Slashdot Mirror
SCO Claims Kernel Contains UnixWare Code
ergo98 writes "SCO has increased the intensity of the lawsuit with IBM by claiming to hold indisputable proof that copyrighted UnixWare code found its way into Linux, violating the rules of both camps. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen: SCO refuses to divulge the code in question, however they promise to reveal it in court shortly."
As already stated on LKML here, it's far more likely that they saw something that had been stolen from Linux or other GNU code in SCO, and thought is was the other way around.
It also isn't clear if SCO is referring specifically to Redhat userland, redhat kernel patches or what. It's only clear that they don't mean specifically the Linux kernal as found on kernel.org.
-If you wish to make a complaint, press 1. If you wish to wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, press -- what else? -- the star key.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
I've used some of the same words Shakespear used.
So sue me.
about the Sco vs. IBM suit, I can't help but think that SCO is going to be worse off than Mike Tyson's cellmate when all is said and done.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Can they build code to be added to the OS without keeping it protected by the GPL?
If they want to have that info as evidence then they have to provide Big Blue's lawyers with the goods BEFORE the trial or it'll be inadmisssable.
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
And they are repeated many many times! /*
*/
Those lines are exact duplicates of orginal Unix code! Oh no! They've got us!
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
[*] SCO lawsuit support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
If Y is selected, then copywrited code from unixware will be compiled into the kernel, if you have millions of $CURRENCY and would like to get SCO after you then say Y, most people would say N here.
Patch here
SCO's up against the wall first!
As someone who bought both Caldera 2.2 and 2.3 when they first came out, I feel I somehow contributed to this mess. So that I might make amends for my actions, unwitting though they were at the time, please allow me to state that:
FUCK SCO AND THE HORSE THEY RODE IN ON.
If in case SCO clamis are true... would the linux kernel itself, as it stand become non-gpl'ed? After all if some GPL code makes its way its something else... its is GPLed... seems kinda fair to me.
SCO is back at it, begging IBM to buy and assimilate them...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The fact that a) they were looking for it and b) found it, leads me to suspect it might (assuming it exists at all) be SCO or someone at SCO.
That's the beauty of open-source. It's wide open, and well documented.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Blast everyone at SCO headquarters!
Heck, I'd buy a copy... ;-)
Anyone up for a Quake mod?
Seriously, IBM will probably lawyer them to death...once the company is worth <$1 millon (a few months), IBM will buy it. Game over.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
What will people do with Linux if this is proven true? does this scotch successive innovations?
"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."
Infidels!
So worst case, IBM DID do this (which I doubt), Linux suffers and BSD takes over!?!? Grreeeeeaaat, then we'll have to listen to a bunch of "Linux is dead" trolls. When will it end??? Either way, one thing is for certian:
SCO is dead.
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
... SCO is getting desperate. So they tackle one group of people in court who have the resources, trademarks, etc to totally crush them. Then they alienate about 90% of their potenial customer base. Raw stupid. Although after having been forced to admin sco once upon a time, I can attest that most of the things they do don't make a tremendous ammount of sense...
Shadus
SCO is claiming they have found weapons of mass
destruction in the linux kernel code. The UN will
be assembling an inspection team shortly.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Actually their where only breadlines in russia after the "free market reforms".
And the life expectancy dropped ten years.
woohoo!
Seems like the parties in involved will be hacking the hell out of CVS to prove chicken or egg...Oh yeah? I wrote that code back in 1933!
One would think that SCO has enough version control to know what they have, when they got it and where it came from. That would be assuming alot with them though.
Repeatedly over the past few days, they have provided a moving target as to what they they are claiming as thier IP. First it was IBM, then it was the OSS Linux community as a whole, and now they are saying it is the distros.
How typical. A bunch of dumbasses that could never have corperate direct now cannot even give thier litigation a sure direction for one day.
Note to SCO: Go back to drinking your Provo Girl beer, watching forest fires and making bad Linux distros. This is turing into a joke for you that you will NEVER recover come.
You will not own the community, you sure as hell won't IBM, and if I was IBM, I sure as would not want to purchase a company full of directionless assholes.
Give it up guys. All your linux are belong to us should not be anyone's mission statement.
"Lithuanian gutter weed or blunt from Portland...which do think the Blazers like?"
does not make it true.
Why are we wasting valuable time? Couldn't this time be better spent innovating? If Microsoft gets wind of this method of screwing opensource, there will be no more innovation.
Come on, everyone knows SCO is no longer innovating, but rather using lawyers to gain revenue... This reminds me of another company, Research in motion, recently renamed to Lawsuits in motion, as they no longer create new products, they just sue people for copying their generic designs...
I'll be real interested to find out what code IBM stole. Look! They push their stack parameters the same way during a task switch!!! OMG!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Even if this is true, shouldn't they have contacted Linus and had him remove the offending code? I'm sure he would have.
Since they are claiming Trade Secret status on the System V code, isn't failure to perform even basic attempts (such as contacting Linus) to minimise the impact of this leak enough to void the Trade Secret status of their code?
The more SCO speaks, the less credible this lawsuit sounds.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
This is the last death-throw of a company that has been rotting out for a very, very long time. Just keep your ducks in a row, and you'll probably be able to defend against them.
Their picking IBM as a target is probably the best thing that they could have done for the open source movement, since IBM will have the greatest chance of finding something to counter with that will seriously stick.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And if you ask alot of former SCO employees, there are many rumors of Linux code in the SCO kernel!
So, it's a fair trade!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I bet this is the stolen code:
for (i=0; i<256; i++) {
Dirty, stinking thieves!
"Good afternoon your honour, I am the Linux Kernel. I am here to testify here today on how the evil SCO stole my heart, soul, and my very sources, incorporated them into their wicked SCO frankenunixware, and then claimed my code was there's..."
And there was not a dry eye in the courtroom that day...
...or do the stock quotes at the bottom of the article provide the best commentary on this issue?
They know SCO is dying so that are trying every tactic they can to try and stay in the game...
IMHO they're screwing themselves though... Who wants a product that is basically available in a free product? (Or you can chose to pay for a CD & support from any number of distros).
Some companies (& orgs like RIAA) just can't take the hint that they aren't needed or wanted any more...
Don't get me wrong, SCO is probably very wanted in some sectors, but give me a break, Linux can do just about everything you can do with SCO.
Oh! And this one time, at band camp...
Wouldn't it be interesting if someone managed to slip in copyrighted code intentionally, with the knowledge that it would eventually be found -- causing quite a bit of damage to the Linux movement...
Adjust your tinfoil hat, people.
I think they're just being sore losers, but if nonGPL code has entered Linux, I'd like to see it removed.
It's not that I don't want the code, but it can't be that hard to replace. I'd appreciate something more usefull like Apple's secret HFS+ code.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I'm sure there are hundreds of others who've had their code "liberated" without their consent.
Are you saying you've liberated someone else's code for an open source project? I know I have not, and I've not seen any evidence of this having been done in the Linux kernel.
Where's the evidence?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
So they can slam OSS, but what about going the other way? I've heard of software stealing GPL code in part and in whole, making modifications, and not releasing the source again. Some have been caught, I'm willing to bet a whole lot more haven't been.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I love this quote:
> "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."
So you don't want us to fix this so-called infringement? Most companies do a cease-and-decist before a lawsuit, allowing the accused to make changes. If this infringment HAS cost them a billion in damages, wouldn't you think they would want the infringement to stop right away? They could still make their case in court and use the same so-called evidence to show that previous infringment caused the damage, but not allowing the accused to fix the problem just shows that it's not the infringement they care about. It's just a means to getting money.
notice how linux is being portrayed as the dog and SCO the underdog in this article? It's subtle, read between the lines and they way they describe people.
That's a pretty remarkable change, donchya?
simon
home page
You know, if everything he says is actually true, there must be lots of copyright violations in commercial software too; the only difference is that we can't see the code to prove they are there.
Didn't SCO patent the lame @$$ OS that nobody likes concept?
Datacenter Scoreboard:
----------------------
Linux ~20 servers
HP-UX 3 servers
AIX 1 server
SCO 1 server
This attitude didn't work for Saddam, will it work for us?
He is obvious trolling with quotes like:
Moderators who moderated this up: Get a clue.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
In this article, they clearly refer to the kernel: "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" How do they possibly expect to win a lawsuit when they can't even agree amongst themselves about where the UnixWare code appears in GNU/Linux? And what the hell is "the periphery of the Linux kernel"? Modutils? Fileutils? Util-linux?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This seems quite reminiscent of the USL v. U.C. Regents case over the BSD release. USL maintained that the BSD code was tainted, but never cited any specific lines of code. USL decided to settle after the U.C. regents pointed out that USL was in violation of the license terms for the BSD code they were using in System V. At that point, USL probably realized that U.C. could force them to withdraw System V from the market and recall all existing copies in order to strip out the BSD code. Anyhow, as part of the settlement, CSRG did remove a few files that were said to be tainted, but since USL didn't indicate which files to remove, CSRG picked out a few of the files that were crufty and in need of replacement anyhow, and removed those.
