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.'"
Re:"Someone inside SCO" (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I can see right now, these allegations have about as much chance of being true as SCO's claims.
Why is Linux so metaphorical? (Score:2, Interesting)
The continuing saga of SCO's suicide. (Score:4, Interesting)
History repeats itself (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt the same problems would happen with SCO, because unlike AT&T back then, which was the Unix company, SCO is just some pissant company no one cares about.
That would also explain why SCO has been so unwilling to show exactly which bits of code they used. People would quickly realize that Linux developers wrote the stuff, not SCO.
On the other hand, I don't think anyone would be stupid enough to claim that Linux used code stolen from their own Linux compatibility layer. What are they going to claim "Without our code, Linux would never be compatible with, um, Linux"
Get this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Two questions, though:
1) Out of curiosity, how does FreeBSD handle Linux binaries? Is it Linux kernel code included under the GPL somehow or did they implement it themselves? If the latter, isn't this accusation against SCO the same as SCO's argument of "Well, they must have misappropriated our code because, well, they must have!"?
2) What am I supposed to get about "get this 'SCO also never used any of the Linux kernel code.'"? What's the issue? The extraneous "also" that wandered in from the next sentence, probably an eWeek typo? Or is it supposed to be a claim that SCO never used Linux code at all, despite the nect sentence making it clear that "used" means "used in the LKP"?
Re:Two Words (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be interesting to find out, since they are claiming LINUX is holding offending code, since LINUX in this case can only refer to the kernel itself, and since Caldera released the linux kernel (on their FTP) not that long ago, how can they claim any other company is at fault for using, or distributing the same thing?
It is only a matter of time... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the policy level, Microsoft is extremely paranoid of Open Source. At the individual developer level, the quality and depth of code reviews varries substantially from group to group. As a result, Microsoft is highly unlikely to be aware, as a company, if Open Source has penetrated its products. This presents a significant risk to shareholders.
Apple, on the other hand, has done an excellent job of integrating Open Source into their commercial product(s). They are certainly aware at the marketing level that there is a combination of Open Source and Apple code in OS X, so I assume they have a very good handle on the situation at an engineering level.
Now SCO is in the worst position. Not only do they have the same tech-industry turnover rate as companies like Apple and Microsoft to deal with, but they've changed hands repeatedly in the last decade, further randomizing the org structure. While the SCO legal team may be able to construct threatening arguments aimed at IBM, Linux and friends, they are really exposing their vulnerability to counter suit. Again, significant shareholder risk exists in SCO.
SCO's goal (Score:5, Interesting)
What they actual want: Defacto or Actual CONTROL OVER 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'?
Defacto control can be achieved by establishing (at least in business people's minds) that Linux infringes their IP, but never revealing exactly how. They will simply say: Look MS settled (and yes they really were threatened with a SCO lawsuit), Look IBM settled (they might, I bet they would if SCO offered to settle for a undisclosed ($1) amount), Gartner, Aberdeen, Yankee Consulting say Linux may infringe, etc.
Full control (SCO owns Linux copyright) may be established by asserting Linux is a combination of public domain work (GPL stuff) and copyrighted SCO stuff. In other words, they want the courts to assign them OVERALL COPYRIGHT FOR LINUX. Their Legal complaint makes this 100% clear that this is their position:
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.
The problem here is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone out there know any ways around this? I would love to be corrected, because as things stand, this just looks like another case of the big guy using the legal system to screw over the little guy =(
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:5, Interesting)
The same thing could easily happen in this case. IF there is SCO IP in Linux, whatever code it is can be changed in minutes or hours, and even IF SCO was right, they might not get anything! Of course the other good example is USL vs. BSDI, but SCO apparently never paid attention in their history or business law classes...
YOU HAVE IT BACKWARDS! (Score:0, Interesting)
There are two salient facts in the article.
first the SCO engineers were not re-writing the SCO linux kernel they were simply writing stubs and wrappers for the SCO kernel to make an API (if you will) that looked like Linux on the outside and was actually calling SCO unix routines. they were NOT changing the SCO unix routines or making SCO kernel more linux like. they just wanted to allow Linux application to be able to execute in a Linux Personality Module layer that made SCO look like linux without having to change the SCO kernel
Second, in the process of doing this they noticed that many of the linux routines were identical to their SCO counterparts even down to the variable names!!. At the time the engineers thought this was dandy since it meant the the layer could just call the analogous SCO routine without any modification. I guess it took a while for it to dawn on someone that this also suggests that Linux may have been copied from SCO's kernel. (or mutually from a third source).
But the point is they were seeing identical code in linux and the activity they were conducting would not have lead to putting linux code into the sco kernel. This is bad for linux.
