SCO Claims Linux Lifted ELF 675
fymidos writes "SCO has finally spoken. According to this linuxworld article, they claim that linux illegally uses the ELF binary format, the JFS filesystem, the init code and some more 'copyrighted Unix header and interfaces'. Finally SCO makes its move. The JFS part was expected of course, but according to the article, as far as the ELF format is concerned 'the Tool Interface Standard Committee (TISC) came up with a ELF 1.2 standard' and 'granted users a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license" to the stuff'. Oh, and of course 'both Novell and the old SCO - as well as Microsoft, IBM and Intel - were on the committee'."
FreeBSD and linux compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
-SD
Can we have some details on the JSF (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More school yard fun (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, knowing what I know about SCO (only what I read here and on groklaw), I'm willing to believe that there is substantial similarity. However, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the code came from Linux (or more properly, IBM, perfectly within its rights) into SCO, and not the other way 'round.
Their lawyers have fudged so many facts, fumbled so many easy misses, that I wouldn't doubt this for a moment. "Please stay the RHAT case, because it will be decided by the IBM case," and "please dismiss the IBM counter-claim; it will be decided by the RHAT case."
-paul
It's about time! (Score:2, Interesting)
So I was expecting some "good news" from them.
Oh please .... make it stop! (Score:5, Interesting)
The JFS claims, that seems like an awful stretch as well, It does make more sense in targetting IBM though as I believe they had heavy involvement in JFS. Honestly I am not nearly as familiar with the ins and outs of it, but unless they are claiming something ridiculous like memcopy() or something...
Which brings us to number three, 'copyrighted unix headers and interfaces'
Now the interfaces, which could perhaps be interpreted as API... there is some chance that could have some fuzzy ground I imagine. But how on earth can the judge/court even take them seriously at this point?
Re:More school yard fun (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Sontag also says that any entities that ignore SCO's ELF copyrights are infringing."
Hello? Copyrights are for "copy" protection. Not "patent" protection. If you invent something new and fail to patent it, I can re-implement it all I want, copyright or no.
2. SCO also claims "substantial similarity" between the Read-Copy-Update (RCU) routine in Linux 2.6.5 and Linux patches and SCO's copyrighted work, specifically SVR4.2 MP.
Again, do they have a patent? If they don't, then they should STFU.
3. It thinks that Unix SMP 4.2 System V initialization (init) code was copied into Linux 2.6, that there's "substantial similarity" between the user level synchronization (ULS) routines in Linux and Unix, that its Unix System V IPC code was copied into Linux 2.4.20 and that copyrighted Unix header and interfaces were copied into Linux.
Oooo... it's similar! Well, that just cinches it, doesn't it. It's not like anyone would ever re-implement a design they liked. I better go take the wheels off my Chevy. It's too similar to a cart and horse.
4. It also says the journaled file system (JFS) module from later versions of AIX, which SCO believes may derive from the JFS Unix, is in Linux 2.6. - MOG
Just to reiterate, SCO is not reading their own contracts. What IBM develops is IBMs. Plain and simple.
These guys ought to be tried and convicted for barratry, regardless of whether their legal counsel is this stupid or not.
Re:Why wasn't this brought up in 1995? (Score:5, Interesting)
This may be a hard sell to the court since they were not a party to the original effort and they can't seem to find any of the documents transferring any rights from old SCO to Caldera/TSG.
We'll see if it staves off the inevitable for a while longer at the aug 4th hearing. The best part is that the more deperate they act the more chance the principals will end up in jail when all of this fraud is exposed.
Claims on 2.6 ? It was but a gleam in Linus' eye! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now this gets entertaining (Score:5, Interesting)
So they have just got themselves into the aiming calculations of the entire computer industry including the other big Blue, not just IBM.
Anyway, do not see a problem even if they win this one. While I want to puke just at the thought of ECOFF, it is if IIRC (C) intel and HP and all it will take to get linux to use them will be one big rebuild and a rewrite of libdl. That is if Intel and HP do not decide to put the dl for ECOFF into the public domain.
In, btw, this is something on which Cisco can buy them just to shut them up (if everyone agrees to go home and stop the lawsuits).
Re:FreeBSD and linux compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO has no standing. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the seller sold the copyright with the explicit understanding that ELF was in the public domain, NewSCO can not claim anything.
If someone "exceeded" their authority it's a matter for the parties involved at the time.
ELF?!? (Score:1, Interesting)
ELF Info (Score:5, Interesting)
Help from SCO on ELF compatability in SCO OpenServer [sco.com]
Summary of a.out, COFF and ELF from a FreeBSD pov [unixguide.net]
Nice descriptions of various BFFs (binary file format) including ELF [uq.edu.au]
Re:More school yard fun (Score:2, Interesting)
I admit to not knowing much about the GPL, but if it does turn out that the code went from Linux -> SCO, doesn't that mean that the SCO property would be subject to the GPL (what with it being "viral" and all, right?)
Maybe this is why they are doing all this. They've realized that their code is vulnerable, and so to protect it, they have to attack the GPL, lest they go down in flames.
Re:More school yard fun (Score:3, Interesting)
The GPL is very clear that if someone tries to use the GPL on software that they have no right to use the GPL on, then they can't use the GPL for it. This means, if someone GPL's someone elses code, it is considered NOT GPLed at all, and it never was, regardless of any claim. In order to license any software, you must first possess the RIGHT to do so.
Only the legal owner of any code can choose the license his/her software is under. No one can take that away by illegally releasing it under a different license. It is no different than if I stole the source for Windows 98, then "released in under the GPL". That doesn't make it GPL because I never had the rights to do so.
Re:Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless the code to implement ELF is identical in Linux, I don't see anything like a case here. And if SCOX had a patent on ELF, we'd know it by now.
ELF vs a.out - Gentoo anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the worst case scenario is that SCO get a tempory injunction blocking the use of ELF (nevermind that no judge would actually agree that to not issue on would cause irreprable harm, given that it's 9 years old). Therefore, there is some merit in ensureing that it is possible to build a modern Linux system on a.out format binaries. Additionally, it torpeados thier claim that ELF is the 'magic pixie dust that they stole to make Linux work'.
This sounds like a case for a source based distribution. Gentoo, being the most used source based distro sounds like a place that might be able to do that. Alas, I'm not familiar enough with Gentoo to comment - so can anyone who is give a definiative answear on whether Gentoo can be used to give a system without ELF binaries. I undertand that there will likely be a bootstrap step (I remember the a.out -> elf shift in the first place, after all).
It's not just (not even, I should say) fear of SCO, but there is significant meaning in being able to switch executable formats - that's a lot of flexability for the future.
So, a.out Gentoo, anyone?
Just buy SCO (Score:1, Interesting)
The exact price if you buy all the stocks is less then $70 million. However, the debts may be a cause for concern.
http://ir.sco.com/stock.cfm
So any takers?
ELF, COFF, and PE (Score:5, Interesting)
ELF is not "similar to Microsoft DLLs", or that's badly worded. It's similar to Microsoft PE format.
ELF is derived from COFF. It was mostly a rewrite of COFF with some bad assumptions and nn-portabilities fixed. It so happens that Microsoft's PE (PE-COFF) format is also derived from COFF and is very similar to ELF. If the format was somehow "protected" (which wouldn't be via copyright as pointed out elsewhere), then Microsoft are also guilty of copying. If SCO really own the copyrights to Unix (they don't), and if copyright applied here (it doesn't), then MS are in the same boat with everybody else. Lucky for them that SCO don't have a leg to stand on
Tim
Re:The Copyright Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I feel this is a good analogy; whoever wrote the first "Whodunnit" story (probably that dude who wrote the Bible) could claim "Murder She Wrote", "Columbo" and "Hong Kong Phoowee" are all derivative works.
Stephen King (deceased at 54?) would be dragging Dean Koontz through the courts by his lank, greasy hair, and there'd be no Dallas ripoffs... hmm, actually this is making a compelling argument...
Re:Time to move to Mach-o (Score:3, Interesting)
Best of all it affects SCO. If ELF support has to be dropped from gcc, what will they use for a compiler?
TIS, UNIX International, and ELF 1.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a handy reference document for SCO, the version 1.2 of the specification. Too bad it wasn't the first published version:
Google for "pfmt11.pdf"; here is the most interesting and damning excerpt:
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"Some of the major reasons for selecting this format are the public nature of the specification and the fact that the PLSIG and ABICC standardization committees can enhance its formats."
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This version came out of USL and UNIX International, who are jointly credited with the creation of the ELF 1.1 standard. Even if USL could argue rights, the current SCO can't. This standard, along with the DWARF standard, TET, ETET, and the last draft of Specification 1170 (the original Single UNIX Specification) were published on the UNIX International FTP server. UNIX International was a legal agent for USL at the time of publication.
If you want to check into anything, check into the contractual agreements between USL and UI with regard to what rights UI did or did not have. You will find that they had full rights to publish the standard on behalf of their member USL.
