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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.
I find the last two questions and answers to be particularly interesting.
Do you intend at any point to begin offering licenses to Linux users? We would hope as quickly as possible to develop solutions with the industry to allow customers to move forward with whatever platforms they wanted to choose, so long as the appropriate intellectual property foundation is in place.
Why didn't you act earlier? ... 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.
So they'd be generous enough to sell Linux licenses and they didn't realize there might be a problem until a really big company started backing the competition.
Would it be ok to spell it $CO from now on, especially since they seem to be in bed with M$?
How low is their stock right now? 6.85, opened at 6.93, down 1.15%, something like 26% over the past two days. Hopefully this story will drive that value down even lower. This company needs to be obliberated in a most profane and malicious manner.
SCO dropped 25% yesterday, and another 10% today (so far)
SCO is refusing to answer some elementary questions that are essential to put their claims into context. Of course, it suits their purpose to cast FUD on the OSS competitor that is destroying the value of their IP, but there's no reason why reporters should let them do it.
To wit:
Does SCO believe that Linux would be substantially less useful if the code claimed to be excerpted from SYSV were excised? Is the value of the allegedly stolen code significant to the overall value of the Linux system, or is it merely valuable to provide standing for SCO to discourage the use of a free competitor to SCO?
Is the claimed SCO code part of one or more optional components of the Linux kernel, or are they in the kernel's core?
Does the claimed SCO code relate in any way to compatibility with SCO disk partions, file systems, or binary compatibility?
How many lines of code are we talking about?
No, really, how many lines of code are we talking about?
Where is the logic in keeping the outside experts under NDA about what code is believed by SCO to have been copied into Linux? If the code is in the Linux kernel, by definition it cannot be an effective trade secret.. does this mean that the real reason for the proposed NDA is to ensure that Linux developers cannot remove the alleged SCO IP from Linux?
Why doesn't SCO wish for Linux developers to fix the problem, given that SCO has claimed that this is a case against IBM for contract violations?
Does SCO believe that their case for damages would be weakened if the alleged code was removed?
Why does SCO believe it is necessary to prevent Linux developers from fixing the problem, given that there are archives of years of development work on the Linux kernel and utilities. Would SCO consider allowing Linux developers to fix the alleged problem if SCO were given a copy of the entire Kernel development records before revealing this information?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I remember seeing a quote in the previous story stating that unless more folks license their IP , they'd sue Linus Torvalds for violating SCO's IP. Of course, with Novell's statement, even their ownership of the IP in question is vague.
So.. why isn't this being clamped down on as using the court for the purposes of extortion? I don't know what one has to do with the other, and (obligatory statement, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV OR the internet), but it seems to me by tying in unrelated issues (do this, or we'll sue somebody else) they are using the courts for extortionary purposes. Be interesting to see if this gets looked at.
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
In other words, anything in Linux which ``belongs to SCO'' has probably actually been copied, perfectly legitimately, from BSD. And of course, anything BSD is safe from SCO, whether SCO has the copyrights or not. At worst, Linux will have to incorporate the BSD advertising. More likely, the advertising clause was removed before the copying was done.
I suspect that IBM knows this. It would help explain their lack of panic.
See what I've been reading.
Admit this: Who of you purchased any SCO product over the last years? How many of you didn't hear about SCO before, or just heard the name without associating it with anything? What share of the computer market does SCO control?
SCO is forgotten.
So, what's the best way to get out of shadow and stand in spotlight? Oh well, miss Lewinsky showed that to all of us.
1. Make a lot of noise around something famous.
2. Gain fame.
3. Sell products, make claims.
4. PROFIT
The best target would be something as big as M$, but SCO had several reasons not to attack it (including M$ lawyers). So, the next target on the OS market seems obvious...
Why else would SCO care for 15 lines of code, whey would it make so dubious claim, than just to gain publicity? "No matter, good or bad, it's important that they talk about you". Old rule of showbusiness, may apply here too...
