Groklaw: SCO, and Australia

[DCT Jared]

Australian court is taking SCO more seriously
and more quickly than SCO's parent country.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040225094810723

This is extremely good news for open source, for it lends much
credibility to the idea that SCO needs to honor its Caldera
history, when it freely gave away source code.

The most interesting point: In Australia, SCO may be forced to
create a licence which is the same in essence as GPL, and
stick to it, because of their prior history of officially endorsing it.

<snip>
For example, if a company sold pencils which it did not own, an appropriate remedy would be for 
them to perfect the ownership of the persons who bought the pencils (e.g., by buying them from the 
person who did in fact own them) if they were able to. Imagine if a company sold pencils which it 
did in fact own and later said, "Well, I didn't realise they were mine. If I had known I owned 
them, I wouldn't have sold them to you/you have to pay me more money/I am changing the terms of 
sale". In these circumstances it would be surprising if the original terms of sale were not 
enforced.
</snip>

I love law which is used properly, for its intended purpose, which
is an abstract, third-party way of bringing corrective action to
scoundrels, and counselling action to virtuous souls.

-Jared