Scoring SCO's legal games

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The GPL grants end users an effective license to use SCO IP: Both Caldera and Old SCO prior, during and after Caldera's aquirement of the SCO server division, profited from bundling GPLed software together and distributing it with Linux or compiled for their proprietary UNIXs.

In 1994 Caldera systems was was split off from Novell taking the developers who were working on the Expose project.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D108210A6

Novell was well aware of the terms and conditions of the GPL licensing
http://makeashorterlink.com/?N128620A6

Also in 1994 the original SCO group started distributing GPL'ed software bundled on a CD under "SCO Skunkware".
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y238210A6

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W268420A6
QUOTE
"It is also permitted to give away (for no charge) copies of those materials on the CD which are licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) under the terms of that license."
UNQUOTE

See also http://makeashorterlink.com/?B298620A6

Employees from both Old SCO and Caldera, before during and after the announcement of the SCO-IBM Project Monterey, contributed patches and code to many parts of the Linux kernel.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?F5B8210A6

Caldera and SCO though Turbolinux distributed the said code under the terms of the GPL and also directly profited from doing so.

The GPL clearly states "6. ... You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. ...".
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

This effectively grants all downstream recipiants of the Linux source code the right to use any of the SCO's patents, trade secrets etc used within the SCO distributed source code, under the same terms of the GPL license.

See
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1395307,00.asp; Posted by: David Mohring Posted on: 11/24/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use