FSF now has "Legal Standing" [LWN.net]

FSF now has "Legal Standing"

Posted Jul 22, 2003 3:03 UTC (Tue) by freeio (guest, #9622)
In reply to: Easier way to get a license by dark
Parent article: SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux

ftp.sco.com is an interesting site. While downloading the above, I took a look around with gftp and found that the S390 linux source is found here on sco's site.

ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Workstation/CSSA-2003-020.0/RPMS

Why does that matter? Well, the S390 linux is the only linux version for which FSF owns the overall copyright. IBM donated that to FSF. SCO is non-compliant with GPL, and is distributing code for which FSF specifically owns the overall copyright. Thus FSF has "legal standing" for copyright claims, since under the circumstances, sco is now distributing FSF code without a license.

Remember, the GPL is the only license anyone has to distribute linux. Since sco is flagrantly violating the GPL, they have forfeitted their GPL license to release linux at all. They are thus infringing copyrighted material belonging to the Free Software Foundation.

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