discuss: SCO copyright violations on LDP
Subject:
Re: SCO copyright violations on LDP
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
6 Aug 2003 23:52:23 -0000
Message-Id: <20030807000206.GA936@lafn.org>
Regarding LDP documents on SCO's website (inherited from Caldera).
On Wed, Aug 06, 2003 at 01:25:54PM -0700, Tabatha Marshall wrote:
> Honestly most of this isn't even worth the conversation. I'm not sure
> SCO even deserves the right to carry LDP documentation, given their
> efforts to blow Linux out of the water.
They have every right to distribute them per the licenses. LDP requires
that the license allow free distribution.
> I don't turn soapbox very often, but if it was up to me, I'd ask SCO to
> remove the LDP documentation from their site completely, or allow them
> to only provide a link to LDP. I checked the link to the HOWTOs at
> http://docsrv.caldera.com:8457/en/index.html, and none of them are newer
> than February 2001. If they're not even going to provide an up to date
> list of what we have, perhaps the LDP docs should just be removed, and
> that would be justification enough.
No it's not. You weren't here when I did a search on the Internet for
one of my HOWTOs and found that the vast majority of them were old
versions. There were several hundred sites distributing old versions.
But worse that that, some sites add advertising to them. All this
misuse of LDP docs could be stopped if the license prohibited this. But
LDP will not allow such licenses (should this be changed?).
So misuse of LDP docs is rampant and there is nothing we can do about it
since all the licenses we use allow it. Any license that restricts such
abuses would be considered by FSF (and Debian) to be non-free. I think
they need to reconsider this issue.
> I don't believe they're stepping on our toes with their legal statement,
> but I don't see it as an advantage for LDP to associate with SCO in any
> way, given what they are trying to do to the open source community.
>
> The copyrights of all LDP docs belong to their authors. I suppose if it
> doesn't bother authors to be associated with SCO, they could stay, but
> shouldn't SCO be on the hook for keeping LDP stuff reasonably up to
> date?
We could write a nice letter to SCO and ask that they keep them
up-to-date. SCO doesn't even have to reply. But then, what about the
hundreds of other sites that do the same thing? If an author doesn't
want SCO to distribute her work, the only way for the author to stop
SCO would be to change the license (which would only apply to future
versions so it wouldn't have any effect on the old stuff there now).
But authors are not permitted to change the license this way, since it
wouldn't meet LDP's criteria and the revised doc couldn't be kept in our
collection.
David Lawyer
