"The open-source community is rallying against comments made by The SCO Group CEO Darl McBride late last month that the GPL, under which Linux and open-source software is distributed, violates the U.S. Constitution as well as copyright and patent laws.
"McBride created a furor last month when he wrote: 'We believe that adoption and use of the GPL [GNU General Public License] by... the software industry was a mistake. The positions of the Free Software Foundation and Red Hat [Inc.] against proprietary software are ill-founded and are contrary to our system of copyright and patent laws.'
"Rolland Roseland, a systems developer for information services at The Schwan Food Company Inc., in Marshall, Minn., said McBride's characterization of GPL use as illegal is a mistake..."