Does anyone remember the letter that SCO sent out to customers back in the late 1990s, suggesting that customers would be better off with a professionally written and maintained operating system, rather than an amateur effort by a few hackers? It has a lot of other ridiculous comparisons like that. Someone (ESR?) wrote a parody letter refuting every one of their points.
I used to have the two letters posted outside my cube at a previous place of employment. I just tried to find them using Google, but I must not be using the right search terms.
Anyways ,
How-unix works source code books are plentiful.
So, SCO's taking lessons from the Bush junta, eh?
"We have indisputable proof of their guilt! We are right, we have always been right! Details? Uh... we'll let you know later, we promise. Pinky swear."
Isn't a cornerstone of our copyright law that the onous is on the publisher to defend his/her rights. I seem to recall a rather sizable claus that nullifies the right to sue on Copyright infringement if no attempt to enforce the copyright had been made in the past.
Or maybe I'm confusing this with Trademarks?
In any case, it isn't like SCO wrote the code. They bought the code, and as I recall, at a bargain basement price. Hardly 1 billion dollars worth of damage.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
few versions of Windows allow you to
do anything but trivial system administration without having to resort to
the 1970s-style teletype interface.
Doesn't work.
This means that they have unclean hands, as they are supposed to try and mitigate the damage in order to receive compensation.
You can't knowlingly add to the damage and then ask for compensation incl Punitive damages based on same.
Any suit against Linux vendor in the future can site this as an Affirmative Defense" and pretty much get the suit tossed on that account alone.
Help fight continental drift.
And their where spelling mistakes too. Life Expectance is overrated.
-
Vonal Declosion
...as a defendant you're supposed to be told what you're being sued over or charged with (unless you're a terrorist suspect). The following is just ridiculous...
"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"
So, is that to say that they do not want the code in question to be replaced or removed? How would the courts look upon this attempt to block a good faith response to their charges?
In any case, any laundering would need to be done in the form of erratta, and SCO could easily go "Hey, look! It was in flurbulator-2.3.12, but it's gone in flurbulator-2.3.12a!!"
-To report a Giant Panda sighting, press 2, followed by the 14 digit code on the bottom of any can of creamed corn.
Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it. - Gen. George Patton
Actually, I just turned to my left and asked the russian lady who sits next to me about that. She seems to remeber these bread lines before AND after.
So far there have been more cases where other people have misappropriated GPL code than the other way around. I'm sure there are thousands of other cases where code has been shackled without the creators consent.
If SCO can prove their claims then the courts will decide on how to redress the infringement.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
This story has been posted about probably a dozen times now without any evidence included. Do you suppose you could hold off on posting new stories until either the evidence is made available or the suit is dismissed/won/settled? As it is now we're just seeing the same responses posted over and over again.
I think RH, UnitedLinux(minus SCO, of course), any other commercialized distro, and Linus should sue SCO when they make claims that Linux source code is contaminated with their intellectual property.
This is a blatant attempt to scare potential customers of the distros, and/or impugns the reputations of the distros and Linus.
Even if SCO decides to settle with IBM (i.e. get bought out or bribed), they have opened themselves up to a case of libel, unless they can back it up with examples and proof. Their CEO alluded to exact code duplication and semi-obfuscted replicas of code.
Ok, np, show the code in question, and then we'll check some verifiable (repeat VERIFIABLE) code submittal logs of Linux and SCO. If by some miracle their logs, show an earlier submission...then the lkml community would probably yank the code immediately, and probably improve on it just to make a point.
Second of all, by not coughing up the examples, there might be a case for "failure to mitigate damages". Basic speak for "You cant say I did something to hurt you, wait forever, then tell me what I did wrong to wrack up increased "economic damages", when you could have told me sooner, and I would have cleaned up the issue and reduced your potential losses further.
(IANAL^2)
If SCO is correct, what does this mean to Linux as we know it today?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
why dont YOU shut the fuck up and wait until they show the "proof" to dispute it you ignorant fuck. jesus christ, i hate it when people already bitch about sco's credibility when they havent even seen the code in suspect. this only shows that you fear sco may be right.
I'm quite sure there is life besides our own somewhere out in the universe. I have no proof, but the mind bogglingly large number of stars convince me that it must be so. *shrug*
Let the chips fall where they may? Jeebus these guys are out for money. If there is SCO code in the kernel that affects desktop users and companies how badly will this set back the movement to Linux of companies looking for a cheap a stable OS?
Let's assume for the moment that some IBM engineer took some code from SCO and added it to Linux. What is the consequence for the Linux kernel and other distros who did not intend to violate their copyright? I'm assuming that the GPL would cause all the legal liability to fall on the shoulders of the people who added the code, but then somebody still has to go and scour that code out of the kernel right?
This is messy, but then it gets even worse when you consider the notion of code forks, etc. What if Linus removes it, but for whatever reason a fork over at SUSE doesn't get removed? What if they don't bother, can SCO get a court order to force removal?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Let's set up a fund to collect money from open source users to use for the sole purpose of buying SCO stock. We'll collect enough to just buy the damn company release all IP into the GPL that we own.
And that as they say will be that.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Thy HAVE to disclose it prior to trial. They will have to give it to IBM. IBM can then find the author and determine the truth.
This attitude didn't work for Saddam, will it work for us?
It did not work for Saddam because
Bush --> IBM (800 pound gorilla)
Sadadm --> SCO (insignificant)
It wasnt a big deal for bush to crush Saddam (even if bush had no proof that saddam had wepons of mass destruction).
But the situation is different here. SCO cannot crush IBM beacause niether they are 800 pound gorilla, nor they have any freaking proof.
Depends if you're talking about GUI apps and desktops, if so then I would agree there are many clones.
If you're talking command line and server apps then I disagree.
Apache isn't a clone of IIS.
MySQL isn't a clone of Oracle, SQL Server.
Sendmail isn't a clone of Exchange server.
OpenOffice is and isn't a clone of MS Office, it provides similar features but uses XML for its file format, something that Microsoft have chickened out of using.
Anyway, you can run things like GIMP on Windows if you want. Without Linux and the Open Source community there would be very few decent free apps for Windows.
They are both very simular operating systems. It seems to me that Linux would have to solve many of the same problems. Doesn't it stand to reason that Linux code will be simular to UnixWare, because they arrived at the same solutions ?
I agree!
I don't agree with the original poster regarding networking - it's a huge area that certainly should double kernel size. But the rest of it, I must agree with.
Today's operating systems are built on yesterday's technology. Everything works fine with one CPU, one user, and 512 Megs of RAM. But folks, we're talking modernization. The future.
Virtually ALL popular desktop OSs are totally broken. The free ones are broken, and the ones that cost $5000 are broken, and everything in between.
There is but one OS that's appropriate for both small and big boxes - with decades of growth in front of it. It's secure, it's expandable, it's iron-clad reliable.
It is VM/CMS.
Moderators on crack again (when it was marked as 'insightful,' iirc)
It is completely legal to write your own software. It's completely legal to use the same metaphors when solving the same problems. It's even legal to "clone" an interface when such interoperatibility is a high user requirement. Can you imagine the chaos if every vendor had to come up with new names and flags for programs like ls(1), cc(1), find(1), etc.
What's illegal is copying code without permission. That's not cloning, and the results can't be copylefted since the punitive author doesn't have the right to release the code.
And as for the idea that all OS implementations are just ripped off from commercial products, have you actually looked at the quality of commercial code lately? Haven't you heard of company after company after company switching to Linux and open tools after realizing that they were regularly spending 20% or so of their time fixing files corrupted when the app or system crashed, cleaning up after viruses, cleaning up the mess left by bundled malware, etc.? Even if some mad Microsoft employee sneaked out with the source for Word or Outlook and ported it to Linux, a lot of us would still keep far away from it because of the profound flaws in the applications.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I think that SCO is being used by the long hand of Microsoft
youre already hanging sco as guilty when you havent even seen the proof yet. this only tells me that you fear sco might be right here and youre trying to pre-empt their findings by bashing their credibility and name ahead of time. slashdot is full of ignorant open source loving fucks who will completely disreguard common sense when it comes to upholding the name of their precious linux.
