SCO: An Open Letter from Darl McBride Dec 5, 2003, 02 :20 UTC (115 Talkback[s]) (22241 reads) (Other stories by Darl McBride)
"December 4, 2003
"An Open Letter:
"Since last March The SCO Group ('SCO') has been involved in an increasingly rancorous legal controversy over violations of our UNIX intellectual property contract, and what we assert is the widespread presence of our copyrighted UNIX code in Linux. These controversies will rage for at least another 18 months, until our original case comes to trial. Meanwhile, the issues SCO has raised have become one of the hottest technology stories of the year, and often our positions on these issues have been misunderstood or misrepresented. Starting with this letter, I'd like to explain our positions on the key issues. In the months ahead we'll post a series of letters on the SCO website (www.sco.com). Each of these letters will examine one of the many issues SCO has raised. In this letter, we'll provide our view on the key issue of U.S. copyright law versus the GNU GPL (General Public License).
SCO asserts that the GPL, under which Linux is distributed, violates the United States Constitution and the U.S. copyright and patent laws. Constitutional authority to enact patent and copyright laws was granted to Congress by the Founding Fathers under Article I, § 8 of the United States Constitution:
"Congress shall have Power... [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,
by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to
their respective Writings and Discoveries.
