SCO Group Launches Broadside Against GPL

Going on to attack the Free Software Foundation and those software developers around the world who did not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress, McBride said that over the past 20 years, the Foundation and others in the open source software movement "have set out to actively and intentionally undermine the U.S. and European systems of copyrights and patents.

"Leaders of the FSF have spent great efforts, written numerous articles and sometimes enforced the provisions of the GPL as part of a deeply held belief in the need to undermine or eliminate software patent and copyright laws," he said.

The software license adopted by the GPL was called "copyleft" by its authors, because the GPL had the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof. As a result, the GPL was exactly opposite in its effect from the "copyright" laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union, McBride said.

This stance against intellectual property laws had been adopted by several companies in the software industry, most notably Red Hat. According to McBride, Red Hats position was that current U.S. intellectual property law "impedes innovation in software development" and that "software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software."

But SCO took the opposite position, McBride said, believing that copyright and patent laws adopted by the U.S. Congress and the European Union were critical to the further growth and development of the $186 billion global software industry, and to the technology business in general.

In taking this position, SCO had been attacked by Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and many software developers who support their efforts to eliminate software patents and copyrights. "Personal threats abound. At times the nature of these attacks is breathtaking—the emotions are obscuring the very clear and important legal issues SCO has raised," he said.

"SCO is confident that the legal underpinning of our arguments is sound. We understand that the litigation process is never easy for any party involved. Our stance on this issue has made SCO very unpopular with some.

"But we believe that we will prevail through the legal system, because our position is consistent with the clear legal authority set down by US Congress, the US Supreme Court and the European Union," he concluded.