1. I would find it hard to believe that SCO can prove that IBM put such code into the kernel (if indeed it exists there at all).
2. I would find it reasonable to believe that SCO put the code into the kernel itself as a poison pill (if indeed it exists there at all).
MORTAR COMBAT!
Well it may be true, what if the code in SCO actually came from Linux instead? Did they find this out AFTER Caldera bought them and put the code there?
Personally I think this is going to be tough to prove, unless they can show exactly when and who put it in the code. Also just because someone uses code that was put in illegally, that does not necessarily mean they are punishable for that. Ignorance goes a long way...
Only 'flamers' flame!
From the article:
An impassioned McBride, however, said there's a matter of principle at stake. SCO Group can't just let its intellectual property be used willy-nilly.
"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."
Note: Some of the pirated codelines inlude:
#include <stdio.h>
main()
{
printf("Hello World!/n");
return(0);
}
My Goodness! Will wicked piracy of SCO code never cease! Oh woe! Oh Doom! Oh Barf!
Hmm, a little too much sarcasm. Must clean up now. Toodles!
They are currently busy rewriting the UNIX Kernel to include Linux GPL code. That way they have proof and can sue IBM.
:-)
You didn't expect them to provide proof now did you? They aren't finished re-writing UNIX. If they did they would have no case. Can't have that happen can we.
Personally I'm tired of SCO. I've been dealing with UNIX systems for years now and SCO was by far the most annoying OS next to Microsoft I've worked with. Going from HP-UX/Solaris/Linux to SCO UNIX was like a shock to my system
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
This is the typical last ditch effort to save another worthless company before it goes belly-up. The sad thing is IBM will of course win (which is good), but SCO will file for bankrupcy before IBM can win an countersuit for damages. This is the way it always works. Rather than admit fault with their business model (or lack thereof) the turn to litigation to make a final attempt to make money. Pitiful.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <malloc.h>
#include <strings.h>
And it goes on and on and on. Obviously stolen, as
no competent programmer could possibly have written all
this without having to look at SCO's source. Their CEO
says so.
I hope whoever reviews this complaint has at least a fairly competent research team, so they can discover that many of the "facts" are actually completely false! This kind of thing makes me mad. I hate stupid parasites. They haven't got a leg to stand on, and they know it.
Something stolen from UnixWare in the Linux kernel.
...the sky is falling! Seriously, linux as we know and love it is fine. If it's proven true then the corporate distros are in potential trouble, although they would likely C&D. I use slackware. Like SCO is going after them.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
being trolled by spelling is also ovverated.
It's so cheap but easy.
Hey buddy, stevie is a Virgo so dont screw with em!
If I recall correctly, companies must make an effort to minimize their damages under all circumstances if they want to be able to collect compensation for damages. For instance, if I am IBM, and my supplier of screws never delivers me my shipment of screws for my mainframes, I am responsible to find another supplier. I can't wait a year and not ship any mainframes and then try to collect damages of Billions of dollars of lost revenue. Such a claim would be absurd since I didn't do anything to minimize my damages.
Isn't this true for SCO? They were supplying source code to companies like IBM. Apparently, according to their claim, they were also losing great amounts of revenue to Linux due to the unauthorized use of this code in Linux. It seems like they could have minimized the damage by doing a "diff" command between the Linux sourcecode (which was always available) and their own code and found out immediately that there was tainted code in there.
By being open source, it seems that Linux should be the most compliant OS out their because anyone with such claims as SCO should immediately be able to check the source. For them to wait this long to check (as they are losing over a BILLION dollars) seems to be a gross incompetence of SCO management. What else could contributors to Linux do to ensure the compliance of Linux wihout access to SCO's code? It seems that by being open source, the community has already done everything in its power to comply to IP law. SCO losses are a result of its failure to do its own part ($diff file1 file2).
Besides, the fall of SCO did not happen overnight, why must IBM take disproportionate responsbility (assuming they are at fault, which is unsubstantiated at this time) for what appears to be very poor efforts on the part SCO to protect their own IP (especially since they are also a Linux distr.!!!).
Also, if I were an investor I would be very upset. SCO has basically changed their business model without proper disclosure to the SEC. It is pretty well known that after they made their claim, it would be impossible for them to continue as a software company. Yet they seem to be continuing to waste money on new releases of Linux products that nobody will buy. What is the logic of releasing products for an OS that you are trying to slow the development of? What kind of business strategy is that?
Finally, the fact of SCO is a Linux distro is really ironic.
I mean, if even they are openly distributing their own IP through Linux under the GPL, what right to they have to sue other companies for doing the same!? If they couldn't even ensure that they were not dilluting their own IP themselves (with a simple "diff" command), how can they require other entities to do so?
I really believe that SCO has not put enough thought behind this and some of upper management is going to be directly liable to the stock holders for some blatant acts of poor judgement.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Those UN inspectors couldn't find a turn in a sewer.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There's lots of great free software for Windows without the open source community's software. Don't you have Kazaa?
/* Drunk. Fix later. (Dennis R) */
Our Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien had this to say about proof Sept 21, 2002.
"A proof is a proof. What kind of proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it is proven"
Guess it can't get much more clear that that. Huh?
Life is not a rehearsal. Step up!
What SCO clearly do not understand and what the judge hopefully will, is that there are many common algorithms that when implemented, may have identical code. For example, if you were to have 100 coders, all with similar education, and told them to impliment Bubble Sort, I'd bet you'd venture afterwards that 70-80 of them plagerized somebody's code. While I cannot begin to speculate what kind of algorithms were implimented in code SCO claims was stolen, there's a very strong chance the similarities are coinincidence.
A situation like this arose in a couple assignments in computer science courses I've taken. This one professor I had, who was super anal and also did not understand this principle, accused myself and some of my peers of copying each others' code. His evidence for our "cheating" was that our programs all had some almost identical code save for variable names and some functions. Now, the kids I was accused of helping to cheat or cheating off of were people I had never before interacted with until we found ourselves in the prof's office. However, the professor had done the usual thing of teaching basics, here's some algorithms, here's how you do this, here's how you do that... and because some algorithms are so intuitively implimented, the product can look the same. I mean cripes, how do you expect every student to do mutexes or handle deadlock in completely unique ways? Some things have one correct way or being done!
We explained this to him numerous times, but it seemed with every assignment, different segments of the class were being accused of cheating. Unfortunately for some, they were not able to properly explain this phenomenon.
Either SCO is really dumb or they fully expect the judge to not understand it either.
Join Tor today!
Well of course a counter-revolutionary sellout would say some propoganda like that.
I wouldn't swear to it, but I don't think so. That's definitely the case for a trademark and "look-and-feel" type crap - if you don't defend it, it can become public domain. Patents don't work the same way. You can't lose rights to a patent until A) You release it to PD, B)You lose in court on challenge, or C)It expires.
In terms of credibility for a lawsuit, though, your point is well taken - the more they say and do, the more it's obvious even to a moron that they're begging for a buyout. I think they barked up the wrong tree though this time, as IBM seems none too amused.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Since SCO is playing games like not simply telling Linus what code needs to be removed from the Linux kernel, then that is enough to earn all the dissing they are getting. In a normal case, they would say what it is they are concerned about, instead of trying to destroy the overall credibility. If their complaint is legitimate, they could show it, and have the code removed. It's almost like Microsoft put them up to this. That's why SCO's name is forever known as mud to me and millions of others, now.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is lifted verbatim from The Unix Hater's Handbook. How lame is that?
...
There isn't a -1 Plagiarism but you mods should make this disappear.
All the AC had to do was attribute it, but I guess that was too much trouble and wouldn't have made it look like he's actually managed to generate an original thought.
Interesting that it should show up in this discussion
SCO released a linux distribution.
At least the kernel was released under the GPL.
I would like to see how they explain that IBM GPL release of code is much more damaging then their own release, under the GPL, of that same code.
The fact that SCO has licenced others to redistribute this code under the GPL should make it pretty hard to get damages for others doing the same.
that all the unix companies, not just SCO and IBM, have an agreement that entails this. If that's the case, Sun or Apple could probably pick where SCO will leave off once it's bought.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Mostly off topic question, but what do the numbers in parenthesis after command names mean?
ls(1), cc(1), find(1), etc?
Where should have I looked for the answer to a question like this?
Thanks,
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Anybody know how much outstanding SCOX stock is there?
[Clarification: I am posting it at the danger of being attacked, but my puny brain cannot comprehend it as it is. Please help.]
If their code is secret, it means they could put whatever they want in there now and claim that it was there from the very beginning. Who knows when that particular piece of code was placed there. 20 years ago? Yesterday? Or just before they go to court to present the evidence?
