[PLUG] The latest on SCO vs. reality

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Thu May 22 18:00:02 UTC 2003


On Thu, 22 May 2003, Jeff Schwaber wrote:
> And that's the real trick: The argument you use says that somebody else
> can GPL your code.

Not quite.  I'm arguing that SCO GPL'd their own code when they released
their distribution.

They may have done so by mistake, but (assuming they have a real claim to
any of the code in the Linux kernel, which is a HUGE assumption...) they
did, in fact, distribute it under the GPL.

Any distribution of copyrighted or use of patented material BEFORE the
time of SCO's distribution is fair game in the courts and they should
(under the law, not under any justifiable moral code) be able to sue for
whatever damages were incurred in that time.

Quite frankly, if you're going to print up some CDs and put your name on
them, you'd better darn well know what's on those discs.

Of course, we can all avoid messes like this by collecting explicit
copyright transfer in a central location for each project.  The Free
Software Foundation has done a great job for the GNU stuff, but Linus has
been notoriously lax in this regard.

If anything's going to kill the GPL, it's going to be that kind of lazy
selfishness.  Recall the hypothetical situation that caused Apple to ban
underage developers from the Darwin project.  If you don't (or can't)
enter into a legal contract and sign over your copyright to the maintainer
of the code, you might, at some point in the future, dispute the
maintainer's claim of copyright on the work and attempt to collect
royalties on the work.

Incidentally, this same failure to properly document and aggregate
copyrights on updates and patches is the only thing fuelling the schism
between GNU and XEmacs.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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 http://www.openlaw.org




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