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Killing SCO means killing GPL!

Posted Aug 21, 2003 15:46 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
In reply to: Killing SCO means killing GPL! by tpeters
Parent article: Aiming at the GPL?

This is not, in fact, the case, because the GPL only sticks to code which you distribute linked to GPL code, and don't recall in response to complaints. Code can only become "infected" by actually releasing it under the GPL. Furthermore, it is not an exclusive license or a copyright transfer, leaving the author of linked code able to do whatever else is desired with it. SCO is claiming that code which you write is a derivative of their code if you have a UNIX license, even if the result does not actually contain any UNIX code, simply because you had the license at the time. Copyright law doesn't see derivative works like that, and the GPL isn't applied that way either.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised to see SCO make the claim that the mechanism used by the GPL is the same used by their license.


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