SCO Berates Linus' Approach To Kernel Contributions 947
Matthias_305 writes "The New York Times has an article about a new court document in which SCO critizes Linus Torvalds touting the 'inability and/or unwillingness of the Linux process manager, Linus Torvalds, to identify the intellectual property origins of contributed source code.' They claim to have got evidence from a conversation on the kernel mailing list in which Torvalds advocates programmers shouldn't care about patents. According to the article he stands by his view which is at least 'candid'." On a related note, BobDowling points to a proposal at The Inquirer ("Shutting down SCO's FUD machine") regarding SCO's claims. "SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA but the article gives a mechanism for publishing appropriate MD5 checksums which allow code trees to be compared without anyone else seeing the code. This is offered as a means to locate the source of SCO's contested code. ... This mechanism gives a concrete procedure that SCO can be challenged to follow as part of the community's "put up or shut up" response. There would be no threat to SCO's claimed IPR."
free link (Score:5, Informative)
Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Funny)
GO LINUS, GO!
of course Linus is going to have little regard for software patents. He's a European and that's one bit of stupidity we have yet to import from the US (please God we never do).
I'm surprised SCO hasn't tried to persuade Linus to support them. "Join me my son!". ;-)
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Informative)
Emphasis on the "yet".
Have a look at this European Commission proposal to make all useful ideas patentable [ffii.org]
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
As for software patents, and patents on methods, they don't contribute to increased invention and development unless you restrict patents to what truly IS groundbreaking or a Columbi egg. If patents were more difficult to get, there would be an added incentive to try to come up with something more revolutionary than what people have been using, but not describing, for years.
Regards,
--
*Art
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to be clear, U.S. patents expire 20 years after filing. Patents, unlike copyrights, have been holding the line against term expansion pretty well over the years. Copyrights (though theoretically limited to life of the author + about 70 years) keep getting extended so as to be effectively perpetual. Trademarks are yours as long as you use and protect them.
Also, there is _always_ an economic incentive to invent something better. If I invent a better mouse trap, people will buy it over your old-but-still-patented mousetrap.
A corporation and bunch of lawyers won't ever invent anything and shouldn't be allowed to own a patent
Some fields of research require a $5M or a $50M laboratory and a team of twenty. There are some inventions that will not and cannot be made with a chemistry set in someone's basement. (Of course, software generally is not such a field.)
the patents should be non-transferable and with a relatively short patent period.
We already have a relatively short patent period: 20 years. Formerly patented material continues to pour into the public domain every single week, unlike copyright.
Patents already have periodic maintenance fees that must be paid every few years during the 20-year term.
These fees increase in size in the later years and they are higher for large companies than for small ones. (Both notions that might help with the copyright problem.)
Non-transferrability, now, there is an interesting idea. Let's talk about that.
Normally a Linus fan. (-: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Informative)
then he's fine (Score:4, Insightful)
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact."
So, there's no way he could have known in advance if a contribution came from somewhere else? Sounds like they are pointing at the process as the problem, rather than setting Linus up to take the hit.
Yeah, what else will he say in a newsgroup? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so when some developer who is ignorant of US IP law asks Linus for his advice on a patent problem, Linus basically told him to STFU. And it was a good thing he did too - look at the riffraff who ends up pointing at things like that. What if the company owning the patent in question found that email? They wouldn't have to work at all to build a case - you've already proven that Linus and the other developers were aware of your IP at time they were developing a competing product. How smart would it be to document this freaking publicly?
Now, I expect Linus was expecting his flock to read bteween the lines there - it's not good necessarily to be ignorant of other patents - but it's a bad idea to let anyone, inside the company or out, to know about the knowledge. You can't exactly make this official corporate policy, but unofficial policy should be "do your own patent searches. Talk about them with no one."
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was also told explicitly that, partially because of the above, violating someone else's patents is essentially unavoidable. Therefore the purpose of patenting things is to have a bigger stick when you sit down to discuss any patent dispute.
So you have tons of engineers inventing things and deliberately remaining ignorant of whether anyone else has invented it, then trying to patent it for the sole purpose of ensuring that if it turns out to already be invented, that inventor will be violating some other patent that did get through.
Does that not sound completely fscked to anyone?
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Informative)
It's nice to see that Linus is getting a bit more riled up about SCO now that SCO has started taking personal potshots at him. In a recent interview [com.com]:
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not normally a Linus fan but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus doesn't have a shit to do with it if something is pushed into the kernel which happens to be someone else's IP, because everything contributed not from linus is someone elses IP.
He doesn't get assigned the rights from the contributors, and he doesn't distribute the kernel (i.e. he doesn't own kernel.org), insofar SCO again is really really far away from anything which matters.
Boy do they get on my nerves, they more and more fulfill the rolemodel of that guy in school which was sooo obnoxious that even the most pacifist people sooner or later had to follow the urge to beat him up.
Bullying Linus... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems they want to bully Linus to present the evidence for their cause they failed to present. This seems at least irrational to me.
Will someone berate SCO' spproach here?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, what if someone had poisoned the code over a period and SCO's blowing the whistle now? Something like the tcpdump files getting infected with a trojan?
Re:Will someone berate SCO' spproach here?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hold behind me a reason to sue you all.
I can show you what I am suing you about, but you have to sign this NDA that states that after you see it you cant talk about it and you can't be a part of the suit/ you must agree with me.
This is in essence what the whole thing is. SCO is trying to play the blackmail game, if they really were inteested or had anything it would be public and being poured over right now showing that it appeared on XX date and came from XX...
but they know that they have nothing, like a bad poker player trying to bluff the whole table.
