[Sussex] Licences

[Geoffrey Teale]

Steve,

I can't really push this in Sarah's direction, her firm act on behalf of 
several companies who are involved at least indirectly with the case - 
it really wouldn't be appropriate for her to comment publically.

I can try and answer from my own knowledge and discussions... so AFAIK 
I'm afraid the answer is long and complex, but boils down to "it 
depends", which is the main reasons law firms still flourish ;-)

Obviously US law is completely different from EU law which in turn is 
not the same as domestic law... ho hum...

So far as I understand it the simplest case is where the breach of 
contract between company A and B happened prior to A licensing derived 
works to C.  In this case there is no contract between A and C at all 
because you can only offer something that is legally yours to offer.  
This would not be the case if A's contract with B was in breach at that 
point.

Any other situation is extremely difficult to judge and would require 
way more research of the case specifics than a casual inquiry could merit.

With the IBM v. SCO case it looks very likely that SCO have no evidence  
of a breech on IBM's part anyway (an independent assessment at MIT shows 
no evidence of any works derived from SCO code) .  It looks increasingly 
like SCO's case could be on the receiving end of a summary judgment and 
dismissal before the year is out.  I suggest that you send an e-mail to 
the guys at Groklaw if you want a more in depth discussion of the 
specifics of this case.

As for the threat to Linux - well, that's almost gone already, so we 
should all be sleeping a little easier right now anyhow.

-- 
Geoff Teale
Cmed Technology
Free Software Foundation
ACCU
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