[clug] sec: unclassified - Samba Team, on SCO and sweet irony

[Martin Pool]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 11:42:16 +1000 (EST)
"Matthew Hawkins" <matt at mh.dropbear.id.au> wrote:

> 
> Martin Pool said:
> > I'm not sure what on what grounds they could be told to desist.

[In the context of this thread we were talking about desisting from
distributing Samba.]

> Slander?  Defamation?  Misrepresentation of a competitors product(s)? 

That's all very well, and good grounds for requesting an injunction on
the behaviour, or a suit for (in the US) commercial libel, or a
complaint to the ACCC.  However, none of them allow the GPL to be
terminated.  Some licences (an early Netscape PL?) had a "you sue us,
you lose the software" clause, but the GPL does not.

In any case, SCO is not defaming the Samba team at the moment, except
indirectly as they say all open source programmers are bad.  So it would
be a case of "you slander my friend, I terminate your licence", which is
even more tenuous.

-- 
Martin