Today's SCO News

joebeone writes "Linus has commented on the SCO v. IBM suit saying "SCO is playing it like the Raelians" and that he will withhold his judgement until the code in question is shown in court. He has also recommended that former slashdot editor, Chris DiBona, be appointed to a panel offered by SCO to examine the evidence." Businessweek has an interview with SCO's CEO. The Open Group would like to remind everyone that SCO is only one of many in the Unix world.

Comments

Something Mismatches

[tanveer1979]

Yea the SCO is firing on all counts against Linux. But there are certain strange anomalies as far as their India Division is concerned. SCO India is apprently still pusihing linux!

The May Issue of Linux for You India has interview of SCO India Head in which that guy is pushing linux and says linux is the key focus of SCO with they wanting to contribute to the Linux Community by way of more software. Isnt that a bit odd!

SCO's own goal

[bazik]

Anyone else noticed that SCO continued to sell their Linux distribution for two months _AFTER_ they sued IBM? They even had a kernel source code on their servers available for download >:)


For more information click here.

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[aborchers]

This SCO guy raises one really disturbing question. What if someone has, in the past or future, malicously or accidentally, injected proprietary code w/ copyright or patent entanglements, into core Linux systems? What are the implications for users who have no way of recognizing the code in violation? Is this really a serious flaw in the open source model?

SCO's Ineffable Fallacy

[codefool]

"If trade secrets are the issue, it wouldn't be hard for the Linux community to recode the offending software."

This is precicely why SCO does not divulge exactly what's in question: it would be too easy for IBM et al to say "Oh. So sorry. Many regretti." and recode it, thus deflating any hope they have for the Home Run.

All SCO can be after is money - QED.

Re:show us the CODE!

[DailyGrind]

Actually the executives are going somewhere.... have you seen the stock price.

Unfortunately in the U$ the end justifies the means and the executive options for SCO are now making them rich.,.

It is not important if they win as long as they can cash out before the outcome....

Re:show us the CODE!

[Mr2cents]

Well, the article states it is:
- it is added in the last 18 months
- it is added by IBM
- they added 'a whole program'

I think this narrows things down a bit, shouldn't it be possible to make a list of code added by IBM in the last 18 months?
Maybe we could all put a snippet of this code on our website, and the one who gets sued by SCO has the right part :)

Even if SCO shows the code

[mocm]

how can they prove that they did not take the linux code and incorporate into their code.
The dates and times of code inclusion into linux are pretty well documented, but how can you do that with closed source.

There's lots of BSD code in AT&T Unix

[fstanchina]

The article from Newsforge had this (anonymous) comment attached to it. I didn't think of this, but it looks like he's right.

[disclaimer: as stated above, this comment was written by an Anonymous Reader -- I'm just pasting; any positive moderation doesn't belong to me, except a "+1 informative" if you will]

"As people may recall from the original settlement of the BSD lawsuit, three files had to be removed from BSD that represented things in SysV source. What is often forgotten, though, is that AT&T itself was in a far greater bind because while there was some SysV code in BSD, there was a LOT of "borrowed" and misattributed BSD code found to be in AT&T SysV. BSD permits this, but the license at the time required the advertising clause, and AT&T fraudulently ignored this. The actual settlement said that AT&T would no longer sue the BSD people, and that the University of California would also agree to hold AT&T harmless for misappropriating BSD code. Hence, much of the code that SCO owns is actually misattributed BSD code for which UC permitted AT&T (and it's decendents) to use."

"Now much of Linux also shares code derived from ancestrial BSD sources or people who have worked in common on both, and I am sure many of the same ancestrial routines still found today at the core of SysV are in fact also BSD derived. Hence, where common code may exist, it's code that AT&T originally misappropriated, and that SCO is free to use and relicense from the AT&T/BSD settlement, but in point of law neither AT&T nor the current SysV owner has actual legal copyright over. Perhaps the regents of UC could hall these SCO scum back into court, as they are in fact in material breach of the AT&T/BSD settlement if SCO now claims copyright "ownership" of that originally misappropriated code since the settlement gave AT&T no such rights."

Re:show us the CODE!

