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IBM Moves To Enforce GPL By Summary Judgement

Posted by simoniker on from the kill-em-all dept.

gvc writes "So much for the GPL 'never being tested in court.' IBM, in its third motion for summary judgement against SCO, is seeking a permanent injunction against SCO's distribution of Linux, on the grounds that SCO has renounced and violated the GPL, and therefore has no right to distribute the 700,000 lines of IBM-copyrighted code therein. As usual, Groklaw broke the story." We previously reported on another IBM summary judgement from earlier this week.

4 of 620 comments (clear)

  1. GPL did stand up in court, didn't it? by kjoonlee · · Score: 5, Informative
    So much for the GPL 'never being tested in court.'

    It stood up in court recently in Germany, AFAIK

    The German GPL Order - Translated from GROKLAW

  2. Re:GPL and Copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Doesn't work that way. Since everyone involved have distributed the code believing they could validly place their code under the GPL, they will be prevented under the doctrine of promissory estoppel from suing people that have complied with the GPL because they believed the developers claims.

    IANAL, but promissory estoppel basically means that if you have said/promised/stated something and someone relies on those statements, YOU can't later turn around and change your mind and then sue people for violating your rights. Other people can still sue, but assuming all developers involved agreed to the GPL they're all limited by promissory estoppel.

    Further distribution might be risky, but then the judge is extremely unlikely to find the whole license invalid - the more likely scenario if the judge is wary about parts of the license is for the judge to ask for advice from someone with solid knowledge of the license and/or the copyright holders in question to try to interpret the license in a way that is both legal and meets the intent of the copyright holders.

  3. ARGGG! GPL is not a EULA! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The GPL is not a EULA!!!
    EULA = End User Liscense Agreement
    The GPL is a liscense for distribution of copyrighted code, it has no bearing on End Users. It only matters to Red Hat, Debian, IBM, etc. A EULA is generally a set of conditions under which you are allowed to USE code ( or usually a work derived from code). EULA's are invalid.

  4. Re:Except this isn't about the GPL, per se by Trackster · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you stop at this paragraph:
    SCO has, without permission, copied code from sixteen discrete packages of copyrighted source code written by IBM for Linux and distributed those copies as part of its own Linux products. SCO has literally copied more than 783,000 lines of code from these sixteen packages of IBM's copyrighted material. As a result of SCO's copying and distribution of IBM's code, SCO has unlawfully exercised IBM's rights to its works and therefore infringed IBM's copyrights. It can be interpreted it that way.

    If you go on to read the next paragraph:
    Although IBM's contributions to Linux are copyrighted, they are permitted to be copied, modified and distributed by others under the terms of the GNU General Public License ("GPL") or the GNU Lesser General Public License ("LGPL") (collectively, the "GPL"). However, SCO has renounced, disclaimed and breached the GPL and therefore the GPL does not give SCO permission or a license to copy and distribute IBM's copyrighted works.
    You can see that the axis of this motion really is the _GPL itself_.