Copyright law places some pretty clear restrictions on what can and cannot happen in this
case.
There are some uninformed people who will tell you that the GPL is up for litigation,
if SCO tries to take that tack, it will be an uphill battle for them, and even if they did succeed
at getting the GPL declared void (very unlikely) they would then face some unpalatable side effects. Namely any decision that invalidates the GPL is likely to render the conventional software licensing model unviable, and though copyright and contract lawyers would be joyful. (if upheld on appeal such a decision would be a full employment act for lawyers versed in contract law as applied to software licenses.) It would go against centuries of case law and decades of accepted industry practice.
It seems more likely that all or part of the SCO lawsuit will face summary dismissal at some point in the not too distant future. Especially if they cannot produce actual evidence of infringing code.
In the past most courts have not taken too kindly to being used for the kind of circus SCO seems intent on perpetrating, now David Boies is a smart man and will probably skate right up to the edge of the legal definition of Barratry, but if Darl McBride or Blake Stowell say in court some of the things they seem to be fond of saying in the media we will probably get the amusing diversion of a citation for contempt of court.
Tempest=(ContainedBy)=> teacup.
IANAL, TINLA, TWAMSAN
On Friday, November 14, 2003, at 07:33 PM, Edward Craig wrote:
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Harald Sundt wrote:--
Anything is possible in a world in which Richard Stallman can beI just read an old Wired article about LT and it talked about a SCO lawsuit for UNIX code intel injected into Linux.
Could Linux actually be killed or transformed into acontrolable piece of commercial property?
subpoenaed by SCO in its defense against a software patent countersuit by
IBM (which is defending the GPL).
-- Ed Craig [EMAIL PROTECTED] Taxi (I need an income) GNU/Linux (I can afford a Free OS) Think this through with me, let me know your mind... Hunter/Garcia _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
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