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SCO vs Linux.. Continued
An anonymous reader writes "ComputerWorld has an interview with Chris Sontag, from SCO.
Now the story has a pretty face." The interview has a variety of comments worth noting like how much source code SCO thinks has slipped from unix to linux. This story continues to amaze me.
Why didn't you act earlier? This move seems to arise with SCO's declining fortunes. We just announced our second quarter, and our financials are in very good position. The company is profitable. It is the first time in the history of the company, in almost seven years of existence, that it has been profitable. The point is we're really only recently seeing significant moves by many players, specifically IBM, to come out and state that they are moving wholesale to Linux.
Unisys anyone?
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
This story continues to amaze me.
maybe, but it's starting to bore a lot of us to death
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
It is many different sections of code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue
10 to 15 lines of code? That's such a small amount that similar code could be entirely coincidental.
#!/
I don't think SCO cares if anyone believes them or not. The only thing that matters is whether or not a judge finds their legal argument sound enough to award them a judgement. Anything else they say is just smoke and mirrors, a nod in the general direction of Publik Opeenion.
The only way the price will go down and stay down is if someone leaks the so-called evidence (or some juicy internal memos...) and the Emperor is discovered to be wanderin' around buck nekkid, so to speak.
I'm just wondering why it hasn't happened yet.
Searching for Truth, Justice, and the Guy Who Boosted My Wallet a Few Weeks Back....
A question: If this ever gets to court, will SCO have to reveal its proprietary code in open court in order to prove that Linux has ripped it off? If so, won't that just disseminate their code further ?
jf
to see the legal system used as a denial of service attack on the entire economy.
I hope that there is some actual basis for the claim, because otherwise SCO is just an MS meat-puppet.
Fighting to keep an open mind on the subject.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
They have no legal legs to stand on. Hopefully the courts will get this one right, and SCO will become irrelevent.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
What a load of crap. He's essentially saying that closed-source code is somehow more guaranteed to be more legitimate. I'd say that the reverse is true: There's a lot more incentive to do things legally when the entire world gets to see your source code than when virtually nobody does.
How unfortunate that he left out the "... and buy SCO instead."
Earlier he said that companies should abandon linux-related projects until SCO's suit is worked out. Now, he's implying that despite the fact that SCO is lying out of their teeth, and that Novell is calling them on it, noooooobody should abandon SCO-related projects. Sounds a bit hypocritical.
Here's what it really boils down to: SCO is the armpit of the Unix world, and the headquarters are in a city that's virtually the center of the MLM universe, and also known for immensely brain-dead business executives. SCO sucks, and is going downhill. Why? Because of Linux. Amazingly, Linux is also eating into Microsoft's server market share. Now the two team up, and decide to try and get rid of Linux. It's really not hard to see what's going on.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
5 to 15 lines in some places? Does SCO think they own hello_world.c too? Give me a break.
Trolling is a art,
SCO has now said it isn't an IP issue or a copyright issue, but a contractual issue. Since Linus had no contract with SCO, how could they sue him for an alleged contractual violation that happened between SCO and IBM?
And the same goes for anything IBM may have leaked, and note I'm not saying they did...but if they did break a contract, how can anyone using a Linux product using such code be held liable for a contractual violation done by IBM, again, when SCO has now said it is contractual issue and not an IP issue or a copyright issue.
On one hand I guess we can be glad SCO are such morons, but on the other hand, can you imagine releasing a press release saying the issue was never about IP or copyrights when they are running around screaming about suing everyone because Linux may have some of their IP in it!!!
Go that way really fast, if something gets in your way, turn
Ron Paul
"We will actually be providing some of the evidence next month to various industry analysts, respected press people and other industry leaders so that they don't have to take our word for it or wait until we show some of that evidence in court."
Until this happens, there really isn't too much of a story here. Wake me up in a month.
You CAN audit Free Software.
You can NOT audit proprietary source code.
We should repeat this frequently and loudly.
