SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 22, 2003 17:13 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458)
Parent article: SCO's copyright letter

The claim is rather weird... BSD is somehow supposed to be able to use those files, but only in BSD derived Unices? And this is part of the sealed settlement, so nobody can even know about this restriction? Sure, if (big IF) this were true, the BSD folks are to blame for not placing notices to this end into the affected files. But that is not the fault of the Linux people who used them in good faith.

In any case, I very much doubt the files where copied verbatim, as they claim. The simple fact that there are versions for different architectures (and they claim the stuff for MIPS, and S/390, et al as theirs!) shows this is completely bogus.

No substance, nothing to see here. Move on, folks.

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SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 22, 2003 20:44 UTC (Mon) by botz (guest, #18038) [Link] (3 responses)

> the BSD folks are to blame for
> not placing notices to this end into the affected files

Really? I thought, that people, that take BSD code, then change the license and copyright, then release the code under different license should already know, that their actions are illegal.

SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 22, 2003 21:54 UTC (Mon) by NotReally (guest, #18040) [Link] (2 responses)

Not Really.

I mean, the current BSD licence doesn't even specify the inclusion of the "Copyright U.C.-B" clause any more. Theo deRaddt's writing on the subject leaves me with the impression that once something has been released under a (modern) BSD licence, you give permission to everyone to do whatever the heck they want to with your code.

It's not a coincidence that BSD's TCP/IP stack ended up in MS products...

SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 23, 2003 10:15 UTC (Tue) by ngg (guest, #18071) [Link]

Nope. Sorry.
The BSD licence still says that you have to keep the copyright notice in the source code. The reason you know that MS used BSD code is that MS complied with the BSD requirement that binaries reproduce the BSD licence, also.

Using the code without including the licence is a copyright violation.

This is even true for "modern" BSD code, because (think about it) it is a derivative work of older BSD code.

SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 23, 2003 16:19 UTC (Tue) by bsdimp (guest, #18082) [Link]

YOU ARE INCORRECT.

BSD License *REQUIRES* that you maintain the copyright notices.
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

(that's from the errno.h file from 4.4BSD-lite)

And no, there's no USL copyright on errno.h, per the settlement.

Also, it is unlawful, and in bad taste, to take BSD licensed code, file off the copyright, and then release it under the GPL. I'm not saying that happened in the case of errno.h, but it has happened in the past.

SCO's copyright letter

Posted Dec 22, 2003 21:19 UTC (Mon) by wastl (guest, #18039) [Link]

In any case, I very much doubt the files where copied verbatim, as they claim

I hardly think so. From include/linux/stat.h (2.6.0-test11):

#if defined(__KERNEL__) || !defined(__GLIBC__) || (__GLIBC__ < 2)

It's fairly reasonable to assume that SCO does not use the GLIBC.

Sebastian