IBM knows this and this is why they are ignoring them and certianly not lowering themselves to SCO's level, but acting in a professional manner.
Finally, I mentioned to the board that the Linux Kernel development team has the greatest amount of programmer talent on the planet... Greater than Microsoft,SCO,SUN,Apple,IBM and Silicon Graphics combined. AS well as a peer review system that is impossible to impliment in any corperate setting, therefore all of SCO's claims are unfounded and should be ignored until they reveal any proof, letalone proof that THEY did not steal the code in the first place.
One of the members mentioned that he did not think of that, that the code could have came from BSD to begin with.
It worked well, they understood.
Re:Will someone berate SCO' spproach here?? (Score:5, Informative)
Then, of course, just consider the sheer amount of talent. There are probably more FOSS programmers than proprietary programmers...by a long shot. That means that there is a huge amount of total talent.
Companies should also not bother with the impossible burden of finding all patents that they may be infringing on. The legal bill to lawyers to interpret patents would be outrageous, and it is simply impossible -- period -- to do, due to the clear lack of organization in freely available patent databases and due to the sheer number of patents.
Re:Will someone berate SCO' spproach here?? (Score:5, Informative)
Now, as to talent ... that's something that we can only objectively measure by the results. It seems to me that the linux kernel surpasses the competitors, and that's why most of the "competition" have supported linux development.
This includes SCO in times past.
So it may not be a lie to say that the Linux Kernel development team has the greatest amount of programmer talent on the planet, as far as OS kernel development is concerned.
Sure, IBM, Sun and Microsoft may have thousands of programmers working for them. This has nothing to do with OS kernel development. Most of Microsofts' programmers are NOT working on their kernels. Ditto Sun. Ditto IBM. Ditto Apple.
And we can't count those who do testing, unless we also count those who do testing of the linux kernel, in which case the linux kernel wins hands down over all the proprietary kernels combined.
Re:talent (Score:4, Insightful)
It could be argued that way in the earlier days, when people went around Microsoft wearing buttons saying "B.O.G.U.S." (bend over, grease up, sucker) to remind those whose stocks hadn't yet been vested that their stock holdings were (also a not-so-subtle badge of seniority)
Let's face it - you've become a millionare, you want a home life, you leave. Lots of talent left - some temporarily (gone to pick lettuce, as one employee did, just to get a break), and others, well, they either retired, or created/joined start-ups.
Remember - no overtime/weekend pay, the expectation of 80-100 hour weeks as normal, etc. And fewer interesting challenges for top coders. Under those conditions, the ones who stay are the ones you would want to leave, so we're probably seeing a rush to the bottom in terms of code talent/quality at Microsoft.
This would explain why they had to take a couple of months to "refresh" people on the idea that buffer overflows are a "bad thing". And, when taht didn't work, appoint a group of code reviewers just to check for such inanities.
Old... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Linus was advising developers that they don't look at patents, for if the kernel is hit by one of them (some are pretty broad), it would be much more trouble if the alleged patent infringement were done knowingly.
I suppose this is a reasonable tactic used by everyone, yet one can criticize it if he like.
md5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:md5 (Score:5, Informative)
As all hashes go, and I know, it's mathimatically "very hard", two different byte segments CAN have the same md5 sum. Longer they get, harder it is...
Uhh, well, the probability that a given line of code has a certain MD5 checksum is 1 to 340282366920938463463374607431768211456.
That's way less probable than the probability of a false positive in a DNA test. (I.e. "Good enough" for a match)
So, unless I see a two headed guy with dark sunglasses, climb into his shiny spaceship and start it's engines, I belive SCO could very well use this technique to demonstrate what part of their code is in Linux.
Re:md5 (Score:4, Interesting)
Changing space would change the MD5 sum, yes, but that is easily normalised out by feeding both code bases through either the same code pretty [sourceforge.net] printer [ochresoftware.com] or through a simple sed filter which replaces any string of whitespace with a single space character prior to the chopping and checksumming process.
patents are for lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
The reason for this is that patents are complicated and claims are not easy to understand. For instance some chemical/protein/DNA/whatever could be patented for a very specific use (it normally is). You can still use it for a totally different reason.
So from my own experience I can see that Linus attitude is perfectly correct.
Re:patents are for lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, because the patent system has been horribly abused and twisted, and because capitalism is stupid about some things, the idea of the patent lawyer came into existence, and the MAIN PURPOSE of a patent lawyer is to write your patent in as obfuscated and broad a manner as possible. IE, to totally subvert the intent and goal of the patent system.
This is one of the reasons the patent system needs an overhaul.
Paradox? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd want Linus to compare both codes and after that sue him for "inspiration"?
Look, Linux, you've seen all SCO code, now don't say you weren't influenced by it. As we said earlier, it is technologically impossible for anyone to produce great code without copying it from us.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, and remove their shoes beforehand!
If only (Score:4, Funny)
Now, if we're really lucky we can get them to shove their foot in their mouth first too!
bullshitting...Re:Paradox? (Score:4, Interesting)
True. It is impossible to find out if someone else has a tradesecret.
But then there is a lawyer problem. Linus (or some other kernel hacker) puts a GPL tag on the source. Is he/she allowed to do that? Is the GPL legal? The point is, who GPLed it, and does that make the GPL viral? (And is the Sys V copyright viral?)
They could always sue linus for being a basterd that who not care . He called himself that multiple times in interviews.
