On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 07:29:08AM -0400, zentena@hophead.dyndns.org wrote:
On May 15, 2003 05:29 pm, Vince Littler wrote:
"SCO will continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux customers and hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux products."
If they indemnify their own customers in this way and then _continue_ to sell Linux, that is an anti-competitive practice, which I doubt would be
How? Every time you buy a CD the seller is agreeing to not sue you for stealing it. Doesn't mean they can't sue somebody else. You can always sell your own property.
However, if the seller sells it under a license which gives the buyer the rights to copy and distribute it freely, then anyone has the right to use that code themselves. I could have taken a Caldera CD and given it to someone at IBM, and they'd be perfectly within their rights to copy that code into the Linux kernel. The point is that Caldera have continued to distribute codeto their customers which they claim to be "tainted". They have distributed this code under the GPL. This immediately gives their customers the right to copy and modify this code. By discontinuing the distribution, they cannot revoke the GPL terms - the horse has already bolted, and they can't shut the door. If they had inadvertently distributed someone else's code, they could probably stop others redistributing it (since the GPL is probably invalid, as they didn't have the right to distribute under GPL in the first place), but it is *their* code that they are complaining about, and they've already given it away under GPL. They might be able to claim financial damages/royalties for code distributed up until the point where it was released by Caldera/SCO themselves, but not thereafter. If Caldera were to try to prevent the Linux kernel developers (or others) from distributing code, all the developers would have to do would be to show a migration route from the code sold as part of Caldera's product to the current kernel. Then, the GPL has been satisfied, and there's nothing Caldera can (legally) do about it. Once Caldera distributed it themselves under the GPL, they've given free license to everyone to redistribute. Of course, IANAL and all that. Oh, and these are my opinions, not necessarily those of ST. -- David Smith Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com STMicroelectronics Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk Bristol, England GPG Key: 0xF13192F2