Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 10:49:01 -0700 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Where can I find FreeBSD-related SCO lawsuit updates? Message-ID: <q6isq6z59u.sq6@mail.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20030713053837.GC94666@wantadilla.lemis.com> (Greg Lehey's message of "Sun, 13 Jul 2003 15:08:37 %2B0930") References: <20030709125055.GA90046@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20030709193315.A494@citusc.usc.edu> <20030710123509.GA97000@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <3F0D6AAD.9030406@potentialtech.com> <20030710141516.GA97366@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <3F0DAFDA.2050708@potentialtech.com> <3F0E91FB.57B452A5@mindspring.com> <3F0EB5BB.1080203@potentialtech.com> <20030713053837.GC94666@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> writes: > My current best guess is that they're hoping to get royalties from > Linux. That's why they don't want to identify the code; they want it > to be in there. They've said a number of things that point to this > conclusion. See http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/sontag.html: > > "GPL has the same derivative rights concept [as UNIX]," according > to Sontag: "Once contributed, code cannot be removed." You're conclusion might be true, but I don't see how it follows from your quote there. He surely can't think that contributed code cannot be removed from other code and it's wrong to assume that reading when there is a more reasonable one available. He probably just meant that (legally) contributed (and GPL'd) Unix code cannot be "removed" from the use of the public under the perpetual license terms. (Even if the "as UNIX" editorial insertion is accurate, he'd just be saying that was true of the AT&T license too.) It seems that he was just acknowledging that legally GPL'd AT&T code could not be removed from public use by SCO, except that it wasn't (he claimed) legally GPL'd. Taken out of context, it hints at a worse problem which has received little discussion, but which SCO might be making an issue of. (I haven't been paying close enough attention to say.) Specifically, that while some piece of code (say, a Linux or FreeBSD kernel) no longer contains ANY code which comes from some bad source (eg, AT&T/SCO), it might still qualify as a derivative, when everyone knows that that's what it is in a laymen's understanding of "derivative". And copyright law gives the owner of the source rights in derivatives. So what are the chances that a court (or worried targets of a lawsuit) would agree that some code can be a derivative of some source without containing any remains of that source? I think that the example of books and movies is educational. I believe that one could violate the copyrights (not just trademarks) of, say Star Trek's owners, by filming a new "Space Track" movie with enough similarities to the real thing but without a bit of the actual real thing (sound, words, images, scene design, etc.). Courts tend to side with those who they think most responsible for the existance of the maybe-derivative, in our case, SCO (now owning the interests of AT&T). (But they might instead consider it overreaching for a horse long out of the barn.)
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