"As for the GPL, it's total war."

Marcus Brubaker marcus.brubaker-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Fri Oct 31 06:08:11 UTC 2003


On Thu, 2003-10-30 at 08:21, Byron Desnoyers Winmill wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 05:59:42AM -0500, JoeHill wrote:
> > Now SCO has submitted it's arguments in detail, and it's quite plain
> > that they are going for the whole munchie.
> 
> It doesn't matter if the GPL stands or falls in court: (a) this is an
> American court, and they do not control the legal system of other
> countries (eg. Canadian and American copyright law appear to be quite

Don't bet on it.  Due to free trade agreements and international
organizations most countries which have active trade relations with the
US have agreements to recognize (to some degree or another) US
copyrights and patents.  (The agreements go both ways.)

Beyond that it VERY MUCH matters whether the GPL stands or falls,
especially in this case.  If you read the full analysis at Groklaw about
SCO's argument with respect to the GPL it basically boils down to this:
the GPL violates copyright law because copyright law is meant to create
and protect proprietary works, hence the GPL is invalid and
unenforcible.  This kind of argument basically says the only things that
get copyright protection are fully proprietary works.  The kind of
precedent this could set would destroy the corporate environment around
OSS as we know it.

> different); (b) the failure of the GPL would probably bring most license
> agreements into question, and finally end this nonsense of publishers

Not likely.  As I said above, this failure would only serve to further
strengthen proprietary copyrights.

> dictating how we use our computers; (c) if all else fails, the copyrights
> would have to revert to the authors -- so they would not loose anything.

Actually, SCO is arguing that these copyrights are invalid to begin with
and that all GPL'd works are actually by default in the public domain.

> 
> > ....and, honestly, whom do you think is pulling the strings on this one?
> 
> There are companies which have a lot more to loose (than the usual
> suspect) if there are not tight controls on how IP is managed.  *If*
> somebody else is pulling the strings, this may have nothing to do with
> software.

Honestly, the more I read about this case, the more I believe that SCO
honestly doesn't expect to win.  Hell, even an analyst with the Gartner
group has said this really seems to be an endgame move for SCO, win or
loose.

The SCO game plan (as far as I can tell) runs something like this:

1) File lawsuit against IBM which almost certainly won't be successful.

2) Avoid making public details of argument for as long as possible
(since they don't have a real one).  In the mean time, talk it up and
run up the stock prices on the potential payout of winning.  This is
done by use of disinformation and arguments that are so insane people
think they MUST have something up their sleeves.

3) Sometime before going to trial, cash out and sell the company to some
unwitting, fool-hardy company or investor.

4) Whether SCO wins or looses, investors in the know get rich, the
executives at the company make a lot of friends with said investors (as
well as lining their own pockets, see LWNs analysis of insider trades of
SCO stock) which will help them on their next venture all without having
to do anything more than sue IBM and make a huge todo over nothing.

If you want to take the guess work even further, you could venture that
the final purchaser will be MS.  Remember the investment they made at
the start of this thing?  If they buy out SCO in a few months they only
have lost a few million (drop in the bucket) but, win or loose, will
have caused irreparable harm to the image of Linux which could take
years to counterbalance.  Tarnishing the image of Linux is something MS
has been trying hard to do but has managed to be wildly unsuccessful
at.  Even they've admitted that negative marketing against Linux and OSS
has done more harm to them than good.

-- 
Marcus Brubaker <marcus.brubaker-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org>

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