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OSI vs SCO
the jackol writes "As expected, the OSI's just given the SCO vs IBM case a bite with this position paper. "SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group.""
I like the GPL, but please note that BSD or any other free-software license would have the same result in this case. Any license they grant to the public precludes trade secret violation, and copyright violation is limited to breach of the license.
In short, the answer can be found in the acronym:
:)
G.N.U.
GNU is Not Unix
In full, read up on the Free Software Foundation site as to when and why Richard Stallman developed the GNU utilities and how Linus Torvalds was around at the right time to supply the missing piece to the system. i.e. the Linux kernel.
Ah...but this is the point. Nothing in GNU/Linux is derived from Unix. Many things work in a similar fashion (by design), but they were coded from scratch
Probably because the kernel itself has no direct relation to BSD-derived or USL-derived kernels, many of the tools are GNU (Gnu's Not Unix, remember?:) rewrites of basic Unix programs, and the BSD-derived software kind of found its way into various distributions over time since they worked just fine, thank you. I may be wrong, but I think even parts of the kernel can be traced to free BSD implementations alongside the homemade spaghetti. A hypothetical "standard" Linux installation is a mishmash of various codebases that developed outside of closed-source Unixen.
Defining Linux is notoriously tricky, since some people primarily rely on kernel heritage, while others try to build a definition based on the collection of software considered part of the "standard" package. This is complicated by various distributions that may or may not use the same pieces of software for similar tasks. The basics may be all GNU/BSD, but once you get beyond that, things can get ugly fast.
Someone making a chart would therefore likely either decide to stuff Linux off to one side on the justification that the kernel has no direct heritage, or draw a crapload of lines to other Unixen and codebases to really nail down every last relation.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Not true. Linux is almost completely written from scratch. There are a few ported BSD drivers, but the core OS is a completely new work that shares no code with "genuine" Unix. Of course, Linux distributions included BSD derived code, but the suit here regards the kernel, not userland, and the kernel wasn't derived from anything...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
IBM doesn't want SCO. Less hassle to win this suit and crush SCO. Especially since buying SCO would suggest that the suit has any merit. IBM makes money on Linux, or they wouldn't be selling it. IBM is an ancient giant. They have survived the various computer revolutions, and have an enterprise attitude. IBM isn't going away, and has always been the Corporate and Government trend setter. Despite mistakes like MCA and the OS/2 fork, they have endured, and will likely continue to evolve, adapt and overcome.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
There are four separate issues here: Trade secrets, NDAs, patents and copyrights. Trade secrets are nixed by revealing the source code, NDAs possibly also, copyright and patents however aren't.
If I distribute my application in source code form, I still have all copyrights associated with it. The GPL grants others some additional rights to redistribute which they otherwise wouldn't have, even if they had the source code.
VERITAS File System (VxFS) and VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) are owned by VERITAS Software Corporation. They are not part of the Bell Labs code. By reading Eric's article one could infer (I did) that he was implying this code is part of the Bell Labs code.
Disclaimer: I work for VERITAS Software Corporation.
Actually, no. The GPL does not state that corps caught with GPL'ed code in their proprietary software have to GPL their entire program. They have to EITHER GPL their entire program, or REMOVE all of the GPL'ed code from their proprietary program. Their choice.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
UNIX systems that are built under licenses that SCO inherited are the dominant UNIX variants. These include Solaris and AIX and HP-UX. All have licenses from Bell Labs/AT&T that protected AT&T's intellectual property, which SCO now owns.
SCO and Intel UNIX: OSI has it wrong and so does SCO. SCO did port Xenix to the 8086 and 286. Intel/AT&T paid to have Interactve Systems port UNIX 5.2.2 to the 286 and 5.3 to the 386. SCO used the Interactive port for the basis of the later products. Interactive built a packaged UNIX based on V.3 which was eventually bought by Sun which used this as the base of Solaris for Intel.
IBM hired Locus Computing to port UNIX to the PS/2. They used a V.2.2 variant and did not use the same code base that was used for the RISC AIX, which was developed by Interactive for IBM.
The OSF ported the MACH kernel and UNIX layer but still used a variety of the Bell commands. I think the kernel was Bell license free, but I can not remember the exact terms. I know you needed an AT&T 5.2 level license, but I think this was because OSF still used the commands, libs, etc from Bell.
In a way, SCO is correct, in that the Intel ports of the various UNIX'es all derive from some version of Bell Labs UNIX which the vendors had access to via an AT&T license.
Yeah, Caldera bought the SCO name, rights to the original AT&T/Bell Labs UNIX codebase, and the UNIXWare and OpenServer products from SCO a few years back. What was SCO took on the name Tarantella - the name of the DOS/Windows to Unix crossover product that the former SCO also sold. Caldera later renamed itself to 'The SCO Group', and has been selling Linux, UNIXWare and OpenServer product lines - until just recently.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
how exactly does an OS pay for itself? i've got to get me one of these AIX os's...
