SCO: Code Proof Analyzed, Linus Interviewed 890
Arker writes "Bruce Perens has now obtained a copy of the entire slide show from which the recently scrutinized SCO-related Linux code excerpts came, and has analyzed the remainder of the 'evidence' they presented there. Their other code exhibit turns out to have been the venerable Berkeley Packet Filter(!), and their revised line-counts are consistent with simply adding together all the lines of code that have been contributed by Unix licensees." Also, Iphtashu Fitz writes "A new interview with Linus Torvalds has been posted on eWeek.com. In it he slams SCO over the recently leaked source code. Among other things, he points out in the interview that some of the code in question has been removed from the 2.6 kernel ['because developers complained about how "ugly" it was'] before SCO even started complaining."
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/perens/SCOSlid eShow.html
[saintaardv...rpeted.com]
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Interesting)
Multi-processor capabilities requires extremely high fault tolerances. Multi-processor memories requires "locking" at a fraction of a millisecond. These developments, among others, could not have been accomplished in a compressed time period without direct access to 25 years of UNIX development expertise and use of state-of-the-art Unix development labs.
They're saying that the jump from 2.2 to 2.6 an "Improbable Linux Development Path". For me, a non-kernel hacker, can someone explain why this particular point isn't true? Or do you have to pull from many examples in order to prove otherwise?
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Next think about the fact that if other people have written this sort of code before then other people can too.
Also do not be blinded by the big words SCO uses. SCO wants to make it sound hard with their 25 years claims but how long did it really take? How long before UNIX ran on those machines anyway? Was the original code written in a state of the art UNIX lab or just a university lab by university students?
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Not only that, but IBM et al have published in excruciating detail their basic methodologies for handling multiprocessor systems in hardware and software. I would not be surprised if a lot of their ideas were taught in certain decent universities for decades. It is not impossible for a good developer to be able to take publicly available ideas and code and start to work up something like multiproc support. Hell, Linus started the Linux kernel based on coursework and x86 docs he had at hand over a couple of months.
Clearly, IBM and others have improved Linux in these areas and they have many many decades of expertise in these fields. No one needed a drop of SCO code to do any of this.
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a hardware jock that has worked on 4 different commercial unix systems (from the development point of view.) All were multi-processors and I was doing this in 1982.
The first machine two machines I saw the work performed on was BSD! The last machines were Sys V plus Berkeley enhancements. These were in the mid 80's. So we're talking between 15 and 20 years ago. Not one of these companies was SCO by the way
In any case- I've seen several different engineers with the requisite skill set do this, and it worked quite well thank you very much.
At the same time, it took on the average of 1-2 years for a couple of programmers to add the multi-processing features to the OS. Hmmm, and consider that Linux was multiprocessing on a more primitive level by 2.4 kernel (or was it 2.2?) In any case for at LEAST 2 years and actually more like 5 years. They have just been improving it!
Not Rocket science.
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly don't agree with this. 'Just a university lab by university students' tends to be the state of the art. Especially if the students are PhD students. I have never done anything in industry even remotely as state of the art as I did as a PhD student.
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you explain why you think it might be true? It's not very plausible. It's not as if multi processor systems are amazing new technology, they just got cheap in the past few years, so everyone and his dog took a look at the literature to work out how to make the most of them.
That is not, of course, to say there is no skill involved in doing it well but we are not talking about the cutting edge of blue-sky computer science.
BTW `a fraction of a millisecond'? How impressive is that! SCO has the technology to implement a semaphore in less than a million instructions!
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Informative)
I agree it's improbable, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened, and we did it ourselves. The big lie is that it happened by incorporating SCO's code or ideas. I know that's ridiculous, because I was there for almost the whole period in question, working on my little parts of the kernel, but also watching others work on theirs, talking with them, seeing the ideas develop and patches take shape. In fact, this stuff is all in the public record, it's in the linux kernel mailing list archives, particularly the work on SMP and NUMA.
Re:I think we speak for all of us: (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Alan Cox is, frankly, rather brighter than Darl McBride. Yes, I know, as others have posted, IBM and others have contributed to Linux' multi-processing code. But it worked extremely well before they did - I know, I was running a dual processor Pentium Pro with dual RAID5 arrays in late 1996 or early 1997, and that was running on Alan Cox's SMP patch to the 2.2 kernel (might even have been a 2.0 kernel).
Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Funny)
Come on Linus, stop dancing around the issue. Tell us what you really think about their claims.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing about this whole mess is that it just doesn't seem to matter how clear it becomes that SCO is just completely insane -- people in the press still put on a game face and act like they are serious. That is truly, truly sad.
I want to see an article from a non-open source advocate called "SCO is Smoking Crack". Maybe the judge will hold as much.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet if I were to actually cite such a case in current events I'd get modded up to +5. Instead, I'll just do something equally inflammatory and say, "turn to any major news channel - CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Al-Jazeera - and you'll see it in almost every story they carry." You just might not recognize it as such since your background in the story topics is probably as limited as the general population's background in unix/linux.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Funny)
SCO now offically stands for "Smoking Crack Operation"
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Funny)
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030605
The Smoking Crack Operation (Score:5, Funny)
However, I must warn readers of Slashdot that the terms "crack", "crack cocaine", "crack head", "crack house" are trademarks of El Mellin Cartel & Co. Any use of these terms in the literal context (as compared to "SCO crack me up") is subject to a $699 licensing fee, payable in small bills.
