Open source legal issues

[Doug Coulter]

This is a little late to the party, as the SCO group's attempt to steal free software from the authors thereof seems to be just about dead. But I really like PJ's site that has been covering this and a lot of other issues for nearly the last decade -- she runs a great show, and I've learned some things about the legal system I never knew (and I thought I knew a thing or two) here.

If you want to see some serious gaming of the legal system to the detriment of honest people just trying to do good things for us all, check this one out. She has timelines going way back on this one and follows the money and motivations behind some of what is going on pretty closely. This is another case of "many eyes make all bugs shallow", and the bad guys are saying things that amount to "we'd have gotten away with it if not for you pesky kids". But they are still getting even the legal system to break the laws. (Chapter 11 well past legal time limits, money from "somewhere" to keep the FUD going, funneling money to the courts and trustees to keep them from reading the laws, allowing the bankrupt to borrow money against collateral they don't own, with no chance of a payback -- legalized theft of said collateral -- you name it....and certain well known other software companies have been tied into the money for it.

The sad part is that if SCO had pulled this on the small guys who didn't have many millions of spare bucks to defend, they'd have won -- and in the cases where they tried that, they did win -- EV1 in Texas for example, Autozone (settled with no good reason other than to avoid further millions in legal fees, IBM stayed but SCO trying to pursue anyway with IBM's claims stayed, you name it, it's in there)
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An object lesson in a thoroughly broken legal system that runs on the golden rule -- them with the gold (and not all that much) make the rules. This is one of the few places doing something about that, so it's refreshing in an otherwise dark world. A fun place with mostly well informed and intelligent posters. Do check it out. Educational.

About the only good news there is that the GPL has been proven enforceable for sure, in nearly every country on earth. And exposing MS's attempt to game the ISO standard system to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" open source truly open document formats, complete with bribes and ballot box stuffing -- is well documented in case someone still thought they were trustworthy about anything whatever. Of course, you could ask anyone who has partnered with them -- but none of them are still in existence.