This system as a whole, including the Oracle database and the apps which use that database, are parts of a revenue-generating organization. That organization could not operate as successfully without that system, and before it was purchased 7 years ago, our operation was done solely by manual accounting procedures. The financial benefits (expense reduction plus additional revenue) realized above and over the old manual process during that 7 year period are at least twice what that the system cost to purchase and maintain over that amount of time... so the system has made our operation more efficient and profitable.
This is not a matter of religous zealotry, it a matter of plain theft!
But whose theft?
"The exact terms of final settlement, and much of the judicial record, were sealed at Novell's insistence."
"The University of California then threatened to countersue over license violations by AT&T and USL. It seems that from as far back as before 1985, the historical Bell Labs codebase had been incorporating large amounts of software from the BSD sources. The University's cause of action lay in the fact that AT&T, USL and Novell had routinely violated the terms of the BSD license by removing license attributions and copyrights."
Methinks it gets very interesting if that stuff gets unsealed.
But you're still missing the point. He's not debating that SCO own the Bell Labs source: that's a record of historical fact. As the document makes quite clear, the Open Group owns the Unix trademark. So whether or not SCO own the Bell Labs makes no difference: IBM need the permission of the Open Group, not SCO, to call AIX a Unix. SCO's ownership of the source (not the trademark) is entirely accidental to this.
In the same way, I'm not denying that you own your car. However, in any discussion of whether I own my car, your ownership of yours is accidental.
Nobody is saying that anything is 'an accident'. You're still working to another definition of the word 'accidental'.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Well fancy that! I ALSO happen to be an attorney and I have done extensive research on this case as well. It looks to me like SCO hasn't a legal leg to stand on since none of the code they claim is in Linux actually existed before 2002. (I've also signed the NDA to see what it is that they are claiming they "have on Linux". That's why I'm posting AC. Seth is a cocksucker.) SCO will be laughed out of court on day one as soon as they make their "revelation".
As you pointed out, SCO/Caldera did not have any outstanding claims to the source, so they had no integral or premediated claims to the source. The authors could have said 'adventitious' instead.
Your description of objects being bought and sold actually demonstrates how accidental or adventitious ownership works. If I bought a car, I had no previous ownership-interest in it; I'd be doing it out of legal chance, as accidental ownership -- I just bought the car because I could.
A company or person who built the car could say that they have some interest (may or may not be ownership) in the thing, and therefore have some intrinsic reason to buy it. Their ownership would not be accidental. They bought the car because they already had something at stake in the value of the it, perhaps as a demonstration of their workmanship.
Actually, the fact that SCO/Caldera never obtained *ALL* the rights from *ALL* the licences is one of the main points of the article. They make this clear several times by showing different systems that were licenced and SCO has no right to, and systems that SCO released to the public both freely and under the GPL. A second is that SCO/Caldera profited for several years from the actions, including distributing infringing code under the GNU licence and contributing to the code in a public work, but are only now attempting to assert some rights against another company. A third point is that SCO/Caldera probably does not have those rights that it is trying to assert, through the earlier settlement and licence issues, mutally accepted 'theft' of code [which isn't theft if both parties were aware of it and took no official actions], and other history.I think that in spite of some slightly incorrect dates, omitting the free/open arguments and the GNU/Linux OS vs. the Linux kernel, and the inclusion of anecdotes like 'But that emperor has no clothes', the authors have a very clear and solid attack against several aspects of the suit
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Now that I've made that clear.
1. Read the Position Paper. SCO haven't a leg to stand on in the IBM case.
2. Prove it. I cannot understand why Linus, Alan Cox, et al haven't filed some sort of libel suit against SCO. If they'd called me a thief in public like that you can bet I'd be having my lawyer call them straight away and suggest that they retract their accusations or have their arses sued off.
As to SCO withdrawing their versions of Linux, if they did that to avoid being trapped by the GPL then they should have taken the source of the FTP site before they sent out the letters.
I'm tempted to email Darl and officially accept the terms of the GPL pertaining to the copy of kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-152.nosrc.rpm that SCO distributed to me the day after they sent those letters out.
By pulling their Distro they have plainly stated that they know how the GPL works and how it would prejudice their position. By failing to stop distributing they have given away any code they claim had been stolen.
Even so they should still reveal what they claim has been stolen from the Bell Labs code. It should be noted that this code is copyrighted, NOT a trade secret, and has nothing to do with the IBM case and SCO has no excuse for not revealing the proof.
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
The paper says:
However, The Open Group's strict construction of the term ÒUnixÓ is more honored in the breach than the observance.
This is a pretty common misuse of Shakespeare's line from Hamlet. Most people take it to mean that the thing in question is mostly ignored, but what Hamlet meant when he said it was that the tradition in question was a bad one, and that it was more honorable to breach than to observe it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."