Legal commentators weigh SCO's chances (Inquirer)

Legal commentators weigh SCO's chances (Inquirer)

Posted Jul 29, 2003 22:21 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332)
Parent article: Legal commentators weigh SCO's chances (Inquirer)

There is nothing really terrible...

I have a business that depends in large part of Linux, but i never sold a piece of "software", because i couldnt in a sense, and i wouldnt...
Even when i make a CD of publicly available software, i charge for the service , not the software, and to me and the users what counts is:
(from http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/)

"Here's the part MS doesn't get about the GPL. It provides companies with superior indemnification compared with any proprietary product. Anyone who receives GPL'd software, no matter how they got it, as binary, as source, both, or even if they just tripped over a CD of it on the street and took it home, has the following rights under the GPL:

"Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
"The freedom to run the program, for any purpose...".
"The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs..."
"The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor..."
"The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits..."
"A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere . Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission."

Those four freedoms are your indemnification.

Now, IF THERE WERE EVER A VALID COPYRIGHT OR PATENT INFRINGEMENT CLAIM nothing can protect you from that. You must deal with the problem and excise any offending code, which is what the community has been asking SCO to make possible..."

1- If M$ sends me a letter about copyrights or patents i politly tell them to shove it,... even if i were an active developer!!(i cut off the code)

2- And in a more rebel sense, i belive the community only depends on itself with or without patents in europe, because there isnt no owner of ideas, and there's more than one way to do the same things.... but if things get to the nazi proportion and FLOSS get ilegal, only depends to the community to continue without a commercial frontend, and prevent that way the enormous FLOSS code database to be owned by Greedy Little Fingers

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