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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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.