[luau] More SCO stuff

[Hawaii Linux Institute]

Understandably, this is not a forum for discussing legal matters. 
However, most comments from the Linux community seem to have overlooked 
several critical elements in that, among other things: (1) this is a 
trade secret case, not a copyright infringement, and (2) this case was 
filed in Utah “state court” not a federal district court. (Perhaps they 
have been discussed, then, please forgive my ignorance.)

I have not paid much attention to this case (because it seems quite 
frivolous at the outset). But we need to keep in mind that, in order to 
win a trade secret case, you must also prove that the information 
allegedly being misappropriated cannot be readily ascertainable by 
proper means. If the technology is well-known in the art, or can be 
derived from known sources, showing similarity in the source code has no 
relevance. Indeed, since Linux is a variant of UNIX, it is preferable to 
use the same variable names, etc, so that the code can be more 
transparent to non-Linux programmers. Trying to keep variable names the 
same is a courtesy, not a copyright infringement.


Secondly, since the federal government has not preempted the trade 
secret field, this case belongs to the state court domain. Since most 
states have different implementations of the trade secret laws (both 
statutorily and via case decisions), only those who are licensed in Utah 
can competently comment on this case. Thus, you can treat my two-cents 
as whatever they are worth, but just don't quote them.


Wayne


Warren Togami wrote:

>Another good article from Cringely talking about a situation in the past
>somewhat similar to SCO's allegations.
>
>http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619.html
>What Goes Around Comes Around
>The Only Clear Winner in This SCO Versus IBM Case is Microsoft
>
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