Bruce Perens’s critical examination of the SCO ‘case’

Predictably, he doesn’t think much of it. Quote:

“In 1985, concerned Unix customers asked A&T to clarify that particular term of the license. A&T agreed and published the license change in the Echo newsletter that got sent to all Unix licensees in August of that year.

Explaining the change, A&T wrote that the sentence was added to assure licensees that the company would claim no ownership in the software that they developed–only the portion of the software developed by A&T.

SCO is legally bound to honor the contract and publicly stated interpretation of A&T’s terms.

SCO conveniently overlooked this change when it decided to sue IBM. As A&T’s successor in interest, SCO is legally bound to honor the contract and publicly stated interpretation of A&T’s terms. That’s why I think SCO’s major claim against IBM and Linux will fail. The remaining copyright infringement claim is that Linux makes use of the Unix API (application program interface), and that copies of several header files defining that API were included in Linux.

SCO should know there is ample case law asserting that APIs can’t be restricted and are available for all to implement under “fair use” in copyright law. ”