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The amended SCO complaintThe amended SCO complaintPosted Jun 18, 2003 12:37 UTC (Wed) by wweber (guest, #11678)Parent article: The amended SCO complaint In a legal document where processors are to be referred to as "chips" I'm not inclined to expect any sort of technical precision. SCO Group appears to have bought the right to jealously guard a collection of ideas, the UNIX operating system, for their own. On the one hand, they may be "hearing a giant sucking sound" as the free flow of code drains the value out of their purchase. Some of us who read about offshore outsrourcing of programming work can sympathize with this. When Linux was merely the Bookstore/Cafe Operating System for students, there was always The Real UNIX that the real business world used. On the other hand, UNIX has been around for a LONG time. How long can anyone own it? Don't patents and copyrights eventually sunset?
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The amended SCO complaint Posted Jun 18, 2003 12:45 UTC (Wed) by jarek (guest, #4105) [Link] "On the other hand, UNIX has been around for a LONG time. How long can anyone own it? Don't patents and copyrights eventually sunset?"Patents, 20 years.. Copyrights, 50 or perhaps 75 years, I believe (depending on country). /jarek
Copyright times Posted Jun 18, 2003 13:03 UTC (Wed) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] In the US, under current laws, copyrights held by a corporation expire 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation, whichever comes first. That would put the UNIX code somewhere in 2090 (and now you know why the comments at the top of each file claim the code is "unpublished"). Project Gutenberg has a page about this. However, in practice, nothing will expire in 2090 because the copyright durations will have been extended by that time. The practical duration of copyright is: (age of Mickey Mouse) + (0 to 20 years). This will remain true until the human race rises up against its corporate overlords.
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