Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the this-is-only-gonna-get-more-interesting dept.
djtrippin writes "Linus comes forth on the SCO v IBM suit and how it pertains (or doesn't, for that matter) to Linux." He definitely puts a fair amount of perspective on the whole thing. This story really is only going to get more bizarre.
Linus says...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
"Who is SCO again?"
The crux of the article
by
sielwolf
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· Score: 5, Informative
For those of you looking for the 5 second MS Word XP autosummary.
[snip] MozillaQuest Magazine: What sort of impact do you believe this sort of lawsuit filed by SCO-Caldera has on the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and the Linux and free-software communities?
Linus Torvalds: None, really. The people I work with couldn't care less. [/snip]
-- What is music when you despise all sound?
Re:The crux of the article
by
silvaran
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· Score: 5, Funny
Actually, the MS Word XP autosummary might look a little more like this:
I suppose he was carrying his comments on 2 stone tablets...
Let's see, what did he spake unto us? "Ho humm..." Wow...words to live by.
Who cares what Linus thinks?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
No, really. I mean, yes, he's the figurehead of the Linux movement, but who cares? This is a legal matter, we should go ask Lawrence Lessig instead.
He has already said he does even think about patents, and that pretty much shows his attitude towards the whole thing.
Mozillaquest asking Linus for his comments were a typical waste of time, because everyone already knows what he is going to say.
Re:Who cares what Linus thinks?
by
DataPath
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Well, the question involved is whether IBM has been insinuating UNIX (SCO owned, apparently) IP into the Linux kernel. And apparently their claims are that Linux could not POSSIBLY have advanced as fast or as far as it has without stealing UNIX IP, it MUST be stealing UNIX IP. Linus knows better than just about everyone else WHAT goes into the kernel, if not necessarily where it comes from. Since you can be pretty sure IBM isn't talking, Linus is the best source for evaluating with the community is capable of.
-- Inconceivable!
Re:Who cares what Linus thinks?
by
ehiggins
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· Score: 5, Insightful
And there's the beauty of open source. We could ask SCO, "fine, you've got the source, show us the alleged Unix IP-infringing code".
Mirror in case it's slashdotted
by
jsse
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· Score: 5, Informative
SCO-Caldera v IBM: Linus Torvalds Comments on SCO-Caldera's Linux-Related Allegations
Nearly One-Half of SCO-Caldera Income from IP Licensing and Enforcement
Of the 136-paragraph Complaint filed by Caldera Systems, Inc., d/b/a The SCO Group, six are particularly significant regarding the Linux kernel, and the GNU/Linux operating system, and Linux distributions.
Paragraphs 74 and 82 through 86 of SCO-Caldera's Complaint belittle and insult Linux developers, the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, Linux distribution providers -- in essence the entire GNU/Linux and free software community.
In an e-mail discussion, we asked Linus Torvalds to comment on the Linux-related allegations SCO-Caldera makes in its Complaint against IBM. Here is Linus Torvalds' uncensored commentary.
Linus Torvalds: Ho humm..
I'm not all that excited about commenting a lot on lawsuits, since quite frankly I want to have as little as humanly possible to do with such things. At the same time I obviously do find the SCO one a bit interesting, since it's the first lawsuit ever I know of that actually involves Linux, even if Linux itself seems pretty peripheral.
Just as well, that "peripheral" thing;)
MozillaQuest Magazine: SCO-Caldera says in paragraph "82" that "it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use." (Without the aid of the alleged actionable conduct of IBM) Is that true?
Linus Torvalds: I don't think IBM would have started using Linux if it was true. I think IBM got serious about Linux because it noticed that it _was_ "adequate for enterprise use" from a technical perspective, but lacked a lot of things IBM could bring to the table (marketing, of course, but even more than just marketing, just the presence of IBM made Linux be taken much more seriously).
So I think IBM's involvement has been very important, but while IBM has fine engineers, the most important part by _far_ has been the "mindshare" part of it.
But what does "adequate for enterprise use" really mean? The marketing and mindshare certainly _matter_ a lot for pretty much all enterprise customers. So in _that_ sense maybe SCO is right, even though I don't think that is really what SCO _meant_.
MozillaQuest Magazine: It sounds as though this lawsuit is not a suit alleging copyright infringement, patent infringement, or trademark infringement (the standard three prongs of the intellectual property complex). Rather, it appears the Caldera v IBM action is more in the nature of a contract or tort action.
Linus Torvalds: Yeah, I don't personally think they have any IP rights on Linux, and I agree, it looks more like a suit over the contract rather than over Linux itself.
I don't think they are going to win it (very very weak arguments, since at least from a technical perspective I don't think the IBM involvement has been that significant, and SCO was losing out _long_ before IBM started pushing Linux). However, my personal (maybe overly cynical) suspicion is that even _they_ don't think they'll win the suit, and it may be nothing more than a way to force IBM back into license discussions over UNIX itself.
