SCO has valid case

[Peter L. Peres]

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003, Keith Mastin wrote:

> I suspect that the basis of the core kernel code is strong enough to
> survive an unfavorable ruling. The question in my mind is, is the
> opensource community strong enough to survive the courtcase, winning or
> losing notwithstanding?

I think that it must be made CLEAR that the people being sued are not the
GPL, not Linux, but the firm(s) who have introduced the supposed IP into
the codebase, while breaking the GPL.

Imho this scandal only tests whether the GPL will be enforced by the
copyright and trademark owners of the GPL and of the Linux name against
whoever put someone's IP into the codebase (if they put it there). The way
I see it, the moment SCO officially puts down the offending code as
evidence, and the code is found to be taken from someone (possibly from
them) as opposed from the public domain (or BSD code), the people who
wrote the code will have to be found, and then someone from FSF/GPL will
have to serve them a GPL license violation writ immediately. *This* would
test the GPL imho. And failure to do this would be a big mistake, as it
would be a kind of abandoning of the license and its object (by not
defending it).  But, ianal. Meanwhile the FSF/GPL lawyers should have two
such writs in a drawer, one for each of the involved firms, and be ready
to pull the right one out and serve it immediately when needed.

There is no question about whether OS will survive the test because the
test is not about OS at all. It is about whether someone can get away with
slander and FUD against the GPL and Linux, over, say 0.0001% of its code,
and bring the house down over this.  However, the intention of these
people to drag the open source community through this lawsuit and
associated fears is obvious, as is their intention to benefit from this
precedent they are creating in the future.

Peter
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