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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."
"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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.