So I think that 100-day license revocation thing may actually be the most important part of the whole suit, and that the rest might be just the excuse. If I was SCO and looking at IBM, I'd have long since noticed that IBM has been talking about Linux taking over more and more of their current AIX usage, to potentially eventually replace it altogether.
So SCO sees IBM largely going away as a licensee in a few years - and while I certainly don't have any knowledge of how much that means for SCO, I would not be surprised if IBM licenses are quite a noticeable part of SCOs receivables.
And what would you do? You want to get IBM back to the discussion table over licensing _before_ IBM starts to consider the UNIX licenses for AIX to be no longer worth it. I think IBM has announced they'll drop AIX eventually, but I do _not_ think that IBM is willing to drop it within three months. They tend to pride themselves on supporting their existing customers.
MozillaQuest Magazine: What sort of impact do you believe this sort of lawsuit filed by SCO-Caldera has on the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and the Linux and free-software communities?
Linus Torvalds: None, really. The people I work with couldn't care less.
The thrust of paragraphs 74 and 82 to 84 of SCO-Caldera's Complaint against IBM is that without the aid of the alleged actionable conduct of IBM, GNU/Linux would not be an enterprise/server grade operating system. Although in paragraph 84 of its Complaint, SCO-Caldera does not directly say it, when taken in context of the entire Complaint, SCO-Caldera is alleging that it is the alleged actionable conduct of IBM that provides items (1) through (5) set forth in paragraphs 84 to the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, and Linux distributions.
84. Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment.
MozillaQuest Magazine: Did the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux developers and groups lack the technological capability of producing an enterprise level Linux without being bailed-out by IBM as SCO-Caldera claims?
Linus Torvalds: "Bailed-out by IBM"? Hardly. Oh, IBM has certainly been very helpful, and I like the IBM engineers I work with, but Linux was running on 16-cpu Sun sparc computers long before IBM really got into it.
In paragraph 85 of its Complaint against IBM, SCO-Caldera alleges that the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux are limited to handling a maximum of four CPUs.
85. For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts.
MozillaQuest Magazine: Is this true? I thought the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux can handle 32 CPUs?
Linus Torvalds: We still claim 4-8 CPU scalability. Yeah, it sure works on bigger machines, but they are just so uncommon as to not be a big issue yet, and most of peoples' resources are certainly spent on the mass market (well, UP is the _real_ mass market, but most of the kernel people tend to be fascinated by SMP issues, so we tend to target slightly higher;)
Normally, we end our articles with a summary and/or conclusion. We do not do so with this article. That's because we want you to have the benefits of Linus Torvalds' comments about the SCO-Caldera v IBM lawsuit without any spin from us. You are getting this just the way Linus said it and in context. Moreover, Linus Torvalds' comments are concise, well-expressed, and to the point. The only material in this article is Linus' comments with just enough background added by us to put the comments in perspective and context with the allegations of SCO-Caldera's Complaint. Thus, Linus Torvalds' comments need no interpretation or spin from us.
Re:Mirror in case it's slashdotted
by
imadork
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· Score: 5, Interesting
We should have a (+1, Mirror) option when we moderate. This way, people can still Karma Whore, which is of course an essential part of the Slashdot Experience, but I can filter these silly redundant posts out in my preferences.
SMP?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts.
Um, SysV doesn't do this. Good SMP for UNIX has
been added to all the VendorOSes, but without any
help from SCO.
Re:Dennis Ritchie Comments and Documents from
by
Greg+Koenig
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Actually, I immediately thought of the USL v. BSDI case when I heard about SCO's recent filing. My OS of choice tends to lean towards the BSD side (simply due to my background as a CS Ph.D. student, I suppose) but I certainly use Linux for many projects. I used FreeBSD back in ca. 1992 when it seemed that it might be encumbered due to licensing difficulties from USL.
I think the important thing to realize is that while different open source software camps may at times compete against each other (Linux vs. BSD, Gnome vs. KDE, etc.), in the end the diversity we have within our ranks is a very powerful asset. Had the lawsuit in 1992 turned out differently, Linux would have been an unencumbered alternative that would have allowed the movement to continue forward. Likewise, in the extremely off chance that SCO did do something to encumber Linux today, the open source community has many other fine operating systems that are alternatives and which could be a basis to continue moving forward.
IMHO, an important lesson to realize from this after it finally settles down (and I have no doubt that SCO will end up appearing kind of stupid in the end) is that the diversity in open source software is the biggest benefit and allows it to overcome these kinds of things.
Re:Dennis Ritchie Comments and Documents from
by
evilpenguin
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I agree, and I would go even further. Diversity in technology and infrastrcuture is, in general, good. The internet worms and viruses should teach us this. This is why One Microsoft Way is not a good thing, even if you do not subscribe to the GNU philosophy of Free Software (although I happen to do so).
