In article <44df19e3@news.povray.org>, nicolas$george@salle-s.org 
says...
> >			    as well as the SCO "case" against Linux, you
> > cannot honestly say the licenses used for Linux are clear, or prevent a
buse.
> > If they cannot prevent a three year multi-million dollar trial, they cl
early
> > have a problem. Our license may not be perfect, but neither are those c
ore
> > Linux "Copyleft" licenses you are so vigorously promoting.
> 
> The reason there is a three-year multi-million dollars trial behind Linux
 and
> not behind POV-Ray is not that its license is more badly phrased -- by th
e
> way, I know that the FSF has a bunch of lawyers working on the GPL; I won
der
> what is the legal background of the actual author of POV-Ray's license? -
-
> but because the market value of Linux is much higher, both because it hol
ds
> a more tactical position (fewer people need raytracers than operating
> systems) and because of random circumstances.
> 
> But if it came that, for example, a big company started backing up POV-Ra
y
> for the special effects of big bucks movies, and started taking market sh
are
> from the costly proprietary softwares used nowadays, then POV-Ray would
> likely have its multi-million dollars trial too.
> 
No, you are only partly right, the reason for the case may be money 
ultimately, but it hinges, "a lot", on claims that IBM stole code from a 
version of UNIX to build their Linux version, or even more silly, that 
Linux in general somehow does this. Its a case of, "Its just too 
coincidental to us that both our airplanes have swept wings and landing 
gear, which those other guys all use strait wings and skids, I think you 
stole our ideas for those things!" Its pure absolute and total BS, but 
had Linux been written to "not" duplicate the UNIX environment, and run 
its software, there wouldn't be any grounds to contest (it would also be 
less useful of course). The GPL isn't the problem, its the contention 
that a violation of SCO's proprietary licenses happened, regardless of 
the license that IBM happened to be using.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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