SCO suspends, Gartner warns [LWN.net]

SCO suspends, Gartner warns

Posted May 15, 2003 7:43 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581)
Parent article: SCO suspends, Gartner warns

" System administrators must be admonished to submit open-source code to inspection for potential violation of patents. "

Anyone following GPL will of course make their source code available for inspection. What the purpose of the inspection might be is irrelevant.

IANAL but I would have thought it is the responsibility of a patent holder to check for violation of patents, not an person or group of people working independently.

The problem here is that patent offices are now permitting patenting of concepts which are effectively as basic & obvious as the number 3.The system is becoming as absurd as if Disney Corp were claiming copyright on the letter "e", so that no-one would be able to produce any work in any form containing the letter "e" without paying royalties to Disney.

BTW I'm really pleased that Disney are apparently likely to lose the marketing rights for Winnie the Pooh, estimated to be worth $6 billion. I hope the action succeeds.

(Log in to post comments)

Lawyers, lawyers....

Posted May 15, 2003 12:10 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]

Once lawyers really do control society - something that appears to be happening rather rapidly, especially in the US - then we'll have a whole lot more to worry about than threats to Linux.

The everyone-loses (except the lawyers) parasitic effect on our economies and technological progress will probably do more to destroy our societies than any threat from fanatical terrorism. What the lawmakers and law practitioners are doing is akin to "legal", non-violent financial and intellectual terrorism against all of us.

I don't mean to sound sensationalist, but the things I read in my newspapers these days make me *shiver*....