Did SCO 'Borrow' Linux Code? 688
An Anonymous Reader writes "Apparently someone inside SCO has stated that SCO(actually Caldera) copied Linux code into System V. They did it to build what they now market as Linux Kernel Personality - the ability to run Linux software on their Unix. Now, the open source community(of course they don't mention who) is jumping on this, because they didn't return the changes to the OS community or give the community credit. Of course, SCO says it's a misunderstanding and, get this 'SCO also never used any of the Linux kernel code.'"
Two Words (Score:0, Insightful)
Fuck SCO (Score:0, Insightful)
The other way ... (Score:2, Insightful)
That the code inside Linux isn't from SCO but the code inside SCO is from Linux?
How to prove that? If SCO wasn't using any kind of CVS - and
Re:Two Words (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, how do we really know who added it and when? What if it was pre Sys V code? What if the code came from Linux in the first place?
I have heard that the comments were the same, but who made the comments? Is there a name? Does he/she work for SCO?
Lot's of questions
Sue? (Score:2, Insightful)
In two weeks no one will care. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The other way ... (Score:5, Insightful)
SELL SHORT.....SELL SHORT NOW.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take all of that money before the greedy bastards grab it off the table!!!!....Monetary damages are the only thing the SCO mgmt. and the speculators funding this operation respect. Take their money before they figure out that the knife cuts both ways...
Hrm... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also interesting to note just how easily SCO found their code in Linux; you'd think it'd be too difficult to find such things unless you were looking...or if you already knew they were there...
Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was, oh what?, five years old, I remember that kind of talk in the courtyard at school during recess
- Hey, Johnny stole my yellow marble
- No I DID NOT !
- YES YOU DID !
- It's not your marble anyway, it was mine, I just told you to borrow it, I didn't give it to you
- I'll tell my Mom Bruce stole Robert's marble, and you'll be GROUNDED !
- I DID NOT !
- YES YOU DID !
Replace one of these kids by SCO, another by Novell, a third by IBM, a fourth by the Linux community, the one who tells Mom by Microsoft, the courtyard by the computer industry and Mom by the DOJ and there you have it.
*sigh*
Re:Two Words (Score:5, Insightful)
The moderator who modded you "insightful" was on crack, because you completely failed to read the article. Timothy is suggesting that SCO may have copied (presumably GPLed) code from Linux into their proprietary Unix[tm]. If true, the repurcussions could be, erm, quite interesting.
As lore would have it, the original USL suit against BSD and Berkely University broke up on the rocks for a similar reason.
It's not about the same code in both places... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about seeing the same code in both places, it's about establishing which was developed first. You can't look at just the current version of either linux or SCO - you have to look at the change history of the common code. In one version, the code should show some evolution over time - across RCS versions, or across versions of kernel releases. In the copied version, a whole bunch of code will have appeared "Poof!" all at once. You can't just look at the surface - you have to look beneath the surface, into the code's history.
Of course, there is the possibility - I consider it unlikely - that large chunks of code appeared in both places all at once. This will mean that the code was developed over time external to whichever version of linux or SCO unix had it first, then copied in as part of a major rev... but somebody, some developer somewhere, will have interim versions, notes, design docs. Code doesn't just spring from the head of Zeus - it evolves, and whoever developed it will have to be found to prove its origin.
Re:Why is Linux so metaphorical? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Someone inside SCO" (Score:5, Insightful)
To be precise, SCO is spreading rumours that they have evidence.
Poster, please RTFA. (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone outside, but _potentially_ credible said they copied. Not an employee. This is only a _possibility_. Perhaps the source assumed too much or maybe I'm wrong.
Proving the code (Score:2, Insightful)
Compile it.
SCO *has* shown something to the public, to whit: binaries. Compile the original programs that contain suspected infringing code, compare it against the binaries they shipped, and if the match, the are able to place their code in time.
CVS logs can be altered. The code that is compiled cannot, nor can they change the binaries that have already shipped.
It's easy, it's fast, and it is accurate.
That should place the SCO code in time within about a six-month period. If the Linux code pre-dates this period by a significant amount, the infringing code came from the Linux kernel, and SCO is a smoking crater.
If the Linux code came later, then it is IBM who is curb-stomped, followed by a full-frontal assault on Linux itself.
The linked article is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
"Did SCO Violate the GPL?"
No. If they had published Linux code as proprietary software, they have violated the copyright law.
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:5, Insightful)
Paragraphs 77 to 81 of SCO's complaint [sco.com] describe their view of "General Public License" [sic]. In Paragraph 80, read their claims on GPL copyrights (they say there aren't any). Paragraph 77 (and their general claims overall) seek to thus establish Linux is a combination of public domain and nefariously obtained proprietary SCO IP. If the court accepts this line of reasoning, we are left with the situation, where SCO will be able to claim exclusive copyright on the overall work of Linux.
Chris Sonntag made it completely clear when he publcly said 'we hope to get our arms around all the Linux out there' and 'there is no legal use of Linux'?
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:5, Insightful)
> public domain.