Mispellings in the NY times (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe we should ask Mister Steve Lohr to become a slashdot editor
Whew (Score:5, Funny)
The responsibility of copyright holders (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it's the ones who complain about their rights the loudest/with the most money that may end up getting their way. But here, unlike many copyright cases, you can expect everyone present to stand up for their rights, loudly. Unfortunately for SCO, it appears that IBM and many other powerful companies are in favor of Linus' and other's rights.
Ryan Fenton
Is this actually relevant?? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I understand it, the lawsuit is about IBM contributing code to Linux that SCO claims it owned the rights to, and which they didn't have the right to distribute. There was no way Linus or anyone else who didn't have access to IBM's contracts with SCO, could determine that. In any event, the case certainly doesn't seem to have anything to do with patents.
One can only draw the conclusion that they're throwing mud in the hope that some will stick.
Re:Is this actually relevant?? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. So far.
SCO is 'trying' this case in the court of public opinion. More specifically, they're trying to convince CIOs and CTOs to drop Linux and AIX. If sucessful, so I believe their logic goes, that will pressure IBM, and then other companies, to either buy them out or pay them off.
The merits of the case don't matter. It's all about creating FUD and then trying to take advantage of it in business.
If they think that suing Linus will help them do that, they will. At this point, I'm sorry to say, that I expect they will eventually sue Linus.
Again, it's not that they'd think they win this point in court. As many of
Steven
Seems fair enough (Score:5, Informative)
*SNIP*
"I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know."
"The fact is technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them," Mr. Torvalds wrote in the e-mail message last August.
In an e-mail interview earlier this month, Mr. Torvalds explained that his was a candid view in the murky, complex realm of software patents these days.
"Hey, one of the advantages of not personally being involved in any of the commercial Linux players is that I can be honest," Mr. Torvalds wrote. "In fact, openness pretty much requires it â" there is no corporate speak here. Ask any lawyer in a tech company (off the record, so that he can be honest too), and he'll tell you that engineers should absolutely not try to look up other people's patents. It's not their job, and you don't want them tainted."
What's so terrible about that? Why would you bias yourself (and waste a LOT of time) by poring over someone's code before writing your own? You may subconsciously emulate what they've done, and taint any originality you might have started with.
Same thing goes for other disciplines. In medicine, one should talk to the patient first, THEN read their medical records... you want an honest gestalt, unbiased by somebody else's interpretation of signs and symptoms. Isn't that what a second opinion is supposed to be?
This sounds to me like the old "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" philosophy. Big whoop... give linus a break, SCO.
How can SCO prove anteriority ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Law in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
If such a law doesn't exist in the USA, does that mean Pepsi can say they have proof that Coke has dog poo in it, but they aren't going to show the proof? I doubt it somehow.
Furthermore, if SCO are doing these things just to manipulate their share price, and the allegations turn out to be baseless, surely that is fraud?
Re:Law in the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Law in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
IANALS (I Am Not A Land Shark) but it's my understanding that
1. IBM could file a cease and desist, if they wanted to, but they probably don't because SCO is really digging themselves a very deep hole with their public statements, and this will be to IBMs advantage later on.
2. Pepsi could say Coke has dog poo in it, sure, and open themselves to a huge libel suit. Analogous to a degree, but where it breaks down is in that situation Coke would have nothing to gain by delaying counteraction - in this case IBM does have something to gain - a huge chain of public statements from SCO that can be used against them in court. When this finally gets to court IBMs lawyers can bring in a collection of all the contradictory nonsense SCO has been spouting in public and have a field day with it.
3. Yes, if SCO executives are indeed engaging in a pump and dump scheme, as seems most likely, that is fraud and would be a criminal offense. But on that one only time will tell for sure.
Re:Law in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
The contingency case stuff is interesting (speculation?) but completely irrelevant to whether it's a pump and dump scheme. If the executives of SCO unload a bunch of stock before the case is resolved, then their will be good reason to make that charge.
Linux and the community should not be represented formally in this case, as they aren't formal parties to it, but it's certainly being watched closely. Calling Boies and co. good lawyers seems laughable though, look at their track record. Has Boies won a single case? He lost the IBM defense. He theoretically won against MS, yes, but it was a sucker deal, the only 'remedies' that have held are actually pro-MS measures, not even slaps on the wrist. For all intents and purposes that was a loss. He lost for Gore. For someone that commands such high fees he sure seems to lose a lot.
The MD5 stuff is quite clever (Score:5, Informative)
The scheme instead computes an MD5 sum for each line (actually each five lines together) and publishes the hashed versions of the files. Then anybody can do the line by line compare without ever seeing a readable version of the source code.
The theory is that SCO can't complain about somebody distributing these hashes because you can't get the source code from it.
The only problem I see is that the hashes are still derived from SCO's intellectual property and are therefore still covered by copyright. SCO could still put up a stink about it. Especially since they have stated that their goal is to sue IBM for money rather than to identify the peices and rectify the situation. SCO has said that they are afraid that if the lines are known, the problem will be fixed and they won't be able to sue any more. (Poor babies.)
Copyright -- NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, not a problem at all. I'm not a copyright expert, but the hashes would certainly not be covered by SCO copyright for two reasons: 1) They are not an original work of authorship, but instead an application of a mathematical algorithm to "fingerprint" a file; they're just a list of numbers. That would be like copyrighting the output of "ls -l". 2) Even if a judge somehow finds 1) above to be inapplicable, the hashes would certainly fall under the "fair use" exception to the copyright on the SCO files, as they are a form of commentary on them.
