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Groklaw Outlines More SCO Linux Contributions
An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw today reported that they have discovered another SCO programmer, Tigran Aivazian, who has committed code to the Linux kernel. According to the latest story Mr. Aivazian contributed a microcode update feature, a testing program, and made contributions to SMP and vmalloc. This new story adds weight to earlier stories about Caldera coder Chris Hellwig's additions to XFS, SMP and JFS. " Also on the SCO front, an anonymous reader writes "SCO's last Open Letter has drawn two new responses, one from Red Hat cofounder Bob Young, and the other from Jon 'maddog' Hall. 'maddog' makes a carefully reasoned rebuttal that defends the GPL and includes observations like 'How could the founding fathers or the early legislators have foreseen the Web, or even computers?' Young curtly offers McBride the following advice: 'Be less vocal' - making him the King Canute of Linux, perhaps, because it ain't gonna happen anytime soon."
This article is interesting because it shows that some of the code allegedly added by IBM was in fact added by SCO itself.
You'll notice that the entire point is that Groklaw has now established these contributors had policy/supervisor approval.
We always knew that Mr. Aivazian contributed to Linux; the new thing that Groklaw has unveiled here is that he can be proven to have been acting as an authorized agent of SCO.
-- Super Ugly Ultraman
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extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
Hall writes: ".. GPL does not allow a company to take the software created by the sweat and work of another person, add a few lines of code to it and then sell it to make a huge profit."
In fact, the GPL _does_ allow this. There is no restriction in taking a GPLed piece of code, adding lines of code (or not) and then selling it to someone for $X dollars. (1 Jillion Dollars! finger to corner of mouth). In fact, it's completely allowed so long as the buyer recieves the _same_ GPL rights (and source on demand). Why someone would purchase a GPLed product (sans support or other value added) for such an amount is another question, but in fact, a number of people out there do just such a thing, including with code that the original author has changed license terms on and no longer provides GPLed code themselves. Once a GPLed copy is out there, it's out there. Which is a good thing. Despite SCO's claims.
[Major market players such as Mandrake began by 'adding lines of code' to existing products such as Red Hat.]
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