What if, during the course of discovery or another time, you find that the code was originally under the GPL?
SCO is not the one that put its copyrighted System 5 source code into the GPL. It was another Unix licensee that violated the terms of their licensing agreement.
Using that hypothetical [example], if Caldera put something into the GPL, with copyright attribution, the whole nine yards, they can't make the claim about what that thing is that they put in there. But that doesn't mean that -- well, let's use an example. Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL. That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files. So I don't think it's going to have an impact.
The question a lot of people have is how do you put the cat back in the bag? The code is out there.
SCO has carefully thought out that a business resolution is the licensing agreement because SCO is no different than any other company in the United States. Business solutions are always better than litigation solutions. They want to resolve this on terms that are fair to the company, as well as the industry in general. If they can't do that, then they are going to court and they are entitled to receive substantial damages that are owed to them for material that was improperly used in the 2.4 version of the [Linux] kernel. Whether they are paid by IBM or by hundreds of other people, they are committed to making sure they are compensated for their valuable knowledge and copyrights.
Why show off the code?
Why show the code? Why show the contracts? Why show anything? Because SCO is committed to educating people about their rights to ownership and allowing people, with their own eyes, to see what code is out there, because I think you've seen throughout a lot of the open-source media: "There's nothing to this litigation. There are no lines of code out there. They keep claiming there (are), but we don't believe that." We are addressing that. We're educating the public in general that, well, there is in fact infringing code, both direct line for line and obfuscated code, derivative works, non-literal -- it's there.[We] just don't want the rest of the world to believe that it's not [there], that this is some sort of smoke and mirrors. It's not.
How did the decision to show the code play out? At the beginning, it seems, not a lot was being shown by the company. Weren't you afraid of tipping your legal hand or that people would criticise the code you were showing?
As a lawyer, I'm always hesitant to show anything, so I'm probably not a good person to ask. I think it really was the company feeling the need to educate the world. They had heard one too many times: "There's nothing there; this is ridiculous."
Talkback
What box of cracker jacks did the SCO attourney get his law licence from? The US copyright law places no restrictions on a copyright holder to licence others to produce their works and the single copy exclusion is for single copy licences only. If this were not the case then every book printer in the US would be in violation even though they have a licence from the copyright holder. In the case of SCO and the GPL/Linux there are two issues to consider. First, SCO has failed to show any SCO copyrighted code in Linux. Secondly, even if they found code they have already licenced the free use and distribution of the 2.4 kernel code( all of it) under the GPL. Let's take the kid gloves off the next time you interview one of these idiots and have some fun. At this point, if I was one of this guys law partners I would be looking at loosing him before the corporate name is soiled too badly. Cleraly he dosen't know copyright law or common sense. Oh yes, to his paranoid friends, IBM did not, I repeate, did not put me up to this!
Is this about thier contract issue with IBM as the court case seems to state it or is it about SCO's view that they own all UNIX and all UNIX source code.
They are not going to convince others of that belief. Its easy enough to see where UNIX code has been released under other licenses by previous copyright holders. SCO owning UNIX now doesn't change the those facts.
SCO is certainly not endearing UNIX users or Linux users to them. This doesn't seem a good course for a company planning to survive on their software skills.
What a softball interview. Did SCO pay you to place this ad for their thievery. If only they spent as much on developing software that works.
Whether SCO even has copyright over the _alleged_ _offending_ code has STILL to be determined.
Read the above line again PLEASE.
A point this article seems to have omitted for whatever reason... who knows??
It does unfortunately however perpetuate the FUD that SCO have been trying to spread. Sloppy journalism or the boys from Redmond exerting their influence. Who knows??
What I do know is the whole thing stinks. ;-(