Of course, SCO will never agree to such reasonable measures, since they are not fundamentally looking for something reasonable, so the whole thing is moot. A far more likely scenario is that SCO may *eventually* be forced to submit their code base and backups to a court-appointed special master tasked with analyzing the issue of code derivation (what, when, and in which direction), and will be required to fully disclose their development logs to the court. At which time,assuming it ever gets to trial, the case will finally, finally collapse for good and all, and we can get back to sniping at Microsoft.
Strange (Score:4, Informative)
I thought they bought a license to the source code and license rights to the code, but not ownership of the source, and that Novell owns the code
So this article is not entirely accurate
Anyone from SCO here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone from SCO here? (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone Relax a little. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone needs to take a deep breath. We all know what they are trying to do. We need to just turn the other cheek and let IBM deal with it. SCO is now threatening IBM's bread and butter. It will be over soon. I doubt IBM would drag this out in the courts, because this type of FUD would continue to be spouted off throughout that entire time. If IBM comes up with a solidified argument demonstrating that SCO was near perjury with this lawsuit, its all over.
Read this...NOW (Score:3, Informative)
How is SCO's lawsuit affecting sales of Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
FWIW, even if OSS is FAIB, if the DOJ considers *nix IP with a TM, then it basically become's SCO's LIC, meaning our OSS becomes a CSS OS, which would RSTBO.
AIBO going w/ an ASP that manages our OS? BTA, we might end up w/ a BOFH giving us ZA, which WWAD PMS.
AFAIK, INMP if SCO wants to be ITM by enforcing its supposed IPR - *nix IP should be PD or GNU, like BSD just on GP, IYKWIM. I keep asking myself in this situation - WWLD?
Oh, BTW - IITYWIMWYBMAD?
Here's a buck. (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, I'd say that's an accurate statement, really.
If you are trying to identify closed source/proprietary origins of submitted linux code, there is just one thing you need.
God-like omniscience.
Linus is good, but he isn't that good.
Oh, if you wanted a horrible paperwork audit trail, you could make people include a signed document stating "I am the copyright holder for submitted code" or something like that. But part of the draw of working on OSS is to get away from all the icky lawyers and legal documents.
In this one specific instance, SCO is correct. It doesn't really affect their case at all, but they are still correct about this.
Patent Clearance (Score:5, Informative)
If SCO tries to make this case at trial, they're gonna get reamed when IBM inquires into their patent clearance process.
Nobody can afford to do prior patent clearance. All engineering work would stop dead if we did.
Different MD5 != Different Code (Score:3, Interesting)
- The procedure throws away all code pieces
which occur more than once in the same version
of the code. Okay, most of them will be
trivial, but there might be some that aren't.
These pieces aren't compared to the other
version of the code. Might be an idea to use
a frequency threshold instead.
- During comparison of the two versions, all code
pieces with the same checksum are disregarded.
But different checksum does not mean different
code! MD5 are computed on string level - let
there be an additional comment, or a linebreak,
and you won't get a match. Some simple
operation to bring the code into a kind of
canonical formatting can take care of that.
If you don't do that, you run the risk of losing some correspondences, I'm afraid.Patents? WHAT patents? (Score:5, Informative)
Essentially, what SCO is now saying is that if you license UNIX, any ideas that you (perfectly legally) incorporate into your version of Unix belong to SCO, because... well because of course, you couldn't have created it without SCO's huge contribution. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call "shenanigans" at this point.
Incidentally, I would point to this link [gnu.org], where the FSF argue that the term "intellectual property" is not useful - because it can be used by disreputable organizations (like SCO for example) to confuse matters relating to copyright, patents, trade secrets etc.
Common contents (Score:5, Interesting)
The following describes the common sections found by the Inquirer reader (although I have only looked at the linux source files).
Of course, this assumes that the line numbers the Inquirer published are for the linux files and not the BSD files (why did they only publish one set?!?)
Re:Common contents (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of points. *If* this appears in SCO source, this would be very strange. The 7930 is ONLY used in some 4c and 4m Sparcs. That would be 32 bit SPARC, SBUS based machines. I don't even think these are SUPPORTED by recent Solaris releases.
Nobody uses this for Intel, and these machines are not current anymore.
If SCO has this in THEIR code base, they are really smoking some strange drugs... The only reason this is in Linux is because it was ported to old SUN boxen. Trust me, IBM wouldn't have ANY involvement with that.
Ratboy.
SCO's motivation (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that SCO must be one or more of the following things:
1.SCO is indeed doing a stock scam as their actual products are close to worthless. An SEC investigation would be very apropriate here, but would only happen after the fact, sadly.
2.SCO is being funded by another party to persue this scheme, the most likely candidates being Microsoft or SUN, both of whom have a vested interest in seeing Linux and IBM suffer. I would go for Microsoft because while SUN has something to gain in seeing IBM suffer, they also have something to lose if Linux suffers. Microsoft is the only party that has something to gain if both Linux and IBM suffer. It would need a leaked email or something to start the ball rolling on an investigation into this side of the matter though. I also wonder at the same time why no leaked emails have as yet appeared from any SCO employees.
3.SCO's products are absolutely worthless and SCO is indeed trying to do a last ditch fight in order to legally force some kind of artificial marketshare for it's products. The fact that SCO has changed it's public statements on numerous occiasions and even changed the official claim recently (IBM bypassing export controls even though it is no business of SCO to enforce this and the RCU claim which is as patchy as well), means that SCO knows it is on shaky ground. The latest official claims show that SCO is indeed scraping the bottom of the barrel and are truly frightened by the fact that IBM hasn't taken them seriously. Their lawyers nerves must be blank. The accusation against Linux is simply something they are doing in order to try and strengthen their claim. It does however mean that they are actually pouring through every piece of available information in order to come up with some kind of evidence because they truly do not have any that would stand up in court.
The only thing that worries me is that Linus should perhaps learn when to shut the fuck up and think before he speaks. Courts are not democracies and crap like his statments on patents can and will be used against him.
Re:SCO's motivation (Score:4, Interesting)
No, he shouldn't check his opinions at all. As has been pointed out, his thoughts on engineers reviewing patents are completely in-line with many of the corporate IP/legal deparments out there. Secondly, Linus isn't being sued (okay, "yet" I suppose), but even if he was he has his behind covered. It can be proven which code came from where, and as long as he didn't provide the "offending" code [which, by the way, is semantically incorrect, since code itself cannot commit an offense] (if there is any) and didn't know that the code was taken from somebody else, then he's off the hook.
Furthermore, his statements about patents have no bearing on the lawsuit as SCO never claimed any patent infringement -- only stolen code (which is a copyright claim).
Not copyright; contract (Score:4, Informative)
It's a little more subtle than this. SCO isn't even calling it a copyright infringement; they are suing for breach of contract. Part of the breach of contract claims IBM used parts of System V (which SCO claims as their own) in beefing up Linux.
Now, which parts? Apperantly, SCO claims that one specific area of infringement is in the RCU code, which removes a major bottleneck for >4 CPU machines. Sequent "invented" the RCU algorithm; Sequent was later purchased by IBM.
So how does this constitute breach of contract? SCO claims that the Unix contract signed by IBM (and, in fact, by every Unix signee) includes provisions for SCO to claim all derivitive works.
This is the crux; SCO has stated (through its top administrators) that all modern operating systems are merely derived works; they have hinted this includes MS-Windows, and they also want to re-visit the BSD decision.
This is patently rediculous. (Excuse the pun. Couldn't resist.) But, if SCO succeeds in their assault on IBM, they will have a case against every other Unix provider, and against Linux. They will probably have no case against Microsoft (who would most likely pay SCO off anyway, rather than face more bad publicity) or BSD, but that wouldn't stop them from trying with their new-found booty.
This is shares some attributes of the British Telecom case against (Compuserve? Prodigy? Don't remember off the top of my head), based on the scope of the claims. BT wanted to own the Internet; SCO wants to own every OS. The greatness of their chutzpah is stunning.
These guys must have Epcot-sized testicles.
Has anyone tried using CAP for comparing code? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is based on something like this:
- Preprocess the code (replace all variables with the letter 'V', strip the comments, replace white space strings with a single character)
- Divide the result into fixed sized units of length k that overlap, each starting at a succeeding character. They call these k-grams
- Efficiently calculate a hash for each of these k-grams
- Divide the result into windows that contain a number of these k-grams
- Within each window, use a method of selecting a subset of these k-grams that does not depend on position, but rather on the k-gram itself, such as the minimum hash value within that window; if there are ties, select the right-most hash value within the window
- The result is the fingerprint of the code
- Any document with fingerprints in common has some code in common with the original source
Okay, that's a very rough idea of the process, but you might have some idea of it now. Check it out yourself if you're interested.Fixing the MD5 idea (Score:5, Interesting)
- You want to get EVERY example, for potential manual review
- You want to avoid any problems with white space leading to different MD5s for "identical" code
- Doing a 5 line compare seems flawed as what if you compare lines 1-5 in A and B, but lines 1-5 in A match lines 2-6 in B
I therefore propose that:
1. before calculating any check sums, both files should be massaged into some common "base" format.
- Remove all white space inc. tabs and spaces
- Concatenate on one long line, but line break immediately after any semi-colon (;) or end-comment (*/) or immediately before begin comment (/* or
- With comments, line break at least every (say) 20 characters or if there was a line break in original file.
- Maintain some kind of map back from massaged file to Linux source (line 237 in massaged = line 40-42 in Linux source)
- In the massaged file, mark any line less than say 20 characters in a non-comment section as being potentially and probably too small to be copyrightable. This would eliminate stuff like i++; or #include . Matches for these should still show up in the overall results, but be considered as less important unless there are also lots of "more important" matches in the same source file as well.
2. Run both sets of sources thru this algorithm, and calculate two or more hashes for each line, say MD5 and some kind of CRC. If both sets of sources match for all the hashes, a match is found. This is to reduce number of false positives.
Linus hit the nail on the head (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus wrote:
"...the transparency in the process also means that if dishonesty happens, you can go back and see what went on."
Right on. In other words, if SCO would release info on what was copied, then by going through the archives it will be possible to see who contributed it, and under what auspices. So we can see if IBM did it, if Caldera did it, if John Quackenschmoe did it, and if there is a violation hold the appropriate party responsible and stop the FUD.
Of course, the fact that SCO hasn't done this only shows that the pieces of paper they hold in their hands, probably don't have the names on it they say they do.
Insightful closing quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, because Linux code is published publicly, it is easier to track what I.B.M. contributed to the operating system. But the issue, of course, is whether SCO's Unix license covered any of the code I.B.M. put into Linux.
Should the SCO suit turn up any offending code, the open nature of Linux â" and the many programmers working on it â" will ensure a quick solution, according to open- source software experts.
