Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261377AbUJXFtA (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 01:49:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261378AbUJXFs7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 01:48:59 -0400 Received: from c7ns3.center7.com ([216.250.142.14]:58569 "EHLO smtp.slc03.viawest.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261377AbUJXFsz (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 01:48:55 -0400 Message-ID: <417B397D.2070106@drdos.com> Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 23:11:25 -0600 From: "Jeff V. Merkey" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040510 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Kernel Mailing List , bstowell@sco.com Subject: Re: Linux v2.6.9 and GPL Buyout References: <417550FB.8020404@drdos.com> <35fb2e590410221714205fe526@mail.gmail.com> <41799BEE.1030104@drdos.com> <35fb2e59041022175758ece5f9@mail.gmail.com> <4179E136.1090201@drdos.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3658 Lines: 100 Linus Torvalds wrote: >Jeff, > can you plkease stop Cc'ing me on this thread? > > > Linus, I never Cc'd you on this thread. The person who added you somewhere way back there was someone else. Talk to them. Beyond this response, I won't cc you ever again. >No, nobody I know (certainly not me) is willing to re-license Linux under >anything else than the GPL. Quite frankly, I suspect you'll have an easier >time just rewriting the whole thing. > > I won't be "re-writing" anything. I've written something different that takes all the Linux device drivers, application layer, and a handful of file systems, and drops out most of the core of Linux, and these drivers I suspect will get rewritten over time. Since it's all open source anyway, doesn't really matter. >And no, the only offer from SCO I'm interested in is a public apology from >Darl McSwine. Their made-up stories about copyright ownership weren't >really that amusing a year ago, and now they're boring and stale. > > > Linus, you took code from these companies without bothering to check if there were any agreements that made certain they weren't contaminating Linux. You have an obligation under US Law if you are doing business in this country to perform due diligence and this stuff. Then rather than be reasonable and honorable about it, and say something like, " I have not verified that associated intellectual property with this submission nor have I received a release of claims from the contributor. I have been informed that several companies have conflicting claims regarding ownership and I have removed the code from the Linux Kernel and asked these vendors to maintain it as separate patches until these claims are resolved.", you keep right on sending it out, hosting it on your servers, all the while Linux Community members make statements that even if the code was someone else's "it's ours now because it was GPL'd". This flies in the face of every precept of contract law and intellectual property law in the United States. The facts are that there is some code which is the subject of a dispute and you are distributing it, willfully, knowingly, and with malicious intent to keep it for yourself. Whether it's has their copyrights, or even their trade secrets doesn't bother you one bit. I felt like Novell should apologize to me after what happened with them, but in all the crap with Novell, I never took their source code, and now that GrokSmear has posted the ruling everyone knows this as well. And guess what, I was in the wrong. I was doing exactly what you are doing. Using lawyers and sophistry to conceal taking their trade secrets and using them for myself, and I paid dearly for it. You will too, and so will a lot of other people who depend on you. I don't think SCO has to apologize to you if you are not even willing to take a mature, adult, responsible position regarding intellectual property, and even try to work with these people. You owe them an apology for running an IP laundry mat, cleverly disguised as a "freedom for all" open source effort. This is not good leadership or responsible stewardship of the IP of others. No one can trust you if this is how you are going to operate, or trust that your effort is free from contamination from others. >So please just remove me > You code has been removed. from the cc, ok? ok Jeff - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/