The good thing is we supply you with stuff you can smoke, SCO just stuff you with smoke.
This aside, I agree with the previous posts, and our records confirm that a Senor D. MCBRIDE is a serious consumer of our prime products.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Funny)
It's a definite libel case, don't you think? do you think ANY crack smoker wants to be associated with this sort of activity.
Be fair, Linus.
FREENET=FREESPEECH (even if it is kinda busted right now)
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Funny)
How did crack get such a wrong stereotype? Don't you kids even bother to use a drug once or twice before adopting it as the nominally definitive slang for "acting wrong"?
SCO: Skanky Crack hO (Score:5, Funny)
Smoking crack is expensive. You need a fair few dollars if you're going to have a decent binge. For some people at least, they'll do pretty well anything to get that money. Lie, steal, whore.
Smoking crack makes you obsessive/compulsive. After that first hit, all you think about is more crack. You talk and think about it obsessively, and when you aren't making progress towards your goal of getting more crack, you're kinda depressed.
Now look at SCO. No integrity at all. Prepared to do or say anything to get more crack (an increase in stock price.) Talk obsessively about it in the media, even though their tales are demonstrably filled with lies.
I'll accept not everyone reacts in this way, so perhaps Linus should have been a bit more careful in his characterization. SCO isn't just smoking crack. SCO is the Skanky Crack hO, hustling a nasty bony ass that nobody but other crazy crackheads wants to buy.
Now where's that motherfucker who keeps on boasting about his SCO stock? I hope he's been on to his broker in the last few hours.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish someone would analyze the IBM patent claims. Unlike SCO, IBM has named specific patents. It should be rather easy for someone familiar with SCO's products to assess whether these are hair-brain patents or real-deal patents.
I understand people don't like software patents (I don't either), but given that the law is otherwise, I'm interested in how credible IBM's counterclaims are going to be.
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Insightful)
And they have a million more. I'm infringing about twenty-three IBM patents just by posting this.
IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't to say that I especially trust IBM over any other vendor, but they have a much greater tendency of putting their money where their mouth is, delivering good business products and supporting them.
Remember that Aptiva that you played around with for a while and hated back in your introductory computer gaming phase? It probably still works, doesn't have capacitors that blew out like ABIT and Gigabyte have had, has drivers for every major OS from Windows 3.1 and OS/2 2.1 to XP, and will run for the next ten years without much trouble. They build computers, not consumer appliances.
I have an IBM PS/2 Model 95 at work that I still have powered on. It's a 50MHz 486 with Microchannel architecture. It's probably the best built computer in my office. IBM doesn't do things half-assed.
Re:IBM (Score:5, Funny)
A former boss of mine was a retired IBMer. He used to give us handwriting "lessons". He kept a master copy of his own handwriting with all letters and numbers written. If he didn't like the way we filled out paperwork, we'd get a sheet in our inbox. So "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed is right on the mark.
Re:IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, remember this story [theregister.co.uk] from the start of the year?.
We had a number of IBM boards fritz with deformed, malfunctioning capacitors.
Having said that IBM were very professional in coming out quickly and changing the boards free of charge.
Your point is valid but your example spectacularly poor.
Re:IBM (Score:5, Funny)
My one-word rebuttal: DESKSTAR.
Re:IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
Such quality is important in some areas. Cars for example. But with computers, I would prefer to buy something which costs a quarter the price, and take my chances on it's life expectancy. Who really has a use for a 486 now? Sure you can use it for a print server, or a mail server, or whatever. By why? Your new 2Ghz will do this just as well, and won't skip a beat while doing it.
Computers should work well for the first 5 years of their life, and then
Re:Linus Pulls no Punches (Score:5, Informative)
The idea is it only takes four patent to shut SCO down and IBM can find more if it has to.
Weird Linus behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, while I find this quite funny, I also find it a bit odd (and perhaps telling). I have read several previous interviews with Linus Torvalds on various topics and he almost never says something like this. (At least that's how I remember it. I'm sure many will correct me if I'm mistaken.) Although he always clearly states his opinion, he usually avoids getting into this sort of direct attack on an organization or person. This quote from him could mean a few different things. It's possible his nerves are getting a little frayed from all the SCO threats and related media blitz. I know I'm starting to get tired of it and I'm just a random, lazy slashdot poster. It must be much more uncomfortable where Linus is at. Also, although MS has frequently tried to marginalize Linux or say it doesn't count for anything, they never actually tried to claim ownership of it. Perhaps Torvalds considers that more of a personal attack.
Re:Weird Linus behavior? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, good behavior. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can only attack what you can see. Until recently, SCO had put nothing real on the table. What can anyone say about nothing? Now that there's something to talk about, Linus accurately describes it. There is nothing at all odd about that, he simply refused to speculate about what kind of fairy tale SCO was going to make up or their motives.
While it might be obvious that SCO's leadership is deranged, fruadulent and bribed, Linus has been smart enough to keep his mouth shut about things he can't prove. Good for him, he's got better things to do.
See The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate (Score:4, Informative)
Re:See The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate (Score:5, Interesting)
Also Tanebaum wrote a book and Linus bought it and asked him to sign it about a decade after the debate broke out. He refused and was still angy with him! Linus was dumbfounded.
Linus is not an angry or ego driven person. Its not in his personality. He even decided to get involved in the drm debate only after he was forced to take a stand. His stand was, I don't care and will not impose my views on anyone else. To do so would destroy the spirit of Linux itself. If anyone wants drm let them add it as a kernel module. Its their choice.
RMS even called Linus only an engineer and not an advocate.
Only one time I have ever seen him angry. That was from someone demanding again and again to add his patch to the kernel. He finally got angry and told the reasons why he would not accept the patch and he would ignore this person further unless the patch was accepted by more distro's and users.
My guess is he hates nonesense and wants this nightmare to end. Also his job could be on the line if SCO files an injunction to close kernel.org. If Linus can't share his tree then OSDL will have nothing for him to do and will probably can him.
Torvalds/RMS = Goodcop/Badcop (Score:5, Insightful)
While the point RMS was making is valid in a strict sense, the larger effect of their positions is complementary.
RMS holds the ideological line, he gives people a reference implementation for programming ethics. You don't have to think precisely the same way, but he'll tell you if you're not conforming to spec.
On the other hand, Linus, in his public comments and in his approach to linux development and licensing, is more like an optimized implementation with a few out-of-spec hacks included to keep things greased.
Put together, their public personae add up to a goodcop/badcop act that works pretty well. RMS will fume about all sorts of things, while Linus will maintain a more zen attitude about it all. Even if RMS is right about whatever he's talking about at any given moment, people have a way of filtering out the Free Software gospel because it requires them to do things that may not be in their personal interest, even if it's the right thing to do. But when the stars align properly and Linus is as angry as RMS, the full fury of the FSF is unleashed.
Re:Weird Linus behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, how would you respond to somebody who is basically claiming that your entire life's work is a fraud? I'd be pretty peeved.
Torvalds: "Hey everybody, look at the results of all my hard work! Freedom for computer users everywhere!"
SCO: "Shut up you dirty thief! You stole our code!"
Torvalds: "WTF? Stop smoking crack."
Punches pulled. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are some big punches to pull and the only reason to pull them is to cover your ass in case someone really presents something infringing. If you say it's all BS instead of demanding a look, you hurt your credibility. By continuing to demand an honest answer from SCO, the free software world continues to show that SCO is not being honest. You can only refute SCO's nonsense as they put it before you. You can demolish claims on end users, you can show monitary damages don't exist, you can show revealed code is public, but you can't prove that there's no infringing code at all. If you do that, it makes you look irresponsible and that is something free software coders are not.
The "smoking crack" phrase is just a figure of speech for deranged and fradulent, which the current claims are based on the code presented. It would be very difficult to prove that cocaine is actually part of McBitch's Microsoft compensation package, so I doubt someone level headed like Linus would use the phrase literally. Not yet at least.
Get out your picks and torches! (Score:5, Funny)
The evil ones must die!
BSD Code? (Score:5, Funny)
Berkeley Packet Filter? (Score:5, Funny)
Filter the packet... drop drop drop...
Re:Berkeley Packet Filter? (Score:5, Funny)
Man I hate the couch.
Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile SCOX will plumment and leave a lot of angry investors.
I doubt the SEC will get involve though, as this is looking less and less like a stock "pump and dump" scheme and more and more like an average case of sheer corporate idiocy.
Re:Please! (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO executives have already been dumping their stocks. I doubt the SEC will get involved too, but that's because they're understaffed and have bigger fishes to fry.
Re:Please! (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, I can see it happening now:
SCO v. linux, coming to the evening news.Classic Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
Torvalds: "They are smoking crack"
---
You gotta love Linus. It's not just that he speaks his mind, it's that he's just cavalier about what he says.
On a serious note, I'd like to see some the guys involved with SMP or JFS or NUMA get together and *sue SCO.* Tell them they want a cut of any license they collect on unless they can PROVE they aren't claiming ownership of parts of their GPL/BSD contributed code.
Re:Classic Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Classic Linus (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM obviously didnt do anything with OSF/1, as AIX is not based on it, its some kind of bastardisation of SysVr2 or 3. HP I dont think did anything with OSF/1 either, as HP-UX is a BSD4. derivative, IIRC.
Tru-64 though would be completely in the clear. (though Tru-64 does have a SysVr4 compatibility layer, licenced from AT&T / USL).
There's a unix family tree somewhere on the net that details it all, its.....
HP-UX - SysVr4
AIX - SysVr2
IRIX - BSD4.2
(hmm.. but i thought they switched with IRIX6 to SysV?)
Tru-64 - Mach (which tends to be more BSDish)
geneology's a fascinating thing.
A couple of things left out (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually mentioned this in my submission, but it got cut out.
The 'SCO' slide of their 'own' code shows the Berkley Packet Filter. The Linux code they showed, they claim is an 'obfuscated copy' but it is in fact a well documented clean implementation written from the published spec. The interesting issue is that SCO seems to be under the misapprehension that the BFP is their own code to begin with - that seems to imply that they illegally stripped a copyright notice somewhere along the way.
Re:A couple of things left out (Score:5, Interesting)
With the information given, it's quite plausible that AT&T originally copied BPF into sysv (sans copyright notice), and never bothered to put it back after the UC Berkeley settlement. Then SCO inherited the sysv mess.
