Lawyer hits back at SCO's GPL attack

SCO's claim is 'moonshine', says Free Software Foundation legal eagle

Peter Williams

A lawyer for the Free Software Foundation (FSF), part of the open source GNU Project, has described as "moonshine" SCO's claim that the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) is invalid.

Eben Moglen, professor of law at Columbia University, and a lawyer for the FSF, said that SCO's argument would, by extension, render Microsoft's method of distributing Windows invalid as well.

Advertisement

The GNU licence ensures that open source software, including Linux, can be distributed and modified freely and forbids anyone to deny these rights.

SCO's lawyer, Mark Heise of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, claimed last week that the GPL was "pre-empted" by US federal copyright law which, he said, only allowed one copy of software to be made.

SCO has brought a $3bn lawsuit against IBM, claiming that it had misappropriated SCO's code by allowing it to be incorporated into Linux. But IBM's countersuit claims that SCO violated the GPL.

But Moglen said: "Of course, Heise's statement is nothing but moonshine, based on an intentional misreading of the [US] Copyright Act that would fail any law school copyright examination."

Moglen argues that, if it were true that only one copy could be made, no copyright licence could permit the licensee to make multiple copies.

This would not only invalidate all other free software licences, but would eliminate Microsoft's method of distributing Windows.

"It would invalidate the Microsoft Shared Source Licence," said Moglen, adding that Windows was "pre-loaded by hard drive manufacturers onto disk drives they deliver by the hundreds of thousands to PC manufacturers".

"The GPL protects against the baseless claims made by SCO for licence fees to be paid by users of free software, and also prohibits SCO from its ongoing distribution of the Linux kernel, a distribution which infringes the copyrights of thousands of contributors to the kernel throughout the world," said Moglen.

Get the latest news, views and technology updates in a weekly round up of the Penguin's unstoppable march by signing up to vnunet.com's FREE Linux newsletter here.

  • Have your say
  • Send to a friend
  • Print
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Share

Tags:

Do you agree?

Further reading

Law expert attacks SCO's Linux claims

OSDL paper exposes 'contradictions' in SCO Group's $3bn case against IBM

Linux

Linux community pours scorn on SCO

'Fatuous', 'ridiculous', 'we've no intention of buying a licence'

Embedded developers ponder SCO threats

Survey shows 60 per cent of embedded Linux developers looking at intellectual property risks

Samba slams SCO 'hypocrisy'

Open software group lambasts SCO for using Samba3 while attacking the GPL

Related whitepapers

Related jobs

Most watched

Summit: Views From the Valley

V3.co.uk's US office weighs in on the information overload crisis

John Chambers speaks on collaboration

Cisco boss talks up new offerings

Analysis and Reports

Remote access - Three steps to getting connected

3.4 million UK professionals now work from home – is your company equipped?

Cost benefits of a global collaboration network

This white paper is a must read for organisations looking for evidence of the bottom-line benefits of high-definition video and voice communications

Poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

Impact of Information Overload poll

What is the biggest problem your firm faces as a result of the data explosion?

View poll results

Advertisement

White paper library

Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies; IThound.com brings you over 6,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Advertisement

Spotlight

deloitte

Summit interview: Deloitte discusses security implications of the data deluge

We chat to Mike Maddison, UK head of Security, Privacy...

ibm logo

IBM boosts mobile shopping with WebSphere Commerce

Update designed to give mobile users a richer, more personalised...

Summit: Intel discusses processors for data overload (part 2 of 2)

More thoughts on how servers can help manage overload

chrome logo

Google plans a Mac version of Chrome

A Mac-friendly version of the browser is in the pipeline

Primary Navigation