Should the IT pundits come to this realization, all of this gibberish about Open Source "accountability" will backfire horribly.
Even if what this SCO monkey claims is true is true, that still leaves the question of ultimate ownership of the offending code. Linux is "out there". The code and development process is publically documented and mirrored.
If SCO claims ownership to 15 lines of the kernel, how do they independently verify that claim? There are simply no 3rd parties with possession of all the relevant evidence.
It's not just the source itself but also the entire change history.
Merely pointing out common code between the two codebases simply isn't enough to base a conclusion on.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, but THEY distributed the code. If some of their IP was in the kernel, they should have never distributed it under the GPL.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
"There is no mechanism in Linux to ensure [the legality of] that intellectual property of the source code being contributed by various people."
I agree, but how is this any different from proprietary software? How CAN MS ensure that its code doesn't contain any SCO code, unless they license to have direct access to that code?
The only difference I can see is that with closed source code, there is NO WAY for ANYONE (even the owner) to make sure there are no IP violations. With open source code, only the owners of the closed source code are able to ensure their IP is protected (burden falls on the owners).
If one is really concerned about IP, one would require all code that has IP protection "Open Source", that way EVERYONE could verify whether or not a specific part of code is a copy of some other code.
However, it is my opinion that, under the current circumstances, making one's own code "Open Source" is the most one can do to ensure that they have performed "due dilligence" in ensuring that their code is free of IP law violation. Closed source seems to be the model lacking in this area, not Open Source.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I think this coincides with the other comment made by SCO's CEO that they'd go after the infringements all the way to the individual users, if necessary. (By the same token, if they can prove Linus Torvalds somehow stole SCO kernel source and rolled parts of it into the Linux kernel, they'd sue him personally for that act.)
The whole thing sounds ridiculous to me, but as so often happens with software, sometimes there aren't a whole lot of different ways to accomplish a task. A piece of hardware only interfaces with its software drivers through specific commands, sent a specific way, for example. I don't doubt SCO could match up small code segments (or even "big blocks of code", depending on their definition of "big") with what's in Linux.... but it might just be because nobody would really write those routines any other way.
I've been trying like crazy to figure out if this is the case, and if so, if SCO is shit out of luck. I remember a long time ago they said it wasn't the case, but their story might be changing.
What I want to know is whether:
1. The code was pre-1994 from BSD, but they somehow don't think the 1994 agreement is transferrable or even valid, or
2. The code in question was written by Novell or (God forbid) SCO after 1994. If written by Novell, did they explicitly give it to the OSS community or was it just that they didn't enforce the violation? If the latter, this could pose problems...or,
3. Did SCO illegally copy code from BSD (or elsewhere) post-1994? I will say, it will be very important to see source tree commit dates even if they do have some interesting code similarities
I wonder who the "independent experts" they show the source code will be? Probably not anyone with Novell, huh?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
In that case, we were accused (in part) of stealing code from an application that was used in the same industry but which not only looked drastically different (hence we could not have even "stolen" look-and-feel), and not only lacked substantial functionality in comparison to our app, but was also first released after our app was in production.
What happened?
We "lost", simply because my employer ran out of money to fight what was unquestionably a preposterous and baseless suit.
But let's look at SCO's claims about "copied code" from the viewpoint of lawyers and likely jurors. They are *not* going to understand the intricacies of kernel code. They are not going to get it when anyone says "Well, the code is the same because it does the same thing." I know this is true, of course, and it's perfectly reasonable: but a jury will try to wrap its heads around this problem by comparing it to things that they *do* understand. So they will compare it to copying books, or movies, or poetry, or something.
Now, if you or I saw a paragraph in a John Grisham book that was identical to a paragraph in a Michael Crichton book, what would we conclude? We would conclude that the paragraph was "obviously" copied.
Given the types of juries that lawyers like to find for themselves (namely, "drooling idiots", all too often), what are the odds that a jury in the United States will really care about learning or understanding the intricacies of programming? What are the odds that they will understand that it's entirely possible for source code to look the same in places when it performs the same function - even if it's written by two different people?
