Re: Suggestion: remove s/sco[45].h etc.

[Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com>]

On Nov 20, 2003, at 5:26 PM, Kim F. Storm wrote:
> I suggest that we remove the corresponding support files, that is
> s/sco4.h and s/sco5.h, as well as other s/*.h files for other
> sysV / usg derivates created or owned by SCO.

I'm highly sympathetic, but don't think this is actually a good idea.   
There's a distinction between users and providers.   SCO users right 
now are in a bad situation - it's likely that SCO is going to go under 
and leave them high and dry.   They didn't start this lawsuit, and 
frankly I suspect a lot of them wish it had never happened, but their 
businesses depend on software they bought from SCO before the lawsuit 
started.   This would just make things worse for them, without 
materially affecting SCO itself.   The whole point of the GPL is to 
promote software freedom, and it seems to me that this sends the wrong 
message to SCO users - "go away."   We want them to come to us, not go 
away.   There's a decent chance that if we don't strive to prevent it, 
a lot of them are going to switch to GNU/Linux in the near future.

Given the present lawsuit against IBM, if SCO builds a copy of emacs 
either for their own use or for distribution, they are violating the 
copyright - they are not abiding by the terms of the GPL, so they have 
no right to make copies of GPL software.   So in fact, the people who 
this change would target aren't even legally permitted to use the 
software to which the change is being made.

So unless it would strengthen the FSF's legal position with respect to 
SCO to take these includes out, I think it would be a bad strategy.