[sldev] Re: [PROTOCOL] Protocol Documentation

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 05-Oct-2007, at 01:52, dirk husemann wrote:
> as we have seen
> with SCO you have ALWAYS the possibility of a greedy fool trying to
> attack you anyhow (e.g., claiming that the code you used was stolen  
> from
> him, don't mind the BSD/GPL/whatever license).

Um, the SCO case was coming from exactly the opposite direction. They  
were claiming that certain GPLed code was derived from their code,  
because it had been part of a system derived from their code. If they  
actually *had* the licenses they claimed they had, *and* their  
license terms meant what they claimed they meant, then they might  
have had had a case. Their problems included:

* They claimed that writing your code to function as a module in  
their code made your code a derived work of their code, when their  
license didn't actually say that.

* They ignored the USL-CSRG case, which eliminated the 'viral UNIX  
license' theory and the 'copyright on the structure of the code'  
theory: it was settled by removing specific files from BSD, which  
would not have made any difference if the license worked the way they  
claimed it did.

* They claimed that code that had been explicitly released under a  
different license by previous copyright owners was still covered by  
the license they were trying to use.

* They claimed that code that had been released without copyright  
prior to the US adopting the Berne Convention was still covered by  
copyright.

* They didn't actually own all the rights to the code that they  
claimed they did.