Personally, I wonder whether it might not be better for SCO to be crushed long before this ever gets to a trial. Juries in this country simply cannot be trusted.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
What fascinates me is how much intellectual property can you fit into 10 or 15 lines of code? There are only so many ways to structure data in the world, so many ways to allocate memory and so forth. How close does your code have to be to some other piece of code for it to infringe on intellectual property?
Sure, if Linux stole entire libraries of code, then that would be an issue. But how can you lay claim to component parts as small as this?
With all the FUD and name-calling among SCO, IBM, Novell, Microsoft, etc. etc., I am realizing more and more the foresight of the FSF in establishing its requirements for copyright paperwork when submitting code (link to FSF docs).
It is important to realize that even if the Linux kernel itself is somehow victimized, the GNU tools and the GNU/HURD should be untouched. The BSDs, Mac OS X, and Solaris should fair very well, too, if only because their legal problems are already dealt with. However, I really think SCO's claims against Linux are a long shot (of galactic proportion, unless, of course, they planted the code maliciously), so my hope is that SCO is the only true casualty once all this is over.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Huh, why would you donate your shares that you spent money on to other corporations?
Maybe donate 'em to the FSF - now that'd be highly amusing.
Furthermore, SCO would then need to prove that the code implemented in the linux kernel is 1) critical to the application and 2) actually covered by any patents as being both non-obvious and non-prior art.
You are getting a little mixed up here. A trade secret is something that is NOT patented for any of a variety of reasons. For example, a company could decide that a patent if granted would be unenforceable because it covered a process step that another company could practice in secret making it impossible for the patent holder to determine if infringement was occurring.
The kicker in all of this is the contract with IBM. We don't know what the terms are, and it may well be that it included terms protecting things beyond what is considered trade secret.
I have been involved in some of these things, and I will say that SCO's claims that developers who worked on the SCO project with IBM then later moved on to work on Linux will be dangerous in a court of law. It is very common to claim that knowledge obtained in the first case will inevetably leak into the second project, and courts can and do believe it.
In my case I was privy under NDA to a technology that my employer was considering purchasing from another company - after the decision was made not to go ahead with the purchase I was not allowed by my employer to ever do work in the technology area covered by the NDA for fear of exactly this problem. I also had to destroy all documents involved, and wasn't able to even tell my boss (the VP R&D) the technical reasons behind my decision to recommend against the purchase.
What if there really are huge chunks of code that were ripped directly from whatever-the-hell-it-actually-is-that-they-own and put in to the linux kernel?
...
We all know that it would be trivial to just rewrite the portions and it wouldn't be an issue in the future, but what about the past?
Wouldn't you be kinda pissed if someone did that to you?
You make money licensing your technology; then someone uses that technology in some free app and just gives it away and it becomes hugely popular; while you get nothing.
I dunno- just stuff to think about...
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
With chunks as small as 10-15 lines, it ought to be pretty easy to determine which lines come from which patch, and then from the patch determine the submitter. If the sections of code that SCO is bitching just happen to line up with particular patch submissions, then they might just be able to make a case.
However, more likely, if the code that they are claiming infringes was touched by multiple contributors over a long period of time, and the result of all those edits just happens to kinda sorta resemble a piece of code in SVR5 (aka independent invention), then they are going to have a much harder time making that stick.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I am aware of no mechanism in SCO Unix to ensure the legality of IP. It is very uncommon for a company to require documentation to verify the legality of their code. In fact, the only company I'm aware of that does this is the Free Software Foundation, who ownes a plurality of the copyrights on the GNU/Linux operating system.
It is a gross exaggeration to say that "almost everyone" feels that Linux's IP foundation is built on quicksand. You are the only one who I have heard state such a belief, despite campaigning by other groups with an interest in discrediting Linux.
Please indicate the person or persons at SCO who fills this task.
