| 1 | As all users of GCC will know, SCO has recently made claims concerning
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| 2 | alleged copyright infringement by recent versions of the operating
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| 3 | system kernel called Linux. SCO has made irresponsible public
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| 4 | statements about this supposed copyright infringement without
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| 5 | releasing any evidence of the infringement, and has demanded that
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| 6 | users of Linux, the kernel most often used with the GNU system, pay
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| 7 | for a license. This license is incompatible with the GPL, and in the
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| 8 | opinion of the Free Software Foundation such a demand unquestionably
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| 9 | violates the GNU General Public License under which the kernel is
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| 10 | distributed.
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| 11 |
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| 12 | We have been urged to drop support for SCO Unix from this release of
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| 13 | GCC, as a protest against this irresponsible aggression against free
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| 14 | software and GNU/Linux. However, the direct effect of this action
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| 15 | would fall on users of GCC rather than on SCO. For the moment, we
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| 16 | have decided not to take that action. The Free Software Foundation's
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| 17 | overriding goal is to protect the freedom of the free software
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| 18 | community, including developers and users, but we also want to serve
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| 19 | users. Protecting the community from an attack sometimes requires
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| 20 | steps that will inconvenience some in the community. Such a step is
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| 21 | not yet necessary, in our view, but we cannot indefinitely continue to
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| 22 | ignore the aggression against our community taken by a party that has
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| 23 | long profited from the commercial distribution of our programs. We
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| 24 | urge users of SCO Unix to make clear to SCO their disapproval of the
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| 25 | company's aggression against the free software community. We will
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| 26 | have a further announcement concerning continuing support of SCO Unix
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| 27 | by GCC before our next release.
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