SCO License Fees Would Hurt Linux Market (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

SCO License Fees Would Hurt Linux Market (ZDNet)

Posted Jul 31, 2003 10:52 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524)
In reply to: SCO License Fees Would Hurt Linux Market (ZDNet) by jdthood
Parent article: SCO License Fees Would Hurt Linux Market (ZDNet)

Yes. You can be sued for using, in the past copyrigthed code. But you can be sued for ANYTHING -- LITERALLY.

You can be sued for wearing blue trousers, for breathing, for having a really funny hairdo. You won't be convicted, but there's nothing stopping you from being sued. (If you're unlucky enough to live in the US, it would quite possibly cost you a lot of money, even if you are found innocent.)

Now, the question I assume you wanted to ask, could you be convicted ?

In general yes. In this case, probably no.

SCO has publicly, repeatedly, officially, stated "This is NOT a copyrigth-case, it's about breach of contract". That is pretty clear.

Secondly, I don't know about you, but my running kernel is downloaded from SCO themselves. I read the licence-file they helpfully provide with it. It allows me to run it without restrictions. If they claim that's not the case, theyre saying two mutually exclusive things, they should consider stopping to say one of them.

Nor can they credibly claim they're not aware of distributing Linux. It's been commented on this site and slashodt and elsewhere hundreds of times. Infact I sent them an email and informed them about it. Got no response.

SCO has no case. They know it too. That's why they refuse to say what exactly the case is supposed to be about. They know that if they did, the community would pick their claims apart faster than you can say "pump-and-dump"

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SCO License Fees Would Hurt Linux Market (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 3, 2003 7:41 UTC (Sun) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

I don't know about you, but my running kernel is downloaded from SCO themselves.

Where did you get it? I downloaded one of their 2.4.13 kernels, but I don't want to run a kernel that old (.13 was still in the middle of the Andrea-VM churn), so - did you find a newer one?

I do think it is rather stupid that their kernel download area is still available to the public this many months after they "discovered" their IP claims. One would think that they would provide their security updates in some access-restricted way so that only their customers could get them. Two weeks after their initial announcement, yeah, I can see how they could say "we just discovered the violation and haven't had time to take down the infringing material" - but that excuse kind of falls apart when they continue to distribute the thing several months later.