SCO Rejects IBM GPL Attack.
SCO Group Inc is playing its hand early against IBM Corp's counter legal action, asserting the GNU General Public License (GPL) is "irrelevant" to proceedings.The company has claimed the US Copyright Act of 1976 pre-empts the GPL in the same way that a US state's copyright law cannot pre-empt the federal law.
SCO told ComputerWire that the GPL tries to address copying, modification and distribution, which are matters already covered by the US Copyright Act. "We believe the US copyright act pre-empts the GPL," a company spokesperson said.
SCO took the stance just days after IBM Corp lodged a counter suit against SCO claiming the company had violated the GPL, the license under which much Linux code is distributed. The suit followed SCO's re-worked action against IBM for alleged violation of UnixWare System V code by supporting Linux.
IBM's counter action claimed SCO's attempt to limit distribution of Linux violated the GPL. The GPL states that when you distribute a copy of a program, you must give the recipients all rights to that code or ensure they can get the source code.
IBM's action also claims SCO violated four IBM patents in UnixWare, Open Server, SCO Manager and Reliant HA.
IBM and SCO have yet to meet in court, but SCO's decision to reject GPL could prove problematic when the companies eventually do meet - that date is set for April 11, 2005. SCO has itself contributed both staff and technologies to Linux that would have been bound by the GPL.
One legal professor has claimed SCO's case is weakened by its decision to support Linux under the company's incarnation as Caldera International, adding a court will also look dimly on SCO's decision not to protect IP at an earlier stage.
SCO's spokesperson said, though, any technologies contributed by SCO or its engineers to Linux are not covered under the case against IBM. He added while SCO has shipped Linux, the company could defend itself according to a legal precedent saying it didn't know portions of its own code were contained within Linux.
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| Title Annotation: | GNU General Public License |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Computergram International |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Aug 18, 2003 |
| Words: | 343 |
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