I am not saying that they are lying, but how can one be sure. If there are ways to make sure that it is, please enlighten us.
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-05-02 20:25:51 UTC (2003-05-02 16:25:51 EDT)
Ok, SCO has its own linux which it distributes under the GPL. So infact all the stolen code within that distribution is now not stolen because they licenced it. Are they suing for code outside that distribution or are they spinning this somehow?
Free speech is getting expensive...
IBM should drag the law suit as long as possible and make SCO losses all its money and then make it go away. No one win but the lawyers.
i've seriously wondered about windows code. how easy would it be for some microslave to head over to sourceforge when he goes home and come to work next day with "altered" gpl stuff?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
"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."
Now, admitting that anything is possible, I must ask, is McBride insane? Here is how to "clean" the code out of the Linux kernel:
Step 1: Log into kernel.org.
Step 2: Remove or patch the offending code in every version of the kernel ever posted to that site.
Step 3: Run complete tests on every patched kernel to make sure it builds and runs on all supported architectures.
Step 4: Contact RedHat, SCO (Caldera), IBM, debian.org, Suse, Slackware, and anyone who has ever distributed a Linux kernel and have them do the same.
Step 5: Contact every Linux user in the world and have them patch their kernels.
Laundering, indeed. I predict that this evidence will turn out to be shit.
Did anyone notice the stock charts at the bottom of the article?? SCO down, with IBM, Red Hat and Microsoft all up.
The market knows which way this is going to go.
Now, THAT'S the post of an ex-SCO user!
That dude is an @ss. What is his email address? and his lawyers?
:)
I see all of my company spam going to him
#1. Who cares.
#2. Does anybody actually use the filesystem UnixWare? Isn't that what their claims revolve around? Does anybody know about that filesystem and how it compares to others (ext2/ext3/xfs/reiserfs/etc)?
Damn, SCO got ripped off when they bought that code, and so did the people who copied this program in to linux.
:) Though, it would make it pretty easy to see that it's just a copy and paste. I love when my students submit code with the same spelling errors in either comments or output. Dumbasses. :)
I'm assuming they want \n?
omg this is horrible
SCO's Darl McBride:
"There's a certain point here where you stand up for what's right and let
the chips fall where they will."
Indeed Darl, indeed.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
- SCO doesn't claim in its' filing that there is any SCO IP in the linux kernel, contrary to what McBride says
- SCO does claim in its' filing that certain compatability libraries that allow UnixWare binaries to run under linux are their IP.
- None of the current distros has a copy of any of these libraries.
- McBride should read his own companys' suit before giving interviews, but then he would be open to charges of "pump and dump" vis his SCO stock (not that ignorance is a defence, but
...)
This whole thing is so fucked up that it can only be a stock-market scam.How many times can this guy die?
...the code that SCO themselves shipped under the GPL, as part of their Caldera Linux distribution? If so, shouldn't they be suing themselves for damages?
I have a hard time believing a judge will accept the argument "Yeah, we shipped that code under the GPL ourselves, but we had no idea it was ours".
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
They're sections of the manpage for that command.
1:user commands, 2:system calls, 3:library functions, 4: special files, 5: file formats, 6: games, 7: miscellany, 8: administration commands
No, only if we an make a condition of the sale that each person ontributing gets to b*tch slap every memner of SCO management. They pay travel costs.
Isn't it odd that the US state with the highest rates of incest is also home to SCO??
I think not!!
Hear, hear. My company presently supports a few SCO systems; we just spent about three days restoring one of them from a SCO patch...for a SCO printer patch that broke it to begin with! Not to mention the nightmare of trying to get SMP to work on OpenServer 5.0.6. for a customer that paid for the extra processor licensing and is very displeased that their system won't so much as recognize the second CPU.
If code is that crappy, I don't see why anyone would go through the humiliation of trying to defend supposed infringements upon it in court. Although that could be their strategy, hoping IBM will just settle out of court to nix any rumors that they might have stolen such drek...
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.
Its a moot point anyways, wintel's new palladium will make it impossible to install linux on a new machine, so linux will be killed anyways. I chose to specialize in linux for my career and now face homelessness and death out on the streets for not going with King Bill.
I know I'll get modded down for this, but the hot link in this story and the previous story on the subject are identical except for a positioning flag... I'm surprised nobody else has noticed.
The number in the parenthesis dictates which section of the manual you can find the documentation. It's not usually needed unless you have a naming conflict. For example, in order to grab the documentation for printf() the library call, you do:
man 3 printf
As for a better place you could find the answer, I couldn't say. That's why I posted it here.
DO 10 I=1,10
You could've hired me.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Code wants to be free
OK, the claim is now that the code in question is not in the kernel, so cut out the word "kernel" and insert "system libraries" (just a hunch, I have no idea what code they're talking about at SCO; there is a very confusing article on mozillaquest.com which tries to figure out what the code in question could be).
But my original point of the insanity of accusing "the linux community" of trying to clean GPL code that's been out there for years is still valid.
Maybe they are just trying the Bush Strategy on Iraq.
Declare that they have done it. And if they didn't, well, they did something else.
Then look for it and when you "hopefully" find it, declare whatever you find as "what you were looking for".
Basically a shoot and call whatever you hit the target. The only way to 100% accuracy.
I find this statement has more merit than anything from SCO. Corporate driven programming is much different from Open Source. With OSS, there's really no pressure to get stuff done and out the door, or at least far less than in the corporate world. This idea is based on Linus's many comments about when such and such release will be shipped : "when it's done".
Now contrast that with UnixWare version whatever, with a crackpot like McBride at the helm whipping up the team to get the code out the door. You can imagine the chaos: see the Mythical Man Month about OS/360, and I believe there's a book about Dave Cutler's team at M$. This is not Extreme Programming, it's the death march.
To conclude, which programmer is more likely to grab some peice of code that just works?
Here's another point: From my experience, OSS code is revised and rewritten constantly. Look at Ingo's work with the scheduler, or the recent work by several folks on the VM. Or Apache Xerces (XML4J). I've been using that for a few years, since it had jp (originally written by some IBMers at one of IBM's Japan labs I think), and that has been rewritten from scratch at least once. One last example - Mozilla was rewritten entirely, sidelining it for several years. That was a questionable move, but I say they did a good job - Mozilla is awesome.
Again contrast that with corporate software - how often do you rewrite working code from scratch? You do if business rules change, but I'd argue that with corporate software (think COBOL) it's more if it ain't broke don't fix it. Case in point: at the organization I work at, we have a database (well, more of a filesystem) written in assembler that is basically 25 year old code. Why? It works, it is very fast, it runs mission-critical systems, and it's very hard to modify, let alone maintain it. (Yes it is being replaced, so they say).
So, Unix code in Linux, copied line by line? Doubtful, I side with Perens.
To conclude, Perens has a good point. But as can be seen by the Sun/Netscape vs. Microsoft lawsuit, anything can happen in the courts. They'll have fun figuring out the "obfuscated" code.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
...are all dead!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Ahhhh, now it all makes sense...
1!
Well you know they're sections of the unix manual now, but here's where you're 'supposed' to look it up:
...
man 1 intro
man 2 intro
man 3 intro
etc.
Not that it would be at all obvious if you didn't already know that.
man 1 ls, man 1 cc ,man 1 find
and then you'll know.
Maybe i've been trolled, but maybe i've helped a newbie.
The Numbers refer to the original MAN PAGES books 1 to 8. Try Xman on any ***X machine.
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
Way back in the day (1999?), slashdot ran one of its most successful april fools stories. It was an ask slashdot:
/. was biased, blah blah blah.
/.'s find feature and google to no avail.
Since MS Windows is closed source, isn't it possible that there's GPL code in there that they're using illegally? What should we do about this?
Of course, everyone responded that the questioner was an idiot,
Maybe SCO didn't get the joke either. Can anyone find a link to that article? I tried
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Yes, linux will die because of this, and big brother BSD will again bail out the GNU group.
Nope, I was wrong. Right there at the top of the article McBride says "kernel." OK, I have to get home and launder my workstation. See ya.
I wish SCO would just go ahead and announce what parts of the Linux kernel have their code so that we can get started on replacing it with something that works.
