[PLUG] A look at SCO's odd lawsuit (fwd)

[Steven A. Adams]

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 21:47, Robert Kopp wrote:

> Do we have to worry about it? If the courts rule that
> some of the code in our "free" operating system is
> proprietary, does this mean that, at least in the case
> of commercial servers running Linux, they will have to
> pay for an OS license or remove parts of their code?
> 
All I can say is that taint checking in Linux is a good thing.

The way that I read this SCO "last ditch effort" is that they, in a
nutshell, are trying to extend their patents to ideas - and that's not
allowed; you can't patent an idea. If this were possible, we would have
one GUI and Xerox would own it. 

There is also some question about whether the actual Unix patents were
even transfered from Novell to SCO when Novell divested.