Re: Aiming at the GPL?

Posted Aug 21, 2003 19:26 UTC (Thu) by ksmathers (guest, #2353) [Link]

That makes sense, but I fail to see how that invalidates the GPL or has anything to do with insufficient compensation to form a contract.

I don't think that it would invalidate the GPL. It might weaken specific uses of the GPL, and it would certainly weaken the perception that people have of how safe it is to use GPL'd software, but it would have very little impact on the legal meaning of the license.

Much of that kind of weakening has already happened, with people getting skittish about installing Linux. If the SCO lawsuits against users actually succeed, Linux will be hurt pretty badly, and it may take a long time before people start trusting the GPL to protect them from such lawsuits again.

But technically, the only invalidation that could be done under any of the legal theories that I've read, is in the applicability of the GPL to the code that SCO claims to own. Personally I consider this something like a divorce case. There is a whole lot of mutual property and one of the partners in that property wants out. It would be really nice if the rest of the community could buy out SCO's interest in the software so that the messy divorce wouldn't become even messier, but there isn't really a consortium to do that, nor does SCO seem to be willing to settle on terms that would be reasonable (ie: no ongoing royalties) to the open source community.