There's no way that the Linux kernel _is_ in the public domain. You clearly don't know what the public domain is.
> To try to prevent distribution based on 80 lines
> of code of a program with thousands of lines...
Millions.
Re:It is only a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I'd be very surprised if Microsoft used anything from Linux, considering it's actually legal and therefore far more tempting to use something from the BSDs, and there are not many features Linux has but the BSDs lack.
Two Words: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SELL SHORT.....SELL SHORT NOW.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So no-one likes shares prices going down, except short-sellers.
Re:Get this! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they had to reimplement it because while you can make BSD code GPL you can't take it the other way, at least without copyright holders permission. They were free, of course, to look at the linux code while doing it, making it a relatively easy task. Probably if you looked there are sizeable chunks of identical code and comments there too. I bet the header files are a real treasure trove for those.
Identical chunks of code and comments do not prove copying or copyright infringement. It takes more, in a case like this, because there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for it to occur. To determine if something illegal happened, whether we're talking about Caldera copying from Linux or vice versa, you've got to do a much more fine-grained analysis than just counting lines that match.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
Things will hopefully wrap up on Friday, when SCO is supposed to revoke the AIX license. If they take IBM to court, they will have to show evidence. If they don't, then they lose credibility. Either way, they lose.
Re:The problem here is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe someone else has standing as well (were those intimidation letters legal?) but I suspect the interesting stuff won't happen until IBM's lawyers start speaking up. They're suspiciously quiet at the moment.
If it is true (Score:2, Insightful)
Well we should thank him anyway and often
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally however I have been pointing out that SCO had this Linux integration program for a while now (ref: This Post [slashdot.org]) and moreover that SCO have been releasing this code under the terms of the GPL themselves by continuing shipping Caldera Linux.
To be quite honest, the only people who benefit from this are the Lawyers. Quick, someone check to make sure Darl hasn't invested in the Law companies
-1: doesn't understand the GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
Challenging the GPL in court is on a hiding to nothing.
I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't quite understand this. If the guy was working on the LKP project and they discovered similarity between SCO UNIX and Linux during that work, then SCO did not copy that code as part of the LKP project (although they may have copied it before). Or did he join the LKP project late and alleges that other people on the same project copied the code before he joined? Or is he saying that SCO had copied Linux source code for other reasons and they were just discovering that fact during the LKP project at SCO?
Re:SCO's goal (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, I have never heard of any public domain, BSD, or GPL copyright being slurped up into a propriety product because of the proprietary product's "overriding interest", or what have you.
Re:You're misunderstanding the article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if one assumes that both codebases grow and gain functionality at the same rate. As ESR showed in his whitepaper, Linux has grown and gained functionality substantially faster than SCO, and is ahead in many areas.
why would SCO want to alter any existing functionality in their code by changing it to linux code?
Perhaps the Linux implementation was more featureful. Perhaps it was more efficient. Perhaps the copied linux code delivered some functionality that was not present at all in the UnixWare kernel. Indeed, ESR shows in his whitepaper that Linux is substantiall more advanced than UnixWare in many areas, and has been for some time.
would this not be a recipe for destroyng backward compatibility?
Not as a rule. Programmers add features to all kinds of software without destroying backward-compatibility.
At a minumim any cribbed code would have to be patched for backward compatiblity. the only cases where this would not be true is if the new code was for completely novel functionality that would not have any influence on or need to call existing SCO code. not likely.
I don't follow at all. Why is that unlikely?
The more likely explanation is that they either both got the code from a source older than SCO's code (e.g. BSD) or Linux copied SCOs code as alledged.
Actually, if we know that the code was copied either from Linux to UnixWare or vice versa (i.e., we know that it didn't come from BSD), then the far likelier explanation is that SCO copied Linux code. Rememeber that UnixWare is proprietary; an SCO coder could easily copy a chunk of the Linux kernel and no one would ever know. However, anyone who copied in the other direction would be putting himself at risk, since the Linux kernel is open source, and the evidence of the copying would therefore be plainly visible.
TheFrood
Re:Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)
107 words, and 133 words (Score:5, Insightful)
...and...
So... when they distributed their UNIX with the LKPM included (their "work") and that contained GPLed code, they accepted the terms of the GPL. But they have not distributed, or offered to distributed, the source to their (now GPLed, since the accepted the terms) "work".
This means that either they violated the GPL after agreeing to it. The owners of the copied code will band together and sue them for $2G, I hope, and settle for costs plus distribution of the full source of UnixWare 7 distributed as per the licence agreement SCO acceded to. Just to labour the point, they have already distributed derivative code, so halting distribution does not undo their requirement to distribute full source.
Do I need to make it simpler for you?
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO should sue themselves (Score:4, Insightful)
So they claim, but install the sources from an old Cladera linux distro. Grep for Caldera and see the code they contributed. Infact they even say it's GPLed in there comments. Is it cut and pasted from Unix? I don't know I don't have the source to Unix (I don't know anyone who does? do you?). Is it the same lines that they're claiming people stole from them? I don't know that either, IANAA
Fast forward to the present and you have SCO suing IBM about getting chocolate in their peanut butter. SCO would have a much better chance of winning if they sued themselves.
Re:Two Words (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. All this means is that SCO is guilty of a license violation.
IANAL - but I'm betting that you would have to take them to court and convince a judge that the violation was intentional ("Hey, let's use this GPL code!"), willful ("Yah. We can just ignore the license."), and pervasive ("Sure, why not - the VP of development and legal already said that's fine.") Otherwise, SCO can just claim that the inclusion of the GPL'd code was a "misunderstanding" between a long-gone developer and a long-gone manager, neither of whom had the authority to make this kind of decision on behalf of the company.
Even if you got past that hurdle, I expect that you'd have to explicitly request that the code for the past versions be placed under the GPL as part of the settlement, and SCO would probably value the code so highly ("One billion dollars, your honor!") that any order to GPL the code would give SCO a good chance to get that aspect of the ruling either thrown out or reduced on appeal.
Re:Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)
Another possibility, at least for some of the code in question, is that someone at Caldera authored code that was contributed to Linux under GPL and was placed into Unixware to be released under Unixware's more restrictive licensing.
Dual licensing is legal as long as the copyright holder agrees to it. If the code in question originiated with Caldera/SCO (and thus Caldera/SCO own the copyright) and was provided to Linux as GPL code and inserted into Unixware as non-free code, there's no lawsuit in either direction. So, if we find that the code came into Linux from Caldera and/or SCO, it means we're in the clear, and so are they.
Another possibility is that a third party (eg. IBM) authored the code and effectively dual-licensed it--licensed it to SCO for proprietary use, and licensed it to Linux under GPL. Again, that's most likely fine.
The only way SCO might have a lawsuit is if the code originated in UNIX/Unixware, and was contributed into Linux by someone other than the copyright holder.
--JoeNot no. (-: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the file containing the code you stole has prominent text in it referring you to the GPL (as recommended by the FSF), then you are deemed to have been responsible for reading the GPL before using the code.
Re:Two Words (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL doesn't count because violating it essentially voids it leaving you with copyright law for distributing terms. (You can't, but if you do, you have to pay thousands per copy.)
If SCO had not been trying to screw over the Linux community, this would probably be, small cash settlement, an apology and stop using the code, as it is the copyright holders are probably not going to want to be nice.
Dissent in the Camp (Score:3, Insightful)
and really hates the way SCO is trampling on
the community.
Isn't it nice how they can look out our hard work
and no one is allowed to look over their shoulders?
Kudos to this brave soul who took a stand but I suggest
watching your back.
Re:"Someone inside SCO" (Score:0, Insightful)
If I thought I might be attacked by a country holding one of the largest store of chemical weapons in the world(cough, USofA, cough) I would want some chem suits too AND if this is the same country that has been the only one to actually drop a nuke on a population AND they are known to use uranium tipped tank shells you bet I'd want rad suits.
But I'd guess from your comment that you don't consider that important.
And I vow... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not children, and most of us know that crashing SCO's site intentionally does nothing but demonstrate that we too can be cocks.
Re:"Someone inside SCO" (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not saying this is what has happened but it is at least a possibility. Big companies can be incredibly incompetent at times.
Re:Two Words (Score:3, Insightful)
As lore would have it, the proper spelling of Berkeley [berkeley.edu] is B-E-R-K-E-L-E-Y, and the proper usage is "University of California, Berkeley," being that Berkeley is the University of California; the other UC schools (UCLA, UCSC, et al) are merely extensions of UC Berkeley, which was founded in 1868.
So no, it's not spelled "Berkly," Berkely," Berkley," or any combination of the three, and it most certainly has no connection to the Berklee College of Music [berklee.edu].
I'm amazed that any self-respecting geek can misspell "Berkeley", given the advances made there. Where the hell do you think Berkelium and Californium were discovered? If it weren't for Berkeley, which runs LANL [lanl.gov] and LBNL [lbl.gov], the DOD would be up shit creek, and GWB wouldn't have any of those "nuke-u-ler" weapons he likes to talk so much about. For the love of god, the guy who won a Nobel prize [princeton.edu] for inventing the frickin LASER [geocities.com] is a professor there.
Without Berkeley, there'd be no BSD; it's the Berkeley Software Distribution. It's in the name of the operating system. If you can't even properly spell the name of the operating system to which you're referring, why even bother to make any comment at all?
Re:Congratulation on a USA today reading level! (Score:3, Insightful)
and
"The LKP is a feature that allows users to run standard Linux applications along with standard Unix applications on a single system using the UnixWare kernel."
and you said
"so I think it is safe to say that these functions were in UnixWare first"
So you are saying UnixWare was compatable with Linux binaries before Linux came to being? Just asking.
Re:To administrators of this forum: (Score:2, Insightful)
You are right, thank you. I'm trying to add every one of them to my "freak" list, but it's not easy, when I'm still being insulted by some new ones... Thank you for good word, though.