The Coral Snake Ping.
Posted on 09/29/2003 3:32:20 PM PDT by Coral Snake
Monday September 29, 2003 - [ 03:16 PM GMT ] Topic - Press Releases
LINDON, Utah--September 29, 2003--The SCO Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOX) today made the following announcement:
On Friday, September 26, IBM filed an amendment to its legal complaint against The SCO Group. In this amended complaint IBM asserts that SCO has violated the GNU General Public License (GPL), and based on this violation has then violated certain IBM copyrights. IBM, not SCO, has brought the GPL into the legal controversy between the two companies. SCO believes that the GPL -- created by the Free Software Foundation to supplant current U.S. copyright laws -- is a shaky foundation on which to build a legal case. By contrast, SCO continues to base its legal claims on well-settled United States contract laws and United States copyright laws.
The GPL has never faced a full legal test, and SCO believes that it will not stand up in court. We are confident that SCO will win the legal battle that IBM has now started over the GPL. By so strongly defending the controversial GPL, IBM is also defending a questionable licensing scheme through which it can avoid providing software indemnification for its customers. We continue to urge IBM to provide legal indemnification for its Linux customers.
That's a strong claim. The FSF wrote the GPL to take the place of copyright law? Doesn't the GPL rely on US copyright law? At a minimum:
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
The GPL has never faced a full legal test, and SCO believes that it will not stand up in court. We are confident that SCO will win the legal battle that IBM has now started over the GPL.
I hope they're confident. IBM has just accused $CO of (among other things) breach of contract, which is exactly what they're accusing IBM of. $CO accepted the GPL when it was convenient, when they were basing their business on it, but now they want to back out of it?
By so strongly defending the controversial GPL, IBM is also defending a questionable licensing scheme through which it can avoid providing software indemnification for its customers. We continue to urge IBM to provide legal indemnification for its Linux customers.
That's a load of crap. $CO doesn't provide indemnification for its Linux customers either.
SCO believes that the GPL -- created by the Free Software Foundation to supplant current U.S. copyright laws -- is a shaky foundation on which to build a legal case
That's all I need to read.
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