I guess the end will be quite mundane. Maybe putting a notice in sources "This part created by SCO". Maybe rewriting that parts of kernel. Maybe the charges will be dismissed. Maybe "SCO will bend under customers' pressure and withdraw its claims". What is important, is that people will talk about SCO over next few years, and whoever plans some new investment, will think "...And maybe consider that SCO thing..."?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Just came across an interesting newsbit on an update to yesterday's story about the fact that Novell is challenging SCO's ownership of the patents: (full article available HERE: http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030528/tech_novell_2.html)
"SCO conceded that Novel did still own the patents to the software, but it said it owned the contracts and as such it had the contractual right to prevent improper donations of the Unix code, methods or concepts into Linux.
"From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights," it said."
So if Novell has no problem with it, as owner of the patent, what is SCO suing for? (besides as a "look at me, look at me, buy me!")
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
To that I would add this: Given the USL/Novell settlement in 1994, BSD was given the right to distribute and license their unix product, which, at the time, was pretty much Sys V if I recall correctly. Given that, can you prove that any of the offending code was written by owners of the historical Sys V code after the settlement?
I remember someone saying in an interview a long time ago that the offending code wasn't BSD code, but I'm having a hard time believing it, and I haven't heard anything of the sort for some time.
Anyone know details on the settlement, as to specifically what rights were granted BSD, and when Sys V developed the symmetric multiprocessor capabilities in question? Or has SCO really broadened its scope beyone SMP to general Sys V operation?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I've said it before, but they told us to expect it. Remember Halloween VII?
If you don't, Halloween VII was a leaked memo from MS dated Sep 2002. It was a survey report, discussing what types of FUD were most effective, and where FUD was backfiring.
And later:
Excuse me? Take a look at Microsoft's Netcraft page. The top three machines (UT servers) are running Linux, and are sponsored by MSN.
What about it? What about everyone buy some shares and group together as shareholders to stop SCO from doing this? Then, donate your shares to a single Linux organisation, like Mandrake or Red Hat, and do away with all this madness. This would stop all the doubts people have about the OSS community not being united and only help it. Anyways, just a thought to save linux...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
I'm sure I just "don't get it" when it comes to trade secrets, but some things don't make sense to me. Obviously, IANAL (and I only sometimes play one on /.), but I believe I heard that if something that is considered a "trade secret" is developed independently by somebody else, there's really nothing you can do about it. That's the tradeoff of patenting your findings -- the information is public, but at least you have rights to it. If you keep it as a trade secret, then you have rights only so far as nobody else discovers/invents the same thing you did.
Now, having said that, obviously there is the IBM component. SCO claims that IBM violated trade agreemnts or NDAs or whatever, and that is how "SCO's code" (if indeed the code even belongs to them) was integrated into linux. But here is the kicker: Just because some lines of code are similar (or even the same) in two different pieces of software, it doesn't mean that the code for one was taken from the other! It seems that SCO not only has the burden of proof of identifying what code they allege is similar, but that they also need to prove that it was IBM (or someone who works at IBM) that actually inserted the code into linux (or at least provided it to Linus et al).
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. If some of the matching code is nothing more than an abstracted for loop that increments a counter variable and passes the result to a function or sets another variable (such as an array), then I can't image how any rational person could construe that as patent infringement. But then again, I'm not CEO of a failing company (Q2 earnings aside -- we all know posted earnings don't actually mean anything -- *cough*enron*cough*)
Finally, I like the idea of "whole blocks of code." Obviously his intent is to imply that massive portions of System Unix V code have been "violated," but what he didn't consider is that block has a very technical meaning -- a "whole block" could very easily be a one-line if statement. Not that impressive overall.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
Microsoft is not using Linux. So the scope of any issues they may have are not as related to the specific Unix intellectual property they were using in their product or wanted to be able to use in their product in the future.
This is plainly untrue.
Here's the download page for Microsoft's Passport SDK for Linux.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
UT is the center of telesales... which is the basis of most MLM's...
apparently, mormons get good sales skills from their mandatory mission work.
and no, i'm not kidding about this.
... hi bingo
Yeah, there's still the "time for FUD" issue. However, for SCO's legal case, the "time to document refutations" could be much more important i.e. SCO doesn't want to give the Linux comuntity time to get their ducks in a row.
