We're back in Wonderland, where up is down and it's off with IBM's head in SCO's happy dreams.

[rlk at alum.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz)]

   Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 16:23:52 -0500
   From: Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>

   http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=3D20070202212943434
   It seems that PJ must be taking a writing course, because this is one
   of the funnier SCO portions:
   "The "methods and concepts" are from AIX and Dynix, don't you know. SCO
   isn't claiming IBM got them from System V! No, the high crime is that
   IBM wrote AIX itself and then donated its "methods and concepts" from
   its own AIX, and Dynix, to Linux. Can you beat that? In SCO's
   fantasies, the whole world of software belongs to SCO. SCO's is the
   head, the Medusa, from which spring all software thoughts, designs, and
   concepts. All your code base are belong to us".

   In any case, this article tends to put the entire SCO vs. IBM case
   into perspective for what it is, a contractual dispute between SCO
   and IBM.=20
...
   In any event, this case has some very serious issues for Linux if,
   in the very unlikely circumstance, that SCO were to succeed. Not
   only would it require that we (or our distro) pay SCO a royalty,
   but we programmers might have our programs be considered derivative
   works, and the BLU might also be liable for holding installfests
   without SCO's permission.=20

Not necessarily.  If IBM violated what amounts to a non-disclosure
agreement, they could be liable, but that wouldn't automatically make
downstream users liable for anything.  I would expect that there would
have to be an outright copyright (or patent) violation for downstream
users to have any liability

Not that I expect it to get anywhere close to that, since SCO's theory
is IMHO ridiculous.

-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

Tall Clubs International  --  http://www.tall.org/ or 1-888-IM-TALL-2
Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- mail lpf at uunet.uu.net
Project lead for Gutenprint   --    http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

"Linux doesn't dictate how I work, I dictate how Linux works."
--Eric Crampton

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