They still deserve to burn, especially after Darl's fervent claims that "we are not talking about BSD code"! Talk about willful ignorance..
New SCO Logo! (Score:5, Funny)
I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has (Score:4, Informative)
"SCO's legal theory fails, because they ignore the fact that if a work doesn't contain some portion of SCO's copyrighted code, it is not a derived work. This is especially glaring on slide 20, in which SCO claims ownership of JFS, IBM's Journaling File System. The version of JFS used in Linux was originally developed for the OS/2 operating system"
JFS actually came from AIX to OS/2 and not the other way around. Do a google search on "JFS OS/2 AIX" and you can confirm this. e.g
http://freshmeat.net/projects/jfs/?topic_id=142
Tarek
Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, it was originally developed for AIX, yes, but the OS/2 version was not a port, it was a clean room implementation from the spec sheet instead. And it was the OS/2 code that was the basis for the Linux port. So, in fact, the article is correct.
Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has (Score:5, Informative)
Subject: Re: XFS vs. JFS [sgi.com]
Subject: Re[2]: XFS vs. JFS [sgi.com]
See also Q1 on the JFS FAQ [ibm.com] from IBM.
Basically the original implementation was too tightly tied to specific AIX features. So a spec was written and given to the OS/2 team, who were completely separate from the AIX team, and they wrote a clean implementation avoiding such problems. This OS/2 implementation, then, was ported to both AIX and Linux. The original AIX implementation is dead, and has been for some time. All implementations in current use are based on the clean room work by the OS/2 team.
Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has (Score:5, Informative)
Or you can go straight to the source [ibm.com] (no pun intended).
The relevant portion:
Call the FTC! (Score:5, Informative)
I just got off the phone with the FTC. If everyone calls and complains then the chances they will investigate SCO goes up. They look for patterns. In other words, if the majority of their calls are about SCO then they will investigate. It is time to take the Slashdot effect to the phones.
These are the key points to make:
-You did not purchase software from SCO
-The company that "produced" your software did not purchase it from SCO
-It was not marketed or packaged by SCO
-Despite this SCO is asking for $199 from home users (You) and $699 from business for 1 CPU
They will ask for your name, phone number, address etc. That is mostly to verify your identity and citizenship I think.
Here is the number:
1-877-382-4357 option 4
They are nice and listen well. The lady I talked to even took the time to get a better understanding of what Linux is. The best quote from her "You didn't purchase it from them and they want you to pay them? That sounds crazy."
--
Call FTC 1-877-382-4357 opt 4
-You didn't buy from SCO
-Vendor didn't either
-They want $199
Here's some information that may help. They actually asked for this info:
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
801-765-4999 phone
The guy I spoke with was actually somewhat familiar with what Linux is. One of his first questions was how this company got involved with me, which my answer was "Well, that's the problem. They didn't."
He eventually asked if SCO has contacted me personally with regard to this situation, which they have not. Don't lie to them. Be completely truthful. At the end of the call I got a reference number, and he said that if SCO does contact me personally, I should call back and let them know.
It was very easy to do, and took about 5 minutes of my time. The recording while I wated for the counselor to pick up the phone did say that the FTC does track trends in complaints. If we get enough people to complain, something will happen. Please, take a few minutes and call!
Re:Call the FTC! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Call the FTC! (Score:5, Informative)
I did this last week as well as the AG in NY, Eliot Spitzer and my home state AG. I received a reply from Utah yesterday. The gist of the response was they viewed it as a Federal copyright law issue and not in their domain, it was up to the courts to decide or congress to change the copyright laws. They suggested I contact a congressman.
I haven't given up yet since they overlooked the main issue in my inquiry, that SCO is demanding money from consumers under threat of legal action, which borders on extortion, and that they today have shown their infringement claims are, at least so far, false. I also pointed out the possibility Microsoft is using SCO as a proxy in an effort to exterminate one of the few remaining threats to their monopoly.
Re:Call the FTC! (Score:5, Informative)
Call, don't email! (Score:4, Insightful)
I would think that calling people would have a bigger effect than emailing, don't you? Somebody calling me leaves more of an impression than if they just send a couple of angry emails.
Let them hear the tone of concern in your voice!
Re:Call, don't email! (Score:5, Funny)
"Got another call today from somebody complaining about this company called, uh, "hell-bound bastards", or possibly "Skoh". The complaint was along the lines of 'that fucking Darl better not leave Utah, because if he does he'll get a giant penguin made of barbed wire crammed up his ass'. Caller sounded fairly annoyed. Possibly bears further investigation, in light of the 4000 other calls we've received today saying much the same thing. Sure wouldn't want to be this Darl guy. What kind of a name is Darl, anyway? Sounds like some fatass lawyer to me."
Re:Call the FTC! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Call the FTC! (Score:5, Interesting)
now that hurts (Score:5, Funny)
Aggressive! (Score:5, Insightful)
I really respect the guy. I hope that he is around when Linux finally overtakes the OS world once and for all.
Re:Aggressive! (Score:5, Funny)
Ten years from now, Microsoft is going to be aggressively marketing their Windows API for *nixes, and making cash off IP and Patent licensing to corporate solutions providers working in Linux.
