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Article: Closing the door on open source: can the general public license save Linux and other open source software?(Essay)
- Article from:
- The Journal of High Technology Law
- Article date:
- July 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Suffolk University Law School. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Rather than defend the 'don't ask, don't tell' Linux intellectual property policy that caused the SCO v. IBM case, the Open Source community should focus on customers' needs. The Open Source community should assure that Open Source software has a solid intellectual property foundation that can give confidence to end users. (2)
In a community of over half a million developers, we can hardly expect that there will never be plagiarism. But it is no disaster; we discard that material and move on. If there is material in Linux that was contributed without legal authorization, the Linux developers will learn what it is and replace it. SCO cannot use its copyrights, or ...