[Luni]-understanding the Linux/SCO court case

[Matthew Landry]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 11:56:41AM -0500, jean at kcco.com wrote:
> This tactic is dangerous, destructive, and not necessarilly as futile as
> we'd all like to believe.  That is what we need to not be living in
	I'll concur that the suit against IBM isn't quite as futile as some
have made it out to be. But that's because IBM has a secrecy agreement in
place with SCO because of "secret" technology that IBM uses in AIX and SCO
is now alleging they leaked into Linux. If IBM didn't have that agreement,
this case would have been laughed out of court. But they do, and so they
have to go to the cost and trouble of proving they've done nothing which
violates the enforceable portions of the agreement. I'm confident they'll
succeed, for all the reasons Eric Raymond has already spoken of better than
I could.

	But my basic point is that no developer that doesn't have such an
agreement could ever have anything to fear from this. Anyone but a licensee
could respond to the charge with a simple "we owe SCO no duty of secrecy,
and therefore these charges are unsustainable", and the case would be
dismissed out of hand.

	Hell yes there's FUD potential. And moreover, I'd caution any Linux
developer who doesn't have the luxury of a 100% Microsoft-free life to be
especially careful about reading the terms of any MS software licenses that
come out since this case went to court, because although a secrecy
provision in a shrink-wrap or click-wrap license would undoubtedly be
unenforceable if enough money was spent to fight it, it probably _would_
survive summary judgment, which means fighting it _would_ be expensive.

	But the risk to businesses that USE Linux but don't develop and
distribute code for it is absolutely zero, and any Linux advocate who
doesn't both intellectually know and instinctually believe that is doing
the anti-FUD campaign absolutely no favors.
-- 
Matthew Landry              mbl at lelnet.com                       O-
LEL Network Services                           Anti-Stupid Talisman
"You don't have to outrun the bear. Just outrun the slowest hiker."