Understandably, this is not a forum for discussing legal matters. However, most comments from the Linux community seem to have overlooked several critical elements in that, among other things: (1) this is a trade secret case, not a copyright infringement, and (2) this case was filed in Utah “state court” not a federal district court. (Perhaps they have been discussed, then, please forgive my ignorance.)
I have not paid much attention to this case (because it seems quite frivolous at the outset). But we need to keep in mind that, in order to win a trade secret case, you must also prove that the information allegedly being misappropriated cannot be readily ascertainable by proper means. If the technology is well-known in the art, or can be derived from known sources, showing similarity in the source code has no relevance. Indeed, since Linux is a variant of UNIX, it is preferable to use the same variable names, etc, so that the code can be more transparent to non-Linux programmers. Trying to keep variable names the same is a courtesy, not a copyright infringement.
Secondly, since the federal government has not preempted the trade secret field, this case belongs to the state court domain. Since most states have different implementations of the trade secret laws (both statutorily and via case decisions), only those who are licensed in Utah can competently comment on this case. Thus, you can treat my two-cents as whatever they are worth, but just don't quote them.
Wayne Warren Togami wrote:
Another good article from Cringely talking about a situation in the past somewhat similar to SCO's allegations. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619.html What Goes Around Comes Around The Only Clear Winner in This SCO Versus IBM Case is Microsoft _______________________________________________ LUAU mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://videl.ics.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/luau .