SCO knows that the authorship of Linux is much messier than it would be at a traditional company. By making a shotgun claim to many parts of the kernel they can win if any one peice hits. If one author of one peice can't be found, they can win the suit against IBM. If they tell us now what peices they are we can start scouring the globe. If they don't tell us until the legal procedings begin, it becomes a race between the legal procedure and the Linux comunity. Like a life or death game of seek and find. Better, if they can get a judge to only let IBM see the code, it becomes a seek and find where only IBM can play and they can't tell us what they are looking for. They couldn't even say "Does anyone have Linus's email address?" [Or more likely, "does anyone know who wrote lines 1047 to 1052 of kernelfile.c?"]
If they told us what lines were in question, we could all write memiors about how those lines came to be, with CVS snapshots and mailinglist discussions to back it up. If they don't tell us we can either do nothing and be unprepared, or start documenting everything and not get any real work done.
It looks to me like they are testing if the Linux comunity is able to generate a coherent document trail faster than they can generate code. We have lots of data. Can we seperate the wheat from the chaff on demand?
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
"The development process has no one that is ensuring that inappropriate code is not getting into Linux. All that's there is an honor system, and obviously there are a few, at least, that have broken that honor."
It also has the advantage of being open for all to examine. Quite a deterrent to anyone thinking of adding stolen code and protecting open source developers from unscrupulous, dying companies who are stupid enough to claim IP rights where no IP rights exist.
I wonder how much "inappropriate" code gets introduced into closed source projects? Wasn't there a stink awhile back about Microsoft stealing code? At least in open source projects an offense is likely to come to light unlike code that is hidden in proprietary works.
"I would suspend any new Linux-related activities until this is all sorted out. But first get that opinion of your legal counsel. If they say there is no problem and no issue, then you probably have nothing to worry about. But I doubt there is any attorney worth his salt that is going to say there is no potential of an issue here. There is a big issue."
Yes Chris. There is a big issue. The issue is that your company is dying and you would do anything to extort money from IBM and other targets and to try to get people who are using Linux to switch to a substandard product like that which SCO puts out. The mob used guns, bombs and baseball bats where your company uses lawyers.
"Novell Inc. says the 1995 agreement governing SCO's purchase of Unix System V from Novell doesn't convey copyrights. What's your response? We certainly have a point of contention regarding their interpretation of that contract. We have statements from all the major parties that were involved in that contract that all the business and IP-related property of Unix and UnixWare was transferred to SCO. I think this is just a desperate act on their part to curry favor with the Linux community."
Oh please! Give me a break! Your flippin' contracts do not transfer Unix IP to you. End of story. You are not defending you IP rights. You are just trying to intimidate IBM into paying top dollar to buy your dying company.
Please IBM, crush this pathetic parasite.
"Why did Microsoft get a license from you? Completely unrelated. Microsoft has been adding more and more Unix compatibility and Unix interoperability into their products. We got in contact with them early this year to let them know that we had concerns about if they had all the appropriate intellectual property necessary to be providing that Unix capability."
You had "concerns about if they had all the appropriate intellectual property necessary?" So you're saying that you believe that Microsoft was ripping off Novell's IP prior to giving your company millions of dollars? Now that Microsoft has padded you attack fund at the oddly coincidental time do you still have concerns that Microsoft may be using IP that belongs to Novell?
"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."
No doubt the millions of dollars that Microsoft donated to you helped put you in the black for "for the first time in the history of the company." Oh and the last part of your statement tells it all. This is a move against Linux in a thinly veiled attempt to salvage you failing company.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Wouldn't this mean that other's distributing Linux are also in violation?
Snip from the GPL (emphasis added):
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
The wording is typical legalese, vague and foreign to my human mind. But since there is a dispute over the ownership on the source and potential "trade secrets" would linux distributors be in violation ONLY if they have conditions imposed on them or would the mere allegation of such conditions warrant the ending of distributing Linux under the GPL?
All I know is this is a serious issue for Linux and just the accusations of source theft will cause havoc. IMO that is why SCO is remaining so vague about the accusations and not quick to point out the lines of supposed theft. They really have no reason not to release the specific code to the public because it supposedly already has been released in Linux. So what's the problem? If the suspected lines of code are available to the public then why must the recipients of the evidence sign NDAs?
Bullshit and lawyers, the American way.
Well, I guess they have a different sense of style than I do...but your point is made.
