SCO: FSF Reply To GPL Claims, Conference Sponsors Back Off? 580
bkuhn writes "Last week's Wall Street Journal (and other news outlets) carried statements by SCO's Mark Heise challenging the "legality" of FSF's GPL.
FSF has
issued a response to this baseless claim." Also, mcgroarty points out that Intel and HP seem to be backing swiftly away from their sponsorship of SCO's in-progress Las Vegas conference (a EWeek article suggests that "Intel Corp. was recently billed as one of the lead sponsors of SCO's Forum 2003 conference here this week, but then suddenly disappeared from all marketing and press material for the forum. It appears that Hewlett-Packard Co. also got cold feet. As late as last week, SCO was telling attendees that HP would be giving a partner keynote at the forum on Tuesday morning. But on Sunday the schedule of events given to attendees when they registered makes no mention of an HP keynote...") M adds: Now we've got a few stories from the conference: News.com.com and Eweek. Despite some bad headline writing at News.com, SCO simply continues to employ the Chewbacca defense, showing no code to back up their claims. Amusingly, Darl McBride started his rant about copyright infringement by copying some footage from a James Bond movie. Bravo!
Irony - please contact your employer (Score:5, Interesting)
I was disturbed enough by Darl McBride's statement last Friday (which he repeated again today in Vegas) that the "silent majority" of companies in the IT industry support SCO's recent actions that I had my company release a public statement of opposition to SCO [pensamos.com]. It would seem that the latest thing SCO is trying to claim ownership of is the opinion of companies that have been silent on the issue, so I am calling on companies to break the silence. If you have control over such things in your company, please get them to either copy the statement of opposition to SCO [pensamos.com] that I wrote to your company's website or write and post your own statement of opposition. Let the world know that SCO is strongly opposed within the industry and that they are truly fighting to destroy the intellectual property rights that they claim to be championing.
Picket? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is John Moore? (from Yahoo SCOX board) (Score:5, Interesting)
>"The company's arguments seemed to hold weight with the SCO faithful. "I think (they've) got a strong case," said SCO reseller John Moore, the president of Moore Computer Consultants, based in Pembroke Pines, Florida."
>Is this company the same as www.mcci.com ? Where at this link [mcci.com] it mentions the president of the company is called "Terry Moore" ?? And it seems to be very much a Microsoft shop?!?
Good catch
I got some even better ones for you:
Here is www.mcci.com searched by google for the term "Windows"
tinyurl.com/kf24
Here is www.mcci.com searched by google for "Unix"
tinyurl.com/kf2a
Want something REALLY revealing? Try this: this is www.mcci.com searched by google for "SCO"
tinyurl.com/kf2l
Judge for yourself if they are a Microsoft shop or a Unix shop. I wonder what they were even doing there at SCO Forum? SCO isn't even mentioned on their website ANYWHERE. I don't think they are a reseller of SCO's Unix, with no mention of SCO anywhere on their webpage - how could they be?
And oh... (Score:1, Interesting)
The SCO Forum crowd applauded when SCO executives announced that an upcoming version of its OpenServer [... will ...] provide better compatibility with Microsoft Windows through version 3 of Samba
I guess not all Open Source is bad in SCOwonderland. Fuckers.
Re:They shoot horses, don't they? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Lines of disputed code" (Score:1, Interesting)
"... executives displayed the lines of disputed code..."
Can anybody confirm this? If true, it would mean
at lot of attendees whom I presume didn't sign a
NDA finally got to see the code. I doubt it's
true, but you never know.
SCO shows the alleged "stolen" code (Score:4, Interesting)
I do wonder if the investors didn't have to sign NDAs and if someone was able to take note of those "stolen" lines of code.
Best quotes from the article:
McBride said pattern-recognition experts SCO hired have ferreted out a slew of infringing code in Linux.
Yeah sure, who are these pattern-recognition experts and are they your executives?
"They have found already a mountain of code," McBride said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."
Only thing I can say about this is it sure sounds like a good PR FUD line to use to increase investor confidence.
Taking the wind out of their sails... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, if we could get a hold of their evidence we could either expose it as a fraud or, in the unlikely event that there is some truth to their claims, clean up Linux source to be legal. But since they require an NDA to see the evidence, you'd have to break the law to show that Linux isn't breaking any laws.
If only we could see their evidence legally without signing an NDA...
So then I got to thinking. If we knew what compiler and compiler options SCO used when they built their version of unix, we could build linux with that compiler and compiler options and have some pattern matching utility search for potentially duplicate machine code.
