SCO lobbies US Congress against the GNU GPL

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 22 Jan 2004 at 17:25

SCO has sent letters to members of the US Congress denouncing Free Software as a threat to the US economy, security and the country's international standing in technology.

Although there has been some specualtion as to whether the letter has actually been sent, SCO confirmed for us that indeed it had, to 'Congress and Senate generally'. However, the company has not yet had any indication of how well the letters have been received. 'The letter was not sent to illicit a response as such. It was for the information of anyone in the senate or congress. These people are influencing legislation regarding the open source technologies and SCO wanted its viewpoint noted,' we were told.

The spokesperson added that SCO may send further letters to government officials internationally. 'SCO reserves the right to educate law makers anywhere in the world where issues arise,' we were told, although SCO has no current plans to do so.

The letter, from SCO CEO Darl McBride and dated 8 January, attacks the GNU GPL (the licence under which GNU/Linux systems can be distributed), alleging it violates the US Copyright law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and other US statutes. Attached is McBride's Open Letter on Copyrights.

McBride describes the GPL as a 'scheme' that 'seeks to commoditize software by reducing its moentary value to zero' and alleges that Richard Stallman, the author of the licence finds the idea that 'software [is] an intellectual asset from which the designer can derive profit is unacceptable'.

The GNU Web site cojntradicts this however. It places no restrictions on selling 'free' software distibuted under the GNU GPL for profit. 'We encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can,' it reads.

The SCO letter goes on to attack the GNU/Linux system, warning: 'Each Open Source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software'.

McBride goes on to detail SCO's as-yet-unproven claims over unauthorised Unix IP in Linux: 'Instead of Unix from any number of US companies or Windows from Microsoft, governments throughout Europe and Asia are using Linux... I find this particularly galling because that Linux software contains thousands of lines of my company's proprietary Unix code - for which we receive no revenue.'

McBride claims the Open Source software is available to countries to which such software, including Unix is banned for export. However, McBride here is clouding the issue: the GNU/Linux platform is subject to the same commercial export restrictions as Unix.

And far from a threat to national security, the SUSE platform running on Intel-based IBM servers has been certified for use in US Government departments, having met the strict specifications, including those for security.

You can read the letter at The Open Source & Industry Alliance (OSAIA) which has it in PDF. The organisation describes itself as the eyes, ears and voice of those companies it represents with an interest in Open Sopurce software in legislative, executive and judicial forums throughout the world.

It says it 'will actively engage Congress to explain the full benefits of open source software to the economy, how the GPL relies upon and is consistent with U.S. copyright law, and refute SCO's baseless claims of IP theft.'