Here's a question (and mod me Redundant if someone's already pointed this out...I'm in a hurry): Why can't they just point out the infringing source code in the kernel without revealing their own proprietary code that is being infringed upon? Are they afraid that we might reverse-engineer the genie that is already out of the bottle or is this all just more obfuscation about what is really a legal non-issue?
Also, anyone that has ever worked for a pretty large corporation is aware of the Executive Summary; that being, get the gist of your meaning across very quickly because your average executive has a shorter attention span than a four-year-old with Attention Deficit Disorder. It is interesting to me that the lead answer in this interview is: Think about if I was the CIO of a company and I'm going to be running my business on an operating system that has an intellectual property foundation that, by almost everyone's admission, is built on quicksand. There is no mechanism in Linux to ensure [the legality of] that intellectual property of the source code being contributed by various people.
At this point, I was hearing the Monty Python song with the modifier applied.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
The Linux source is as widely open as any source in the world. Why would you need an NDA? The source (stolen or not) is open for the world to see right now. Even if SCO wins, there are 10+ million Linux CDs floating around with the source
on it.
*obligatory slap at Microsoft*
Microsoft should sue SCO for security model I.P. infringements. "Claim secure while the world can plainly see the evidence that rejects the claim"
(in this cause; that could be exactly why they want an NDA)
In two weeks, The SCO Group Inc. intends to begin showing analysts where the Unix code it owns has been illegally copied into the Linux kernel.
... but to seek an opinion of their legal counsel as to the issues that we raised.
Doesn't own.
Why should Linux users take your claim seriously?
Think about if I was the CIO of a company and I'm going to be running my business on an operating system that has an intellectual property foundation that, by almost everyone's admission, is built on quicksand
First off, doesn't that sound something more like Microsoft would say, A company that would want to negatively connotate any company running what would be linux, instead of a company which owns intellectual property, and conversely would want as many companies as possible to maximize any money out of a legal settlement they thought they could actually win.
Secondly, I'm pretty sure that Slashdot alone is a majority over anyone else who actually beileves that linux is an operating system built on quicksand.
Thirdly, I hate people who use a number system to outline points. I'll scrap that.
Your letter to 1,500 end-user companies outlining your claim was vague. What is it that you want from these companies?
The one thing that we specifically want from those 1,500 companies that we directly sent those letters to is for them to not take our word on the warning that we sent
Finally, a valid point. Do not take their word for it. I can comply.
Again, I have to reitterate. Why in the world would a company that would have everyone else in their clutches for a revenue stream using intellectual property, want everyone else to stop using Linux? Honestly. Please reply with some good reasons, because frankly I cannot think of one.
Also, I'm glad that all it takes to stop development on linux entirely is "potential of an issue."
Should companies remove Linux from their systems?
We're not making any specific recommendations at this time
Is that not what is contained in the previous paragraphs? Am I missing something?!?!
http://use.perl.org
It's very extensive. It is many different sections of code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately copied into Linux in violation of our source-code licensing contract. That's in the kernel itself, so it is significant. It is not a line or two here or there. It was quite a surprise for us.
It sounds like they did a diff between their code and the kernel, and didn't really pay any attention if the affected sections were covered by their patent or not. For all we know, many of the matching lines are the GNU copyright statement.
I guess this is what happens when Linux gets good enough to be installed on the desktops of lawyers and managers. Why did we ever insist on world domination?
With that statement, it seems like SCO provided evidence that it is vulnerable to the "laches defense." According to well established law, you cannot sit back and watch while an infringer enhances and markets your work, then litigate when the infringer starts making big bucks. In effect, SCO let IBM, and many other companies, take the risk and then try to claim the rewards.
Judge Learned Hand wrote, in a 1916 copyright dispute, that:
See the recent (and infinitely puckish) opinion from MGM v. Sony (pdf).
Could this then be a means of ATTEMPTING to screw the GPL? Think about it. M$ gives them money, they knowingly distributed their code under the umbrella of GPL, now they are going after linux - perhaps to try to test, and defeat, GPL.
I'm not saying they will invalidate GPL, but this is the first court case that will likely directly involve the GPL...
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
A lot of people have posted here making incredibly lame jokes about the possible 10-15 lines of code. However, one point they make is true; we can't tell whether or not the alleged copied code is actually copied or just so obvious that it coincidentally happens to be similar. For certain applications, certain code is going to be identical.