Now, that should be old news for
FFS, I'll sign the NDA (Score:5, Interesting)
This SCO thing is really starting to f**k me off. It's all just insubstantial FUD with sod-all solid facts. SCO's even looks like it's aiming it's guns at BSD - which is crazy as there has NEVER EVER been any System V code in any of the BSDs. I'm of the opinion that SCO's strategy is to declare total war on the entire Unix community in the hope that people fold. Criticize SCO and you'll be next....
So my message to SCO has to be put-up or shut-up.
I'm not a Linux user, I don't hack kernels. But I can find my way around source-code. So come on SCO I'll sign your fscking NDA to see what you're carping on about. I'll even check it against the BSD sources too....
Re:FFS, I'll sign the NDA (Score:4, Informative)
That is what is wrong with their NDA. You cannot tell the truth if you do sign the NDA, or work on code anymore, or develop anymore without having given them control over you. Why on Earth would anybody want these people to gain control? They are complete loonies anyway. They probably have the support of the RIAA, Senator Orin "Booby" Hatch and others of that ilk. we know that Microsoft supports them, and at least one other "as yet unnamed" vendor.
We all know that they cannot stand freedom or innovation, because they don't own you anymore. That is what is wrong with their arguments.
Imagine a future where the public domain does not exist. Where no product is ever allowed to be "public", where owning a book is illegal until you pay for it every time you read its pages, where you can't own a pen and toilet paper because you *might* write something and you have a vision of what it is these people really are all about.
They hate humanity and our ability to think and reason and invent. They just want consumers of the garbage culture they purvey. Not me pal, I can think and write for myself, and every idea in Unix, Linux, and other Operating Systems did not descend down these stock-shysters precious "source-tree of invisibility".
Never, ever, sign an agreement with them unless you enjoy being in a lwasuit. They cannot be trusted, and you'll only pay for it in terms of your job, livelihood and reputation.
Think about it, honestly. I mean you no harm and only mean to advise you against signing this thing as a concerned human being who wants you not to be harmed.
Go after SCO's management (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO is a company but it is also a group of people. SCO's current actions have to had been sanctioned by management at the highest level. Someone made a choice, someone said "let's go ahead with this".
So make it personal. By exposing each and every of SCO's top-level managers as being associated and willing participants in this mess their chances of ever again be employeed in a top-level management position (at least in this industry) are highly decreased.
This is especially true if they are tracked into any new job they go into and the company that employes them is exposed (thus being smeared along with SCO by their choice of managers) - any company that hires any one of those persons has a business ethics (or more precisely lack of it) that accepts this type of attitude.
Decisions are taken by someone (companies do not take decisions). Those that take the decisions (or are willing participiants in taking those decisions) should be made to assume their responsabilities instead of being allowed to hid behind a SCO-mask.
Go after SCO's management - yer wish is my command (Score:5, Informative)
- Darl C. McBride - President and Chief Executive Officer
- Robert K. Bench - Chief Financial Officer
- Sean Wilson - Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
- Jeff Hunsaker - Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing
- Chris Sontag - Senior Vice President and General Manager, SCOsource Division
- Opinder Bawa - Senior Vice President, Engineering and Global Services
- Reg Broughton - Senior Vice President, Worldwide Operations
- Larry Gasparro - Senior Vice President, North America Sales
Each has a bio page, but no email address.complaining about their own actions (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. and that's because SCO refuses to identify the protected code.
They also complain that Torvalds refuses to go hunting patents.. That's also appropriate. One of the best ways to avoid violating patented methods is to not know about them. If the solution is an obvious one, then the fact that you came to the same solution without konwing about the patent is almost a sufficient defence. On the other hand, if the solution is not an obvious one, then chances ar that you'll come up with a solution different enough from the pattern that the difference is a sufficient defence.
The purpose of a patent is to document a method such that (once the patent expires) anybody else can use it. The patent monopoly is just to ensure that people have an incentive to register their patents so that they ultimately do go into the public domain.
An interesting feature about the OS process is that -- once something goes into an OS project, it is (or at least should be) essentially unpatentable -- this is because any open source project is effectively published.. Especially for large and well-distributed projects like Linus, it's almost trivial to prove when that idea was published.
If you take the time to hunt patents before you use an idea, you run the risk of delaying the publication of an idea long enough for someone else to patent it.
The long and short result is that it's easier (and even better) to implement an idea and then wait to see if someone complains about a patent infringement than to go wandering through the patent office looking for something that may be the same as what you are using.
Reading through a patent application well enough to understand whether or not it applies to an idea is a long, difficult and dirty job. I'd much rather leave that to someone who's paid to do it (like the patent owner's lawer). Once the issue is raised by somene who cares about it then I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it.
I think that Linus has the same idea, and it sounds like he got it from his business colleagues.
Start here (Score:5, Informative)
Jayson Blair school of fact checking (Score:4, Funny)
I LOVE the head line! (Score:5, Funny)
SCO is so insignificant it is not mentioned the headline! Those guys at the Times are smarter than I thought, I may have to kick down for a subscription.
It is just so sad, I learned Unix on SCO, back in '92. Shame to see the old girl is on crack.
This "derivative" shit of SCO's is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if every single line of code the SCO is objecting to happened to get removed by some massive kernel overhaul by someone who had never had the opportunity to see SCO's "evidence", SCO would still claims rights over the changes as a derivative work because they consider the fact that their code was merely inspiration to be a cause for the new code to be "derivative".