Twenty years from now, we're going to see Microsoft pulling a SCO and trying to squeeze a few extra cents on their shares so Bill Gates can have enough money to retire on, claiming that Linus Jr. allowed Microsoft IP into the Linux kernel. The claims will be obfuscated, just like the example code on the OpenOffice.org Impress slides showing the "stolen code".
Thirty years from now, Bill Gates will be remembered fondly as the person who first brought computers to the common man, back when computers were"young" and still crashed. And back when 64GB of RAM should have been enough for anybody.
Fourty years from now, rumors will be going around, and inevitably, said rumors getting forwarded by everyone's mother and best-friend's sister, about how Bill Gates's brain has been preserved and there's a $4 billion cash account willed to the team that can successfully transplant his brain into a genetically cloned and grown body. And Linus Torvalds's name will be in every 1st grade computer textbook along with Babbage, Turing, Von Neumann, and that Apple guy whose computers still hold onto 6% of the desktop computer market.
Drawing it out... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then they went on extortion trips to Japan and around the U.S. Neither panned out, with major companies like Oracle, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and H-P calling their bluff. Accusations without proof are meaningless.
They showed code snippets under super-tight NDAs, mostly to non-geeks, who promptly said "yep, they look the same". Of COURSE they looked the same! Would SCO show code that doesn't match? The fact that it was all out of context didn't seem to matter.
When THAT didn't convince anyone, they started showing bits of code without an NDA -- and the rest of the world found out why IBM, Oracle, Fujitsu, et. al. isn't afraid and why SCO was so reluctant to show the code in the first place.
SCO is clueless. They have no idea what they own and what they don't. They don't know what they, as Caldera and SCO, gave away and what they "borrowed" from others for their own. They simply assume that any
Somebody just did a "diff" between the SCO source and a Linux kernel and went off from there.
Just watching them escalate the claims day after day gives a clue. First it is dozens of lines, then hundreds, then thousands, and now MILLIONS!
The truth is SCO probably had NO intention of this getting to the discovery phase -- they were hoping for a settlement or buyout before all this came to light.
They are quite desparate now.
Damn! I wish I bought SCOX back in November.
Tomorrow's headline.... (Score:5, Funny)
JoAnn
Torvalds's's Comment's (Score:5, Funny)
And dammit, why does Linus Torvalds have to have 'S' at the end of his first and last name? I can't figure out where the apostrophy goes. ;)
Danger: Stupid, Tech Ignorant Judge. (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be one heck of a long shot for them, but dumber rulings have been made before.
Suddenly SCO not only owns Linux, but that could also qualify them as owning BSD as well as anything that even closely resembles UNIX in one way or another. They might even be able to lay claim to parts of every operating system out there so long as that OS borrowed concepts from UNIX (or BSD, Linux, etc.) Doesn't Windows have code copied from BSD too? Or maybe that is what Microsoft "lisenced" already...
Re:Danger: Stupid, Tech Ignorant Judge. (Score:4, Insightful)
But, while the judge might not know much about Linux or malloc() or any of that, the judge most likely knows quite a bit about copyright law. (probably has three or four books citing copyright related case law in his chambers too) If Perens can lay out a fairly convincing argument in a single web page, I think IBM and it's army of vicious attack sharks/lawyers should be able to more or less decimate SCO's claims without every getting much into the technical side of things. The case is about ownership and copyright more than it is about what the malloc() function actually does.
FSF disagrees with Parens (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FSF disagrees with Parens (Score:4, Informative)
There are two BSD licenses. The original BSD license had a clause that said that if you mentioned features of the software in ads, you had to mention that the code came from UCB. The current BSD license does not have this clause.
The FSF says that the original BSD license is not compatible with the GPL, because of this clause. Here is where FSF says this [fsf.org].
The license that Caldera used when they released some of the code Parens is talking about is very similar to the original BSD license. Here is that license [lemis.com].
If the FSF is correct about the advertising clause making such a license incompatible with the GPL, then it means that Linux does have a problem. When you mix code under the GPL and code that is under an incompatible license, you have to get special permission from the copyright owners of the GPL'ed code. You can't just take GPL'ed code and use it in such a mixed environment.
A good quote. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the guy. There are three SCO stories on the front page right now. Do we really need to debate SCO's every (rather predictable) move? This is worse than the days when every other story was a dupe.
Re:A good quote. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it entertaining. Its kind of like WWE Pro Wrestling. Yea, you can tell who is going to win before the real battle starts, and its mainly about the trash talking from IBM and SCO, plus all the paid and unpaid advocates. But I like a couple SCO stories a day. August is a boring month for politics, usually, since congress is on recess, so this works as a nice substitute.
You don't HAVE to read the SCO stories. TheRegister.com has lots of great stories other than SCO, as well. But some of us are hooked on this, like a cheap soap opera. Except it ain't cheap.
You missed one link, there.... (Score:5, Informative)
In Bruce's commentary, there was a link to an Infoworld article/interview with Bruce [infoworld.com]. It's pretty good. Bruce disputes SCO's claims, and the reporter didn't minimize/trivialize it. Coupled with the eWeek interview, I think we might stand a fighting chance in the court of public opinion.
How to handle SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have hold the copyright on any GPL code that SCO is distributing, sue SCO. They have stated that they do not intend to be bound by the GPL; their actions show that they do not plan to adhere to the terms of the GPL. It is reasonable to believe that they intend to violate the license (indeed, I think they have already). I think it would be reasonable to seek an injunction against SCO to prevent them from redistributing your code unless they agree that the GPL is valid and they are bound by it.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of lawsuits, hackers in jurisdictions all around the USA (or around the world) filing suit against SCO. Their stock price will plummet - that's a language they'll understand. They will be forced to respond.
What are the possible outcomes? These come to mind off the top of my head:
- They capitulate and agree publicly that the GPL is valid and they intend to adhere to it in redistributing GPL software. Major PR victory for free software.
- They agree to stop redistributing GPL software because they agree that the GPL is valid. Major PR victory for free software; major loss for SCO because they then have no viable product. This seems unlikely. Without product, SCO's sole source of income is lawsuits. Furthermore, in acknowledging the validity of the GPL, they open themselves up to further lawsuits seeking damage for their violating the GPL (which I think it is clear they have, in DEMANDING fees for GPL software). Their stock price plummets.
- They refuse to acknowledge the validity of the GPL. A judge (or judges) grant injunctive relief and force them to stop redistributing GPL software, affirming the validity of the GPL. Minor PR victory for free software. SCO no longer has products to distribute. This seems unlikely simply because I don't think SCO would go this far; again, without product to sell, their stock price plummets.
- Other companies avoid dealing in or distributing GPL software, fearing a Beowulf cluster of lawsuits. This seems quite possible; care must be taken in pointing out that suits are filed ONLY because SCO has violated and has stated their intention to violate the terms of the license.
So head down to your local library and check out a couple of legal texts. Find out how to file a copyright infringement suit in federal court in your jurisdictin. Learn to use "Whereas" in a sentence. Pay the filing fee, and pay a process server to Fed-Ex a letter to SCO to let them know they're being sued. Specify damages if you wish, but the goal (IMHO) is their acknowledgement of the validity of the GPL.
Most importantly, publicize what you've done; email every Linux news site out there, as well as major tech news sites. Get the information out there where the mainstream tech and stock analysts can find it and be disturbed at the liability that SCO has incurred in declaring that they do not intend to abide by the GPL.
Re:How to handle SCO (Score:5, Funny)
Now that I've seen those words, my time at Slashdot is done. I can move on.
Re:How to handle SCO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How to handle SCO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How to handle SCO (Score:5, Interesting)
A company by the name of Head Games Publishing had downloaded a couple hundred Quake levels that had been created by a number of gamers, stripped their copyright notices, burned up a bunch of CDs with the levels and sold it as their own. The question that the lawyers kept asking me was "How much money did you lose as a result of their violating your copyright?" Because my primary objective in enforcing my copyright was to insure that anyone could download and enjoy my levels free of charge, I couldn't really name a dollar amount.
This apparently made it difficult to sue. I had $10,000 of my own money that I was willing to spend on this, and I could not convince the attorneys at Lane Powell Spears Luberski in Seattle to take the case. The impression that I came away with was that because of the lack of money involved with keeping the intellectual property "free", they didn't think that I (or they) would get anything out of winning the suit, and they weren't willing to take my paltry 10 grand to demonstrate that to me, which I guess I appreciate.
The situation that I was in may be similar to the SCO/JFS situation. Individual copyright owners of the JFS could have as much difficulty suing SCO as I had trying to enforce copyright ownership of intellectual property that I wanted to make freely available under a particular license.
Poor SCO pointy-haired-bosses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor SCO pointy-haired-bosses... I can see it now (names omitted to protect the guilty):
-------------------
PHB1: "Hey PHB2, I'm putting together this PowerPoint. I suppose I should slap some code in there to make this suit look more legit."
PHB2: "Yeah, good idea." (PHB2 goes to Etrade to dump a bit more stock)
PHB1: "I've got this copied code the IPI [Intellectual Property Investigative --ed] Team passed on to me, but Legal says we can't release it."
PHB2: "Yeah, $600 an hour to tell us we can't disclose it to the press and claim it's top-secret priceless intellectual property at the same time."
PHB1: "No kidding." (pause) "You ever seen code like this?"
PHB2: "Linux hippies. I dunno, it's all greek to me."
PHB1: "Genius! What a brilliant idea, I'll show those hackers the code in Greek!"
PHB2: "Hey, you're good..."
(peck, peck, peck)
--LP
And I say unto SCO ... ha ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
They had installed a UniBasic system which ran the company database, written for the TeleVidio terminal family which was being emulated by Wyse-30's. Naturally I found this intolerable so I modified the UniBasic code and inserted VT100 escape sequences to fix the most important screens so that we could telnet to the SCO box instead of using the Wyse-30's which were blowing up and not being replaced.
That was until I dumped the entire UniBasic system. I wrote a terminal macro to repeat a sequence of keypresses and logged the session to a text file. Then I wrote an awk script to parse the text file into a bunch of smaller files. Then I prepended and html-ized these little files, and finally I indexed them with Glimpse.
Man it rocked. You could do a glimpse search and get exactly the same info that you would have gotten by using the Unibasic from the Wyse-30 right from your web browser.
Right after I did this ( I was a temp ), the parent company completely shut down our company and moved it to Massachussets, firing everybody at my factory. Unfortunately, they still haven't figured out how to connect the SCO box back up and make it work again. Eh? Fixed IP what the hell is that!?! Hahahahah you dumb asses!