In traditional closed-source operating systems, the users must believe the manufacturer's statement that the OS is free of IP entanglements. The open source community, at least, provides IP holders with the means to verify IP issues. Can the same be said for closed-source OSs?
There have been multiple occassions when closed-source software has illegally adopted code from open-source software. And yet, you seem to imply that this is a problem specific to Linux's open-source model.
Your actions betray your words. You refuse to provide the user base with the information they need to evaluate the issues. Your complaint is vague, and provides no specifics with which the user community could evaluate its authenticity. Does SCO recommend that we stay away from Linux, based on vague claims? Would SCO be willing to pay for the additional costs incurred in a transition to an alternative, if your claim is found to be without merit?
Suppose I made the public claim that SCO had violated my copyrights, but refused to elaborate. Would you then expect all your customers to stop any new SCO-related deployments pending a resolution?
There is also a potential that you have violated my copyright in creating your own software; it just doesn't seem like a likely thing. Such an action must be judged by an evalution of its merits. Since you do not provide any information by which we could judge the merits of your complaint, there is no reason to act on your accusation.
You're claiming that Linux has been polluted with Unix code that you own, but you have not produced any evidence of that. Will you? We will actually be providing some of the evidence next month to various industry analysts, respected press people and other industry leaders so that they don't have to take our word for it or wait until we show some of that evidence in court. We will actually be showing the code, and the basis for why we have made the allegations that we have. We are very confident about our case. Because we are dealing with confidential source code that we have never released without confidentiality agreements, we will have to put in place nondisclosures [agreements] simply to protect the source. But people will be able to give their opinion as to what they think.
It's obvious that this sack of shit is lying. If his claims were true, he'd have no reason not to point out the offending code, since it has already been released to the public for all to see. There is no longer anything that he can protect by keeping the "offending code" secret. This is just a smokescreen for the fact that there really is no evidence because the entire claim is completely fabricated. See the OSI's response to this non-sense.
Also, there are many mechanisms ensuring that FOSS software is properly distributed without violating IP. People are required to sign waivers indicating that the contributed code was not improperly obtained. In many cases, corporations are asked to sign waivers.
Furthermore, since the code is FOSS, any proprietary entities concerned can easily identify any issues and have them resolved. SCO could have done this a long time ago -- it's obvious this is bullshit.
As a general summary, there are more insurances that FOSS isn't misappropriated than there are for proprietary code (which is closed-source, so they can hide misappropriations of IP). Furthermore, it is much more likely that SCO violated that GPL than that any FOSS developers violated SCO's IP.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Given that SCO Group license Unix from Noveel which owns the Unix Patnet to Trade secretes onUnix methods and the copyright to System V code..
..Novell does have a case to complete put SCO group out of business pernamently both in their license business strategy and everythign else..
The only thing SCO group can enforce is the terms of a sub license of a sublicense..
Given their actions of harming trade secrets of Novell
Don't Tread on OpenSource
unlike trademarks, patents and copyright do not diminish with disuse.
Though trademarks come with the strongest "use it or lose it" responsibilities, patents and copyrights are still subject to some. If a judge finds that a patent holder or copyright owner has harmed an alleged infringer by delaying legal action, the doctrine of laches states that the monopoly holder cannot collect damages for alleged infringements that occurred prior to the alleged infringement.
In addition, copyrights have fair use limitations. If the owner of copyright in a published work refuses to sell copies of the work and refuses to license the work, it could be argued that the copyright owner thereby denies the existence of any "potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" (17 USC 107) that could be harmed by the alleged infringement.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Q: In other words, a company's options reduce to sending a flock of (expensive) lawyers to investigate the legal consequences of a highly complex claim, the factual merits of which you refuse to divulge?
A: Well, when you put it that way . . . still YES! A thousand times YES! Linux development shall come to a screeching halt!
Seriously, when's someone with standing going to countersue?
Open-source software is a common resource; what SCO is doing is analogous to saying "we know that there are poisoned wells. But we're not telling you which ones. Options: (1) drink and maybe die; or (2) pay us to tell you which wells are poisoned.
