SCOX GPL VIOLATIONS INFRINGE IBM COPYRIGHTS

ColonelZen · Guest

IBM's Counter Claim 8 against SCOX essentially asserts the following
facts and asks for a finding of fact by the court for the following.

Way back when SCOX was Caldera and actively promoting and selling Linux
a gent named Christoph Helwig with, according to posts by his
supervisor on the LKML, Caldera's permission donated some code to the
Linux kernel. And BTW there are a few device drivers with Caldera
copyright too.

Then along came IBM, and they saw Linux and found it was good, and
donated and continue to donate code to linux by the cubic boatload.

Then Ralphie and Darl while running Caldera decided they were too
stupid to run a real business and decided to run an extortion racket.
They may have been right about the former.

Anyway they renamed themselves "The SCO Group" and started offering -
and actually selling "SCO Source Licenses" covering "SCO Code in Linux"
for various binary only versions of the Linux kernel AT THE SAME TIME
THEY WERE DISTRIBUTING THAT SAME LINUX KERNEL.

Little problem here. IBM's code was in that Kernel. Along with about
ten thousand other programmers. And the ONLY right SCOX had to copy,
modify, or distribute that code was the GPL. Which among other things
expressly excluded works sublicensed by an incompatible - and VERY
EXPRESSLY excluded binary only licenses from its own grant of license.

So there was SCOX offering the SCO Source License on the very same
instances of binary kernels it was distributing from its own website
which contained cubic boatloads of IBM code but with NO license modify
(by creating SCOX's configured kernel) or distribute IBM's code, since
they had lost aegeis of the GPL by offering their own incompatibile
license.

-- TWZ