SCO after BSD settlement

[Gary Thorpe]

 --- Matthew Dillon <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > 
> :The BSD license requires that the copyright appear in the manuals or
> :the copyright notice provided with binaries. Have you checked the
> :manuals Mirosoft ships with windows to see if they have the required
> :copyrights? If they don't have the copyright notice, then they _can_
> be
> 
>     The BSD license no longer has this requirement, retroactively. 
> This
>     is indeed the requirement that 'hooked' AT&T in the USL lawsuit,
> but
>     it no longer exists.  If you look at /usr/src/COPYRIGHT you will
> see
>     this retroactive change at the end of the file.
> 
>     As much as I would like to sock it to SCO, the BSD license does
> not
>     have that sort of power.  The GPL, however, does.
> 
> 					-Matt
> 					Matthew Dillon 
> 					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 

But I was talking about _Microsoft_ not SCO, although its lucky for
them that many open source advocates are selectively outraged. The FSF
is not suing SCO for GPL violations: SCO is suing IBM for license
violations. _If_ IBM put code SCO _owns_ into Linux, it does not become
GPLed: only the _owner_ can relicense _their_ code. IBM nor the FSF can
tell anyone else who wrote their own software what license it should be
under, _unless_ it is a derivative work in the case of the GPL. The GPL
does not invalidate ownership or copyrights, especially since SVRx is
_not_ derived from Linux (but the reverse may be partially true for
some parts of the Linux kernel _if_ SCO is telling the truth).

BSD license != GPL, true. But I have not seen anyone claim that SCO's
SVRx products uses Linux code. Ever. This is a different case from
Berkely vs. whoever owned SVRx then, in which case it would be
difficult to see what is derived from what.

Try signing a NDA for the souces to Windows NT and then taking parts of
it and putting it into your own GPLed OS. The equivalent is what SCO is
_claiming_ IBM has done. How can such code be _legally_ under the GPL?
_If_ IBM had done it, it would have been beyond their legal right to do
so being that do _not_ own but only _license_ SVRx code. Their
agreement would specifically prohibit them from doing so. _If_ they
did, they are in the wrong. If they didn't, SCO's claims _are_
baseless. So the end results does not depend on GPL vs. BSD licenses or
the sacred power and sanctity of Open Source: only on what IBM did or
did not do and can be shown in the court case.

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