Re: SCO offers UnixWare licenses for Linux

[Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:22:25 -0700
Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 05:52:44PM +0100, Ian Hastie wrote:
> > There is a difference between getting something knowing it 
> > to be improperly obtained and believing it to be the property of the 
> > supplier.  Just to follow your example, you buy a second hand disc or 
> > computer.  When you hook it up you find a load of illegal MP3s.  If what
> > you say is correct you'd be guilty of theft, or at the very least copyright
> > 
> > infringement.
> 
> You bet you would.  Unless you could make a case that the seller sold you
> the system with legal rights to that data, and that case would have to
> include some plausible fee for the data, then the judge would say "there
> is no free lunch son, if the deal looked too good to be true, it was and
> you saying you didn't know isn't an excuse".

Sorry, Larry, but we live in the post-dot.com age and all have experienced
astonishing business models where virtually everything was handed to the
"customer" for free. I even know a business model where you get a free _car_,
have to pay nothing and it _works_ for the company.
So your argument is indeed one of the "unkowning" type, it would take me about
10 minutes to fundamentally prove such a judge plain silly.

Regards,
Stephan