Diversity is good even within the Free Software world. We don't all use sendmail and that is good. We don't all use Gnome and that is good. We don't all use Mozilla, and that is good. There should be three, four, five choices for every major category of software.
A lot of people seem to think this is a bad thing. It is "confusing." I dont think so. You select by feature, fit, or whim (depending on necessity) and you limit failure by design, failure from malicious interference, and failure from excessive lawyering.
I'd like to see diversity in all infrastructure technology. (Like combining the present grid with neighborhood wind/solar energy).
Sure, I can be a loudmouthed bigot about my favorite technologies, but even though I don't happen to use FreeBSD, I am glad to know it is there (and I have an ISO of it at hand if need be).
I use more than one Linux distro at home (Debian, RedHat, and SuSE). I use OpenBSD for my firewall machine.
Diversity, redundacy. These are the basis of true reliability. Sure, Microsoft (for example) can try to secure the shit out of their next OS, but if everybody uses that one product, one mistake takes everyone out.
The *nix world hasn't (as a rule) been much more systematic about security than has Microsoft, but its diversity has been its saving grace.
The biggest failures of *nix security have occurred in those few places where one package has indeed been dominant. Sendmail is one. BIND is another (BTW, what alteratives to BIND exist for Linux and *BSD? I actually don't know and would like to know.)
Re:From the complaint...
by
lenski
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· Score: 5, Insightful
a high degree of design coordination: The internet
access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment: dyadic (to quote the old evil empire...), quad, and higher-count multiprocessors that have become far more common under the influence of Moore's "law"
Access to UNIX code, methods and concepts: People have been studying OS technology for 40+ years... Including IBM!:-)
UNIX architectural experience: Again, this is standard upper-classman study. I studied this stuff at the age of 18, 28 years ago. (Back then, our studies were somewhat "academic", given how many System/360./370, CDC supercomputers existed at the time...)
A very significant financial investment: Add up the contributions of the core teams, the hundreds of regular patch providers, thousands of enthusiasts, and hundreds of thousands of people studying this stuff (Gnu very much included): The cost of paying that many smart people professional wages would be, in a word, huge.
SCO has completely missed the effects of common availability of computational resources. I remember when crossing the gigaflop "barrier" was a big deal. Today it's your average laptop. 18 years ago, a UNIX source license in a business context could cost about $125,000 (as priced by a friend of mine, working on Sequent boxes). Apparently, that's when SCO executives seem to have stopped noticing the progress of technology.
When The Smoke Clears
by
E-Rock-23
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't think I quite understand SCO's position on this whole matter. But, with UnitedLinux slowly crumbling and the nature of Linux, I'm willing to bet that SCO/Caldera might get laughed out of the Linux business.
IMHO, IBM has done a world of good for Linux. My favorite commercial remain's IBM's basketball team ad that featured the Chris Mullin wannabe wearing number 12, and the team owners discussing his role on the team.
"How can we get him to work for peanuts?" "Because he loves the game..."
That's exactly what Linux needed - to get it's name out beyond our little Geeks-Only circle to the masses, both Corporations and the Average Joe/Jane. Now, how did that harm Linux or Linux development? How did that muddy the waters? If you ask me, it rocked the boat in a good way.
Linux has grown by leaps and bounds, from a grassroots OS to a viable option for both business and home use (more the former then the latter). This lawsuit serves no real purpose, IMO. Honestly, I'll just bet that it's an attempt by a faltering SCO to steal some of the thunder that IBM has built for Linux. They just want a piece of the pie.
Final Prediction: SCO's complaint will be thrown out, and Linux will continue moving forward, with or without them.
a high degree of design coordination Who says this couldn't be achieved by the Open Source world? It has, and Linux is not the only example (though it is, admittedly the largest scale project of them all).
access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment In the true spirit of Free Software/Open Source, all of the design and testing is done by the community. Having hundreds of thousands (and now millions) of people all making use of it is far far better than the best testing equipment money can buy.
access to UNIX code, methods and concepts What for? Have they taken a look at the Linux code, or even the code for the GNU utilities that are part of a standard UNIX environment? Does any of it have anything in common with the code they say is theirs? It's all open, SCO, prove it. You can have a look.
UNIX architectural experience Oh please. As if there weren't already thousands of people with this kind of expertise at the time Linus Torvalds began this work!
a very significant financial investment The off-time of thousands of hackers who would otherwise be paid significant money is indeed a "significant financial investment". And furthermore, what's wrong with the fact that real financial investments are coming in from IBM and other companies?
-- Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Read the SCO document
by
NullProg
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· Score: 5, Informative
As I've stated before (and have wasted too much time on this matter), here it is again...
Concerning the few specific examples SCO listed in their court filing, the Omni print driver and JFS appeared in OS/2 long before Linux. Warp 3 and Warp 4 Server respectively. JFS appeared in AIX first but was never the property of UNIX.