SCO is so ass-backwards I can see how this whole thing came about. They must have fired anybody with brains decades ago, and they are just milking their cash cow until it dies.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
A ditty (Score:4, Funny)
CEO of the company, S-C,S-C-0
With snip, snip here, and some very questionable source code whose origin that cannot be determined and most likely taken out of context while backed up with ludicrious claims that have no bearing on reality and in fact show a complete disregard for sanity in conjuction with alienating their customers and angering those who created it in the first place while simultaneously suing those who use it and impressing on the community the need to imprison the asshats who are pumping and dumping their stock at the expense of the shareholders and in spite of FTC rules there,
Here a line, there a line, everywhere a stolen line!
Old Da-rl McPrisonBride, S - C, S - C - OOOoooo!
Second verse, same as the first! Everyone!
Linux isn't monolithic, after all... (Score:5, Interesting)
Like in response to a SCO letter: "Our 'Linux' is a non-infringing custom build. Goodbye."
The burden of proof lies with them, doesn't it? How would they go about proving otherwise, assuming there's even anything there to prove?
The Psychology of it (Score:4, Insightful)
What baffles me is not how they can peddle this lunacy with a straight face, but why they believe that the fabric of society has broken down so much that this kind of thing is something you can do without shame.
Even twenty years ago, nobody would have had the giant brass clangers it would take to do something like this. Have our values eroded so badly? Has society really become so decadent that literally anything goes? And if it has, how do we go about the process of healing civilization itself?
Let us lobeth a grenade at SCO and be done. (Score:5, Funny)
AC's chanting: Pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem.
Brother Neal: Armaments, chapter two, verse nine to twenty one.
Brother Neal: And Saint Stallman raised the Slashdot up high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy Holy Slashdot that, with it, Thou mayest slashdot Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy'. And the Lord did grin, and the AC's did feast upon first posts, trolls, GNAA posts, and...
Taco: Skip it a bit, Brother.
Brother Neal: And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou click on the holy link called Slashdot. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, clickest thou holy Slashdot of OSDL towards thy server [caldera.com], who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
Taco: Amen
Slide show misrepresents the legal case (Score:5, Interesting)
Slides 3, 4, and 5 document SCO's contract with Novell to acquire Unix IP. I don't see anything funny there.
The funny part is on slides 6 and 7. Slide 6 contains excerpts of the AT&T License Agreement with IBM. Slide 7 contains more excerpts from the AT&T License Agreement with IBM, except that "AT&T" is changed to SCO in one place.
However, this is just the Licensing Agreement. This just the contract that allows IBM to use AT&T Unix within its organization.
Beyond this contract, IBM also has a Sub-Licensing Agreement. The sub-licensing agreement allows IBM to sell Unix products to its customers. SCO's presentation does not talk about the sub-licensing agreement at all, but this agreement is one of the contracts filed with the Court.
To draw an analogy: the License Agreement is like the agreement that lets you run Windows on your PC. The Sub-License Agreement is like the contract that lets Dell sell Windows to other people. SCO's presentation quotes the License Agreement, and says that license prohibits IBM from distributing code. But SCO's presentation ignores the Sub-License Agreement, which allows IBM to sell UNIX to its customers.
On top of that, IBM has a third agreement with AT&T which grants IBM additional rights on top of the Sub-Licensing Agreement. The third agreement explicitly states:
2. Regarding section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you.
7.06(a) Nothing in this agreement shall prevent LICENSEE from developing or marketing products or services employing ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques related to data processing embodied in SOFTWARE PRODUTCS subject to this Agreement, provided that LICENSEE shall not copy any code from such SOFTWARE PRODUCTS into any such product or in connection with any such service and employees of LICENSEE shall not refer to the physical documents and materials comprising SOFTWARE PRODUCTS subject to this Agreement when they are developing any such products or service or providing any such service.
You can read the contracts for yourself. They are Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C at SCO Lawsuit Documents [sco.com].
So IBM has an explicit right for their engineers who have worked on the UNIX source code use ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques in other IBM products. IBM paid good money for this right from the lawful copyright holders. (This may explain why SCO is attacking the Sequent contributions, because Sequent doesn't have as much rights in its contract as IBM has in theirs).
This brings us to Slide #22, where an IBM engineer posts information about his experience with scalability in AIX. Under section 7.06(a) above, IBM has the explicit right to disseminate such information about Unix (let alone IBM's rights to talk about property which is purely theirs, such as JFS).
SCO knows this. SCO filed these contracts with the Court (accessible through Pacer) and SCO also published these contracts on their web site.
I would love for reporters to dig into the actual exhibits and ask questions based on the exhibits. Just hit the SCO Lawsuit Documents link above and read the exhibits.
New Rules (Score:5, Insightful)
In the new United States, being right doesn't mean you're going to win. It's all about money now folks.
Let's take this into account when we rally to protect the rights to our software, and not assume that the "facts" are going to be as relevant as the overwhelming wall of bullshit that seems to surround the amazingly fucked up stuff that the government claims is fair.
Re:Get rid of the BSD Code (Score:5, Interesting)
Whatever for?
If it's to help develop a competing approach to solving a problem, I'm all for it: whichever one winds up proving to be best at solving the problem should be the one adopted, even if it's the other camp's solution.
