[PLUG] The latest on SCO vs. reality

Jeff Schwaber jschwaber at wesleyan.edu
Thu May 22 18:43:02 UTC 2003


On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 20:59, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> 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.

See this is exactly the argument I'm afraid of--it means the default
corporate policy, for safety, must be no use of open source code or
projects. Because something like this might happen accidentally, and
then you're screwed.

I'm not convinced that their distribution of it is licensing it under
the GPL--the gpl is an explicit statement by the copyright owners of the
copyright. They never wrote their own statement entering the pieces into
the GPL--the GPL is, to some degree, a choice. The idea that they can de
facto GPL something by accident is grotesque.

> 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.

Hmm...quite frankly, if you're going to print up some chips at a fab,
you damn well better known how they run.

It's gotten to the point that complexity is overmatching those who
attempt to manage it, even with management techniques, simplification
strategies, code reuse, etc. Software projects can have hundreds of
developers on them, and projects can use dozens of libraries. No one
person could possibly know everything that goes into the largest of
projects.

> 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.

The problem with this is that you are now giving up your copyright to a
third party that you have no control over. You've lost all of the rights
of copyright, even those left to you by the GPL. The FSF has taken them
over. If the FSF decides tomorrow to start selling Gnu projects for
money with no source code, they can. That cannot happen in Linux,
because too many people own the copyright to too many pieces of the
code. And in my mind, that's a good thing. Open Source is a community,
and the FSF has decided to be dictator over that community, and while
they did found it, that's rather presumptious.

Jeff





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