For instance, if you want to use a single string for, say, holding user input, you'll probably use malloc() to declare a char* called 'str' or 'p'. This will probably be about 5 lines of code if you include error detection.
Then there are system calls one uses. If you're outputting a line of text, you'll probably use puts(), or printf(), or fprintf(). If you're getting a list of groups a user is a member of, you'll use getgroups() and/or getgid(). If you want to spawn a subprocess you'll use fork(). If you want to get the name of the current terminal you'll use ttyname(). All this creates code which is likely to look very similar.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
Well, if their claims to having a solid gripe against Linux don't pan out, and/or people in the Linux community start suing them for Libel and slander, I can see their stock ending up under the $1.00 mark pretty quick.
From what I can see, to prove their case against IBM, they'd not only have to prove that Linux has SYSV code. They'd also have to prove that it's IBM that released the code, and not some third party. If IBM is responsible for a third-party releasing their code, then SCO is on a very slippery slope.
By induction:
- If IBM is responsible for third-party release of source code then any company with UNIX source access is responsible for (accidently) re-releasing the source code when they distribute Linux source code
- If any company is responsible for third-party release, then SCO (as a distributer of Linux and the UNIX license holder) is similarly responsible.
- If SCO is responsible for releasing UNIX source code under Linux, then the company with the right to re-license that code is responsible for (re-)releasing it under the GPL.
- If that's the case, then -- under the GPL -- IBM (and the rest of the universe) has the right to do what they've been doing.
QED.OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The next question is.....
Can they prove that those lines originate from their proprietary source, and not from some common (shared) free source?
eg. A text book, magazine, a HowTo, a chip manufacturers tutorial sheet, or some other code source.
The onus must be on them to prove that they did in fact create that code and not copy it from some other source.
But to state that Linux incorporates Unix code in any large way is ridiculous. The Unix kernel is structured entirely differently from the Linux kernel, if I'm reading my Bach book correctly while reading my LInux source. And any similarities in certain algorithms can be easily explained by the fact that some of us *did* read the Bach book. I honestly can't see any place where any Unix code would be useful in kernel-land, aside from possibly some of the UFS code for dealing with the Unix Sys V.3/SysV.4 filesystem. The kernels are just structured too differently.
Finally: I haven't looked at Unix source code since 1987. Frankly, it was pretty damned ugly back then (you should have seen the code for 'sed', for example, what a hack, and not a comment to be found anywhere!), and I haven't seen anything in the Linux kernel that looks ugly enough to be Unix source code. But what the hell, let's just toss out unfounded allegations and try to hold up people for royalties on Linux. Beats working for a living, I guess.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"I'm betting they want the offending code to keep getting used so that they can prosecute the use."
Trouble is, you have a legal obligation to mitigate damages, or in English: You don't get reimbursed in a court of law for harm you could have prevented.
Revealing the code won't do anything to cure any harm to SCO that has already taken place due to the allegedly misappropriation, and SCO can get damages for that if they can prove the improper use of their intellectual property.
So - no damages for future avoidable harm *whether or not SCO reveals the code*. Think about that. It means the reason they're giving for failing to identify the code publicly is a lie. Like CmdrTaco says, the more you hear about this case, the less sense it makes.
Exactly, any project that has the same inputs, the same outputs and however many million lines of code is going to have code that is exactly the same as an other project that is equivalant, accounting for variable name being different, so when SCO's Chris Sontag said,
to me it seemed to be indicating that the linux people were unable to specificaly avoid using the same code as SCO claims to own, because they were not privy to the code; there are only so many different ways to write that pesky Hello World program. I'd be interested to see what SCO considers large Blocks, my guess is that this is a case of Shankspear sueing several of the infinite number of monkeys with typewriters for copyright infringement.
The other thing I find unusual is SCO has the unix and linux source code, why didn't they scan the code sets, there are programs available that will scan source code. My little brother wrote one that will tell you if a c program and a pascal program were writen by the same person correctly 85% of the time, and it much more accurate if the programs being scanned are written in the same language. Not using something like this on sources worth $billions is pretty irresponsible. Not using something like this before releasing a new version of Linux under the restrictions of the GPL is the stuff shareholder lawsuits are made of.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds