------------------------------------------------ On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 11:19:40 -0600, Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > This could brew an interesting discussion or just start a flame war, > > but what happens tomorrrow when SCO *claims* that they have IP > > protected code in Perl and that every Perl distribution is tainted > > and all users must pay license fees to use it? > > Then we find some friendly lawyers and defend ourselves, as we'd have > to do whether or not we support SCO users by maintaining the Perl > ports to SCO platforms. I think your hypothetical is irrelevant to > the question of whether we continue to help the programmers and > sysadmins whose management decided to use SCO. If you want to show > support for the people fighting evil, donate to the FSF or EFF. > > In the immortal words of Larry Wall, "The Golden Gate wasn't our fault > either, but we still put a bridge across it." > Right. My point was less about whether the Perl community should boycott SCO (as that I believe is mainly personal opinion) but more about the accountability of OSS and the avoidance in the future of an "SCO-like" claim against any OSS product. If we must resort to finding "friendly lawyers" then we still must provide them ammunition to use to thwart arguments raised by the other side. How easy would it be to prove that Perl is 100% clean? Of course I ask that question because I am living in the "land of the free" where the DMCA, yada, yada, yada... http://danconia.org
