Software Freedom After SCO: GPL and the Evolving Free Software Ecosystem
Brad Kuhn
The question is no longer whether or not the SCO v. IBM lawsuit (and the
surrounding PR campaign against Free Software) will fail; the question now
is only when. While no one can name the moment when SCO will fizzle and
leave the landscape, we can extrapolate how the post-SCO Free Software
world must be structured to assure its continued success.
The SCO litigation has reminded FSF, and taught others for the first time,
that merely licensing Free Software under GPL, albeit an excellent first
step, is not necessarily sufficient to ward off all possible attacks from
those who seek to discredit the Free Software infrastructure. The proper
assembly of Free Software, both in a technical and legal sense, is a
necessary component of defending software freedom.
In this talk, Kuhn gives an overview of how the Free Software Foundation
considered and solved this problem, and what FSF's recommendations are to
Free Software projects who seek to stand iron-clad against and above
reproach of those would seek to disrupt the free flow of contribution that
is essential for software freedom.