Expanding on Jeremy Gross' point, are there any domains in which a purchaser/user of a product which has (allegedly) incorporated others' IP can be held personally liable?
If I buy a CD recorded by a musician who has "sampled" another's song and incorporated in his track, surely I cannot be held liable for this, or even required to return the CD.
If my copy of the New York Times includes and article which the author has plaigarized from another source, I doubt any legal authority is going to "recall" my newspaper, or prosecute me for my quarter investment.
These seem more directly pertinent than the Mazda-Ford analogy, as a Linux distro seems more like a publication than a physical product, though the same principle, I would think, applies.
Perhaps the issue grows slightly murkier in the case of a downloaded copy of Linux; in this case conceivably the argument could be made that the user has personally copied a copyrighted chunk of code. Maybe for thorough self-protection, Linux sysadmins would be best advised to buy an off-the-shelf distro of Linux, to point at if the lawyers ever show up.
If this threat/argument from SCO ends up being found baseless and/or absurd, aren't they in the position of having interfered with the business of several thousand companies via their letters, baselessly and in pursuit of money, i.e. "extortion"?
If any of you Opera users find the "Free-X Statement" link akin to a Spinal Tap album cover, the site hasn't been defaced or removed. Try another browser, Opera 7.0 appears not to render their page readably. Undoubtedly the site's fault, not Opera's, of course.
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Expanding on Jeremy Gross' point, are there any domains in which a purchaser/user of a product which has (allegedly) incorporated others' IP can be held personally liable?
If I buy a CD recorded by a musician who has "sampled" another's song and incorporated in his track, surely I cannot be held liable for this, or even required to return the CD.
If my copy of the New York Times includes and article which the author has plaigarized from another source, I doubt any legal authority is going to "recall" my newspaper, or prosecute me for my quarter investment.
These seem more directly pertinent than the Mazda-Ford analogy, as a Linux distro seems more like a publication than a physical product, though the same principle, I would think, applies.
Perhaps the issue grows slightly murkier in the case of a downloaded copy of Linux; in this case conceivably the argument could be made that the user has personally copied a copyrighted chunk of code. Maybe for thorough self-protection, Linux sysadmins would be best advised to buy an off-the-shelf distro of Linux, to point at if the lawyers ever show up.
If this threat/argument from SCO ends up being found baseless and/or absurd, aren't they in the position of having interfered with the business of several thousand companies via their letters, baselessly and in pursuit of money, i.e. "extortion"?
If any of you Opera users find the "Free-X Statement" link akin to a Spinal Tap album cover, the site hasn't been defaced or removed. Try another browser, Opera 7.0 appears not to render their page readably. Undoubtedly the site's fault, not Opera's, of course.
(me.)