This is flagrantly abusive, and someone should unleash the flesh-eating lawyers on SCO.
The GROSS FALACY with your point has been stated repeatedly.
SCO made threats against other Linux distributors and Linux end users while still distributing Linux. This is a clear "smoking gun" that SCO continued to distribute their code under the GPL after they became aware of the situation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If they distributed their IP in GPL'd code without their knowledge, the GPL does not apply to that code, as it was licensed by someone who did not have the authority to license it. They accepted the kernal as a package, under good faith that all contributions to it were legitimately licensed by the contributing parties.
Caldera has numerous kernel patches, which would lead one to believe that they did have a consistent review and familiarity of the kernel code long before this became an issue.
There are 3 things to prove:
1. They did not willfully and knowingly distribute "tainted" code through the Linux kernel (in the form of the Caldera kernel patches.)
2. They do in fact own the property rights to the code in question, and not Novell. As said in the article that is under interpretation. Novell has a lot more money than SCO, so Novell wins.
3. Tainted code actually exists in the Linux kernel. 5-15 lines, as stated, in multiple occurances can merely be a coincidence. The large blocks of code spoken of mysteriously is going to be the meat and potatoes.
IANAL...
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I'm not arguing the point that they should have immediately stopped distribution once the alleged violation was discovered. That delay could be a case of the left foot not knowing what the right foot is doing. Or the order to bring a lawsuit being handled before the order to stop their own distribution. You'll find that the courts tend to give a bit of leeway when it comes to timing issues like that. Hence my statement:
Whether they stopped their distribution soon enough after discovery of the violation is a matter for the courts to rule on.
You'll notice that I didn't mention the timing of the withdrawal of their distro in my recap of the fallacy. I think we both agree that,
IF their IP claim is valid, and
IF someone leaked that IP into the kernel source tree, and
IF they were unaware of it,
THEN the source tree contributer was not authorized to license the code, and
THEREFORE the GPL is not valid for that portion.
Elsewhere there are indications that they should have known of the alleged violations for some time. They themselves were contributors..
I haven't seen a reference to this article yet?
Are they claiming ownership of C++??
The SCO Group now owns the entire bundle of products that were the property of the AT&T UNIX Systems Laboratory when Novell purchased USL. The SCO Group also owns all the products and property that belonged to SCO when Caldera purchased SCO (including the stuff SCO bought from Novell. It owns all the Caldera products and property. All in all, the SCO Group has a nice collection of products and properties.
For example, a February 1993 press release issued by Novell states: USL develops and markets the UNIX System V operating system, the TUXEDO* Enterprise Transaction Processing System, the C++ Programming Language System and other standards-based system software products to the worldwide computer industry.
They also mention COFF and ELF formats ...
Full article : http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-01_S tory01.html#libraries_included
Back in the day, a lot of the Linux networking utilities were based on BSD networking utilities that were released as part of the 4.4BSD release after the USL settlement. I really don't know how many Linux utilities are descended from utilities in the 4.4BSD distribution, but it could be a substantial amount of code.
What led to the settlement between Berkeley and USL (in Berkeley's favor) was that USL had been taking BSD code for years, removing the BSD copyright and license (the first act is forbidden by law, the second by the license), slapping an AT&T proprietary notice on it, and committing it to their repository.
When this was discovered, Berkeley was in the position of being able to say to AT&T "there's no way you can make up for this. You just have to stop selling System V entirely." So they were basically forced to settle.
However, SCO had been receiving SysV tapes from USL for a long time before this settlement occurred. It's quite possible that what they have in their source code repository is a bunch of BSD code with AT&T proprietary notices on it.
Without opening up the legal records from the USL lawsuit and getting testimony from the people who worked on BSD and on System 5 way back when, it would be impossible for them to tell the difference.
