is why they and everyone else have asked SCO to outline the problem code. At this point, I can't see a court siding with SCO, as they have failed over and over and over to give distributors of Linux the information that they need to AVOID infringement. If SCO said, lines 200-20000 of fubar.c are ours, then the community would move to validate that claim and, if it was valid, remove the offending code ASAP. SCO doesn't want that, clearly, or they would have made it happen (as has happened with their claim over the SGI malloc, even though their claim to that code is tenuous at best).

So, when you say "they won't be able to get any updated versions anway, not from SCO, not from RedHat, not from anybody," that's not so. You will, in fact, get an update pretty damn soon after such a chunk of code is revealed (should it exist at all), and that update will be unencumberd. If that means re-writing 90% of linux, then it will take a bit, but even SCO's wildest claims have made it clear that only a few (albeit large) subsystems are affected.

What Red Hat's obligation to SCO will be (if any) is not your concern. That's a business arrangement between Red Hat and SCO.

Re:Oh no! Help!

[Zeinfeld]

Does this mean I'll have to pay for a full price licences for my Tivo, Router and network enabled coffee maker instead?

Nope, the way the case works the licesne fee sets the maximum damages in the case that they took you to court.

It is unlikely that SCO can claim any damages because the plaintif in any tort is required to mitigate their damages. In other words someone drops a cigarette near your house, you watch the cigarette set fire to your lawn, your deck and you do nothing to try to stop it even though you are sitting next to a fire extinguisher. The person who dropped the ciggarett asks to use the fire extinguisher, you refuse. No you cannot claim the cost of rebuilding the house as damages.

In this case SCO has deliberately avoided mitigating its damages by refusing to be specific as to which parts of the code are in dispute. They know that the minute they do so those parts of the O/S will be rewritten whether or not there is a genuine copyright issue.

SCO cannot claim for damages that it is intentionally causing. The users of Linux have a right to avoid infringement by using an alternative implementation not covered by a SCO copyright claim.