The SCO Boomerang and the Strength of Linux

karvind writes "PJ of Groklaw has written an insightful article on benefits flowing from SCO's litigation: GPL stands up in court, the community bonded more tightly than ever, encouraged increased support for FOSS and last but not the least heightened awareness of the benefits of using GNU/Linux systems. Article is also on Yahoo and NewsFactor."

Comments

And more concern

[nurb432]

"will i be sued if i use this free software"

Microsoft is placing full page ads based on this angle in trade magazines now.

While the reality of being sued may ( or may not exist ), they are doing their best to instill the fear of it into businesses, so they will stay with 'safe' software.

With all the free press, its only helping Microsoft do this.

Re:And more concern

[Corpus_Callosum]

I read that as "will i be sued by Microsoft if i use this free software"

Am I the only one? Is Microsoft announcing it's intentions to throw rocks at the gears? I can see some Microsoft black-project to get some independant [ehum..] developers to sue big companies for some triviality related to an open-source license to try to drive the point home.

Never mind me, I'm just paranoid..

Re:And more concern

[fermion]

I think the big issue is the continuing availability of technology. Will the tools one uses to build a firm be available next year. Will there be predictability in costs and upgrades. With MS products, this predictability generally exists, and if it changes, there is often a long enough window so that firms can change tools. This predictability is what forces MS to keep older OS alive, and nuetered the MS attempted to force firms into yearly upgrade cycles.

So, the issue is not so much who will pay for lawsuits. Most end users, of course, realize that they will not be liable. What of concern is if the GPLed tool will be availabe. If SCO or MS wins a suit, there might be immidiate injunctions against the use of those tools. MS has enough money to make the problem go away, and has done so. The OS vendors. typically, do not.

So in this enviroment where eveyone is suing everyone over patents, and even MS has made payments, there is great uncertainty in the market over who own what. Like so many things, the situation works in favor of the monopolist, and against the free market.

Re:There's a reason it wasn't tested in court

[Anonymous Coward]

Making profit is a good thing.

So why the hell can't my family trade slaves anymore? Seriously, get a clue. Proprietary software doesn't need liberation. It needs to have its artificial supports (copyright and patent law) pulled out from under it, so that binary only and source available are competing in a REAL free market. I'd give it, oh, a couple of years. Without copyright the GPL would be unenforceable. It would also be unnecessary.

Re:GPL

[dmaxwell]

Promissory estoppel at the very least would kick in. The developer would also have to 'splainin' to do why he licensed under the GPL in the first place. Contracts are binding on both parties to an agreement. A license binds the the licensor as long as the licensee is in compliance. A compliant licensee who has become dependent on the software may even be able to sue the reneging licensor for damages.

Name one lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead, I'll call your bluff. Name one lie in that article. Didn't think so.

OT: rights of owners

[mi]

After all, why should the owner of some code not do as he/she wishes with it?

You know, where the author of GPL -- Mr. Stallman -- lives, right? Cambridge, MA...

The dominant view of property in that town may be very different from yours. For example, this is the city that had the most anti-landlord legislation for years (resulting in great tenant-landlord animosity, of course). After the state-wide referendum repealed most of it several years ago, many people in Cambridge keep campaigning to put them back in. Tenants, you see, are people too.

Now, I don't know Mr. Stallman's views on the subject, but I would not be at all surprised, that his answer to the question:

After all, why should the owner of some apartment not do as he/she wishes with it?

is quite different from yours.

Back to your original question, users are "people too", aren't they?

Re:GPL

[hacker]

"The situation I propose is that the original developer announces that anyone using the software now needs to pay a licensing fee, claiming that the GPL is not a valid license to begin with..."

Also not possible, since the GPL is simply a license to copy and redistribute copyrighted software, if the GPL is revoked, I still have been granted rights to the version I was given, via the U.S. Copyright system. I am free to do whatever I wish with it, including rebrand it as my own and sell it as a competing product.

When the GPL is stripped away, what is left is a stronger legal standing, not a weaker one. Trust me on this, We've been fighting 3 cases of GPL violation with our FSF-appointed attorney in towe, for the last 4-5 years now. Commercial companies seem to think because we're "spare time hackers", we can't afford attorneys, and that they can pick and claw at whatever pieces of our code they wish. They are sorely mistaken.

In the case of a GPL investigation, if the violation of that license is proven to be accurate, all rights to continue to use that GPL'd code are revoked, making EVERY SINGLE SALE OR DOWNLOAD of that GPL code from that point, a United States Copyright Violation, subject to fines of $20,000/USD to $200,000/USD per-incident. Its VERY expensive to violate the GPL.

In one case, the vendor took our project, every single piece of it, slapped their own names on it, removed ours, stripped out the licensing, put their icons on it, and began selling it to "partners", without letting them know that it was based on GPL code (and without transferring that GPL license to those "partners"). Since they were openly advertising that it was "their" product, written by them (they gave copies away by the thousands at "beaming" kiosks at tradeshows), this was now what is called a "Lanham Act Violation", otherwise known as "...false designation of origin". When we approached their "partners" and asked for source, we were directly threatened by the CEO of the original violating company with bankruptcy and other things. I quote: "If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys! I have millions of dollars of investor money to play with..."

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid and ignorant companies like this continue to be, but the number of GPL violations continues in the industry every single day, there are thousands of known violators out there right now, just waiting for someone to slap them with an injunction and a subponea to audit their source code.

Once someone grants you rights to a piece of software, it cannot be revoked after the fact.

Re:There's a reason it wasn't tested in court

[Profane MuthaFucka]

IBM sold off their Thinkpad business, so even more of their income will be because of services, not hardware.

To some extent you are right about using hardware to push services, but going forward this doesn't look like it's going to be the case as a rule. IBM is a services company that happens to sell hardware.