The Age: Why SCO’s Attack on the GPL Will Fail

“SCO, in its ever-twisting, ever-turning battle to remain in the
press release TOP 40 has trotted out the concept of trying to
invalidate the GNU General Public License. This is the same license
under which the Linux operating system kernel is published. Does
SCO have any chance of succeeding?

“As information technology managers, it is imperative that we
are at least mildly versed in simple matters of law and copyright.
This helps us to provide better raw material grist for our
risk-calculation millstone.

“Before investigating, let us first review the current state of
affairs. Among a confusing smokescreen-like litany of claims, SCO
are suggesting that some technology/codes that IBM created and
owns, should in fact belong to SCO and that SCO never intended for
IBM to release these codes into the realm of the GPL and Linux. SCO
have thus filed a contract-dispute suit against IBM. IBM vehemently
rejects this claim and has counter-sued SCO in turn, seeking, among
other things, compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction
requiring SCO to refrain from misrepresenting its rights…”

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