Groklaw Starts Unix/Linux History Project

An anonymous reader writes "Over on GrokLaw, PJ and others have decided to create a 'timeline' for Unix and Linux development. The plan is to recreate, as completely as possible, the history of these two operating systems '...from the perspective of tracing the code by copyright, patents, trade secret, and trademark. The idea is that the final timeline will be a publicly-available resource, released under a Creative Commons license, that will assist the community in defending against - or better yet in deterring - future lawsuits against GNU/Linux code.'"

Comments

The press

[Message Board]

I'm curious to whether the Linux derivitive work(s) that SCO released and distributed in its own products will come out more in the press. Considering that this will be backed up with creditable resources, it could provide valuable insight for the press into "our side" of things. Big corporations have lots of nice looking graphs and reports to make things look rosy, but Linux really does not.

Hrm...

[Niacin]

They better have valid sources for the timeline, or SCO will say something along the lines of "this is crap, we did it all!" and the courts would care less.

And whats up with the lack of responses? People must be getting fed up with SCO crap.

A Quarter Century of UNIX

[hey]

This book might help:
A Quarter Century of UNIX

Re:As much as I like CC...

[tres3]

This is NOT true! Once it is introduced in court it becomes public but it still retains its copyright and, if it contains trademarked images, then it is protected by trademark. Further, if it has a patented invention (leaving aside the probability that the US patent office failed to properly research the application) you cannot build that invention without licensing the patent. Once something is introduced in court you have the right to see it provided that the judge has not ordered it sealed (to protect a minor defendant, corporate trade secret, or for reasons of National Security) and fair use rights will grant you the right to publish it (or parts of it) in a news report but the original author will always retain the copyright. That assumes that the US congress continues to lengthen copyright terms everytime Mickey Mouse is poised to fall into the public domain.

For example: Let's say that I write a short story about Mickey Mouse and attempt to sell it. Mr. Eisner, through his lawyers, will attempt to stop my distributing/selling it. In reality, being a broke programmer that lacks the funds to take on a multinational corporation in a court of law, I would be forced to concede before I ever entered a court room. But lets assume that I did have the funds and the tenacity to attempt to take on such a battle. First, the complainant, Disney, would file their complaint, or lawsuit, and attach exibits, namely my story, and submit it to the court. At that point they have not violated copyright law by reprinting my story for their complaint as it is needed for them to make their case. Second, although my story will now become part of the court record -- and therefore open to public review -- I would still own the copyright on that story; that means that even if Disney prevailed in court and loved the story that I wrote they still would not have the right to publish it without making a deal with me; and for that matter no one else can publish it without making a deal with me and Disney (since it is a work derivied from their character).

Where it will really become interesting is if it is considered a database that could be protected under the proposed HR 3261. A timeline is a collection of facts that could conceivably be protected by the proposed law; that is the reason for releasing it under the Creative Commons license. Fortunately, collections of fact are only protected if they are organized by some unique means. Courts have ruled that phone books, because that are sorted alphabetically, are not protected at the moment; that is why corporations that collect data are trying to change the law. I would guess that numeric and chronologic ordering of data would not be considered a unique method of organizing the data and thus would not be protectable under the current law.