:P
What are they waiting for.... a bug-finder's fee?
from a great article http://www.corante.com/openmind/20030501.shtml "Finally, there's another gotcha as far as this suit goes. SCO is claiming that IBM, Red Hat and SuSE are somehow violating SCO's IP with code that they're shipping with their Linux offerings. If this is true, is SCO shipping it as well? Under the terms of the GNU General Public License, even if IBM and the rest are shipping stuff wrongly (which, again, I very strongly doubt), once it makes it out the door in SCO's Linux offerings as GPL'ed code then the company as the legitimate copyright holder (if they are) has given carte blanche to the rest of the world to use that code. From the GPL, section 6: Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. It would seem to me that one quick way to debunk SCO's claims would be to examine the source from SCO Linux and the source from what IBM is shipping. If, in fact, there are no significant differences (and I suspect there are not) then SCO has no leg to stand on. "
Headline: SCO sues the whole f***ing human race cause
every human has some of the same DNA that they have...
It's much more likely that there is some Linux kernel code in weapons of mass destruction... ;)
Disclosure and discovery only applies to criminal cases.
I was at the NW Linuxfest last week and saw SCO there and was pretty much like: WTF are you doing here?
I mean, I hate thinking like that, but I just really resent the audacity of their little Swan Song .
The odd part to me is that even if the rogue coder violated SCO's license by GPLing SCO's IP, they still GPL'ed the code. You can't undo that. The rogue coder is at fault, but SCO is at fault for trusting them.
SCO doesn't have a licensing agreement with every Linux user, and they can't sue every Linux user for violating IP agreements which have nothing to do with them.
IANAL of course.
Well, Mr. Secretary General, I'm sure you'd be the first to know.
What's the status of that code in ther kernel. If it's ruled a violate of copyright, what happens to that code? Who's responsible for getting rid of it? Do they need to get rid of it?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I have a dollar.
Someone with the legal standing to do so should find a way to sue SCO for defamation and interfering with the Linux industry in order to force SCO to reveal what they think they have. I just don't believe them or their lawyers and there oughta be a way to call them on it and just shut them up. Either tell us where we've wronged them or go away.
(my real feelings involve bandsaws and CEOs, but that's just not quite socially acceptable.)
Invent a time machine and go back and sue SCO for IP infringement.
Ok, so SCO files a bogus lawsuit and then puts out press releases every week saying "We own U!" in an effort to keep their name in the news, and themselves relevent.
What's new?
--Insert catchy
Sorry, I was drunk when I coded that.
I have a dollar.
Hang on to that. In a few months, that may be all the money we need...
Ahh, The Simpsons, full script here
Bill Gates: Mr. Simpson?
Homer: You don't look so rich...
Bill Gates: Don't let the haircut fool you, I am exceedingly wealthy.
Homer: [quietly] Get a load of the bowl-job, Marge!
Bill Gates: Your Internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can't figure out what, if
anything, Compuglobalhypermeganet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I've decided simply to buy you out.
% Homer and Marge quietly discuss this proposal.
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Gates' lackeys trash the room.]
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane
laughter]
I think this is the person (may be Alan Cox too) that can put all worries to the rest.
Did anyone make any statements regarding SCO? I don't remember that I saw anything lately.
My personal guess would be that they have been contacted buy IBM legal department and suggested not to say anything till everything goes to court.
Come to think of it IBM is pretty quiet too. There was something few days ago. But that's nothing compared to what SCO is doing. Could it be that IBM is just quietly preparing to pounce and put SCO out of it's misery once and for all?
Uh should we really waste our time discussing this anymore. I bet by the end of the day there will be 400-600 posts in this thread
- Back off man. I am a scientist
Their entire suit may be based on header files in Linux which conform to SYSVR4 specifications. To an untrained reviewer, this may indeed look like infringement.
Fortunately, there's plenty of legal precedence about header files, conforming to specifications, etc. which should make short work of this claim.
Anyway, down to business...
SCO customers in New York! would you like to move away from a sinking ship and regain control of your systems? Looking to develop a Linux strategy? We can help.
"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 they would.
You know that you're dealing with an idiot when they accuse you of an act which is physically impossible.
The reason that SCO is pursuing this case in the first place is that they are doomed. They rely primarily on proprietary UNIX licenses (OpenServer and Unixware) for x86 hardware to survive and anyone with half a brain is making the easy migration from SCO UNIX to Linux. In the meantime SCO has to maintain not one but two proprietary UNIXes with a development team smaller than RedHat's, and they haven't even got a version of their software that runs on Itanium or Opteron processors. Not to mention the fact that they are already losing money with no relief in sight.
In short, SCO is screwed.
However, they realized that they could alleviate some of the hurting in the short run by running a FUD campaign against Linux. If they scare enough of their current customers into thinking that Linux has intellectual property problems then they might retain some key accounts for another round of upgrades. Some investors might even believe that they have a chance of making real money with their lawsuit, and this would give SCO managers a chance to cash in some of their SCO stock while it is still worth more than the paper it is printed on. That is what this circus is all about. SCO knows they aren't going to win. Heck, they aren't even *trying* to win. The whole thing is nothing more than an elaborate con job.
RedHat and friends could countersue for damages based on their ridiculous claims, but this isn't likely to make them any money. After all, if SCO had money they wouldn't be trying this stupid stunt in the first place.
Colin Powell will be presenting the evidence at the UN next month.
Even if some mad Microsoft employee sneaked out with the source for Word or Outlook and ported it to Linux, a lot of us would still keep far away from it because of the profound flaws in the applications.
Hell. Even if Microsoft released it under an open-source license a lot of us would keep away from it for the same reason - only looking at it to create compatable interfaces for porting data out of Microsoft applications (and maybe back in, for lusers still stuck with it).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think you are a lawyer.
Yessir I do.
I think you are Oliver Wendell Holmes.
No, wait a minute, you are Oliver Wendell Douglas.
Nope, Now I got it. You are Eb.
That's it, you are that friggin Eb, over there watchin TV with that Arnold the pig.
Has anybody else noticed that the only distributions that SCO is
even looking at are those that actually are making money?
This appears to be nothing more than a money grab targeted at a portion of the
industry where they are failing. One of their execs. (probably the CFO)
asked himself one day
"How are we going to make any real money of this linux thing?"
"Sue big blue and any other company that is doing it right!, thats the ticket!"
I believe that IBM will end up litigating them into bankrupcy then aquiring all of their assets.
Upon which they should can McBride and his crew.
SCO refuses to divulge the code in question, however they promise to reveal it in court
Is it possible to go to court without telling the parts. Imagine beeing a jury
Seems they should have to compile the source code into a binary, and compare that binary with the final distribution binary. The only way to prove they are not showing untainted code is to prove it is the codebase they used to create their system.
In a way, the resulting binary *is* a checksum-equivelent.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If SCO is correct, what does this mean to Linux as we know it today?
Correct about what?
If you read their court filing, they're not claiming copyright violation, they're claiming "IP" (probably trade secret) violation... so depending on who's claims you're talking about, one of two things would happen:
1. (Copyright violation): Linux distributors point out that as SCO has their own Linux distribution, the code in question is distributed by SCO under the GPL. This gives anyone the right to distribute it under the terms of the GPL.
2. (trade secret violation): Linux distributors point out that as SCO is distributing the secrets themselves under the GPL, that they can't claim that they are secrets anymore.
So, what it means is: squat. Business as usual.
As hard as it is to believe, the only way I can make sense of SCO's "launder" statement is that the are suggesting that the linux community would remove all traces from the kernel, including previous releases. Also, we would all presumably keep mum about it ever being there, thereby hoodwinking both the legal system and justice herself!!!!!
A moment's contemplation will make anyone (well, maybe not a laywer or a judge, they do seem exceptionally thick) see the absurdity of that suggestion, as well as available remedies if that was actually a concern (i.e. sequester a copy of the kernel/library archive away, under the oversight of the court, before revealing the offending lines of code).
Par for the course, total bullshit. DIE IN FLAMES, SCO.
AND DIE POOR TOO!
My point is they can't sue.
SCO distributed the code under the GPL, anyone including IBM can redistribute it under the GPL.
IBM didn't distribute it under any license other then the GPL, I don't see a violation.
There is a word "copywriter" and another "copyright". No, they are not the same.
You could argue that the work of a copywriter is to copywrite and thus have a verb, but it's still not the same as to obtain copyright.
Yes, they've been saying this for quite a while now. There's news involved here?
Is it just me or does it look like they're going to reveal the source code right after Duke Nukem Forever is out and they make Evil Dead 4.
Karma: Non-Heinous
...that its code was in a series of products called "Windows".
Didn't they just say that the linux kernal was cleared and didn't contain any of their IP? I gotta say I am really disapointed with SCO, they used to be such a cool company. I feel kind of ashamed that I am forced to use and admin their OS'es at work. Not to mention that my SCO shirts will now be politcally incorrect....
