SCO's new offensive and the GPL

Posted Jul 22, 2003 12:11 UTC (Tue) by kfox (guest, #4767) [Link]

Oh wait, Linux already has that
defense.

The problem is SCO has not attacked
Linux -- they are making threats to
attack. If SCO actually attacked,
the whole thing would blow over in
a couple months and insiders would
not have an opportunity to (legally)
cash out their stock.

As far as FUD "attacks" go, those
are self defeating. People will hear
them and worry about them at first.
After hearing about them for years
with nothing bad happening, people
stop worrying. In the end, groups
spewing FUD are seen as self-interested,
anti-social, and destructive -- even
insane. Surely you remember the story
about the boy crying wolf? FUD does
not work.

Posted Jul 22, 2003 16:32 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

This is a fundamental problem with copyrights on works which are not intended for distribution (like proprietary source); it's impossible to determine whether something you have belongs to someone else when nobody who knows will tell you. I'm not entirely clear on how the legal system intends this to be resolved (e.g., an author puts someone else's private letter in a book, gives it to a publisher as a work of fiction, and disappears; the original writer recognizes this when the book is published; the publisher couldn't have known beforehand, the plagarist is gone, and the original writer may not want the letter in print, and hasn't been compensated for it, either; what happens?)

If anything, the risk with Open Source is that if you are violating a copyright, the copyright holder has a chance of finding out. But there's no more risk there than there is in buying books. And it's certainly possible that hidden offences will be discovered at some point, and a copyright dispute is certain to be much more acrimonious when and accidental offender has been profitting substantially from the offense for a while in secret.