SCO Includes OS Products In OpenServer 6

William Robinson writes "In a bid to be friendly with Open Source, SCO has included 7 OS products in their Unix product. Among the included packages are MySQL, PostgreSQL, Samba, Apache, Tomcat, and FireFox. SCO's position is consistent, spokesman Blake Stowell argued. 'We don't necessarily have issues with open source, we just have an issue with open-source technology that includes intellectual property it shouldn't' he said."

Comments

Of course they're consistent

[AKAImBatman]

SCO's position is consistent, spokesman Blake Stowell argued. "We don't necessarily have issues with open source, we just have an issue with open-source technology that includes intellectual property it shouldn't,"

From Groklaw:

In their Sixth Affirmative Defense, they say:

"The General Public License ('GPL') is unenforceable, void and/or voidable, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred."

The Seventh Affirmative Defense adds:

"The GPL is selectively enforced by the Free Software Foundation such that enforcement of the GPL by IBM or others is waived, estopped[sic] or otherwise barred as a matter of equity."

The Eighth adds:

"The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred."

So, yes. Their position on the GPL is completely consistant. i.e. The GPL is invalid, therefore they can take and redistribute all the software they want without any reprocussions from copyright law. They're wrong, but at least they're consistent. (In a twisted, "believe what I want you to believe," sort of way.) ;-)

P.S. Shouldn't this be under YRO or general articles instead of Apache?

Re:Of course they're consistent

[nurhussein]

The GPL is invalid, therefore they can take and redistribute all the software they want without any reprocussions from copyright law.

If the GPL is invalid, or if they don't agree to it, they can't distribute the Linux souce code *at all* since it's copyrighted. The GPL is the only license that allows redistribution of the Linux kernel. Attack the GPL and they're guilty of breaking copyright law.

Does this mean

[m50d]

that they acknowledge the GPL as a valid license? Because if not they have no license to distribute MySQL (unless they paid for it).

I know there was never much doubt, but IIRC one of SCO's arguments was that the GPL was invalid.

Does that mean

[joeflies]

that they've checked those projects for infriging intellectual property too and certify it's clean?

Curious

[augustz]

SCO has very publically disclaimed the GPL. Letters to congress, letters to fortune 1500, and in sworn statements in court.

"The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred."

Given this position, isn't there standing for a contributor to actually litigate the validity of the GPL? You've got a company that has disclaimed the GPL, but still uses the software.

That's not the way it works, you can't have it both ways. Either you agree to play fair, or you have to create your own software, not take others.

And of course, the PR spin on this being "consistent" is hillarious.

Just say no...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since SCO is on record in various court-filed documents as NOT believing the GPL to be valid, one has to wonder how they go about distributing software that's licensed under the GPL.

If the software is GPL'd, but they don't believe the license to be valid - then how do they go about distributing someone else's code w/o any license? It's my understanding that the code is automatically copyrighted by the author unless the author grants some other rights to users, such as under the GPL; so that should mean that if they don't accept the license that the author released it under (GPL) that it's still copyrighted by the author, and SCO would have to go to the author for a license to distribute.

Given the trouble they've caused everyone with their temper-tantrums over the past few years, if I were mySQL - I'd say "ummm, no thanks. We'll pass on allowing you to distribute our stuff if you don't want to do it under the GPL. And by the way, we need you to sign a document under penalty of perjury that you accept the license we offer (GPL) in it's entireity, and agree not to dispute any portion of it in perpetuity, and to indenify, protect, and defend us against any and all claims as may come relating to said license..."...

basically toss it right back at 'em...

And finally - can we get rid of this half-assed "confirm you're not a script" crap... most of them are an absolute bitch to make out.