And since they were not making changes to the linux kernel --they were just making a layer that emulated it on top of the sco kernel-- they did not violate the GPL. there is nothing that needed to release nor any copy rights they needed to cite.
the ONLY thing one might think here that is at all suscpiscios is as a result of this excersize the SCO enegnieers became really familiar with linux routines at a high level of detail. but this is not a crime and does not suggest they copied from it. their observation of the similarity and the purpose of the project suggests the opposit infact. sounds bad for linux.
much better chance of being true (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps a lot more. Anyone stealing code from SCO would likely at least change the comments, as they know the source code is going to be public. On the other hand, anyone doing code for SCO knows that the code is not open source, and likely never expects anyone who could match it to Linux code to see it. Might have even been done by a coder who wanted a quick fix without the knowledge of the management of SCO (or Caldera or whatever name the software was done under at the time). Then later someone at SCO finds the matching code. What is their first impulse? To say "Oh, we may be stealing code"? Or to say "Our code matches code in Linux so IBM must have stolen our code".
I still like Cringley's explination best, that SCO did exactly what they openly said they were doing and merged Linux with Unix. But assuming they didn't make this up completely and indeed there is some code in Unix that matchs code in Linux down to the comments, it seems much more likely that some of the widely available open source Linux code was improperly put into Unix than some of the closely protected source code for Unix was put into Linux.
Re:"Someone inside SCO" (Score:5, Interesting)
So there isn't much evidence either way (though, as soon as which lines they are leak, we'll check logs to see who contributed them), but there's a whole lot of speculation going against SCO.
Shakespeare && his Monkeys || SCO &&am (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO copied Linux code?
Just a random, alternative explanation.
Or maybe, the same monkies they got to write Shakespear (sic) by random chance, wrote the same exact code in two different places. Let's think... the odd of randomly producing the same 1K of code have an upper-bound of about 1 in 64^1024, still not exactly zero. A Lower bound would be a big factorial expression. Ignoring the comments and differences in names and variables, most becomes VERY similar (hence OOP & patterns).
This is BSD vs AT&T all over again (Score:3, Interesting)
BSD/Linus - Yes, but guess what? you have a load of mine too
AT&T/SCO - mmm, ok, let's settle.
Re:Congratulation on a USA today reading level! (Score:2, Interesting)
The article goes on to say,
which implies that the code with the same variable names is actually original Linux. It appears to me that the reporter, especially one from eWeek, knows what he's talking about, and this further explains the statement in the second paragraph.Re: Proving the code (Score:2, Interesting)
Depening on compiler used and optimizations used binaries are quite unlikely to be comparable, consider this:
$ cat test.c
int main(){
int i = 0;
int j = 0;
for(i=0; i<765; i++)
{
j *= i;
}
return(0);
}
$ gcc -o test test.c
$ gcc -o test1 -O test.c
$ gcc -o test2 -O2 test.c
$ ls -l test test1 test2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 seva seva 13457 Jun 10 19:54 test
-rwxr-xr-x 1 seva seva 13409 Jun 10 19:54 test1
-rwxr-xr-x 1 seva seva 13393 Jun 10 19:54 test2
So, unless you know the exact compiler version and optimization options used, this is not useful.
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:3, Interesting)
78. The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software. The primary operating system advanced by GNU is Linux.
80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.
Link is http://www.sco.com/scosource/complaint3.06.03.htm
Re:Congratulation on a USA today reading level! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's possible some coders in the mid nineties decided to beef up SCO's unix by copying code over from Linux, but why? It would break backwards compatibility. And similarly, why would these functions change much from the beginning of Linux? They probably did not. So unless SCO's code got into Linux from the near beginning, I think it is much more likely that BSD is the common descendant.
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.sco.com/scosource/complaint3.06.03.htm
80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.
Re:Point 81 have you read your EULA today (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the license:
LIMITED WARRANTY
Caldera Systems warrants that upon Your receipt of the Product and for a period of 90 calendar days thereafter, the media, if any, on which the Software is embedded will be free of defects in material and workmanship under normal use. Caldera Systems does not warrant that (i) the Software and any related Updates will be free of defects, (ii) the Software will satisfy all of Your requirements or (iii) the use of the Software will be uninterrupted or error-free.
In case of breach of warranty related to the quality of the media, You must return at Your expense and no later than 10 days after the expiration of the warranty period, the Product to Caldera Systems or its local authorized representative, together with a copy of Your dated Proof of Purchase. Caldera Systems or its representative will replace any defective media, or if not practicable, may terminate this Agreement and refund to You the amount paid for the Product. You acknowledge that this Paragraph sets forth Your exclusive remedy and Caldera Systems' exclusive liability for any breach of warranty or other duty related to the quality of the Product.
LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
Except for the caldera systems warranty set out above, or otherwise expressly provided in a separate agreement with caldera systems or your supplier, all warranties, terms, conditions, representations, indemnities and guarantees with respect to the software, whether express or implied, arising by law, custom, prior oral or written statements by caldera systems, its licensors or representatives or otherwise (including, but not limited to any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or any implied warranty of non-infringement of third party intellectual property rights) are hereby overridden, excluded and disclaimed. Some states or countries do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so the above exclusion may not apply to you. This warranty gives you specific legal rights and you may also have other rights which vary from state to state or country to country.
Under no circumstances will caldera systems or its licensors or representatives be liable for any consequential, indirect, special, punitive, or incidental damages, whether foreseeable or unforeseeable, based on your claims or those of your customers (including but not limited to, claims for loss of data, goodwill, profits, use of money or use of the products, interruption in use or availability of data, stoppage of other work or impairment of other assets), arising out of breach or failure of express or implied warranty, breach of contract, misrepresentation, negligence, strict liability in tort or otherwise, except only in the case of personal injury where and to the extent that applicable law requires such liability. In no event will the aggregate liability which caldera systems or its licensors may incur in any action or proceeding exceed the total amount actually paid by you for the specific product that directly caused the damage.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the limitation of exclusion of liability for indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages so the above limitation may not apply to you.
Re:SCO's goal (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would M$ care? (Score:2, Interesting)
What would the legal ramifications be if a single 'rogue' coder inserted GPLed code into a commerical product? Would such sabatoge open MS stockholders finacially responsible for the damage done to a freely distributed OS?
That would be a tough case to win. More likely, MS would be asked to remove the offending code, and they would do so.
Having a policy not to use GPL code and the money to buy good lawyers, there is NO incentive for MS to patrol for GPL code. I would argue the opposite, that M$ would benefit by borrowing GPL code for a quick implementation while bugs are worked out on their own versions. Not saying that they do it, just that individuals working for MS and MS don't have much to lose, as long as the official policy is NOT to use open source code.
Re:The continuing saga of SCO's suicide. (Score:3, Interesting)
Par 80 explicitly claims GPL is PD (Score:3, Interesting)
Specifically, may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property. GPLed code is a "copyright property", the entire licence [gnu.org] depends on that. Asserting that the code cannot be bound by copyright is essentially the same as asserting that it's public domain. Have a look at the example GPL'ed program header:
From /SCOsource/ (Score:4, Interesting)
I came across another page [sco.com] with quotes from select quotes from RMS and Bruce Perens:
Richard Stallman
I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect.
Richard Stallman, Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software: O'Reilly (2002) at p. 72
The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It's one big act of subversive playful cleverness...
Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)
Bruce Perens
This is becoming a tradition. I go there and break the law every year in the name of free speech.
Bruce Perens, explaining his plan to demonstrate how to modify DVD technology to attendees of an Open Source convention.
We have to remember that Linux is a follow-on to UNIX. It's not just a UNIX clone. It's actually a UNIX successor.
Bruce Perens, mpulse magazine, December 2001.
As if the lawsuit were not damaging enough -- we have heard of businesses halting further Linux deployments due to these allegations and the lawsuit, we have high levels of FUD around people outside the open source software community in general, and Linux's, and perhaps even OSS's image is being tarnished, at least for now -- we have mischaracterizations of the nature of Linux in numerous ways, all out insults the hard work and ingenuity of the many developers who've contributed to give us a true alternative to proprietary computing by claiming they were incapable of performing such a task without corporate assistance (as if 80 to a few hundred lines of code out of about a million really gave Linux the boost from being "fringe" software to being a competitive alternative to the big boys, as stated in the first link of this post), and they are outright using character assassination on some OSS proponents with no shame whatsoever on their website.
Now, I'm not one to be shocked when businesses show disregard for truth and ethics, but this is quite a campaign they've got going here. I, for one, would hate to see IBM buy out SCO, as it would reward acting in this sort of fashion, not only for SCO, but for companies in similar situations in the future -- I'd much rather see them either get their pants countersued off by IBM and possibly other organizations as well, or have the judge throw out their case and give them a good censuring.
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
FreeBSD can run Linux binaries. If SCO needed a Linux Compatibility Layer or whatever, why would they illegally copy code from the Linux kernel when they could just lift whatever they wanted from the FreeBSD sources?
Oh wait, what was I thinking? This is Slashdot - Conspiracy Theories for Nerds. Bill Gates probably broke into Linus' home himself and stole the source code for SCO.
Re:In two weeks no one will care. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is of course totally false. In fact it is an outright lie and in total contradiction to the real facts.
The GPL does not work unless somebody claims copyright. Usually the original author or the company they work for, but sometimes copyright is assigned over to the FSF.
If there is no claim to copyright then the software is public domain, and the GPL is meaningless. So by definition the GPL means the code is copyrighted property.
