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SCO smear campaign can't defeat GNU community

Tags:
Richard Stallman,
Sco Group Lawsuit,
Linus Torvalds,
Unix

Richard Stallman ZDNet US

Published: 26 Jun 2003 15:00 BST

To copy Unix source code would not be ethically wrong, but it is illegal; our work would fail to give users lawful freedom to cooperate if it were not done lawfully. To make sure we would not copy Unix source code or write anything similar, we told GNU contributors not even to look at Unix source code while developing code for GNU. We also suggested design approaches that differ from typical Unix design approaches, to ensure our code would not resemble Unix code. We did our best to avoid ever copying Unix code, despite our basic premise that to prohibit copying of software is morally wrong.

Another SCO tool of obfuscation is the term "intellectual property". This fashionable but foolish term carries an evident bias: that the right way to treat works, ideas, and names is as a kind of property. Less evident is the harm it does by inciting simplistic thinking: it lumps together diverse laws -- copyright law, patent law, trademark law and others -- which really have little in common. This leads people to suppose those laws are one single issue, the "intellectual property issue", and think about "it" -- which means, to think at such a broad abstract level that the specific social issues raised by these various laws are not even visible. Any "opinion about intellectual property" is thus bound to be foolish. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.)

In the hands of a propagandist for increased copyright or patent powers, the term is a way to prevent clear thinking. In the hands of someone making threats, the term is a tool for obfuscation: "We claim we can sue you over something, but we won't say what it is."

In an actual lawsuit, such ambiguity would make their case fail, or even prevent it from getting off the ground. If, however, SCO's aim is to shake the tree and see if any money falls down, or simply to spread fear, they may regard vagueness and mystery as advantageous.

I cannot prognosticate about the SCO vs IBM lawsuit itself: I don't know what was in their contract, I don't know what IBM did, and I am not a lawyer. The Free Software Foundation's lawyer, Professor Moglen, believes that SCO gave permission for the community's use of the code that they distributed under the GNU GPL and other free software licences in their version of GNU/Linux.

However, I can address the broader issue of such situations. In a community of over half a million developers, we can hardly expect that there will never be plagiarism. But it is no disaster; we discard that material and move on. If there is material in Linux that was contributed without legal authorisation, the Linux developers will learn what it is and replace it. SCO cannot use its copyrights, or its contracts with specific parties, to suppress the lawful contributions of thousands of others. Linux itself is no longer essential: the GNU system became popular in conjunction with Linux, but today it also runs with two BSD kernels and the GNU kernel. Our community cannot be defeated by this.

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