SCO: An Open Letter from 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.

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