[Wikipedia-l] SCO vs. IBM

Thu May 15 17:12:34 UTC 2003

We should follow the SCO vs. IBM case closely, because in a few years 
there might be a similar attempt to sue Wikipedia. For the paranoids 
among us: Maybe the Encycloedia Britannica employees have already begun 
entering masses of EB snippets into Wp articles ... ;-)

 From
http://www.sco.com/scosource/letter_to_linux_customers.html :

"As you may know, the development process for Linux has differed 
substantially from the development process for other enterprise 
operating systems. Commercial software is built by carefully selected 
and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure 
software. This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership 
of intellectual property rights associated with the code.

By contrast, much of Linux has been built from contributions by numerous 
unrelated and unknown software developers, each contributing a small 
section of code. There is no mechanism inherent in the Linux development 
process to assure that intellectual property rights, confidentiality or 
security are protected. The Linux process does not prevent inclusion of 
code that has been stolen outright, or developed by improper use of 
proprietary methods and concepts."

"As a consequence of Linux’s unrestricted authoring process, it is not 
surprising that Linux distributors do not warrant the legal integrity of 
the Linux code provided to customers. Therefore legal liability that may 
arise from the Linux development process may also rest with the end user."