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IBM Denies Charges of Unix Theft
ahooton writes "C|net is
reporting
that SCO has filed a lawsuit accusing IBM of theft of it's Unix intellectual property. SCO
alleges this occurred because IBM released portions
of the Unix system, owned by SCO, in to Linux." While the suit is nothing new, IBM's retort is. IBM asserts it is innocent of any charges of wrongdoing. Additionally, IBM is accusing SCO of trying to stifle Linux development through the use of the courts.
I know it's been said before, but...
SCO's real purpose behind this lawsuit is not to get money, but to publicize itself in hopes of finding a larger company to buy them.
SCO's business hasn't been so great lately, and...they're just a little desperate at this point.
SCO alleges this occurred because IBM released portions of the Unix system, owned by SCO, in to Linux.
I've understood that they've reimplemented some technology in Linux, but have they really just taken the existing pieces and put them into Linux? I doubt it.
Would someone care to shed some light on the subject?
.: Max Romantschuk
What I hope this means, is that IBM will once and for-all put an end to this SCO FUD. Who knows the true reason behind SCO's logic, but whatever it is, we dont need it ;)
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Here is another CNet article on what SCO Group Chief Executive Darl McBride thinks on this issue. From the article,
"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an interview
Interesting... eh?
getSexySig();
Has anyone else seen the comments McBride has been making lately? Here's some choice quotes from news.com.com.com.com's unbiased and uninflammatory article, "Code Red for open source?":
"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an interview.
Please note that he has refused to release examples of this.
In addition, he said, "We're finding code that looks likes it's been obfuscated to make it look like it wasn't UnixWare code--but it was."
Please note that he has also refused to release examples of this, too.
"The Linux community would have me publish it now, (so they can have it) laundered by the time we can get to a court hearing. That's not the way we're going to go."
Yeah, that's a great excuse to not actually give any evidence of the accusations you're making - tell people that 'the Linux community' will try and sanitize every existing copy of the source code to all the versions of the kernel containing this supposed SCO source - which, he says, has been in the kernel for 'several years'! Perhaps he missed the bit where his lawyers briefed him on the GPL and how it lets anybody have a copy of the source code - including SCO itself! Is he really suggesting that SCO lacks the ability to keep a copy of all currently extant versions of the Linux kernel to use as evidence? F'chrissakes, the md5 checksums of Linus's kernels are public knowledge - if anybody tried to 'sanitize' a particular version, it'd be ridiculously easy to prove that it'd been changed since its original release.
"This is not about 10 lines of code, it's about 20 years of extremely valuable intellectual property we're trying to protect...Am I supposed to lie down and not say anything about it?" McBride said. "There's a certain point here where you stand up for what's right and let the chips fall where they will."
Gotta love that last line... McBride wouldn't know "what's right" if it came up and bit his ass.
I can't even begin to express my disgust for a company that insults, intimidates and sues the very people who have made it possible for SCO to distribute their own version of Linux. Crawl away and disappear, McBride - you're a liar and you know it.
Last I heard, IBM was asking SCO to state specifically what code they were alleging that IBM had used, and IBM had gotten no answer. Today's story still has IBM describing SCO's allegations as "unsupported." If the nice folks at SCO can't back up their claims, are they just betting that the effect of the news stories on their business ("no bad publicity") will be greater than the losses they'll take for filing a frivolous lawsuit? What am I missing here?
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
"There is no RIAA-suing-college-kids style lawsuit here."
That's because the RIAA is looking to use fear tactics to shut down competing media delivery forms. SCO is just in it for the money, and it's over at IBM.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
This allegation really underscores a primary issue of closed source software - it's not out for public review, and hence, it would be VERY difficult to validate these claims. For all we know, SCO's code is a rip-off of Linux or some prior open-source code that Linux was a beneficiary of. SCO never published their source and there's nothing outside of SCO (or maybe IBM, if there was some kind of agreement) to validate the claims. The trouble is, we can trust neither of those parties to present untainted copies of the relevant code as both could have altered timestamps or copied in code. There's also the fact that some processes in software can just really be done in one optimum way.
This is a good reason software should not be considered "published", hence copyrightable, unless the source code exists in some human-readable means in some organization outside of the "software publisher" (who truly publishes nothing), a place the courts could seriously look at as proof of the existance.
A way that might serve as a valid stopgap would be the generation of an MD5 hash of each source file and submitting that to some trusted agency (Library of congress?) for another digital signature and timestamp to be added, proving the date of creation to some legal standard so that these allegations could be backed with proof. We'd know the plaintext was validly signed by the LOC and that it existed at the time alleged to.
I like Christoph Hellwig's (ex-Caldera employee) comments on the Linux Kernel Mailing List 02 May 2003 06:44, in part:
"It might be more interesting to look for stolen Linux code in Unixware, I'd suggest with the support for a very well known Linux fileystem in the Linux compat addon product for UnixWare.."
Let's hope the FSF sue SCO for infringement of the GPL. For a billion dollars. I'm sure IBM lawyers would lend a helping hand! ;)
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
How truly uniquely American response to basically everything: "Let's sue!!". :)
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"