GPL In Court [LWN.net]

GPL In Court

Posted Jul 3, 2003 1:31 UTC (Thu) by mbcook (subscriber, #5517)
Parent article: SCO can not win "SCO vs Linux" case. Seriously.

As far as I know, the GPL has never been tested in court. So there is a tiny chance that they actually COULD do something. That said, since SCO has distributed the code themselves for a while, it could be argued that even without the GPL, they basically gave their approval.

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GPL In Court

Posted Jul 3, 2003 5:53 UTC (Thu) by spitzak (subscriber, #4593) [Link]

No, he describes the results accurately. If the GPL "fails" then the code
is protected by copyrights belonging to the original authors. The GPL is
simply an "exception" telling you a special way that you can violate the
copyrights, and if it is removed you have no legal way to violate the
copyrights.

<p>The results would be exactly the same as he stated. SCO and everybody
else would not be allowed to distribute Linux. Only by getting permission
from all the original authors could anybody distribute Linux. SCO would
probably be the last place to get such permission!