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I think this just about says it all:
Related Quotes
Caldera Intl SCOX 3.52 -0.17
Intl Bus. Machines IBM 87.57 1.68
Red Hat Inc RHAT 6.12 0.15
Microsoft Corp MSFT 26.13 0.42
And several burnt CD's wouldn't be proof enough?
But I took it in a different direction. This would not just be a libel suit involving just Linus or the distromakers, this is defamation/libel of an entire community of developers. Thus a multi-plaintiff suit, or perhaps even a class-action suit might be more worthwhile. Second, my understanding of libel torts is that you while have to even prove intent to mislead/lie/etc, blatent negligence to the facts of your assertions can constitute this intent. If IBM isn't going to counter-sue, WE SHOULD.
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
Now that I've actually read TFA (hadn't before posting) it's good to see that I can get moderated +5 insightful for repeating Bruce Perens words. Bah.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Linux is open, source code is widely available. What if an SCO programmer takes sample code from Linux and incorporates it into SCO? In other words, how can SCO prove that their code came first?
Good idea, snapperhead.
If you can show any actual code that was peached from yours, the maintainers will certainly rewrite their code to remove yours. If it turns out after all that y'all actually peached ours (ala MicroSoft & BSD), then you have problems. And if there's actually no violations, everyone go home happy.
I anticipate SCO getting handed their collective ass by everyone they go after on this. It'll be fun to watch!
Have a nice war,
Mal the Elder
SCO's refusal to divulge which code is tainted is part of their ploy. On CNet, SCO's CEO said that "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." (story)
But this is silly. While the community could remove UnixWare code if it exists, old copies of the software would still contain it. The evidence would still exist for the case against IBM; it wouldn't disappear.
So SCO's goal is probably to secure a legal resolution as soon after the code is divulged as is possible. That way if SCO succeeds, though the community will remove and/or replace the tainted code, it won't happen quickly enough to avoid a few months of licensing hell for distributors like RedHat, SuSe and Fill-In-Your-Favorite-Distro-Here. As long as the old code exists, those companies won't be able to allow free downloads. And they won't even be able to put their old distros online for download - and never will, since the old distros will contain the tainted code.
If it comes to pass, this licensing will be very disruptive to the GNU/Linux community.
They must have gotten a hold of those damning Nigerian documents indicating the transfer of banned Unixware code and small aluminum tubes to the Linux Kernel!
I also hear that Linus supports Al Quaeda!
Others have alluded to the fact that solutions to similar or the same problem tendto generate uncannily similar code. This seems to be a fact.
As well as the above, the Linux kernel contains substantial amounts of code from the *BSD code base as well, and thereis boundto be code cutansd pasted from *BSD as well. Unixware has probably also drawn from the same well in places given the *BSD license, from FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Not to mention the portions AT&T codebase that are in *BSD and Unixware, and which probably got into Linux from *BSD, thus generally sorting licensing and IP issues.
There are also complete drivers and compresion libraries (PPP compression) present in different major versions of Linux, with perfectly legitimacy
SCO will have to cross check all relevant source portions against *BSD to make sure they really have a case. Also, they have released new versions of Caldera Linux since the court filing with GPLed Linux kernels, thus GPLing the bits of the kernel that they claim were plagarised.
Somehow if they have a case I don't think they are after the retraction of that source, but they just wantto get the people who did it in the first place.
Don't you think that there should be some burden on SCO to provide evidence of the supposed copyright violation up front. Do you really think that a judge should hear their case just because they say so? Also, Mcbride stated that he knows that SCO IP is even as we speak being distributed by Redhat, Suse, and others. He is doing nothing to stop this. I find it amazing that Mcbride has the audacity to make statements along the lines of: we know they stole our code, and we know they are selling our code, but we're not going to say what code this is because then they would just stop selling it and that's not what we want.
Maybe it's really the other way around... SCO should tread lightly on this one... wouldn't it be funny if UnixWare was forced to become GPL because it was found that developers unlawfully incorporated Linux kernel code in to UnixWare? That would be a nice trick the SCO developers could play on the SCO Lawyers if they secretly wanted revenge.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
The linux kernel people are in a very big trouble: evidences of the theft are in many places:
.
: #define max(x,y) ({ \
.
e t.c:92:#define min(a,b) (((a)<(b))?(a):(b)): #define min(a,b) (((a)<(b))?(a):(b)): #define min(x,y) ({ \
$ grep -n '#define max(' -r
./drivers/net/pcmcia/wvlan_mdd.h:140:#define max(a,b) (((a) > (b)) ? (a) : (b))
./drivers/telephony/ixj.h:66:#define max(a,b) (((a)>(b))?(a):(b))
./include/linux/kernel.h:162
$ grep -n '#define min(' -r
./drivers/net/pcmcia/wvlan_mdd.h:143:#define min(a,b) (((a) < (b)) ? (a) : (b))
./drivers/scsi/isp/isp_linux.h:735:#define min(a,b) (((a)<(b))?(a):(b))
./drivers/scsi/isp/scsi_targ
./drivers/telephony/ixj.h:63
./include/linux/kernel.h:156
That's the best point I think I've seen yet.
Wouldn't their distribution of contaminated Linux code legitimize it? Since they are actively saying that they can distribute a GLPed implementation of the stolen code but no one else,including their UL partners, can. If SCO is distributing this code that they say that they own under the GLP, haven't they given everyone else the right to redistribute?
Along the same lines, how similar are the kernels for SCO and SuSe?
You know, the secret lines of source code that no one's ever seen.
SCO had a booth at this linux conference I attended this week. Now that's CHUTZPHA!
Surely someone who reads /. has access to both Unix and
Linux kernel sources? A little creative fgrep'ing
should find some dupes if they exist, which can then
be posted, since for all we know, they're "owned"
by whoever holds copyright on the Linux version.
.nosig
I heard on CNN today that he wasn't in that restaurant building that got bombed and indeed is alive and well, and if he cannot get asylum in the US, his next career choice will be to become a singer.
With 12.2 million (SCOX) shares outstanding, could we not get enough people together and purchase enough shares to gain effective voting rights? We could push through shareholder proxies to dissolve the company. We could even perform a hostile takeover, and drive SCO into the ground.
My neighbor did something... I can't really say what he did, but it was cauing tons of damage to my property. If I told him what he had done he could just fix it. Of course I've taken many pictures of the damage, but I see no reason why I should have to tell him what to fix until we're in court. In fact, that's just what he'd expect me to do. Unlike SCO, however, I sent him a warning letter before I sued him. It read "If you don't figure out what you're doing wrong and fix it within 30 days I'm suing you!"
My Blog
"Given that we have extensive legal resources put forth into making sure we respect the valid intellectual property rights of companies, we are not concerned with the statements that have been made" that Unix code appears in Linux, said Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day. "We do take intellectual property very seriously."
right...
http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/09/24/1432223.shtml
Common sense is not so common.
Willya, please?
OK, so I was too slow and all the good ones were taken! So what?
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Through all these decades I've learned the one thing IBM wants people to think when they hear IBM is integrity.
Now how did IBM get involved with linux ?? Linas Vepstas started an IBM linux mainframe port in 1998 and had made fairly impressive progress by the end of 1999. In the same timeframe, IBM Böblingen also began a linux port, but as a skunk-works project. They released their updates to lkml in mid-December 1999 and went public. In a surprisingly short period of time, for a monstrosity as big as IBM, the project was blessed by IBM corporate as a way to generate revenue from their mainframe hardware. Also a decades operating system called vm got new life breathed into it because it lets you run thousands of linux images with far better resource utilization (bang for the buck) than individual servers. (If you think vmware is cool, you ain't seen nothin'). And Linas, sad to say, was fscked.
But the next year (2000) was spent just getting linux to run decently. And the last couple of years has been spent to actually get sites to run this thing in production.
So, as an outsider, it was apparent to me that IBM's initial effort was spent to just get linux running decently on mainframe architecture and not much else. Now flashback to the 1980's (hmmm Vice City just popped in mind ;-) IBM developed a risc architecture and chose to run a proprietary unix on it. So aix is born, along with a licence agreement with AT&T for Unix IP. Not that they actually had to use any of the IP, but it was a good base to cover.
Now, as an IBM newbie, it has been hammered and hammered again that thou wilt not divulge IP and will honour thy NDA. I don't know, but I think each and every employee has to get hammered year after year.
It may sound archaic today, but the values IBM insists on indoctrinating me with are `when in doubt, do the right thing', and `free will involves making a choice, please accept responsibility for your decisions'. The noive ;-)
I seriously doubt that any IP benefits IBM obtained for unix almost 20 years ago are relevant in today's linux and I seriously doubt that any IBMers would betray the trust of another's IP or violate a NDA.
