SCO attacks open-source foundation

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Is SCO stupid or insane?

"The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws," SCO Group said in an answer filed late Friday to an IBM court filing.

One way to read this is that SCO is saying that the U.S Constitution does not allow copyright, antitrust, or export control laws. I do not believe that even SCO is stupid enough to think they can overturn much of our federal laws. Copyright is the foundation of many of our big buinesses, including the book, movie, music and software industries. Is antitrust illegal? Please tell AT&T that they could have had antitrust law declared illegal. Are they saying our export controls are illegal? The U.S. court system is not a good place to overturn laws that affect the income of the federal gevernment; they would have a better chance lobbying in D.C.

Let us fix the sentence:
The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, copyright, antitrust and export control laws.

The GPL allows people who want to use something copyrighted by someone else may do so if they follow certain conditions. Copyright allows me to offer this writing into the public domain. Copyright allows me to charge others for using works I have created. The GPL says that you can use my work as long as you distribute your contributions to my work if you redistribute my work with your changes. Without the GPL, you could redistribute my work only after negotiating a price with me.

The advantage of releasing work under the GPL is that other people can collaborate with me as long as they all agree to the same terms. This is what has happened to Linux. Millions of people have contributed to Linux. They all agreed to use the GPL to cover their work. It would be impossible to use any significant amount of the Linux code without the GPL, because there are too many contributors to be contacted and negotiated with separately.

I do not remember any of the U.S. Constitution stating it was illegal to collaborate with others. The Constitution itself was a collaborative work that was placed in the public domain (as all laws must be in this country.)

The GPL builds upon copyright law. Without copyright, the GPL is unneeded. Without copyright, the GPL is useless, since all work would be public domain. Having copyright without the GPL, you need to negotiate with every contributor to a work. The GPL sets the terms of copying my work. You do not need to use them; in many cases you could still negotiate with me. There are much software that can be used under the GPL or used under different licaenses if you pay for it. I could release a song under the terms that you must pay $0.08 every time you play it in the radio. That is our current system. There is nothing illegal about setting the price of using a copyrighted work on the package.

I have no idea how the GPL affects antitrust, other than the GPL allows a legal hole in copyright which allows monopolies by definition, but the GPL helps avoid monopolies that would lead to antitrust.

Is SCO saying that SCO violated U.S. export controls when SCO distributed software? This is weird: "Over here! We did it! We think it is illegal and we want to be punished." Huh? I think that this proves SCO is not doing this under their own brainpower. Even a child knows you start with "Not me" then listen to the evidence. Trying to force the government into recognizing you as a criminal usually gets you locked up in an institution for the insane.

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Make your sig "Still no Preview button" until ZDNet fixes it.

Posted by: solprovider   Posted on: 10/29/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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