[clug] Re: SCO copyright registration

Darren Freeman daz111 at rsphysse.anu.edu.au
Tue Jul 22 16:36:23 EST 2003


Antti,

On Tue, 2003-07-22 at 13:00, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> "Registering copyright" is only a *claim* to copyright. It is not
> a judgement by the copyright office on the validity of that claim.
> SCO filed a copyright registration so they can claim statutory
> damages *if* it is later found that their copyright has been violated.

Oh well, since Linux is GPLed, all code contained therein is copyrighted
to whoever wrote it, and is explicitly licensed for all to enjoy. So
once again SCO gave away the rights to any code that they might
otherwise claim copyrights to, by distributing it under the GPL.

The issue I have with the article is the way it implies that "... all
Linux users are software pirates if they don't pay up ... there's
hundreds of files ripped off by those evil Linux developers ... there
couldn't be any way for Linux to scale to 64-CPU machines if IBM hadn't
helped out by ripping off the innocent, hard-working, God-fearing people
of SCO, who have never done anything wrong. In fact the good people of
SCO love the evil users of Linux so much that they will forgive their
sins for a low-low price of one Unixware license. ... those Linux commie
developers fooled the innocent herd of users into being software
pirates, but it's not too late to repent for your sins against SCO.
Linus Torvalds on the other hand is evil and must be incinerated in an
industrial facility, and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of the concept of
freedom) must be disposed of in a similar way to prevent the evil from
spreading." -- not a quote from SCO

> So for $30 USD, *anyone* can claim the SysV copyright.

Well as there's Linux code in Unixware, comments and all (or so SCO
claims), then I think that means that Unixware is violating the GPL ;)

> Cheers,
> 
> Antti

Have fun,
Darren




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