MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-05-22 |
| FROM | Dave Williams
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] More weaseling
|
From:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/22/1053196680078.html
SCO official defends Linux sales after suit was filed
By Online Staff
May 22 2003
The SCO Group's product management director, Erik Hughes, says the
company continued to sell its Linux products for over two months after
suing IBM based on "legal advice."
SCO filed the case in Utah on March 7, alleging that code from Unix
property which it owns had been used by IBM for furthering its Linux
business. Last week, SCO issued warnings to commercial Linux users that
they could be liable as well and announced that it was suspending sales
of its own Linux products.
SCO officials have made conflicting claims about these alleged
violations being present in the generic Linux kernel which is available
for download on the web.
The Linux kernel is distributed under the General Public License. The
code is available for distribution and re-use in any software which
comes under the same licence. The kernel for SCO's own Linux is still
available for free download from its website.
Hughes denied that SCO's UnixWare product contained any code from the
Linux operating system. After SCO, in 1999, announced that it had added
Linux functionality to UnixWare, there has been speculation that this
could have been done by using code from the Linux kernel.
He deflected a question about UnitedLinux - an initiative under which
SCO and three other Linux companies have been selling distributions
built from a common base - by saying that SCO was continuing to honour
its commitments to its Linux clients.
However, Hughes said, SCO was not participating in any further
development of UnitedLinux until the whole issue of alleged copyright
violations had been sorted out.
He had no answer when asked if SCO's partners in UnitedLinux - SuSE,
Conectiva and TurboLinux - had been directly informed by the company
about the ongoing problems. "I don't know the answer to that one," he
said.
Hughes again had no answer when asked what modus operandi SCO would
adopt when June 13 came around - the date on which it has threatened to
revoke IBM's license for AIX, Big Blue's own version of Unix.
He had this to offer about the GPL and SCO: "The GPL, by its terms, only
applies to software programs or works which contain a notice "placed by
the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of
this General Public License. (emphasis by him)
"The following rules follow from this provision of the GPL:
1. To the extent a developer who contributes code is not the actual
"copyright holder" of the code (i.e., instances of pirated code)
as defined by the GPL.
2. To the extent a developer contributes code to which he claims
copyright, but it is in fact an unauthorized (sic) derivative
work of a properly copyrighted software, the open source
developer does not actually own the copyright and is therefore
not the "copyright holder" as defined by the GPL.
"In other words, the GPL itself covers situations where code is
improperly or accidentally contributed to the GPL without proper
authorization (sic) of the true copyright holder."
____________________________
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