Linux Illegal?
 

sometimes back there was a news that sco is claiming all LINUX is illegal.

and they were threatening to take legal action against linux people. i want to find out what is the present position . IS LINUX REALLY ILLEGAL?

Moved to General with all the other SCO related threads

Go to www.groklaw.net for all up to date news about the SCO/IBM/Novell/etc case.

To my knowledge, NO.

I suggest that you have a look through this site. It's the one that even the magazine "pundit's" seem to recommend for the best "take" on what's occuring in the IBM v SCO debacle.

regards

John

SCO's position is actually that EVERYONE OWES THEM MONEY.
They are happy to present ANY ARGUMENT THAT WOULD INDUCE YOU TO PAY THEM.
SCO's wild accusations and aggressive posture do not change how the GNU project, or Linus developed their software.

Then again....
With SCO driving the lead tank in the blitzkreig followed by the weight of a combined M$ and Sun, perhaps it is illegal. :D

What is SCO?

Linux is like speeding, its not illegal until your caught.. ;)

if you live in the US, : then yes it is illegal, anyhting that is free is illegal (or at least someone will try to sue you,... its all about money in the US)

whether or not linux is illegal no one can tell you right now for sure until these court battles (and appeals) are done, perhaps the better question is "is linux safe?" which it is, at least for a home user and small to moderate sized businesses, SCO will not come after you if it wins, and if it does then youll already have had loads of time to switch back or better than that switch to BSD, which means even if somehow linux is found to be illegal the knowledge you gain learning linux will not go to waste since almost all of it will apply to BSD as far as I'm concerned use linux look around every once in a while at SCO headlines and as long as none of them say "SCO just won were all screwed" dont worry about it

I think linus would be quite upset at that remark ;)

1) If you are a large buisness, you have no need to fear SCO. Read some of Novell's court documents - they are openly mocking of SCO's case. If you are a large buisness, SCO doesn't have the legal traction to take you down.

2) You are forgetting the OSDL's defence fund. / Indemnification.
The OSDL (I think) had a 10 million odd 'SCO defence fund' which should help keep SCO at bay.
If you have indemnification, that'll cover you if you are seriously worried.
I believe it comes as standard for all suse customers (Suse is in the unique position of being owned by Novell who claim they own the source to unix...) but you can also get vender-independant indemnification if you so choose.

If I was you, I'd wait untill SCO wins BOTH SCO vs IBM & SCO vs Novell (1 is highly unlikely, 2 requires a legal miricale) and at least one of SCO vs Autozone / SCO vs DaimlerCrysler before I got worried. For all that to happen, it could easily take 3+ years, and with SCO's sales non-existant, I don't know how long they are going to be able to stay afloat.

Hopefully Novell will put an end to this madness and release Unix GPL / Public Domain. It's dead already.

Although this controversy has sparked some initial fear, it wears off after a while because some say it's bogus and there is no clear verdict (as yet). After a while think, meh, nothing's happening, and you don't worry so much about it.

I for one am not all that worried. And there even if SCO did win, that's not enough to send me back to Windows. We could divert all our attention to redeveloping the kernel from v2.2.x or onto FreeBSD (mentioned earlier).

As an attorney I am not worried at all...

In law school they taught us;
If the facts were against you, argue the law.
If the law was against you argue the facts.
If both were against you, argue in the press...

SCO is going down in a big way. OpenSource will win in the end. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see...

Well if you remember, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and HP (to name a few) purchased the UNIX source code from AT&T (due to the federal court order restricting them from marketing UNIX).

And some universities were _given_ the UNIX source code for free, like Berkely. Linus developed Linux from MINIX (Mini-UNIX) for free...

And if SCO wins, 25% of the internet will go down, as Linux will be illegal. Plus companies will have to switch to another OS, costing into the millions. If the courts say M$ is a monopoly, then why would they let SCO win? It would increase the monopoly Microsoft curently has!

So sites will go down, companies will go bankrupt, Microsoft & SCO will get tons of money. Sounds like something the courts would allow, no? :-)

SCO knows they will not win this fight, so what they want to do is trying to bring up the value of their company, so they can go away with money in their pockets when this story is over.

So while they are in court their stockoptions go up and if you think thei'r lawyers are paid with stockoptions...

diffidently sounds like something the US legal system would allow

again why i don't like to many lawyers, cause they do anything for money,,,,.... and why i don't like the US legal system: theres no clear system, as your post says, if one don't work, do something else, the legal system is only about who can argue the best and who has the most money, ... in some ways the old systems of "dip your hand in boiling watter and take out this rock to prove your innocent", there after all was a clear order to things, something which is good for this day and age