Also, I believe that IBM would spend $1B to impugn this assault on its integrity rather than $20M to make it go away.
You'd need to look at the history of several distros, Red Hat, SuSe, Debian, kernel.org, and of course Caldera and the new SCO. It would seem like a trivial, but time consuming, exercise. Just get several of the last 4-5 versions of each distro and compare it against the Caldera/SCO versions! Particularly differences from the most recent SCO version should shed the best light on what they're "really" trying to argue!
My thinking is that the current SCO Linux is heavily sanitized, but the Caldera from just after the buyout would be the most accurate to nail them with because Caldera bought SCO [NOT the other way around!] so their behavior "is" important here. One would also have to mark the parts of the new SCO that are not currently GPL, as well as to note what parts of the previous distro they replaced!
Like someone else mentioned, the beauty of OSS is that it's been in the open the entire time! The evidence to at least support Linux is already out in the open. That and the OSS community has much more cheap freetime than SCO can afford for Lawyers! They've already tipped their hand, it would just take some time to find it.
UPDATE: Perhaps this could be put into a distributed computing client! It would compare source snippets from each of the distros and return the results to a central database. Then EVERYONE, even non-programmers, could help out!!
SCO claims copyrighted code found running the Starship Enterprise. Story at 11.
In all seriousness though, I'm beginning to wonder whether SCO is a technology company or a front for a law firm.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Favorite quote from the article:
"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."
It's refreshing to see someone in today's business environment who's willing to really put it all on the line to protect all that is right and wholsome in the world.
The RIAA could use a man like this to help them sue evil college students who are threatening the very existence of those poor starving record company executives.
Hey, I just had a look at the code for the latest build of Longhorne (don't ask how!) and I found the following code that is 100% MINE:
... some code they put in to make it look like it wasn't mine ...
... another attempt at obfuscation ... ... they're still trying to fool me! ... ... argh, so frustrating ...
... a bunch of attempts at trickery ... ... they're at it again! ...
for (int i = 0; i 20; i++) {
}
And the Linux community is just as bad! I found the following code in the latest kernel, and I KNOW they got this from me:
switch (a) {
case 0:
break;
case 1:
break;
default:
}
And you know what? IBM's just as bad! Here's some code straight out of WebSphere they STOLE FROM ME:
try {
} catch (Exception e) {
}
That's it, I'm getting a lawyer and getting my piece of the pie! You thieving rats better stay away from my code or I'm going to own you!
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Sometimes they come back.
This evil doing is being done by the evil empire M$
the Great Satan Bill Gates.
"We feel very good about the evidence that is going to show up in court. We will be happy to show the evidence we have at the appropriate time in a court setting," McBride said. "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."
Why doesn't SCO grab the source now so that they can disclose what was copied? The fact that the Linux kernel is a free software project means that it is continually in a state of publication, so whatever is in the source code as of right now is already a matter of public record, no? Anybody can go download it. For the Linux community to try to retroactively clean out code like that would be very difficult.
The 3-volume set of The Art of Computer Programming would do as a start for establishing prior art to anything implemented in the Linux kernel.
Over the last 30 years, any number of "Data Structures and Algorithms" books have been published.
I think that Linus himself has said that he modelled (not copied!) the orignal Linux of 10+ years ago on Andrew Tannebaum's Minix.
I've not looked in depth at the Linux kernel (if that's where the "violations" have occurred, SCO seems to be waffling on this) but what I've read about the various development versions indicates that the real programming effort goes into making everything work with everything else.
Occasionally, there are algorithmic-level discussions (such as with the scheduler), but most of the focus seems to be on "Patch X to Module Y breaks Functionality Z on Platform XYZ".
Any good MBA's out there to compare SCO/Caldera's financials vs IBM's? I'm hoping that on principle (and IBM has invested a lot in Linux/Open Source) that IBM doesn't settle, and doesn't just buy SCO out to settle the suit. A $10M/year legal bill for IBM to defend the SCO suit is (I think) a drop in IBM's bucket, but a big chunk of SCO's cash flow. As someone else has noted, probably the worst outcome for SCO is if the case actually comes to trial, and they have to prove their claims.
"In today's discussion SCO's Chris Sontag, for the first time as far as we know, publicly identifies and clarifies to some extent whether the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux operating system, Linux distributions, and/or Linux applications are involved in the alleged IBM misconduct -- and to some extent which Linux distribution providers are involved and how they are involved." From the article.
Now today they are saying the kernel has copyrighted code.
Anyone else want a clear explanation on what changed?
Y'know, there's nothing to defend such suits, or such cases. That seems to have been what SCO is banking on; if no defense is made, SCO wins by default. Of course, maybe it would have been better if they hadn't sued IBM. :-)
But this is a problem that's going to come back for a sequel, I think.
http://www.sco.com/company/feedback/index.html
Actually, I never left. And I'm still not dead.
Karma: Undead.
While I also doubt they will pull this off, considering there is a PENDING LAWSUIT here, it would be self defeating to give away the evidence before court time.. ( and perhaps even illegal.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
>going to be directly liable to the stock holders for some blatant acts of poor judgement.
No, under legal theory you're allowed to be incompetent. There aren't enough judges in the world to review every disputed business decision, or even to review every pigheaded, moronic, divorced-from-reality business decision. The courts really don't want to take over the function of the capital markets in taking money away from bad managers.
An actual lawyer could give you a better explanation than this.
Now we understand why Microsoft has created some narrow "open source" situations: once they contrive to leak some of their own code into the Linux kernel as a plausible consequence of exposing some code to third parties, they'll finally have their way to crush the Linux windpipe, er, shut down the air supply.
Hi,
There have been a couple of comments about how Caldera has already distributed Linux kernel so they cannot claim IP theft etc.
I think we should be careful that Microsoft et al. should not put a spin on this like "See, they got involved in GPL software and lost their IP rights. We have been saying IT companies which produce original work should stay away from GPL if they do not want to lose their IP."
We have to make it clear that SCO/Caldera did not get screwed because they touched GPL software but they have simply agreed to share their IP and now claiming someone stole it, or something along these lines.
ato
It will also be easy to fix: it will just get removed. It seems unlikely to me that SCO can get much of a remedy beyond that, and perhaps some limited penalty for the person responsible.
More likely, however, any similarities are either due to the use of published code (textbooks contain bits and pieces of UNIX), because of accidental similarities (it's millions of lines of code), or because SCO copied stuff from Linux rather than vice versa.
Slackware was running circles around sco back in 1995 - just check the 1994-1996 editions of infoworld. SCO usually finished dead last in any sort of benchmark comparison with modern unices such as linux, freebsd, solaris.
Why would the kernel hackers have any interest in the crappy sco code?
Boot to Windows and run NOSMOKE.EXE. Most of you know it as a hardware fix, but it'll patch the kernel too. Is there anything it can't do?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
linux stole cal.
we're all going to have to pay. what's a calendar
cost. $15. each of us will have to pay $15 for each
year we've had linux's cal on our computers. IBM
will argue that they should only pay for each person
who's actually run cal, 10, or who's actually printed
out a calendar from cal instead of buying sco to
print out their text caldendars. 0
...Microsoft is already making code obfuscation a natural part of their development process. Most likely they are going to release their code open source at some point in the future, after they've obfuscated it to death.
r l= /library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/netcfobfuscation.asp
See...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
+2 more cents.
hmm... this isn't the first time UNIX patent holders
have been jerks...
when is apple going to merge OSX with the GNU Hurd
and get this bs over with?
-199
Do they really, honestly think that I'm gonna fork over one, single, red cent to them over this? And just what do they propose to do when we all refuse to un-ass any $$ when the greedy scum-bags demand we pay them??
I really would like to know what is going on in their pointy little heads over this..
They can't really belive that we are all going to sit down and write them a check, each and every one of us. We'll just keep using it, for free, as it was intended to be, and laugh them out of existence as they file fro chapter 13..
Buh bye SCO, you really take the stupid-cake....
Ideally, copyright lengths should be reduced back to the original 1790 values. I know this probably won't happen but it is certainly the best way to put things back in balance. Currently, the so called "content providers" own all information and charge out the ear for it. That is unacceptable. Information should go into the public domain such that other people can use it, modify it, grow it and make better things with it. That was the whole purpose of copyright in the beginning, anyway! To give people incentive (for a few years) to release their works such that OTHERS could use them to make this country advanced and strong. In today's fast paced business environment, nothing makes more sense than staying ahead of the competition by continuously improving things and coming up with wackier and better things all the time. This is how progress is made in arts, sciences and everything else. Progress is not made by passing more and more criminal laws to protect "intellectual property" that is really just information that SHOULD be free and useful to people.