In the interests of full disclosure, I was a Novell/USG ("UNIX Systems Group") employee at the time. Novell/USG was comprised of the NWU ("NetWare for UNIX"), NUC ("NetWare UNIX Client"), and the former USL. I'm one of the people who rescued the public content of the UNIX International FTP server and found it a new home at various other corporate sites when UNIX International effectively disolved in 1994. One of the documents rescued was this very document.
-- Terry
Re:Why wasn't this brought up in 1995? (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened with TISC in 1995 is irrelevant [google.com]. As the Usenet post from 1993 shows, the ELF support in Linux does not come from any code that TISC released into the public domain in 1995 with the support of SCO. It was a clean room implementation based on documented interfaces from "SYSTEM V RELEASE 4 Programmer's Guide: >ANSI C and Programming Support Tools" (ISBN 0-13-933706-7).
There is no copyright issue here SCO, but have fun taking the US Navy to court over it.
Regardless (Score:3, Interesting)
The torture policy from August 2001 can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/doc
Re:Time to move to Mach-o (Score:3, Interesting)
My thoughts also. The microkernel crowd in general seems to agree that Mach is not a good microkernel. (L4 is much better.) And writing a monolithic kernel on top of a microkernel, rather than taking advantage of the full microkernel flexibility...I don't see the point.
Can anyone explain to me why Apple did this with MkLinux, why NeXT did this with NeXTSTEP, and why Apple continued it with OS X? I love OS X's user interface and blend of Unix and old-school Apple stuff...but this one decision, it just seems so dumb.
Re:More school yard fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, what? Copyrights and patents are orthogonal. They cover two completely different things.
According to the USPTO, if something (like software) can be copyrighted, then it *cannot* be patented - although aspects of it (like an algorithm) might qualify for a patent, the code itself would not. The general rule is that patents protect ideas, copyright protects expressions or implementations.
This is essentially what SCO is claiming with their copyright arguments, as I understand it.
In order to determine what SCO is claiming, one must ask which day of the week it is.
which is not to say those formats cannot be patented, just that it's not what is going on here
Nobody is claiming that - they're claiming that the format *is not* patented, and that (by definition) you *cannot* copyright a format, so therefore SCO's claims are baseless.
Unless they can show that the kernel's ELF loader contains code copyrighted by them, they have no case.
What a surprise, or not. (Score:4, Interesting)
The board is surely behind this and i suspect the SCO laywers are furious. Now they have to explain to the court why this was so damn hard to bring forward in a court with two orders hanging around their neck while it was this easy to tell the media.
Share price up tomorrow and then as theese unfounded allegations get shot down it will fall again.
Demise dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to think that way too, before "I made $10 million bucks and all I got was this crummy t-shirt."
Seriously. Built an early ISP. Sold it for a ton of money. Raised an additional $20 million to chase UUNET and PSI's coat-tails. Had a neutral broker in the whole deal steal the money and the company. His attorneys stalled everyone out long enough to get money to offshore banks. We all won the suits, and never saw a dime. Company was long dead by the time the court system got done.
What I didn't understand at the time was that people like this know how to make money going down. Study what they call penny stock companies (ala bulletin board stocks/pink sheets). You can run one of these that does absolutely nothing, never files SEC documents, and make a nice income. Here's the middle item of the underwear gnomes strategy:
1. Incorporate a dummy privately trading C corporation which you and your friends own.
2. Use your public bulletin board company to acquire the dummy company. Claim the dummy company has some mystical super secret technology, or better yet, a patent claim against someone like Amazon.com, Priceline, Ebay, etc. When you buy it, it not only loads you and your friends up with more shares of stock (you buy it with the public company stock, and if you're smart, you do much of this w/ registered stock you can immediately dump), but it puts a bunch of press releases out about the event and gets half of the stock buying market going in a feeding frenzy buying your public stock.
3. Dump a bunch of your newly accumulated shares. Ride the stock price down to $0.001.
Repeat steps 1-3 over and over. Oh, when creditors come, make sure you drive the price to zero again (this makes it worthless for them to come after you and even keeps them from pushing involuntary bankruptcy which would take over your company). Claim you were an innocent investor who lost millions too. If pressed on where financial documents are, make sure you had hired some stupid kids and promoted them to CEO by promosing them multi million dollar paychecks. Have them sign all the IRS and state revenue department documents, but don't ever let them actually have control of the bank accounts. This sends the IRS and SEC after them and will stick them with tax obligations for decades. During this lying low time, acquire a few of your dummy companies and load back up on stock.
Sound far fetched? It happens every single day. The SEC told us it could not do anything about these and could only worry about the big Worldcom sized matters because they were "underfunded and overworked." The rest of the story is that it takes financial and political clout to get the SEC to investigate. Common folks don't matter.
