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Analysis of SCO vs. IBM
icantblvitsnotbutter writes "An excellent -- and clear! -- article over at LinuxWorld.com has a multipoint analysis of SCO's 40-page complaint (this is a brief?!). For all those IANAL's out there, here's something to sink your teeth into. On the balance, the outlook seems positive for IBM. Still, the parallel invocation of a contractural clause potentially nixing AIX lends some credence to claims that this is a just way for SCO to coerce IBM into buying them out..." Some old documents from a similar lawsuit have surfaced, and naturally ESR has his own take on the case.
What I would have really liked is something on the lines of "Here is patent number 1" and here is how linux is different/same.....It is not as if SCO patent reads like "WE patent UNIX and everything that looks like it. And that is that
Quoting from the SCO complaint;
18. SCO is the present owner of all software code and licensing rights to System V Technology.
Pretty much summarises what they are saying.
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
Caldera bought SCO's Unix assets a couple of years ago, and now "Caldera" does business as the "SCO Group".
Amicus Curiae
Definition: Latin term meaning "friend of the court". The name for a brief filed with the court by someone who is not a party to the case
I don't remember it this was posted already in previous discussions, but in this interview with IBM Kernel Hackers from last year, some points are raised, some good and some bad for IBM, specially in the 2nd question. In short, the people at IBM that was into the linux kernel development can't take parts of i.e. AIX code and put into Linux and viceversa, but some interchange of ideas could have been happened if a developer of one team talks with one of another.
Black's Legal Dictionary defines amicus curiae: "A person with a strong interest in or views on the subject matter of an action may petition the court for permission to file a brief ostensibly on behalf of a party, but actually to suggest a rationale consistent with its own views. Such amicus curiae briefs are commonly filed in appeals concerning matters of broad public interest; e.g. civil rights cases".
I found this item here.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
It is also interesting that SCO actually appears to believe that. Even without the headers the API to any library can be reverse engineered with nm and gdb in about two days.
As for "Shared libraries are by their nature unique creations..." I'm not even sure where to start. How is some code a "unique creation" simply because I have compiled it as a shared library? If I build it as a static library, is it no longer unique? Do SCO not understand that one of the points of using shared libraries is that they are inherently interchangable? That one just makes my head spin.
Finally, I also seem to remember Linus owning a Quad Xeon box, back in the mid-90's. So whats this about the Linux developers only having uniprocessor boxes?
... Not in the legal sense of the word, at least. You can't walk into a courtroom and say "your Honor, I claim the sky is blue". Sure, in the English sense of the word it's a claim; in the legal sense of the word, it's not a claim because it lacks standing before the court. I.e., great, the sky's blue: why should the court care? Great, IBM helped Linux get ready for the enterprise: why should the court care?
A claim is basically a statement of "... and this is why the court should care". So far, SCO's argument about why the court should care doesn't hold water. I'm not worried.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
One trivia point: SCO's SMP implementation was not written by SCO but was licensed from Corollary.
Two more i386 ports that ESR has forgotten about: Altos (later purchased by Acer). I was one of the engineers that ported SCO 3.2.0 (or was it 3.2.2?) to the Altos 1000 (see Google groups for info). The second is the "Sun 386i" 80386 computer which everybody seems to have forgotten about. Again, see Google groups.
IMHO the only thing of value SCO was to contribute to Monterey was the X server.
I believe that from a legal standpoint AIX is licensed SVR3 code (although having seen AIX kernel code, SCO OpenServer and UnixWare source, and "pure" virgin SVR3 code I can attest that AIX is a complete overhaul and bears no resemblence to pure SVR3 (or SVR4) except in the bowels of STREAMS).
full disclosure: ex-SCO employee who worked on all kernels including Monterey prior to Caldera.
Perhaps. But if I were you, do what I did: download the kernel changelogs for 2.4 (and if you like 2.2) and grep them for ibm.com (i.e. commits from someone at IBM).
For example, I fetch the changelogs from here. And then I ran:
in the directory containing the changelogs to get the filenames with commits from an IBM email address. Use a pager with regexp search capability (like 'less') to view the files, in this case the changelogs for 2.4.19 and 2.4.20.What?!? You're not running linux?!? Shame on you!
As you will see, most of the checkins involve bug fixes for IBM's JFS, some patches for IPV6, and few ones for s390. Gotta love version control, eh?
Project Monterey was a plan that never happened. It was a plan to put Unix on IA-64 machines that died during conception. What we have is a lot of white papers on the subject but no written, working code. Of course I could be wrong, and if there was working code it would have probably been written by IBM developers anyway with a "Copyright (c) 2000 IBM Corp." near the top of the sources.
Probably, but one of the accusations SCO makes is that IBM allegedly handed out Unix code owned by SCO to Linux kernel hackers. And that Linux would not have advanced if IBM had not handed out said code. But so far, all code commits from IBM appear to be mostly patches to existing code. What's more SCO accuses IBM of handing out code from SCO Unix to improve Linux's SMP capabilities. However, Linux's SMP support was one of the primary reasons why IBM adopted Linux in the first place (for proof, see my earlier post in this thread). Ergo, by adopting an Open, Freely Available variant of Unix with SMP support would lessen their development efforts.
What I find rather interesting is Caldera's Logo on the IA-64 Linux page. And it lists them as one of the players in this project. And even more interesting is the missing links on SCO's website pointing to details of the Itanium Netfarm they have presumably made available to IA-64 Linux developers.
- casts polymorph other spell on grue... 0xB00F!
UnixWare to Linux Porting Guide (development tools and the API)
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/sco-porting.pdf
I would agree with you if SCO had even mentioned their recent work with IBM, but they didn't (probably because the IBM lawyers wrote a contract that is unassailable). The entire case stems around the original UNIX source code that SCO acquired from Novell. As such it is a ridiculously specious case. Don't believe me, go read SCO's filing.
From THE COMPLAINT ITSELF:
"...The author [ESR] personally ran two of these -- Microport and Yggdrasil -- and a third not listed, which was the Dell own-brand port.
SCO competed directly against these ports, and cannot fail to have been aware of their existence. SCO's claim to have been unique in supporting Unix for PCs is therefore not merely false, it is a deliberate and egregious lie."
Everyone who thinks they know anything about this issue but who is under -- say -- forty years of age owes it to themselves to read ESR's brief.
My first experience with UNIX was in '86 -- using SCO Xenix -- on an NEC 80386 in an auto parts store.
SCO as an "enterprise computing environment" UNIX?
Yeah, right...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
"...When OSDL spun up, IBM gained a choice: work with one small partner that lacks demonstrated expertise or focus on the enterprise market, or join a large consortium of industry heavyweights with man-centuries of relevant experience.
That seems just about enough time for an astute IBM strategist to conclude that SCO was the less likely alternative to sustain a serious Linux development and support effort over time. To any technical person, SCO's own failure to develop expertise beyond its small-business roots seems a more plausible explanation for the switch to OSDL than some nefarious anti-SCO conspiracy by top IBM executives..."
God, I love ESR...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
You go, ESR...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
JFS version 1 was originally on AIX. The version 2 of JFS that appeared in OS/2 Warp Server for e-business was pretty much a rewrite, as far as I know (which at least explains the plethora of initial bugs), and later ported back to AIX. It was _this_ OS/2 JFS that got open-sourced and ported to Linux.