Per the SCO view, with project Monterey IBM gave away the keys to the UNIX kingdom to Linux. I'm sorry, but Monterey was annouced in October 1998. Well after Linux was ready for "prime time". I still have servers to prove so. Bicycle my ass.
Important point - Linux is a UNIX Workalike, AIX is a derivation of the original UNIX making them completely different beings. Linux was built from the ground up based on the POSIX standards.
Hope that clears things up.
Re:The point is something else...
by
Jahf
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not necessarily. If anyone has the lawyers capable of making SCO's infringement claim stick, it would be Microsoft. $1B isn't complete chump-change (even to them), especially as that's only IBM, and if it would hurt their competition, I could Microsoft doing it. Don't forget that patents (and their infringements) would transfer in an aquisition.
In my opinion, if SCO -isn't- looking for a buy-out, they're nuts. They don't have clout in the market anymore and they probably don't have the coffers needed to pursue these infringements. I'm not saying I agree with their claims, but if they are looking to get bought, it's a proven strategy to build up a portfolio of cases and then sell off to someone with more muscle.
-- It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I'm not a big fan of IBM either...
by
pointwood
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's easy to look at IBM as a "the good guy" and forget all the bad things they stand for too!
In Europe there is currently a big fight about software patents and who do you think is a big supporter of them?
Here is a quote: IBM's patent department is actively lobbying Europe to legalise software patents. They have invested millions in fighting example cases to leading European lawcourts such as the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal and the German Federal Court in order to soften and eventually remove European restrictions on patenting software. They have also threatened European politicians that IBM might close down local facilities if software patents are not legalised in Europe. IBM has also prevented the US government from conducting studies on the value of software patents for the national economy. In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability. Once software patents become assertable in Europe, an IBM tax of several hundered million EUR may be levied on European software companies.
Now, what is the biggest threat to Linux? SCO or software patents?
Besides that, I find SCO's suit very stupid - the only winner in this is going to be the laywers.
When SCO went bad (a memoir)
by
charlie
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· Score: 5, Informative
Obligatory disclaimer: I worked for SCO from 1991 to 1995. I was in the techpubs team working on SCO OpenServer 5, released in mid-1995. So I think I have some insight into SCO's corporate culture as it then was...
Kids, the company that filed this lawsuit is not SCO.
Engineers at SCO were bolting together PC based UNIXes back before Linus got started. From the late 1980's, they inherited Xenix -- a descendant of AT&T System 7. In 1988 they bought the rights to AT&T SVR3.2 (for an eye-watering sum -- in 1994, each box SCO sold was encumbered with about $200 in royalty payments to other companies). By 1992, SCO UNIX 3.2.4 was a cash cow, and they needed something new.
I'd rate the rot as having set in by late 1991. Before then, SCO was an exceedingly cool place to work -- one of the early UNIX start-ups, SCO was the outfit with the hot tub in the courtyard of the original company offices and the source of numerous interesting legends. There was a lot of cross-fertilization with SGI and Sun at the engineering level back in the late 80's, and some of that survived into the 1990's. But the ACE Initiative killed it dead -- led to a 15% downsizing in 1991, when SCO was forced to admit that it couldn't market Open Desktop against Windows and hope to win. Then there was a string of bad decisions that effectively doomed the company to ossification and slow decline.
First there was the decision to build OpenServer in the first place. Then when SVR4 appeared to be making ground and SVR4.2 (UnixWare 1) came out, there was IIRC a quiet attempt to clone the SVR4 kernel. (The AT&T copyright declarations were retained in the headers, but by 1995 SCO's main product bore about the same relationship to SVR3.2 that a heavily customized rice burner bears to a showroom model.)
But SCO was, at this point, still a real software company. The UNIX dev team had more than 200 engineers working in it. Then the rot set in for real...
(Historical aside: I first met Linux in 1993, as the system a bunch of SCO's engineers were running on their home machines. But when I left in early 1995, there was an attitude of complete denial in SCO's management -- Linux was a toy system that could never be relevant.)
Anyway. Why did I leave?
The main warning to me that the company was probably not a good long term career bet happened three months ahead of the functional freeze on OpenServer. One lunchtime managers came around our cubicle farm and pitch-forked us into coaches, drove us for two hours around the M25 motorway, and dragged us into a hotel at Heathrow where we were given glasses of grape juice and ushered into a theatre. The lights dimmed, the sound system came up playing "Things Can Only Get Better" (gack!) and the board of directors ran on stage punching their air. The occasion? It was to announce the retirement of the CEO and his replacement by the CFO (yes, the head bean counter). Said CFO promised to grow SCO's revenue base from $200M/year (in 1995) to $1Bn/year by 2000. I took one look at this stage, considered the Linux box (1.2 kernel) back home, and went back to my cubicle and started updating my resume.
There's a point to this long, discursive ramble. After I left SCO, I kept an eye on it. Sales didn't do well, although the Tarantella middleware product -- Doug Michel's pet, after the board panicked, kicked out the accountant, and invited him back -- did okay. The UNIX dev team languished, became an appendix to HP and IBM with Monterey, and in the end was downsized repeatedly until it no longer existed. Finally, SCO split in two.
