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