Torvalds Says Linux IP Is Sound

An anonymous reader submits: "In an interview with CRN, Linus Torvalds says he's confident there won't be any IP problems discovered in Linux. In fact, Torvalds, says he was extra careful with issues like the IBM Read Copy Update code."

Re:Linus regard for customers

[ePhil_One]

In nutshell, this comment shows perfectly why Linux will never succeed in the mass market. It is built by developers...for developers. The end users are irrelevant.

Obviously you don't understand Linus's role in all this. Linus' customers ARE developers. Joe sixpack doesn't go download the latest kernel and install, he goes and picks up RedHat/Debian/Gentoo/Slackware/etc... from CompUSA. RedHat/Debian/Gentoo/Slackware/etc... are Linus's customers, they are the ones that deal with him

Re:Caught My Attention

[penisburd]

Patents can be used in GPL code, AFAIK, as long as the owner of said patent allows it. Of course, it is always good to be cautious here because if IBM decided to yank the license for their patent, a lot of people are affected, so they have to get strict licensing terms that prevents that from happeneing.

Re:Caught My Attention

[rossifer]

Because the GPL specifically discusses patent licensing. In section 7, it states that if you can't get a royalty free license to the relevant patents then the GPL can't be applied.

Which is meant to imply that (in this case) if IBM is willing to license the relevant patents to GPL licencees without royalty then it can hold those patents (and charge others for the use of them for non-GPL'd applications) and GPL code based on those patents. Which IBM is doing.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Outcomes of the SCO trial

[Anonymous Coward]

The lawsuit is about trade secrets. Once they're public, they aren't protected anymore. As long as IBM owns the copyright for the donated code, they can distribute the code. But IBM could possibly be liable for violating their contract if SCO can somehow convince a court that the code they donated is a Unix derivative and their contract doesn't allow that.

Re:Linus regard for customers

[manvantaradude]

In nutshell, this comment shows perfectly why Linux will never succeed in the mass market

Wrong. Linus works on the Linux kernel. The people that package various distributions worry about the customers they attempt to serve. Most folks that enjoy using Linux would laugh with Linus on this one.

Re:Caught My Attention

[Azog]

Like it says... the patents are licensed. Read the GPL, it is not incompatible with patents. It just says they have to be licensed so that they won't be a problem for people using the code.

So IBM wrote a license for their RCU patents which says (briefly) that anyone can use it in GPL'ed code.

And there you go - no conflict.

Of course IBM can still sue people who use the RCU stuff in NON-GPL'ed code, unless those people get a separate license to do so.

Re:He is spinning

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it's about (alegedly) violating an agreement. It has nothing to do with who owns what, but rather "you said you wouldn't do this, and then you did it".

Not that that's much more likely than any of the other hot (or body temp) air (or some gas) that SCO has been expelling, but the nature of the complaints (so far) filed are such that the can have no effect on anyone other than IBM; McBride's wet dreams not withstanding.

Re:Caught My Attention

[steveha]

[IBM] can hold those patents (and charge others for the use of them for non-GPL'd applications) and GPL code based on those patents.

Yes, exactly correct. This is why Linux has RCU and BSD doesn't. IBM is willing to license the patents for free for GPL code, but they still want to charge license fees for use in proprietary code.

Releasing something under BSD is effectively placing it in the public domain.

By the way, you sometimes see people claiming that "if there weren't any copyrights there would be no need for GPL" or some such. Not so. GPL uses copyright law to prevent people from taking free projects proprietary; BSD lets you do anything you want, including taking a free project, hacking it up slightly, and releasing it as a proprietary product.

steveha

Re:Say what?

[Bootsy Collins]

Oh brother, not this again.

Trade secrets, copyrights, and patents, are three different things, covered by three different sets of legislation and case law, and typically suggest three different approaches for relevant IP management. Most of Linus' comments in the article are about copyright. The LKML entry you reproduce is about patents. Patent issues have nothing to do with the dispute over RCU.

Re:Say what?

[NialScorva]

If you violate a patent knowingly, it trebles your penalties over violating it unknowingly.

Thus the simple solution is that engineers should *never* look at patents, so if they violate one, they can limit the damage.

Re:Damnit Linus!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in this case it would be Linux: the Linux _kernel_, not the GNU/Linux _operating system_.

Re:Damnit Linus!

[nathanh]

How many times does RMS have to tell you. IT'S GNU/linux.

No, SCO claims IBM copied code into the kernel, which is correctly termed Linux. RMS has clarified this already.

Re:Say what?

[Error27]

Linus actually said "we" and not "I". And by "we" he, of course, meant Andrea Arcangeli.

Here [iu.edu] is the link where Andrea says he had IBM send Linus a copy of the RCU patent paper work.

Re:Does it matter?

[panurge]

Of course. Right up to the Supreme Court, scientific evidence is only acceptable in courts of law after lawyers have pronounced on it (which of course, as arts graduates, they are so well qualified to do).

In fact, a lawyer actually commented on a case won by Abraham Lincoln in which evidence of (I believe) the Nautical Almanac that the night in question was moonless, that the evidence should not have been accepted and that the defense should have summoned an astronomer who could have been cross-examined by the prosecution. Lawyers fundamentally do not understand scientific method (several in my immediate family.)

Ummm, no

[TheConfusedOne]

What Linus was saying about patents was that he will not actively go and search out patents to see if a development is infringing. This is considered the proper practice for engineers as it would eliminate any possible clean-room development defense if they looked at the patents, AND (to make matters worse) patents are so horribly written that you may not even recognize an infringing item.

As for the RCU, he was extra careful because it was a known fact that IBM had a patent related to the code in question. So, he was being careful to make IBM formally license the patent before including the code.