The important corporate bit now follows. SCO had two arms; the Tarantella middleware arm, which was doing okay, and the UNIX arm, which was in a death-spiral. As I understand it, SCO Inc sold the UNIX arm to Caldera (then flush with IPO dollars), renamed itself to Tarantella Inc, and is presumably doing okay, albeit as a smaller software company in a different field. Caldera retained some of SCO's UNIX marketing and sales staff, but basically treated SCO's software as a cash cow. Caldera were set up with lots of money by Ray Noorda, but don't seem to have had a clue how to sell software. And the company now known as SCO is actually Caldera.
So what's going on?
Caldera has always been a money hole. Caldera peaked at something like 4% of the market for shrinkwrapped Linux distros, and never quite seemed to get the engineering side together. While Redhat's contribution is well-known, and SuSE have done a lot of solid engineering work (much of which is GPL'd -- the device drivers, for example -- rather than the much-more-visible and proprietary admin GUI), who remembers what Caldera tried to add to the community? (Yes, they tried to build yet another admin front end -- in the end, nobody else bothered using it.) Caldera basically targeted the commercial market before it was ready to buy Linux. Then they bought a sadly run-down product from SCO, and failed to promote it effectively. That's because Caldera still think they're selling software licences, rather than support and services. Now nobody wants to buy their licences (when they can pick up something equivalent for free) they're trying to attach a cost to the free stuff.
It's somewhat sad that SCO's name is being dragged through the mud this way; it feels like someone I knew who's been dead for years just clawed their way out of the graveyard mud and began shambling around town looking for brains to chow down on.
It all started...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's a simple story.
It all started when an idiot went and spent a fortune the buy "the UNIX trademark" from bell labs. Then another idiot spent a huge amount of money to buy "the UNIX trademark" from the first idiot (who was now mutated to "smart guy").... You can imagine what happened. SCO is the final idiot who spent the biggest amount of money to buy "the UNIX trademark". They will always be idiots until they find someone else to sell "the UNIX trademark". But nobody wants it today. That pisses them off....
After POSIX, the "UNIX concepts" were made public, and implementing them is certainly cheeper than carring around some rusty code from 1970.
Slashdot Mirror
"Who is SCO again?"
For those of you looking for the 5 second MS Word XP autosummary.
[snip]
MozillaQuest Magazine: What sort of impact do you believe this sort of lawsuit filed by SCO-Caldera has on the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and the Linux and free-software communities?
Linus Torvalds: None, really. The people I work with couldn't care less.
[/snip]
What is music when you despise all sound?
I suppose he was carrying his comments on 2 stone tablets... Let's see, what did he spake unto us? "Ho humm..." Wow...words to live by.
No, really. I mean, yes, he's the figurehead of the Linux movement, but who cares? This is a legal matter, we should go ask Lawrence Lessig instead.
He has already said he does even think about patents, and that pretty much shows his attitude towards the whole thing.
Mozillaquest asking Linus for his comments were a typical waste of time, because everyone already knows what he is going to say.
SCO-Caldera v IBM: Linus Torvalds Comments on SCO-Caldera's Linux-Related Allegations
;)
;)
Nearly One-Half of SCO-Caldera Income from IP Licensing and Enforcement
By Mike Angelo -- 10 March 2003 (C)
For more than a month now, SCO-Caldera has been doing some intellectual property (IP) saber-rattling and market posturing regarding its UNIX source code ownership and Linux. On 6 March 2003, SCO-Caldera stopped its saber-rattling and pulled the sword out of its sheath when it filed a legal action against IBM regarding claims involving the UNIX and Linux operating systems.
Of the 136-paragraph Complaint filed by Caldera Systems, Inc., d/b/a The SCO Group, six are particularly significant regarding the Linux kernel, and the GNU/Linux operating system, and Linux distributions.
Paragraphs 74 and 82 through 86 of SCO-Caldera's Complaint belittle and insult Linux developers, the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, Linux distribution providers -- in essence the entire GNU/Linux and free software community.
In an e-mail discussion, we asked Linus Torvalds to comment on the Linux-related allegations SCO-Caldera makes in its Complaint against IBM. Here is Linus Torvalds' uncensored commentary.
Linus Torvalds: Ho humm..
I'm not all that excited about commenting a lot on lawsuits, since quite frankly I want to have as little as humanly possible to do with such things. At the same time I obviously do find the SCO one a bit interesting, since it's the first lawsuit ever I know of that actually involves Linux, even if Linux itself seems pretty peripheral.
Just as well, that "peripheral" thing
MozillaQuest Magazine: SCO-Caldera says in paragraph "82" that "it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use." (Without the aid of the alleged actionable conduct of IBM) Is that true?