Back to the discussion about SCO... I think that when software goes out of copyright (after the 1790 time limit), an entire build environment including all code should be released. Since earlier code cannot possibly contain code copyrighted at a later date, this cannot present the legal problem that things still in copyright need to be released as well. Even if such a drastic change does not take place, the executable program should become public domain. That, at least, would give people the ability to use older programs, if not necessarily to fix bugs in them. And therefore, I think the SCO thing is a pile of B.S. I don't know for sure, but I believe that if copyrights had retained their 1790 time limits, this "valuable" code (that probably implements printf or something stupid like that) would already be in the public domain anyway. (On a side note, how advanced would Linux be now if all code since the 60's was released and available for modification and inclusion?)
Believe it or not, this is an improvement over their earlier statements, not a worsening of them as the article poster implied. By claiming they have a specific example, they have moved the argument into the realm of the provable (and disprovable). Their earlier argument was that it's impossible for open source hobbyists to ever achieve any quality as quickly as they did. That was not only insulting, but if it held up in court it would have set a precedent that people best not develop OSS projects quickly lest they be accused of stealing code. Only CSS projects are allowed to finish quickly.
This is better. By concentrating on some specific code snippet, they can be rightly thrashed if they're just making it up.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
If you have ever delt with them you know that they have never had any sucess running a company. But they sure dream big... trouble is every dream they dream has something to do with the Nasdaq.
n lack of _any idea whatsoever_ about a long term plan or any plan at all beyond "yeah, we'll cut off their air supply!", for that matter.
This time, it's not pump and dump though. BTW, Canopy was "unlucky" 2000-> and never had a sucessful pump and dump. It really does seem like they thought they could get bought or a settlement. Hey, it worked on that DrDOS thing (which was real, BTW).
Nothing to fear, McBride is stepping all over his dick in the press showing a typical Canopy/Caldera/Lineo/CalderaAgain/Embedix/ScoAgai
Stupid, just plain stupid.
I just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in... I'm sure many of you will agree with me that SCO sucks. Oh, damn, I'm going to get sued for saying that. I take it back. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linux based on BSD UNIX? Okay, so if thats true... and we already know that SCO is based on System V Release 4 and XENIX, then what the heck kind of grounds does SCO have? Anyways, I think they suck, and IBM should buy them, and then fire all the losers in management at SCO. Nuff said. ;-)
Step 6: Collect and destroy/replace every Linux distro sources CD in existence.
don't you love it when macrosponge useing smaller holdings(SCO) to try to dominate linux?
Net attack crushes SCO website from news.com
By holding off until court to present what specific parts of Linux are claimed to be violating their copyrights, they will be causing the court to have to be delayed while allowing IBM to research the specifics. This is the kind of thing that should be divulged during discovery. I would think the judge will not be happy about this tactic.
The only thing I can see SCO is doing in this is trying to drag out the case. By dragging it out, they are probably trying to get IBM and/or other businesses to just pay them royalties to shut the thing up, or buy them out. I hope they don't get bought out so we can have a boycott target.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
See http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-999584.html".
These are two seemingly unrelated ideas:
Of course there's going to be code that is remarkably similar between SCO and Linux.
The UNIX intellectual property rights were forfeited by the writing of the POSIX spec. Give it up, SCO.
To belabor the point, imagine the following:
Microsoft releases the standard for the Word Document format, an OSS project implements a reader/writer of this format. Microsoft sues the writers for IP infringement.
I really hope that IBM counter-sues.
exit 0;
That's the offending line!!! No seriously!!!!
SCO: IBM stold our code!
IBM: Did not!
SCO: Did so!
. . . . and so on.
How can the bring in a segment of code and say "You see this is in Linux and they stole it". I can do that now if I wanted. Wouldn't the whole source have to be released make sure it actully fits in SCO. What if I claimed I wrote the code 8 years ago. Then all it is, is a pissing match. IP without a pantent is quite hard to proof IMHO.
Atto
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
Funny to see the staunch Linux supporters, Microsoft is SATAN but it's ok for IBM to ransack other's intellectual property so long as it's good for 'the community'.
SCO has a very good case, why else would they go after the biggest fish first? Companies (+ hackers) have decided they wanted to co-opt the original technology Unix and pirate it out as 'free' despite being 98% similar.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, but the hypocrisy of the OSS community is disturbing. They want to defend IBM on something they would literally want to crucify Microsoft for. It points many of them out to be purely driven by emotion, much of it hatred and mean spirited. Only when they realize how one-sided their thinking has become, will their thoughts and comments become worthwhile.
And here's an early preview of how the family responds when their integrity is questioned?
NET ATTACK CRUSHES SCO WEB SITE
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-999584.html
Sounds about like the Gambino crime family to me....worse thing is somebody out there is probably proud of it. But the IP theives spammers and flooders are going to keep finding it harder and harder to get away with their dirty little tricks...and hopefully there will be voices in 'the community' that step up and speak out against them. We're waiting to see.
What is the likelihood of Caldera/SCO bosses having dumped their shares en masse while the IP FUD iron was/is still hot?
In other words:
- When you can't make money from selling products, because your product is worthless, try to make money from lawsuits.
- When you don't have any valid claims to make money from lawsuits - because your product has been irrelevant for years - make a bogus but vaguely plausible claim to temporarily boost your stock price. Immediately sell your shares.
- Profit!
Caldera have worked out step 2, people! Incredible!!SCO has kernel code looting YOU!!!
somebody leaked out the affected code:
;-)
cout "hello world";
Impressive indeed
Juedges know nothing about software development or the digital worl, online reaserch communities, collaboration etc. These guys are all 60+ golfers who think that to collaborate tjey all have to fly to florida for week long seminars.
Tehy think all tehcnology is invented by individuals working for companies in labs (this si their view of invesntino and it colors their view of "ownership").
AND NUMBER #1 THREAT:
IT WAS JUDGES WHO INVENTED THE CONCEPT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - WHICH IS A SHAM.
Can you imagine if linux loses or IBM loses?? ...
IBM is Micro$oft's biggest competitor
and so is Linux.
If they somehow both lose because of this lawsuit,
who would benefit the most ?? M$
Two birds with one stone.
MS can't fight Linux on technical basis and open source and IBM is a large large company.
Past infringement is still infringement.
In U.S. law tradition, there is a doctrine called "laches" that states that if a monopoly owner harmed an alleged infringer by delaying legal action, the monopoly owner is not entitled to damages for infringements that occurred before legal action began. In patent cases, laches kicks in after six years unless the defendant can prove that the plaintiff so harmed the defendant.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When you give several engineers a problem to solve you will in many occasions find that the programs they produce are similar because the problem is similar.
My guess is that they are trying to say that since the code does the same thing that it is copied not because it is a verbatim copy. Under normal circumstances, with copyright, you need to prove that a person or entity copied *verbatim* the work in question. If this case hits the courts and SCO wins (which is doubtful, but stranger things have happened) could this mean that this is no longer needed to prove infringement of copyright? If so, could this mean that any OS or FS project could be threatened in this way?
We must fight back against this by making our voices heard by SCO and by letting IBM know that the community is behind them.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I've contributed code to gcc and the linux kernel.
When I contributed code to gcc, the Free Software Foundation sent me paperwork to sign where I certified that the code was my work (not anyone else's). They also sent me paperwork for my boss to sign certifying that the company I work for disclaimed interest in the code.
When I contributed code the the linux kernel, I e-mailed my code to torvalds@transmeta.com. No paperwork. No verification of identity. No quitclaim from my employer.
The Linux kernel really is a lot looser than the GNU Project.
sig intentionally left blank
Not quite sure where you got that idea. See Here for info. Note "patent" in title. Copyright wouldn't be a problem unless the code went in completely unchanged (which NEVER happens with the linux kernel), and would be easy to fix - gut it and re-implement it "cleanroom." Since it's a patent though, it doesn't matter how it's implemented, it's a violation if it has the same functionality.
SCO's patents on UNIX have long expired
The original ones, yes. But there are numerous follow-up patents dealing with multi-processor design which weren't part of the original Unix. It is these patents that are under discussion, and they are under the time limit. This is stuff, some developed in cooperation with IBM, that was worked on in the last maybe 5 years. Definitely not old and expired.
For what it's worth, if it were a matter of copyright, we'd be more screwed timeline-wise, as they last a VERY long time. What is it up to, 80 years or something? And even if it were copyrights, those DO NOT have to be defended either. The only thing that does is trademark, which, as you point out, has no relevance here.
To reiterate: you CANNOT lose patents OR copyrights by not defending their use.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat