[Luni]-understanding the Linux/SCO court case
SqrFolkDnc at aol.com
SqrFolkDnc at aol.com
Fri Jun 6 10:55:18 CDT 2003
In a message dated 6/6/2003 3:15:41 AM Central Standard Time, mbl at lelnet.com
writes:
> But "shutting down LINUX" is both impossible in a practical sense
> and outside the realm of the court's authority in this case even if it WERE
> theoretically possible. Nor is any company not in possession of a Unix(tm)
> source license from AT&T/Novell/SCO/Caldera/SCO even theoretically at risk
> of finding themselves defending against a similar case, whether they use
> LINUX (or even contribute to LINUX) or not.
I agree, shutting down LINUX as in 'causing it to disappear from the world'
is probably impossible. But couldn't they nitpick away at it, i.e. fine a new
module every 3 months that "violates" their copywrite? OK, the LINUX crowd
would rewrite the module and everything would be OK for a while. But wouldn't
that cause IBM and COMPAQ and all other vendors to not offer LINUX as an
option, not wanting to have to support their user base with all the module
replacements, and wouldn't that scare nearly all businesses away from using as their
operating system for desktops or servers? So, wouldn't that, relegate LINUX to
something for the geeks to play with on their home machines and nothing else?
Or, perhaps worse yet, lead to a world where LINUX is used EVERYWHERE except
in the USA (since foreign court systems are unlikely so support such an
extreme view of property rights), and only MS is used in the USA, causing US
companies to have a higher cost of operation than foreign ones, making US companies
non competitive.
If you want to paint worse scenarios, maybe George Bush IV would invade
France, Britain, etc. to enforce the MS monopoly and eliminate the terrorist LINUX
operating system? Hmmm, and LINUX developers would be aiding and abetting
those foreigners violating copywrites, so they could be arrested for that. I
hope I'm kidding......
On another issue
Why are companies running Unix other than SCO (or IBM) Unix not at risk of
being sued for not being "properly" licensed? That's how copywrite violators
have always been pursued in the past, go after one or two big companies, get a
judgment, then use that to threaten everybody else, and perhaps go after those
who don't agree to pay up.
--Carey Tyler Schug
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