Linus Torvalds: I don't think IBM would have started using Linux if it was true. I think IBM got serious about Linux because it noticed that it _was_ "adequate for enterprise use" from a technical perspective, but lacked a lot of things IBM could bring to the table (marketing, of course, but even more than just marketing, just the presence of IBM made Linux be taken much more seriously).
So I think IBM's involvement has been very important, but while IBM has fine engineers, the most important part by _far_ has been the "mindshare" part of it.
But what does "adequate for enterprise use" really mean? The marketing and mindshare certainly _matter_ a lot for pretty much all enterprise customers. So in _that_ sense maybe SCO is right, even though I don't think that is really what SCO _meant_.
MozillaQuest Magazine: It sounds as though this lawsuit is not a suit alleging copyright infringement, patent infringement, or trademark infringement (the standard three prongs of the intellectual property complex). Rather, it appears the Caldera v IBM action is more in the nature of a contract or tort action.
Linus Torvalds: Yeah, I don't personally think they have any IP rights on Linux, and I agree, it looks more like a suit over the contract rather than over Linux itself.
I don't think they are going to win it (very very weak arguments, since at least from a technical perspective I don't think the IBM involvement has been that significant, and SCO was losing out _long_ before IBM started pushing Linux). However, my personal (maybe overly cynical) suspicion is that even _they_ don't think they'll win the suit, and it may be nothing more than a way to force IBM back into license discussions over UNIX itself.
So I think that 100-day license revocation thing may actually be the most important part of the whole suit, and that the rest might be just the excuse. If I was SCO and looking at IBM, I'd have long since noticed that IBM has been talking about Linux taking over more and more of their current AIX usage, to potentially eventually replace it altogether.
So SCO sees IBM largely going away as a licensee in a few years - and while I certainly don't have any knowledge of how much that means for SCO, I would not be surprised if IBM licenses are quite a noticeable part of SCOs receivables.
And what would you do? You want to get IBM back to the discussion table over licensing _before_ IBM starts to consider the UNIX licenses for AIX to be no longer worth it. I think IBM has announced they'll drop AIX eventually, but I do _not_ think that IBM is willing to drop it within three months. They tend to pride themselves on supporting their existing customers.
MozillaQuest Magazine: What sort of impact do you believe this sort of lawsuit filed by SCO-Caldera has on the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and the Linux and free-software communities?
Linus Torvalds: None, really. The people I work with couldn't care less.
The thrust of paragraphs 74 and 82 to 84 of SCO-Caldera's Complaint against IBM is that without the aid of the alleged actionable conduct of IBM, GNU/Linux would not be an enterprise/server grade operating system. Although in paragraph 84 of its Complaint, SCO-Caldera does not directly say it, when taken in context of the entire Complaint, SCO-Caldera is alleging that it is the alleged actionable conduct of IBM that provides items (1) through (5) set forth in paragraphs 84 to the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux, and Linux distributions.
84. Prior to IBM's involvement, Linux was the software equivalent of a bicycle. UNIX was the software equivalent of a luxury car. To make Linux of necessary quality for use by enterprise customers, it must be re-designed so that Linux also becomes the software equivalent of a luxury car. This re-design is not technologically feasible or even possible at the enterprise level without (1) a high degree of design coordination, (2) access to expensive and sophisticated design and testing equipment; (3) access to UNIX code, methods and concepts; (4) UNIX architectural experience; and (5) a very significant financial investment.
MozillaQuest Magazine: Did the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux developers and groups lack the technological capability of producing an enterprise level Linux without being bailed-out by IBM as SCO-Caldera claims?
Linus Torvalds: "Bailed-out by IBM"? Hardly. Oh, IBM has certainly been very helpful, and I like the IBM engineers I work with, but Linux was running on 16-cpu Sun sparc computers long before IBM really got into it.
In paragraph 85 of its Complaint against IBM, SCO-Caldera alleges that the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux are limited to handling a maximum of four CPUs.
85. For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation. This difference in memory management performance is very significant to enterprise customers who need extremely high computing capabilities for complex tasks. The ability to accomplish this task successfully has taken AT&T, Novell and SCO at least 20 years, with access to expensive equipment for design and testing, well-trained UNIX engineers and a wealth of experience in UNIX methods and concepts.
MozillaQuest Magazine: Is this true? I thought the Linux kernel and GNU/Linux can handle 32 CPUs?
Linus Torvalds: We still claim 4-8 CPU scalability. Yeah, it sure works on bigger machines, but they are just so uncommon as to not be a big issue yet, and most of peoples' resources are certainly spent on the mass market (well, UP is the _real_ mass market, but most of the kernel people tend to be fascinated by SMP issues, so we tend to target slightly higher
Normally, we end our articles with a summary and/or conclusion. We do not do so with this article. That's because we want you to have the benefits of Linus Torvalds' comments about the SCO-Caldera v IBM lawsuit without any spin from us. You are getting this just the way Linus said it and in context. Moreover, Linus Torvalds' comments are concise, well-expressed, and to the point. The only material in this article is Linus' comments with just enough background added by us to put the comments in perspective and context with the allegations of SCO-Caldera's Complaint. Thus, Linus Torvalds' comments need no interpretation or spin from us.
