[GRASS5] license question

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 06:19:32PM +0100, Glynn Clements wrote:
> Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> 
> > It is about the legal maintainability of a Software.
> > You are making the same mistake as the linux people:
> > They were not watching their legal status and got that SCO case 
> > as one of the results of this.
> 
> I don't think that particular statement is true; I think that they
> would have gotten the SCO case anyway. 

Well we cannot be sure, but chances are a lot less.

> SCO's arguments seem to be:
> 
> 1. That they own some of the stuff which IBM contributed.
> 2. They automatically own anything and everything related to Unix.
> 
> I don't think that anything which the Linux developers could have done
> (e.g. FSF-style copyright assignments) would have changed anything in
> that particular case.

Yes it would change something:
Towards 1: They would have required the written official
statement of IBM that they wrote the code and never looked at other stuff.
This would have triggered a more thorough legal examination within IBM.
Towards 2: They never claimed that in court and this is also the
reason why "GNU is Not Unix".

3. FSF could enter the stage as copyright holder suing SCO.
The linux developers have a harder time doing so, because they do
not own the copyright on all portions.


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