To a person who wasn't aware of all this history, they would see a substantial similarity between a lot of "AT&T" code and a lot of Linux code. Not knowing that the "AT&T" code was actually Linux code, they might readily conclude that the code was stolen.
So my point is that it's actually possible that SCO honestly believes they are in the right, because they don't realize that a lot of the code that they think is theirs is actually code came from BSD.
Would it be ok to spell it $CO from now on, especially since they seem to be in bed with M$?
In bed with M$?? Let's look at what the article says:
What do you see as a company's options in the face of your warning? I would suspend any new Linux-related activities until this is all sorted out.
This is not in bed. This is in a dirty bathroom stall, in a seedy part of town, with one party on his or her knees.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
SCO didn't GPL their code because someone else, _not_ SCO, copied sys V code into the Kernel. That doesn't "auto-magically" make the sys V code GPL code. It is rediculous to think that you can steal someone's code, copy it into a GPLed product, and the owner of the stolen code auto-magically loses all right to that code. Just because SCO distributed linux, and even contributed to linux DOES NOT MEAN THEY knew their code was in linux. THINK about what would be required for them to know sys V code was in linux: Some SCO linux hacker would have to have sys V code memorized (odds are who ever did the linux hacking for SCO had never seen sys V code), and then happen to read the section of Linux containing that code, and through some magic mental diff realize it is the same code. Look, Linux is a huge code base. Sys V is a huge code base. It is very _unlikely_ that a coder would notice stolen code unless they were specifically looking for it and wrote automated tools to do it! Not even Linus knows all the code in the kernel. Christ people, making faulty arguments against the SCO case doesn't help anyone. Too bad nobody will read this post because I don't have a /. account.
If the code is in Linux, as they claim, then the code is available to the public, and they no reason I can think of to share the infomation about what code they are disputing.
If the code is in Linux, as they claim, then the code is available to the public, and they no reason I can think of to share the infomation about what code they are disputing.
This was my thought when I first heard them say this, too, but if what you're suggesting is that they don't have anything to offer, I don't think they'd be making the legal noises they are. They pretty plainly did some kind of research before they came out with this.
I find myself wondering if what they're afraid of is not exposing the code, but exposing the location of the code.
Think about what would happen if they did. I'm betting 400,000 programmers would rush to rewrite any of the offending sections and that by the time of the trial, SCO would dredge in the "offending code" and the happy band of defendants would plead: "But we changed all of that, so your citing all this old code is irrelevant. Moreover," the defense would continue, "as soon as you brought it to our attention, we fixed it. We had no way of knowing we were infringing because, after all, the code we were infringing is a secret."
Consequently, as odd as it sounds, I'm betting they want the offending code to keep getting used so that they can prosecute the use. I'm betting when they say "stop using it", they are being disingenuous, since it's the continued use that will bring a good judgment.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
This is a very good point.
... is the code sections relevant. One can look at music where theft of concept is rampant and effectively expected. Proving infringement is notoriously difficult to do as the simply tweaking the rythm or melody will result in a different work.
I would think that if someone has a well-defined coding style that the same stuff would crop up in more than one place. The same naming conventions, etc...
The question is
It's almost like trying to copyright a design pattern. It's more like a method or a strategy, a way of going about things. In some cases these could be absoluetly trivial problems that have trivial solutions. In such cases, it's no wonder that one would respond (code) in the same fashion.
If their truly is "infringing" code it really has to be LARGE CHUNKS. As we all know, code from two different (but similar) systems is about as interchangeable melted lego bricks. The idea that someone could intentionally chop out small pieces VERBATIM and expect it to work is pretty silly.
Copying large grained, well encapsulated, functional modules of code is the only software plagarism could possibly be effective. 5-10 lines wouldn't work correctly without major modification, it's not worth copying. It would have to be in the range of hundreds and thousands of contiguous lines which match in a functional fashion.
Anything below that threshold is effectively the same as putting a thousand (code) monkeys in a room with PCs and seeing if they randomly repeat AT&Ts greatest sonnets.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!