Then, we could look at the Linux source for the code in question, and follow the electronic paper trail to find when it was first submitted. If we could have proof that the Linux submitter was the original author, then we have proof that at least some of SCO's alleged pirated code was, in fact, pirated from Linux by SCO. If the code was of questionable origin, then we could clean-room reverse-engineer a replacement.
Anyone know how one might identify the compiler SCO used on a particular release of unix?
Why challenge the GPL? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FSF calls Redmond. Come in Redmond. Anyone ther (Score:3, Interesting)
Another company known for not respecting IP... (Score:3, Interesting)
Try googling on mysql "progress software" gpl or click this link [tinyurl.com]
Re:Sco Is reportedly showing the code (Score:2, Interesting)
heard through the grape vine (Score:5, Interesting)
Can anyone get copies of the slides to verify this?
HP (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They shoot horses, don't they? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been more interested in what the original Caldera folks, Ransom Love and particularly Bryan Sparks, make of this. SCO was always an uninteresting company (to me, at least), but Caldera wasn't. Even though they got less interesting even before their transformation into total dweebitude, they started out pursuing "pipe dreams" of Linux credibility in the enterprise and a viable desktop Linux before anyone else did. The "Linux will take over the world" mentality has its antecedents in the work Sparks and Love were doing back at Novell circa 1993-94 on the Corvair/Expose project. (And as I've noted before, it's ironic to see the anti-SCO crowd dragging Ray Noorda's name through the mud so frequently, given that he was a lunatic anti-Microsoft crusader--Corvair was, at least according to Infoworld reports of the day, an attempt to use a Linux kernel with DR-DOS to make a 32-bit Windows-compatible OS before Windows 95 was out.)
Love is largely out of the computer scene these days, I think, but Sparks isn't--he's running DeviceLogics and owns DR-DOS (again). Anyone tried to interview him?
SCO's Profits (Score:5, Interesting)
In a report card update on the company over the past year since he joined, McBride said he had acheived his first mission, which was to increase company value. A year ago the stock was trading around $.66 and the company was capitalized at some $8 million. Days after McBride took the helm at SCO, the Nasdaq sent a delisting notice informing SCO that it needed to get its stock price above $1 again to avoid being delisted. This raised customer concerns about the financial security of the firm and its viability. SCO now has a market capitalization of more than $130 million, McBride said. A year ago the company was sitting on just two quarters of cash and was about "to go out," but a belt tightening effort and aggressive sales campaign had changed that. "We have tripled our cash position over the past four months. SCO is actually going into business, not out of it, and we have turned the company around. We are proud of that, and the future going forward is bright. We have no long-term debt, cash balances are improved and we have reduced costs," he said.
As you can see from the above more proof that the FUD attacks against Linux has only served to increase their bottom line. McBride admits this publicly at a confrence. While at the same time he's dumping the same stock he claims to have turned around. So it seems to me that he does not have much faith in the company. Another sad fact is the silence from the SEC about all this. Clearly this is stock manipulation in the worst light. A small company on the verge of going out of business begins to spread rumors that other companies owe them big bucks and suddenly people jump on the bandwagon becuase they know the stock will shoot up if such a case won in court. In fact the stock has gone up over 1000% in the last 4 months and people have made a profit at the expense of Linux and frankly I dont see how the damage can be reversed at all. Yes more people know aobut Linux but now they're just saying "There's that OS. Looks nice but I'm not going to buy it and have to pay a fee to SCO" Seriously I heard that the other day at a CompUSA when someone was considering a copy of RedHat Pro for 99.00 which I sorely missed by one day cause I misread the label *cry* but back to the topic here. Linux is damaged, the SEC is doing nothing, and McBride and his cronies are raking in the cash. I'm sure the Jailed company Exec's are screaming from their cells to get the SCO crew to join them also. Must be torture to watch someone commit the same crimes you're imprisioned for but nobody's doing anything.
Life will be fun if the court decides that SCO is in error. But if such a decision comes about the stock will be worth
Another tidbit about SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO Blasts IBM, RedHat Counterclaims [crn.com]
Best part about it:
"We're fighting for a right in the industry to make a living selling software," McBride said. "The whole notion that software should be free is something SCO doesn't stand for. We have drawn the line. We're supposed to be excited about that and we're not."
Now, if I'm not mistaken, SCO uses the GCC compiler, and Samba (and is using Samba 3 as a big part of their new OS plans) which are both free software. I'm also sure they are using Apache and many other free software packages. It seems free software is just fine and dandy in SCO's eyes as long as it's not infringing on their marketshare.
mewyn dy'ner
Boycott SCO? How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cancel CRN subscription (Score:5, Interesting)
Businesses needs to learn that if they support SCO they wil be treated like pariahs.