But dumping the BSD code just to be "unique" is silly.
With respect to this SCO nonsense, the only thing I care about is whether or not the origins of the contributed code can be traced. If a piece of code winds up in, say, FreeBSD, I expect they have checked its source as thoroughly as the Linux maintainers would for any code contributed directly to Linux. In short, I see little reason to discriminate between the two.
Finally, if a piece of code winds up in either distribution that shouldn't, then it's a moderately simple matter of pulling the code and rewriting it if necessary if it's found that the contributer who donated the code did so without proper authorization. One would hope that a court would find the action of such removal and rewriting in the face of accidental infringement to be sufficient remedial action once the infringing code is revealed. But this is the U.S. legal system we're talking about here, and it seems to be so screwed up that I can't dismiss the possibility that it would rule heavily against an accidental infringer. In fact, things seem bad enough that I have to consider such a situation to be likely.
Sigh...
Re:Ummm, isn't Bruce setting himself up? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the companies I know that find sensitive material that is still marked "confidential" re-published by the press simply request that it be removed, but it appears that the reporting on the material itself is fairly well protected; I would imagine Bruce's commentary would fall under the reporting but things like slide photos or the slides themselves (if the "confidential" remained on the slide during the presentation) might be iffy.
As an aside, a lot of companies knowingly let "confidential" documents leak as a way of unofficially distributing the information. SCO could be hoping that this would result in very damaging reports without ever having to provide the code snippets publically -- it leaves an out of deniability "that was an internal document never meant for the outside world and it wasn't reviewed by our lawyers for accuracy, yada yada"
But this is SCO, so the fact that Bruce used the same alphabet as SCO in his report is probably grounds enough for them.
Re:Removed from the code (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it doesn't matter in that sense. But it's a great vindication of all of us that have been skeptical of SCOs claims, because it's exactly the kind of thing we predicted. It's, at worst, a piece of BSD licensed code that should have had a copyright notice preserved that got lost along the way. This isn't the sort of thing you can justify a $3billion lawsuit on, regardless. They should have sent an email and asked for the copyright notice to be replaced, that's what anyone else would have done.
On top of that, it's code contributed by SGI, so they're on the hook for actual damages (not bloody much) but even if SCOs novel ideas about suing users were correct, they couldn't sure more than about 5 people over this anyway. It's a file that's used only to support one of SGIs old machines, it's totally irrelevant to the vast majority of users.
Wrong.
First off there's no such thing as 'IP rights' per se, that's just a rubric used to cover four different sorts of rights; patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets.
SCO has no related patents, so that's not an issue. SCO doesn't own the Unix trademark (the Open Group does) and even if they did that's not an issue here. Copyright doesn't prohibit learning from someone elses code, only copying it outright, so it doesn't back up your claim.
A trade secret would come closest - if someone saw the code under NDA and then copied it into Linux, then that person would definately be liable. But only that person, and the trade secret status of the code would be ended.
Re:Removed from the code (Score:5, Informative)
This is a common misunderstanding; thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong or illegal with reverse-engineering (be that examining source code or binaries). Like another poster pointed out, the only mechanism that could protect against "monkey see monkey do" would be trade secret registration.
For patents, it does not matter if you saw something and reimplemented it, or even created it yourself from the scratch. Copyright only protects against unauthorized copying, not against reimplementations.
The whole clean-room reimplementation idea was an overkill created by Compaq lawyers, when they were cloning IBM PC. They wanted to be 150% sure everything was legal, since they were dealing with a high-tech behemoth, with ample resources to use on lawyering. Doing clean-room development is plenty good for avoiding potential trouble, but it is not a requirement of any sort (more like a sterilized man using a condom).
"ugly" code? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason it was ugly was that it duplicates the function of some other code in the kernel.
It is hard to believe that the code was ugly. After all, it was written by ken/dmr and withstood 30 years of scrutiny.
"treated .. as" (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I find this very subject to multiple interpretations. Nothing in the contract explicitly grants ownership of derivatives to ATT, so IBM could argue that even without the amendment that grants ownership of derivatives to IBM, nothing gives ownership of the derivatives to SCO. This might be important for code developed at Sequent.
Re:"treated .. as" (Score:5, Informative)
What that paragraph does say is that the derivative works are covered by the same terms of that contract as the original software is. The contract requires that the original code is not disclosed to others. Thus, the derivatives also cannot be disclosed to others.
Remember, this case is about trade secrets and breach of contracts not about copyright violations. SCO are not claiming to own the copyright to the derivatives, they are claiming that IBM is contractually prohibited from publishing the code.
Their argument is still wrong because code that is linked to theirs is not derivative of theirs when separated out and containing none of theirs.
Re:How do you pronounce SCO? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How do you pronounce SCO? (Score:5, Funny)
I pronounce them dead. Time of death, the moment Darl opened is fat trap and talked up this scam.
Not LSD! (Score:5, Funny)
To paraphrase Inspector Clouseau, they are asking us to buy "a leesenzzz for their minkee". But it is not their minkee!
Re:surely they have a case (Score:5, Interesting)
"Your claims are nonsense because you don't own this code, and here is evidence of where the code was made freely available before your company even existed. Oh, and the code sucks so much that you're the only ones who even want to use it. Shouldn't you be spending more on developers and less on incompetent lawyers?"