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, sue.
Those who can do. Those who can't sue.
Here are Dennis Ritchie's Comments from usenet and some supporting documentation from the USL vs. BSDI case.
Zoid.com
SCO has completely missed the effects of common availability of computational resources. I remember when crossing the gigaflop "barrier" was a big deal. Today it's your average laptop. 18 years ago, a UNIX source license in a business context could cost about $125,000 (as priced by a friend of mine, working on Sequent boxes). Apparently, that's when SCO executives seem to have stopped noticing the progress of technology.
I don't think I quite understand SCO's position on this whole matter. But, with UnitedLinux slowly crumbling and the nature of Linux, I'm willing to bet that SCO/Caldera might get laughed out of the Linux business.
IMHO, IBM has done a world of good for Linux. My favorite commercial remain's IBM's basketball team ad that featured the Chris Mullin wannabe wearing number 12, and the team owners discussing his role on the team.
"How can we get him to work for peanuts?"
"Because he loves the game..."
That's exactly what Linux needed - to get it's name out beyond our little Geeks-Only circle to the masses, both Corporations and the Average Joe/Jane. Now, how did that harm Linux or Linux development? How did that muddy the waters? If you ask me, it rocked the boat in a good way.
Linux has grown by leaps and bounds, from a grassroots OS to a viable option for both business and home use (more the former then the latter). This lawsuit serves no real purpose, IMO. Honestly, I'll just bet that it's an attempt by a faltering SCO to steal some of the thunder that IBM has built for Linux. They just want a piece of the pie.
Final Prediction: SCO's complaint will be thrown out, and Linux will continue moving forward, with or without them.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
"sources close to to IBM say" IBM is going to fight it
...
I type this every time.
Well SCO is somewhat challenging that, they certainly question Linus' version of some events. For example Linus has said time and time again that:
Linux was a pun on Linix and Linus
and
Linix is short for Linus's Minix
SCO asserted in the suit that
Linux is short for Linus + Unix.
Obviously they know the origin of the name better
(and of course Linus's version has newsgroup postings backing it up that only shows that deja/google is in on the conspiracy to defraud SCO).
This is important for SCO since they have 0 rights over Minix.
A brief exposition on why the points are BS...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
As I've stated before (and have wasted too much time on this matter), here it is again...
Concerning the few specific examples SCO listed in their court filing, the Omni print driver and JFS appeared in OS/2 long before Linux. Warp 3 and Warp 4 Server respectively. JFS appeared in AIX first but was never the property of UNIX.
Per the SCO view, with project Monterey IBM gave away the keys to the UNIX kingdom to Linux.
I'm sorry, but Monterey was annouced in October 1998. Well after Linux was ready for "prime time". I still have servers to prove so. Bicycle my ass.
Sorry, end rant. Gulp Beer,
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Important point - Linux is a UNIX Workalike, AIX is a derivation of the original UNIX making them completely different beings. Linux was built from the ground up based on the POSIX standards.
Hope that clears things up.
Not necessarily. If anyone has the lawyers capable of making SCO's infringement claim stick, it would be Microsoft. $1B isn't complete chump-change (even to them), especially as that's only IBM, and if it would hurt their competition, I could Microsoft doing it. Don't forget that patents (and their infringements) would transfer in an aquisition.
In my opinion, if SCO -isn't- looking for a buy-out, they're nuts. They don't have clout in the market anymore and they probably don't have the coffers needed to pursue these infringements. I'm not saying I agree with their claims, but if they are looking to get bought, it's a proven strategy to build up a portfolio of cases and then sell off to someone with more muscle.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
It's easy to look at IBM as a "the good guy" and forget all the bad things they stand for too!
In Europe there is currently a big fight about software patents and who do you think is a big supporter of them?
Here is a quote:
IBM's patent department is actively lobbying Europe to legalise software patents. They have invested millions in fighting example cases to leading European lawcourts such as the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal and the German Federal Court in order to soften and eventually remove European restrictions on patenting software. They have also threatened European politicians that IBM might close down local facilities if software patents are not legalised in Europe. IBM has also prevented the US government from conducting studies on the value of software patents for the national economy. In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability. Once software patents become assertable in Europe, an IBM tax of several hundered million EUR may be levied on European software companies.
Link
Now, what is the biggest threat to Linux? SCO or software patents?
Besides that, I find SCO's suit very stupid - the only winner in this is going to be the laywers.
Kids, the company that filed this lawsuit is not SCO.