Re:FSF calls Redmond. Come in Redmond. Anyone ther (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They shoot horses, don't they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this would be a great time for the Samba team to serve SCO a C&D. I'm sure someone will be willing to step up and handle the legal fees? IBM? Redhat? Anyone else?
Re:SCO to sell Samba product... (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't keep SCO from distributing a GPL'd Samba unless the Samba folks can show that SCO has violated Samba's copyright terms (ie, the GPL as it applies to Samba).
However, it seems to me that Linus and other Linux copyright holders CAN and should demand that SCO stop "licensing" Linux. SCO can't license "their" part of Linux and still distribute the whole kernel as GPL. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too with respect to the GPL - and that's giving them the benefit of the doubt about their supposed IP rights in the kernel.
Re:They shoot horses, don't they? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't worry, SCO is dead.
I honestly have no idea how such lunatics could get to run a company. "Don't get involved in a land war in Asia" probably is 2nd to "Don't get involved in litigation with IBM".
The only possible rational I can think of for what SCO is doing is that MS subversively decided to send them running into the machine guns to "slow down Linux".
No it isn't. (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, the GPL is the same dam way...
The GPL, whether you agree to it or not, does not reassign any copyrights on any code you link to GPLed code or remove your right to do anything you wish with code you wrote.
Also, despite popular Slashdot urban legend, the GPL does not automatically turn your code into GPLed code if you release it linked to GPLed code. It offers you that option (as well as the option of releasing your code under any other GPL-compatible license) as one way to allow you to redistribute works derived from GPLed code without having to negotiate a new license with the author or violate copyright law. If you ignore these options and release an amalgam of your own code and GPLed code, it means that you're violating copyright law, not that you've accidentally relicensed your code or relinquished your copyright to it.
And the fact that you don't relinquish rights to anything you write is the most important distinction between the GPL license and the contracts that SCO claim to have with Sequent and IBM: code that you write and link to GPL'ed code is still your code. If you want to legally distribute this code linked with the GPL'ed code, then you have to distribute it under a GPL-compatible license, but while that license does grant additional rights to others it does not remove any rights from you. If, say, you write a new feature for Emacs, you cannot legally redistribute your modified Emacs except under a mixed GPL+compatible license, but you can then take your new code and tack it on to your own text editor which you may distribute under any license you want.
According to SCO's claims, as soon as someone linked NUMA code with System V code, somehow SCO gained the right not just to use that NUMA code themselves, but to prevent the original authors from using the code how they wish! Under that theory SCO could have sued IBM for distributing "their" code in AIX even if IBM had never touched Linux. It's of course theoretically possible that Sequent or IBM signed such a contract, or even that at some point IBM signed a contract which transfers ownership of the whole damn company to SCO, but I wouldn't take SCO's lawyers' (much less their executives') word for it after reading about their ludicrous ideas about copyright law "invalidating" the GPL.
Re:Why challenge the GPL? (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed.
I seriously doubt there is any sort of smoking gun on paper. If MS or Sun was directly involved, then it was some board level people in a face to face meeting. The only remotely possible way I could see that coming out is if the rumored push for RICO charges got some steam or maybe an SEC probe. Basically, a weak SCO sister would be offered a deal to roll over his boardroom butt buddies or be the scapegoat who gets to go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison. I don't see that happening and I don't see any reporters digging up anything either.
Re:Irony - please contact your employer (Score:2, Interesting)
"Presenting what he claimed was a literal copyright infringement in Linux of Unix code, Sontag showed examples of identical registration of variables, lines of code and comments in the same sequence."
Identical registration of variables!
Identical lines of code!
Comments in the same sequence!
"Sontag said SCO has gone through millions of lines of code and developed methods to find similarities. "We have rocket scientists who have applied their spectral recognition and pattern analysis to software, which has yielded amazing results."
Pattern analysis is statistics. And they used rocket scientists to use statistical methods to get 'amazing results' that there is some nonzero correlation resulting from a pattern analysis?
I hope the judge too will know that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
"Sontag noted that a copyright case law also made clear that the quantity of code is not at issue, but rather how important that code is."
So obviously there is virtually no code to show by SCO...
Oh, and leave out the 'int frame_length;" from the code above and the code doesn't even compile! Look how important it is. Yeah, so is the semicolon that SCO copied from Linux at least 5e6 times!
By the way, there is no mention of proof of origin. Even if there is copied code, then how do you know SCO isn't the thief here.