So is there any wonder that the names behind SCO include power hitters from both parties and much of Utah's power base? Just another way of taking money from the lower classes...
RCU and Sequent (Score:5, Interesting)
I was working with CBIS (Cincinnati Bell Information Systems) in the early '80s when Sequent S81 was running Dynix/ptx with SVR and BSD interface flavours.
The technical sales reps were very hot on RCU and how it worked with NUMA to scale the system. 32 way SMP of 386's might not seem much now, but it was significant back then.
Their plans were to have multiple OS flavours under Dynix, relying on RCU to provide scalability to AIX, SunOS/Solaris, and other operating systems that would sit on top of the monolithic ptx core.
From day one, RCU and NUMA were marketted by Sequent as seperate products targetted at many operating systems and vendors, not as just a part of Dynix.
I'm tired of watching SCO's insanity. The industry did not develop in a vaccuum -- there are hundreds if not thousands of us who are witness to how the systems were really developed, despite some IP vulture corp's claims otherwise.
It's a disgrace that SCO's legal team and IP trolls haven't been arrested for fraud and locked up by now. They have no legal case, they never did, and they never will. It's time for them to be spanked and sent to sit in a jail-cell corner for 20 years each.
Re:Errr... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh dear, my new kitchen which I am slowly installing, might just resemble some small corner of Darl's kitchen, the washing machine, tumble drier and dishwasher might be arranged in the same order for example...... I think I need a good schyster!
Microsoft strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been wondering about this as well, though really see the SCO deal as more of a trial balloon and not the actual mother of all battles for open source.
It really doesn't seem like Microsoft's approach (remember how many billions they have and the pride that comes with the wealth and dominance). A proxy battle is more interesting as a means of testing the waters and seeing how the open source world responds. Where are they resiliant, and where are they weak? Toss pathetic little SCO and their delusionary CEO at them (much in the manner Hillary Clinton is 'endorsing' Kerry/Edwards). How often have they acquired a weak product and threw it in the competitive pool prematurely, fully knowing it wouldn't swim - only to come back in version 3 or 4 and destroy the competition (after having learned all they needed).
In this respect, the more interesting game is the one not being played - the game of omissions, unmoved pieces, etc. Where is F/OSS weak and scrambling? You can bet Microsoft is designating many millions to carefully observing this battle - their dominance depends on it.
Microsoft does not play to lose. They won't let SCO hit the real IP issues - rather have them throw items like ELF, JFS and header similarities that you know will fail. This is textbook Art of War.
*scoove*
Smallest ELF program (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh please .... make it stop! (Score:3, Interesting)
If SCOG thought it had purchased the ELF format from SCO, it certainly might have a case...against the old SCO. Of course, those documents have been mysteriously lost, so who knows what Caldera thought it was buying...but it certainly couldn't have actually bought ELF, regardless of how much it might have been mislead into thinking so.
Hey Darl, got some news for you! (Score:3, Interesting)
/me stands back and waits for Sony to crush SCO like a bullant that's just bitten them.
Re:Truth Elves ??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why wasn't this brought up in 1995? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the article, these ELF charges are part of two new documents filed in the IBM case.
One can only conclude that this is a SCO shenanigan aimed at blocking IBM's motion for summary judgement regarding noninfringment of SCO's copyrights. IANAL, but Autozone's lawyers (and the folks over at Groklaw) seem to think that if IBM gets the declaration, SCO will instantly lose its case against Autozone (and probably DaimlerChrysler and Red Hat, too). So SCO really needs to delay that judgement as long as possible.
On the other hand, if SCO was serious about this ELF stuff, you'd think they should have brought it up a year ago when it filed against IBM, or at some point fairly early on in discovery.
Re:Of course they have to file something (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO's real problem is that the lawsuits are starting to reach the point where SCO loses. AutoZone got a stay. Damlier-Chrysler has moved for summary judgement, and they have a procedural hearing tomorrow at which SCO probably won't look good. Early next month, the big one, IBM's motion for summary judgement on the copyright claims, goes before the judge.
In the IBM case, SCO is frantically filing motions in all directions, desperately trying to stall a ruling on summary judgement or to raise issues that will convince the judge not to dismiss the copyright claims. If they lose on that one, it's the beginning of the end.
Re:Demise dollars (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand my backup plan is to go into hacking myself and steal about US$900,000 from the jerks doing this to us. As long as the FBI doesn't care I guess I might as well. Oh yeah, the local police, who have an Internet crime department, claim to be unable to deal with any crimes involving the Internet.
Added to your story about the SEC I think my confidence in the governments ability to help me is pretty low. Nice that my tax dollars are paying to protect only big businesses.