SCO owns the World?
LWN has an excellent article about SCO's claims, and how they show that proprietary licensing is at least as "viral" and contagious as the GPL, if not more so.
Paid registration is required to read this for the next few weeks. I recommend you register. LWN has the best editorial control and commentary of any Linux news site I know.
According to some opponents of free software, users of that software are taking grave risks. The GPL, it is said, is "viral" and can cause the loss of a company's intellectual property. And free software users are exposed to the possibility that somebody, somewhere, may have incorporated tainted code, exposing users and distributors to unexpected liabilities. The solution to these problems, of course, is to simply stick with safe, licensed, proprietary software. It costs, and you sign away a lot of rights, but the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from signing that license agreement is worth it.
Except it's increasingly clear that things are not that way. We all owe SCO a debt of gratitude for showing us how unsafe proprietary software can be. That company is using proprietary licensing to press a truly staggering set of claims over the work of others and power to disrupt organizations worldwide.[...]
SCO, it would seem, owns everything. Compared to that claim, the allegedly "viral" nature of the GPL (if you distribute something derived from a GPL-licensed product, the derived product must also be licensed under the GPL) seems weak indeed. SCO is laying claim to decades of work done by dozens of proprietary Unix vendors, and that's just the starting point.[...]
All of those AIX customers did exactly what they are supposed to do: they signed a proprietary license, paid their fees, and went off with the idea that they had bought the right to use the system on their machines. Now it appears that Unix users, at SCO's whim, can be deprived of the software upon which they have built their businesses. Proprietary Unix, it would seem, is a foundation built upon sand. Given that Microsoft felt the need to buy a Unix license from SCO, it is not clear that Windows users are in any better shape. One might assume that SCO would not try to pull the plug on Windows, but the possibility exists regardless. We look forward to the forthcoming warning from the Gartner Group.
posted Fri 20 Jun 2003 in /issues/sco-vs-linux | link
Archives 2008: Apr Feb 2007: Jul May Feb Jan 2006: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun Jan 2005: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2004: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2003: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.