> I'm trying to persuade my employer to ship a product that would be built
> on Linux.
What do you mean "built on" - using Linux as the development tool or
actually shipping a Linux PC with "added value". I assume the latter
from the rest of your post.
What's the added value and how tightly is it integrated?
Quote:> At the moment, I've gotten a question from the lawyer about what we
> would do if someone claimed they owned a restricted copyright for part
> of the Linux distribution.
He's the lawyer - isn't it *his* job to tell you what the possible
options are?
Quote:> The particular hypothetical situation would be, somebody wrote a piece
> of code, and copyrighted it as their own, not GPL. Somebody else grabbed
> that piece of code and dropped it into something they were doing that
> was covered by GPL. Now, we ship it and get sued for every dime that
> we've got and have to stop shipping the product... Bad news all the way
> around.
> Does anybody know of any concrete instances of anything like this?
It's one of the reasons the FSF require you to assign the copyright to
them before they will include the code so you should be OK with FSF
based material.
I think it makes a difference whether you are the author or publisher
of the infringing work or a distributer (AFAIK a bookshop can't be
sued for copyright infringement for selling an infringing work - no
doubt someome will let me know if this isn't the case).
In this case you may be able to just distribute, say, Caldera to your
clients along with your application, kernel module or whatever. If a
copyright case *was* brought you can assume that the infringing work
would have to be removed so make sure you only depend on code to which
the FSF has the copyright. I think that the "Somebody else [who]
grabbed that piece of code" would be the person that the copyright
owner would have to sue.
Obdisclaimer: I'm Not a lawyer. If your actions are based in any way on
this posting or any part of this posting they are at your
own risk.
--
Paul