Oh, and this is the killer:
"Turning to derivative works that have found their way into Linux, Sontag said these include NUMA (non uniform memory access), Read Copyright Update (RCU), Journal File System and schedulers."
"NUMA (non uniform memory access)" Access? Since when did the 'A' in NUMA not stand for Architecture?
"Read Copyright Update (RCU)" That cracks me up. He's not talking about "Read Copy Update". Fact's don't matter to him. He just quickly browsed the Linunx Scalability Effort web pages and is just taking some random acronyms from it without even knowing what it means.
"and schedulers"... Yeah, just the one word he remembered right under NUMA from the Linux Scalability Effort [sourceforge.net] home page.
Even the money argument he makes doesn't hold a stake in proportions. He's claiming to be so good for shareholder value that now the market cap of SCO is at $130 up form $8... That is so little money compared to how much money has been made and saved in the same period of time.
Plus legally, he's making the classic move of somebody who knows he's losing an argument. He's switching discussion subjects and including side issues that don't matter for the case at hand: the contract dispute with IBM that he filed.
So I would like to conclude with this:
Technically, Financially, and Legally, McBride is full of shit.
Let's just hope the system works and chews him up and spits him out.
Re:We are up to a million lines of code! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is about 5.4 million lines in all of the
Have we yet proven SCO is full of it?
mewyn dy'ner
I was just there (Score:3, Interesting)
McBride showed 60-100 lines of code. They were precise including the comments. However its possible that the duplicate code was from RCU from sequent so the verdict is still out. I am not a coder and McBride did not say which file it was.
Anyway he showed more examples in the linux kernel including the SysV initialization code. THe Unixware version was similiar accept it had break/switch statements while the linux version did not. McBride went on saying that 829,000 lines of code were way too similiar and I could view them if I sign a NDA. I refused.
For more info look here [com.com].
IBM may have including code from sequent and the courts have to find out which license IBM was bound by. I personally think its evil that SCO can claim ownership of something they do not even own because of a piece of paper 15 years ago. Its rediculous.
Boycott SCO's lawyers (Score:3, Interesting)
But the ethics of civil offense are quite different: There is no inherent right to abuse our legal system and attack the innocent through it on false charges. Judges can - and we hope they will in this case - sanction the lawyers who enable such actions. But even beyond that, the lawyers working with SCO deserve complete sanction by civil society, and particularly by the tech industry they are trying to carve a niche out for themselves in. We must make it very clear that any company which hires them in the future will be subject to boycott. Any news organization which hires them for commentary - on anything - will be subject to boycott. Anyone who invites them to attend their party or join their club will be subject to boycott. We must learn to see them as tainted by their association with SCO in a way which in which a criminal defense attorney should not be seen as tainted. We must treat them as the moral equals of child abusers and meth manufacturers, and give them the same cold welcome in our neighborhoods.
Re:Not quite what I wrote (Score:2, Interesting)
You do realize that these programmers aren't actually being paid less. We have a massive concentration of wealth in the United States... it's us who are paid far too much. They can work at half the salary you were (Before you were underbid/outclassed) and essentially be making a sum worth 10x that in their country. For what you can buy one house for, they could buy 10 of the same house. So really, they are making a hell of alot more money than you were. It's just that money is essentially devalued in the US because we have too much of it.
Re:Irony - please contact your employer (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by that, but it sounds similar to RAID-1 over the network. I have used the free enbd module (Enhanced Network Block Device driver) and Linux's built-in software RAID to implement that. It's all free. Is that similar to what you were looking for?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We are up to a million lines of code! (Score:3, Interesting)
Hrm, those figures are suspicious. Look at this:
Those numbers are within the same ballpark as SCO's claims. I think SCO is counting every line in every file that touches the 3 technologies.
The SMP example is noteworthy because many matching files are simply including an SMP header (smp_lock.h) so they can use spin_lock and spin_unlock. That's necessary for the code to be SMP-safe. SCO must intend to argue that anything linked against the SMP core constitutes a "derivative work". So because SCO claims to own the SMP core they also claim ownership of all code linked against it. That would explain the 750kLOC figure they've been throwing around.
http://www.sco.com/2003forum/sponsors.html is 404? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems that SCO has really big problems with sponsors. The sponsor page is done.
Re:We are up to a million lines of code! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The End is Near (Score:2, Interesting)
Man someone should doctor up this photo so that Slashdot would have two borg icons... we could replace caldera with the SCO-mcbride-borg adaptation...
Nah, not the Borg. Either the Ferengi or the Pakleds ("you are smart...we look for things that make us go...")