Re: SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux

[Ian Hastie <ianh@iahastie.clara.net>]

On Thursday 24 Jul 2003 17:01, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > At least in the United States, you are not going to get away with
> > claiming there is some stolen code that caused damages.
>
> ...
>
> > Instead, to prevent this kind of "legal theft", the only thing a person
> > found in possession of "stolen" property needs to do is to return it,
> > unless there is evidence that the possessor actually stole the property
> > in question.
>
> Yeah, right.
>
>     ``I "found" these 3GB of mp3's of music and I had no idea that
>     they were stolen but now that you mention it, here they are back.
>     Finders keepers, right?''

Hardly comparable.  There is a difference between getting something knowing it 
to be improperly obtained and believing it to be the property of the 
supplier.  Just to follow your example, you buy a second hand disc or 
computer.  When you hook it up you find a load of illegal MP3s.  If what you 
say is correct you'd be guilty of theft, or at the very least copyright 
infringement.

Or another example with the second hand computer.  You discover that some of 
it's software isn't properly licensed, even though you believed that license 
to have been legally transferred to you when you bought it.  Does that 
misjudgement make you guilty?

> What were you thinking?  That's obviously incorrect, I know that it is
> incorrect from both observation of recent court cases as well as direct
> personal experience.

OK, if IBM illegally included SCO IP into Linux then they might have done it 
knowingly.  If Linux Torvalds accepted that code believing it to be legally 
supplied then how can he, or any other unwitting Linux user, be guilty?  It 
seems to me that SCO is more interested in making a quick profit than in 
preventing infringement of any rights they may have.

Of course I personally do not believe there is any real basis for SCO's 
claims.  Then again we are talking about a court case where the "truth" will 
be "decided".  Any similarity with similarity with reality will be purely 
accidental, if the lawyers have their way.

-- 
Ian.