SCO Scuttles Sense, Claiming GPL Invalidity:"Now that the tide has turned, and SCO is facing the dissolution of its legal position, claiming to "enforce its intellectual property rights" while actually massively infringing the rights of others, the company and its lawyers have jettisoned even the appearance of legal responsibility. " - FSF

An excellent broadside against SCO's contention that the GPL is illegal under US Copyright law.

6:26:31 PM    comment []  

SCO puts disputed code in the spotlight. Technology launches take second place at SCO's confab to a defense of the legal battles against Linux, as the company displays the lines of code it says were copied from its Unix. [CNET News.com]

Now they claim that over 800,000 lines of code related to SMP in the Linux kernel was lifted from SCO Unixes, that many vendors contributed code that belonged to SCO, and they are defending the industry's right to sell software.  Does that mean that no contributed an original line of code to SMP, that developers at multiple licensees got together to swipe SCO code rather than write it themselves, and that if SCO does not prevail the software industry will be destroyed by Open Source?  I don't think so.  This is just more posturing for the press.

6:17:05 PM    comment []  

SCO Turns Up the Heat on Linux Users. As SCO prepares to kick off its annual SCO Forum, the company's CEO Darl McBride issues his most definitive warning yet to corporate Linux users. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

The article includes this little tidbit: "In a nutshell, this litigation is essentially about the GNU General Public License and all it stands for. That license has not yet been challenged or tested in court, but it is now going to be. We are also firmly and aggressively challenging the notion that Linux is a free operating system," McBride said.

Now that sounds to me like SCO is now taking on the entrie Open Source community by attacking the GPL.  The play is becoming obvious: SCO owns Linux now because of the IP inserted into it in violation of license agreements with IBM, and, BTW, the GPL is invalid because it runs contrary to US copyright law.  SCO needs to invalidate the GPL in order to be able to pursue Linux users because it released its own version of Linux under the GPL thereby putting the 'stolen' code into the Open Source world.  Of course it can't back out of that now, but it can argue that the GPL is not valid and therefore it didn't release the code.  This is a pretty thin argument since the GPL is, while never court tested, a valid license.  

Remember that a license is a contract entered into by two parties.  Here one party is the creator of software, the other party is the consumer of the software.  In America parties can enter into just about any contract they want so long as it isn't against the law (think murder for hire) or public policy (a little fuzzier, but not really applicable here), and the parties are on equal footing entering the contract.  Attaching the GPL to software is perfectly acceptable.  The creator is saying: "Here's my software for you to use for free based upon the limitations in this license."  By downloading the software and using it, the consumer is saying: "I accept the terms of the contract as stated in the GPL for using this software."  It's pretty straight forward and SCO did this when it released its own version of Linux and made contributions to the OS.  It could not have not known about the GPL and continues to make its version of Linux availabe, though it does contain a notice that it is intended only for current users of Openlinux. 

In order to get out from under the GPL, SCO needs to have it declared an invalid contract.  There are few arguments to make.  The GPL is not against public policy.  It is not being forced on anyone such that one party is unequal to the other.  What SCO is arguing is that the GPL is an illegal contract because it seeks to preempt the Copyright Act, specifically the provision dealing with computer programs that allows a user of aoftware to make only one copy of software for backup purposes. THis won't fly because the very next paragraph of the act allows for the transfer of these copies if authorized by the copyright holder.  Of course, this section is subject to a prior section that outlines the exclusive rights of the owner of copyright that include: "(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;"  This is what the GPL does, it is an assignment of rights by the copyright owner, in this case to anyone who agrees to the license.  It would seem that SCO's argument fails on its face.

Of course it only fails in a court of law.  In trial by press all the shiney lawyers seem to know what they are talking about, copyright law is complicated, and corporate IT departments are risk adverse.  The last thing some rising IT manager wants is the blame for some law suit, no matter how unfounded.  The law gets slung around out of context and without explanation.  SCO sells licenses, we all loose. 

10:01:30 AM    comment []