Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News) [LWN.net]

Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News)

Posted Sep 14, 2003 15:58 UTC (Sun) by jdthood (guest, #4157)
Parent article: Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News)

    Linux people don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights.

It is true that people like RMS think that patents and copyrights on software are bad legal institutions. However, that must not lead us to conclude that they don't respect the law, which you seem to insinuate in what follows.

    How can one be sure that the code of software that has been
    contributed by programmers across the world to create this
    Linux software is unique and is not lifted from somewhere
    else?

We can't ever be completely sure, but because of its openness we can be a lot more sure that Linux code is original than we can be sure that Microsoft code is original. Microsoft isn't famous for its originality. And, hmm, where have I heard claims like yours before?

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Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News)

Posted Sep 14, 2003 16:27 UTC (Sun) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link]

From Windows 2000 Server SP2 (don't know about current)
The ftp client.

$ strings ftp.exe | grep Copy
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

Sent an email to the Regents of the Universite of California
a few years back, they sent back a snail mail saying they
didn't know anything about it. Then they referred me to
the proper office to inquire about a license for UC
technology. Whatever.

Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News)

Posted Sep 15, 2003 1:39 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

From Windows 2003 Server

The ftp client.

$ strings ftp.exe | grep Copy
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

Still there :-)

Interview: Linux usage raises big legal concerns (Gulf News)

Posted Sep 15, 2003 20:20 UTC (Mon) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Right, and it's BSD licensed, so this is legal, as long as the copyright is acknowledged. And since it's in the strings, it's probably acknowledged somewhere.

Now if it were "Copyright Linus Torvalds" or "Copyright Free Software Foundation", then that would be cause for concern, but how is this implying that MS doesn't care about IP law?