SCO Used Linux Kernel Code (Score:5, Interesting)
The IP laws fundamentally work against Open Source.
Any company can extract code from an Open Source project, such as Microsoft and then incorporate it into its product.
As such, IP law protects the company from this sort of illegal appropriation because of disclosure rules governing IP law and the DMCA act.
What we need, is something akin to the BSA and SPA. A "tattel-tale" website.
SPA encourages employees to tell on thier companys if they are pirating binaries.
Why don't we have such a website that allows employees to tell on companies that pirate GNU Source Code by incorporating it into thier products, and not contributing the changes back to the community?
After all, do to the enourmous amount of corporate corruption in the US, under the table political manuevers our #1 enemy is doing, there must be a huge number of burned out pissed off Microsoft/ACME employees out there.
We only need one.
Rewards would be part of the legal settlement, should money be awarded.
-Hack
Off topic: On finding the SCO code used in Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Presumably if IBM really submitted a bunch of code that they had ripped off from SCO, then there would either be a huge single posting of the code to LKML, or a tight bunch of smaller postings.
So, has anyone identified postings to the list on behalf of IBM that look suspicious?
Possible Suggestion! (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't get any bites though.
I think it would be a good idea, to bring a class action lawsuit against SCO.
I think we should use slashdot as a place to organize such a lawsuit.
For the following reasons:
1) I think technically, this lawsuit given the recent changes in management at SCO, involves fraud. That is, the companies officers know privately they do not have a case against Linux, and are fraudulently misleading thier investors/shareholders too personally enrich themselves with regards to stock price using a lawsuit to falsify product value to said shareholders/stock holders.
This is due to the recent in jump in SCO's stock price. The company simply isn't worth the current stock price, historically and is therefore artificially inflated.
2) Technically, I think, from the perspective of most Linux Kernel developers, including myself and SCO's own development group, that SCO may have abridged GNU code illegally. If this wasn't the case, I don't believe SCO would have continued to sell thier own distro after they committed the lawsuit.
The suit should include full disclosure of all SCO source code. Furthermore, seperate suits should be filed against SCO should GNU software be found in thier kernel.
3) The suit is affecting the industry, consulting firms, companies in real, economically negatively, in a measurable way. Customers are being lost, companies are having to spend money to switch, or consult legal people. This is all because of SCO's suit.
We do not need to wait to the end of this suit, we can file class action suit immediately to get damages/satisfaction.
I also believe that if we ajoin the company officers in #1, we should be able to file a seperate lawsuit against each officer of the company, and not just the company as a whole.
I think, we should use slashdot as a place to:
1) Ask people to generate documentation. Documentation of an official nature, which supports points 1-3. For example if you are a consultant, and you lost a job based on SCO's injunction and public statements, ask the customer to write a letter detailing the loss of business because SCO makes Linux too risky.
2) Internally, if you are working for a company, obtain permission to use corporate Email disclosures for any migration plans away from Linux.
3) Detail any personal damages as a result of not being able to make medical insurance payments, bankruptcies, or personal financial hardship as a result of the loss of business as a direct result of SCO's pending lawsuit and its affect on your salary/business.
I would be happy to help organize my time with regards to this, and would encourage anyone to Email from Slashdot as to how to proceed.
Please post.
Afterward, we can begin the process of selection of legal counsel once we organize.
-Gregory Carter
-CEO
-Applied Engineering Software Group
-gcarter@aesgi.com
Re:Why is Linux so metaphorical? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think Linux has any more or less zealots per capita than any other organization. But remember, we are talking about millions of people in hundreds of countries. Your probability of running into at least a few crackpots approaches 1.
Personally, I love Linux, and I live the methodologies of Open Source in my own career. I do not insist that the entire world use Linux, nor do I feel threatened by any of this legal crap. Even if they find some snibble patent and confiscate the entire source tree (that will never happen by the way) Alan, Linus, and company would simply start over and program Linux2. And I'd be first in line to help.
iBCS (Score:2, Interesting)
Everybody calm down and take a deep breath. SCO has made some mistakes recently, and they will eventually see the error of their ways and back off. Screaming about petty stuff just makes Slashdot readers look reactionary and ill informed.
Re:Get this! (Score:3, Interesting)
Identical chunks of code and comments do not prove copying or copyright infringement.
How so? I thought that any excerpt of a work that is identifiable was still under copyright. By that I mean that you can't claim that my 'the' was stolen from one of your copyrighted works; but if I lifted a paragraph verbatim from your work and placed it in my work without citation, then it is copyright theft.
So, if code and comments are identical and in chunks, then aren't we presented with the same condition? I think so, especially when a 'chunk' so happens to be a complete subroutine. You infer that in your paragraph, but I think comments, routine names and variable names make the chunk of code identifiable and can substantiate a claim of copyright violation. Please clarify my misunderstanding.