...and if SCO is right...? [LWN.net]

...and if SCO is right...?

Posted May 16, 2003 23:24 UTC (Fri) by flux (guest, #7502)
Parent article: ...and if SCO is right...?

Assuming the worst case scenario, how long before SCO goes after the *BSD derivatives in order to generate more revenue?

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...and if SCO is right...?

Posted May 18, 2003 10:30 UTC (Sun) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, ATT did go after BSD; and settled the case when it became clear that they would lose.
When SCO says that "UNIX is valuable intellectual property" I'ld like to point out that large parts of UNIX were written at universities (by students) and contributed back to the ATT source pool. With a small team of programmers you can create a small self-hosting UNIX system from scratch within a few months. (It took Linus 3 months to build 0.01)
The rise of Linux has lowered the value of the SCO UNIX licences; why pay tens or hundreds of dollars per processor to SCO if Linux is good enough (or better). Why pay thousands of dollars to see the SCO source if the Linux source is one download away?

...and if SCO is right...?

Posted May 18, 2003 14:17 UTC (Sun) by flux (guest, #7502) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree with the point that one of the advantages of Linux is that the source code is easily available, this leads to a collaborative and open development. However, some of the implied questions from my original post are:
(1)If SCO wins and then succeeds in demanding royalties from all distributions of the GNU/Linux OS, based on the inclusion of a small amount of code which is simialar to code that is also present in thier own OS, what measures have the other OS's taken to review all submitted code for Trade Secret and or Patent violation i.e. the *BSD code bases have changed since the original ATT court case and all code included since must therefore also be liable to a similar legal attack?
(2) On a wider issue, as already pointed out in an earlier post, this could persuade some business people that releasing source code in to the open will increase the risk of an IP attack.
The point often made by closed source proponents is that the it's not worth a business expense to fund open source solutions. Just pay the software vendor for a liscence to run propriety software. If this is enforced in law my argument would be that it is depriving people of the right of choice. If the software used by a business is ancilary to the main function, e.g. a hotel chain, then they should have the right to employ a consultant who creates a solution with open source software. A significant problem it seems to me is when trivial patents are awarded such that no software can be created with out falling foul of some patent.It is my opinion that if software patents are going to be awarded they should be for non-trivial innovations i.e. it would not be obvious to a tallented programmer.
(3) (semi-seriously) In order to level the playing field between open source and closed solutions, perhaps if a company is not willing to release the source code for a propriety program then there ought to be an independant review body which will review the code from both closed and open source enviroments. Perhaps the BSA could fund this such that if code is blieved to have been taken without permission from open source programs then the author is properly recompenced. You never know closed source authors/companies may also ask for each others code to be reviewed as well for patent/trade secret violations:-)

Hope the above rambling makes some sense, hopefully the SCO problem and other situations in future will be resolved such that collaboration on open source software is still viable and vibrant.

...and if SCO is right...?

Posted May 18, 2003 19:40 UTC (Sun) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link]

I must tell you that I live in Europe and that intellectual property law here is differing significantly from that in the USA. We could save Linux for most of the world by inviting Linus and RMS. (political asylum for open source software developers)

You can not review code on violation of Trade Secrets (hey, it's a secret) and it is better not to try that because you need to knowingly infringe to be punishable. IBM can be caught for it, because they have Non Disclosure Agreements in their source licenses from SCO; but that doesn't extend to you (unless you have downloaded one of the "free" SCO UNIX distributions).

For copyright infringement the playing field seems skewed such that the closed source companies stand a better chance of proving infringement in open source programs than the other way around. Despite that, there are more closed source companies caught red-handed than open source projects. I think that is due to the fact that closed source is (usually) unavailable to open source programmers; while copying open source into a closed source project is easy to do.

Software patents are a big pain (blame the USPO); I am glad they are not (yet) valid in Europe.

I have the feeling that for the Linux community this case will end the same way as the USL vs. BSDI case ended. SCO's allegations are less supported by evidence than USL's allegations were and this "billion dolar case" is bound to collapse. It could be that Linus is asked to remove a few dozen lines of code... The possibility that SCO is asked to open source its "very valuable" UNIX sources because of GPL inclusion isn't zero either!