[jgerman]

Are those statements true? I kind of hope so. Linux is just the kernel (name flames aside, technically it's true). So it's not possible that anyone can add a whole program to a monolithic kernel. That would indicate that they are actually talking about something included as a program/utility/whatever in the OS by the distributor (I'm assuming this is IBM). If it's even true that a whole progrm was released under GPL when it wasn't supposed to be, it's easy to excise it from any distributions that are including it. It's certainly not a core piece of the OS, GNU and Linux are enough to create a useable OS/Linux distribution.

FSF's Bradley Kuhn comments on SCO case

[vinsci]

In an e-mail interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, FSF's executive director Bradley Kuhn says several interesting things, for example:

"Indeed, FSF holds documents from SCO regarding some of this code. SCO has disclaimed copyright on changes that were submitted and assigned by their employees to key GNU operating system components."

and earlier:

"SCO was not merely a distributor of the kernel named Linux; they were the distributor off the entire GNU/Linux system, which includes Linux as well as the core components of the GNU operating system, such as glibc, GCC, GDB, etc.

"Most of the core GNU components are all copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation and distributed under our auspices under GPL. SCO's right to redistribute them, and Linux too, is the GNU GPL and only the GNU GPL."

[...]

"For nearly two decades, the FSF has carefully and arduously collected copyright assignments on each contribution to the GPL'ed programs on which we hold copyright. We carry out due diligence to ask contributors if they have any reason to believe that trade secrets, patents, or other copyright claims cover their work before they submit it to us. We then collect a copyright assignment from the contributor (and a copyright disclaimer from their employer when necessary) to ensure that we hold proper title to the software on which we place our copyright notice and license freely under GPL or LGPL.

"Individuals and companies using FSF copyrighted programs know as much as one can know that the software has been examined carefully, that its authors certify that the work is their own, and that the authors have no knowledge of other claims conflicting with its licensing under GPL or LGPL."

For several other interesting quotes, see the whole interview.

Re:show us the CODE!

[Eunuchswear]

They've said they will, soon.

SCO ship a bunch of Linux stuff with their "LKP", (Linux Kernel Personality) add-on for UnixWare, and according to The Inquirer they've written to say:

Secondly we [SCO] have begun examining the Linux RPM CD which we ship with the UnixWare Media Kits to expunge any material which is thought to have any IP issues...

Within a few weeks we expect to have completed the purging of the Linux Kernel RPM and will be remastering a new CD which will allow customers to begin receiving UnixWare 7.1.3 Media Kits with the needed LKP materials.

So, within a few weeks we'll be able to compare the old "Linux RPM CD" with the new one and find out what SCO/Caldera think was stolen.

Re:considered the father of Linux?

[cygnus]

What if someone has, in the past or future, malicously or accidentally, injected proprietary code w/ copyright or patent entanglements, into core Linux systems?

There are no implications for the user, period. If someone uses code he is not allowed to, it's his problem and nobody else's. And this applies to all licenses and all development models equally.

i believe the question was asked because there are parties that might see fit to sabatoge Linux and other Open Source projects. Not to say that the Open Source/Free Software methodologies a priori are on shakier legal ground, but that they're possibly more vulnerable to sabotage given malicious third parties.

Re:Can the paranoia and defensiveness

[Surak]

My question wasn't meant to be whether users would be criminally liable, but whether the product they were using would be considered illegal and subject to any kind of claim by the copyright owner. In property law, one who purchases a stolen item isn't entitled to keep it once it is found to be hot, even if they bought it unaware.

Hmmm... say you own a legally purchased copy of the song 'My Sweet Lord' by George Harrison. This lawsuit comes up. Are you now required to return your copy of 'My Sweet Lord' because it is now considered 'stolen property'?

The answer is 'no, of course not.' Because copyright violation and theft, despite what the BSA wants you to think, are not the treated the same under the law. Copyright violation is not theft per se because it is a 'theft' of an expression of an idea, not the theft of physical property -- basically it's plagiarism. The plagiarizer is the liable party in this case. Copyright violation is also (generally) a civil matter, rather than a criminal matter. It's (literally) an infringement upon somone else's exclusive right to copy. Basically the party that causes damages to the copyright holder is the liable party.

I hope this makes sense to you because I feel like I'm babbling. ;)