SCO sues Sams, O'Reilly

[robinturner]

Solri News Agency

"Following the ground-breaking innovations SCO have introduced in IP [intellectual property] law in our case against IBM," says an SCO spokesperson, "we have decided to protect our rights to the 'Hello World' program, and have consequently filed suit against Sams and O'Reilly.

Sams are the publisher of many well-known computer books catering to the needs of time-pressed IT professionals, such as the popular Learn C++ in 10 Seconds, while O'Reilly have published such computing classics as The Aesthetics of Pascal and The Bumper Book of Network Protocols. SCO's suit is based on the fact that many of these books contain the code to the famous "Hello World" program, which it claims to own the licencing rights to.

SCO would not reveal details of the code of the original program, but "derivative" versions abound. For legal reasons we have been advised not reprint examples, but essentially these programs have one thing in common; when executed, they print the message "Hello World". More sophisticated versions provide a button which closes the program, while others have modified the original code such that, for example, the message is printed several times, using a so-called "loop". This complicates the legal situation, since Bell Labs claim to have a patent on the FOR and WHILE loops. While they have no plans to take legal action at present, the possibility of such a case would be raised if versions of "Hello World" licenced by SCO turn out to contain such patented code.

SCO claims to have bought exclusive rights resell licences to the original "Hello World" code, saying "We do not object to people using or even modifying this code, so long as they have purchased a licence to do so, but indiscriminate publishing of either the original code or thinly disguised versions of it is a clear violation of our intellectual property rights."

SCO has also mailed over a thousand schools and universities, warning them that the presence of "Hello World" code on their computers may be illegal.

Comments

[kristian.livejournal.com]

its funny coz its true.