Does SCO distribute XFce or XFce4?

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, john-thomas richards wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 10:46:53AM -0500, csm at Lunar-Linux.org wrote:
> > Some of you may have seen that Fyodor (Nmap author) has removed SCO's 
> > right to distribute Nmap.
> 
> nmap is licensed under the gpl.  how can one remove another's right to
> distribute it since the gpl *guarantees* said right?

what it boils down to is that fyodor _owns_ the copyright on the nmap 
code, so he can pretty much do with it whatever he damn well pleases, 
including adding or removing restrictions at will.  at the point that 
you add restrictions, however, an argument can be made that it isn't 
truly licensed under the GPL anymore.  by rights he should rename his 
license, and basically say "This sofware is licensed under the terms of 
the Foobarbaz license.  The use and redistribution terms are identical 
to those of the GNU GPL, with the added restriction that SCO is not 
allowed to...  blah blah blah."

if we actually wanted to do something similar with xfce (which i don't 
recommend - as jasper puts it, they are <expletive deleted>, we are 
not), that would require that all the copyright holders would have to 
agree.  likely?  i think not.

(on a side note, my first paragraph is assuming that fyodor actually is 
the sole copyright holder, or that he's gotten support from all the 
copyright holders to make the licensing change.  if he isn't and he 
hasn't, then technically what he's doing isn't right.)

i despise SCO as much as most linux people, but i stop short at pulling 
what are, IMHO, childish pranks.

	-brian