SCO would consider any code developed based merely on what one had learned from Unix code to be derivative. This would mean that at least 3/4 of the programs I wrote in Operating Systems class were probably infringing in some way on SCO's IP. The GPL does not consider code developed based on what one learned from GPL code to be derivative -- The GPL only considers a derivative if it is copied and modified, not if it is completely rewritten from scratch by the application of actually understanding what the code does.
Let's say, for example, I wrote a book that had all the same concepts and ideas as Lord of the Rings, but didn't use any of Tolkien's names or trademarks. Having already read LotR, my book would obviously be a "derivative". Indeed many people might say my book was just a knockoff of LotR. While many Tolkien fans would likely be outraged at my writing it, I wouldn't actually be breaking any copyright laws, however. The most anyone could do would be to personally boycott my work, but they couldn't stop me from publishing it or from it being distributed anywhere I chose.
Just as a quick recap, here are the four major IP's. I find it interesting that SCO has changed its story so many times, it's hard to actually tell which sort of IP they actually have that they are referring to. It seems like the premise of trade secret is closest to what they mean, but they keep talking about owning rights to derivative works, which has to fall back on the strength of copyright, not trade secrets.
Copyright only protects content, it cannot protect ideas. Copyright also has provisions for protecting works that can reasonably be considered derivatives, such as translation into another language, changing the media of distribution, and several others. Trade secret can protect ideas, but it cannot protect them once they are publically known (although it is entirely reasonable to make a claim for damages from the party that caused ones trade secret to become public in the first place). Further, trade secrets do not protect against reverse engineering or reinvention. Patents more completely protect inventions and methods, even to the point of stopping reverse engineering, but unlike trade secrets, *MUST* be public knowledge in order to retain patent protection. Trademarks protect terminology, must be publically known, must be defended in order to be retained, and only apply to the field in which the trademark itself is applied (for example, a person should be able to start a plumbing business called "Apple Plumbing", without violating Apple's trademark).
Maybe we're getting somewhere now with this... (Score:5, Insightful)
So now SCO come along and say that they own blah blah blah, because I implemented it into AndyIX first. As far as I can see, this seems to be the basis of SCO's "case". If the GPL is "viral", then SCO's Unix licence must surely qualify as a WMD?!
Why would this change anything? (Score:4, Insightful)
They could already have stated "We claim line 13-37 of
To make a more concrete example, I could claim that Stephen King's latest novel has sentences identical to mine. But when asked to point them out, I would answer "No, that would reveal what my sentences are. See you in court." Does that make any kind of sense?
The fact that they won't show it except under an NDA, makes it very clear that they do not *want* to identify the infringing pieces, if there are any at all. They certainly don't want anyone to be able to find them or replace them.
The MD5 approach would be appropriate for two closed source companies disputing the same problem - it allows a comparison by a third party without compromising either codebase. But in this case SCO has already done what the program is meant to do - they just won't tell you the results. Period.
Kjella
Pump and dump? SCO insider trades (Score:5, Informative)
This comes after almost two months of no insider trades.
Linus' "anti-patent" message (Score:5, Informative)
In the mlist.linux.kernel From 02-Aug-2002 to 12-Aug-2002
The conversation isn't about SCO at all. The conversation started about virtual memory, and some SGI patents.
Linus' comment was to the effect that it's a waste of time for programmers ("technical people"). It's very likely someone has patented any idea you can come up with. Even if we see the patent, we aren't qualified to judge if it effects us. That's the legal department(s) problem (or your lawyer, or whoever). IANAL. LINAL (Linus is not a lawyer), but a lawyer would be more than happy to tell you that they understand the law better than us technical people.
Think of the recent stories on here about tabbed browsing, hyperlinks, and the one-click purchase. Read the full thread to get it in context, rather than a couple lines thrown in a news story. I doubt that I've written anything that hasn't been patented before, even though I stick (c) on all my code.
BTW, the filters on here really suck. I've been trying to post this message, but have been hitting filters all over the place. The current one I'm hitting is "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 33.3).", so I'm just filling in some space here to get it to post, without changing any of the quoted material. {sigh}
Now for the real messages (quoted directly from dejanews).
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:42:30 PST
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> It goes on in this vein. I suggest all vm hackers have a close look at
> this. Yes, it's stupid, but we can't just ignore it.
Actually, we can, and I will.
I do not look up any patents on _principle_, because (a) it's a horrible
waste of time and (b) I don't want to know.
The fact is, technical people are better off not looking at patents. If
you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly
infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you
just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Linus
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:44:17 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a
> hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Btw, I'm not a lawyer, and I suspect this may not be legally tenable
advice. Whatever. I refuse to bother with the crap.
Linus
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 19:22:06 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> This issue is more complicated than you might think.
No, it's not. You miss the point.
> Big companies with
> big pockets are very nervous about being too clo
Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
A common fallacy, but both Open Source and Free software *depend* on intellectual property rights.
Without it there would be no reason to agree to the OS or Free license terms (you could just ignore them and do what you like) and therefore no onus to put back into the pool any improvements etc you might make.
Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!! (Score:4, Interesting)
If there were no IPR (and thus no copyright), all source code anybody publishes could be used approximately as if it was published under a BSD license today.
It would always be possible to publish only binaries, but it would not be possible to restrict distribution of these licenses. (It would also be allowed to re-engineer the binaries.)
So while we couldn't have the protection that the GPL offers today, we would have BSD-like Free Software (you don't deny that the BSDs are FS/OSS?) plus the right to re-distribute, change or disassemble any binaries anybody might publish.
Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!! (Score:5, Informative)
OK, I smell troll, but I'll bite anyways:
Richard Stallman created the GPL in the late 1980's after Gosling forked EMACS and made his version proprietary. Linus didn't start working on his Minix workalike until several years later.
Mr. Torvalds retains ownership and copyright of the code he wrote (check the AUTHORS file; in addition, several files contain "copyright [whatever year] Linus Torvalds"). To my knowledge, the other Linux programmers all retained copyright to their code as well. The fact that they have adopted a particular distribution license scheme does not change this fact.
For example, you could not take part of the Linux kernel and publish it claiming you wrote it (for that matter, you can't even do that with BSD). And, if you decide to fork the kernel and start making your own changes, you can't call it Linux (which is a trademark of Linus Torvalds).
IHBT. IHL. HAND.
SCO Icon Needed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:SCO Icon Needed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SCO Icon Needed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:SCO totally evil? (Score:3, Interesting)
This sort of criticism therefore isn't the same as what you get from a dissatisfied user or even a disgruntled competitor.
Re:SCO totally evil? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think SCO is starting a patent war that may expose SW patents for what they are and the destructive capability they have - while not possessing many (any?) redeeming features.
And what's their winner argument in this case?
Linus is not checking all contributions against potential patents. Are you kidding me? So for every contribution he has to go search the patent database?
SCO and Software Patents, man if we could only hit 2 birds with one stone...
Re:SCO totally evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: [nytimes.com]
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact." (emphasis added)
So they are saying Linus is a bad boy because he is NOT doing something THEY ACKNOWLEDGE HE CAN'T DO, even if he wanted to - which he has said he does not want to, and for good, sound, and sufficient reasons.
SCO(Caldera), I don't care how many lawyers you bring into the case, you are not able to hold someone to a standard that you then point out is unattainable.
Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
As a developer, when you write a bubble sort, how do you know someone hasn't patented the idea?
As a company, given the vague nature of software patents ("A method to do ecommerce using a single button on a web page..."), and also given that developers don't necessary explicitly say what methods they're using. So a search is not reasonably possible.
Finally, even if you buy into the idea of software patents, how would you know if MS had infringed? Unless you have access to the source code, you have no idea. And last I check, MS doesn't readily hand out source code to make sure they're not violating any software patents.
In points out the fallacy of software patents, it highlights the stupidity of granting them, and it shows why all software patents are unenforceable, *except* against open source software.
Software patents must be eliminated: they serve no purpose except as litigation tools for large companies.
Re:SCO totally evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Their entire rant can be turned back on them and used to expose their own poor practices.
The development model has nothing to do with whether or not the problem is soluable.
Re:SCO totally evil? (Score:5, Informative)
Black Hat Linux (Score:4, Funny)
Only Takes One Dishonest Coder to Make SCO Right (Score:4, Insightful)
Knowledge of the technical issues isn't required of the court. Knowledge of patent law is required. If SCO does, in fact, show a court proprietary code copied into Linux, IBM and the Linux community will need good lawyers, not more assertions that the openness of their development process keeps people honest.
It only takes one dishonest developer to make SCO right.
Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism? (Score:3, Informative)
That's precisely what it does.
Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent post contains:
Erm, no. If you had read the article carefully, you would know that the pieces overlap. The article says:
Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus while A B C D E wouldn't match Q A B C D the next hash value in file 2 would be A B C D E which WOULD match.
The idea was that the process would ONLY hit on 5 line matches to avoid all of the things like #include <stdio.h> hits.
Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like a PERL CHALLENGE!!!
Usage: ./script.pl < code.c
Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism? (Score:4, Informative)
In the case of DNA the frame is three nucleotides; in the case of md5, it appears that the frame can be artibrarily set to 5, 10, 13, whatever. Can the comments and other non-functional lines of code be automatically stripped out before the checksum is run without calling it an examination of the code (which would violate the NDA)? That would help to eliminate a lot of the potential for misaligned comparisons. The genomics software can be told, "I have sequence ATTGCG...CTTACG. See if it or any of its derivative small pieces (of arbitrary length N) can be found in the big genome in the database, wether they appear concurrently or not." Can a similar procedure be used to comare the source code from different versions of the software?
Re:Another one (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I know, if there's infringing code it can just be pulled out etc, etc, but the PR disaster that would follow could spell real trouble for open source in general - we have to be careful here and not dismiss this totally, just in case it really does happen.
The blanket coverage is justified I think, because the open source movement as a whole really depends on this case being thrown out, or at least won heavily by IBM.
Q.
See! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
America is so over!
Back to Finland, Baby! Where there are still reasonable legal structures in place, and the rule of law is still bigger than the U.S. Dollar.
I for one can't wait for the court date (Score:4, Funny)
CHEWBACCA DEFENCE
Re:Dumb statment for linus to make (Score:4, Informative)
Linus then goes on to state that the *open* publication process is the best defense. How could Linus or anyone else possibly be aware of all patents? By openly publishing the code and its source, Linus notes that it is possible to back trace to the true "offenders". Linus could have been named as a co-party to the suit. Note that he is not. In a recent interview with CNET, Darl McBride even seemed to agree with Linus' point by stating that having thousands of eyes, open source led to better quality. Well, those eyes might lead to better IP protection too.
SCO's statements just strike me as a tactic to impugn Linus and the whole OS process without going to the mat where they would not have a case. It casts further doubts on SCO's motives.
Re:MD5? (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like SCO is going to reject this one.