Engineers at SCO were bolting together PC based UNIXes back before Linus got started. From the late 1980's, they inherited Xenix -- a descendant of AT&T System 7. In 1988 they bought the rights to AT&T SVR3.2 (for an eye-watering sum -- in 1994, each box SCO sold was encumbered with about $200 in royalty payments to other companies). By 1992, SCO UNIX 3.2.4 was a cash cow, and they needed something new.
I'd rate the rot as having set in by late 1991. Before then, SCO was an exceedingly cool place to work -- one of the early UNIX start-ups, SCO was the outfit with the hot tub in the courtyard of the original company offices and the source of numerous interesting legends. There was a lot of cross-fertilization with SGI and Sun at the engineering level back in the late 80's, and some of that survived into the 1990's. But the ACE Initiative killed it dead -- led to a 15% downsizing in 1991, when SCO was forced to admit that it couldn't market Open Desktop against Windows and hope to win. Then there was a string of bad decisions that effectively doomed the company to ossification and slow decline.
First there was the decision to build OpenServer in the first place. Then when SVR4 appeared to be making ground and SVR4.2 (UnixWare 1) came out, there was IIRC a quiet attempt to clone the SVR4 kernel. (The AT&T copyright declarations were retained in the headers, but by 1995 SCO's main product bore about the same relationship to SVR3.2 that a heavily customized rice burner bears to a showroom model.)
But SCO was, at this point, still a real software company. The UNIX dev team had more than 200 engineers working in it. Then the rot set in for real ...
(Historical aside: I first met Linux in 1993, as the system a bunch of SCO's engineers were running on their home machines. But when I left in early 1995, there was an attitude of complete denial in SCO's management -- Linux was a toy system that could never be relevant.)
Anyway. Why did I leave?
The main warning to me that the company was probably not a good long term career bet happened three months ahead of the functional freeze on OpenServer. One lunchtime managers came around our cubicle farm and pitch-forked us into coaches, drove us for two hours around the M25 motorway, and dragged us into a hotel at Heathrow where we were given glasses of grape juice and ushered into a theatre. The lights dimmed, the sound system came up playing "Things Can Only Get Better" (gack!) and the board of directors ran on stage punching their air. The occasion? It was to announce the retirement of the CEO and his replacement by the CFO (yes, the head bean counter). Said CFO promised to grow SCO's revenue base from $200M/year (in 1995) to $1Bn/year by 2000. I took one look at this stage, considered the Linux box (1.2 kernel) back home, and went back to my cubicle and started updating my resume.
There's a point to this long, discursive ramble. After I left SCO, I kept an eye on it. Sales didn't do well, although the Tarantella middleware product -- Doug Michel's pet, after the board panicked, kicked out the accountant, and invited him back -- did okay. The UNIX dev team languished, became an appendix to HP and IBM with Monterey, and in the end was downsized repeatedly until it no longer existed. Finally, SCO split in two.
The important corporate bit now follows. SCO had two arms; the Tarantella middleware arm, which was doing okay, and the UNIX arm, which was in a death-spiral. As I understand it, SCO Inc sold the UNIX arm to Caldera (then flush with IPO dollars), renamed itself to Tarantella Inc, and is presumably doing okay, albeit as a smaller software company in a different field. Caldera retained some of SCO's UNIX marketing and sales staff, but basically treated SCO's software as a cash cow. Caldera were set up with lots of money by Ray Noorda, but don't seem to have had a clue how to sell software. And the company now known as SCO is actually Caldera.
So what's going on?
Caldera has always been a money hole. Caldera peaked at something like 4% of the market for shrinkwrapped Linux distros, and never quite seemed to get the engineering side together. While Redhat's contribution is well-known, and SuSE have done a lot of solid engineering work (much of which is GPL'd -- the device drivers, for example -- rather than the much-more-visible and proprietary admin GUI), who remembers what Caldera tried to add to the community? (Yes, they tried to build yet another admin front end -- in the end, nobody else bothered using it.) Caldera basically targeted the commercial market before it was ready to buy Linux. Then they bought a sadly run-down product from SCO, and failed to promote it effectively. That's because Caldera still think they're selling software licences, rather than support and services. Now nobody wants to buy their licences (when they can pick up something equivalent for free) they're trying to attach a cost to the free stuff.
It's somewhat sad that SCO's name is being dragged through the mud this way; it feels like someone I knew who's been dead for years just clawed their way out of the graveyard mud and began shambling around town looking for brains to chow down on.
It's a simple story.
It all started when an idiot went and spent a fortune the buy "the UNIX trademark" from bell labs. Then another idiot spent a huge amount of money to buy "the UNIX trademark" from the first idiot (who was now mutated to "smart guy").... You can imagine what happened. SCO is the final idiot who spent the biggest amount of money to buy "the UNIX trademark". They will always be idiots until they find someone else to sell "the UNIX trademark". But nobody wants it today. That pisses them off....
After POSIX, the "UNIX concepts" were made public, and implementing them is certainly cheeper than carring around some rusty code from 1970.
It was all wrong from the start.