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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.
Well if the stock drops low enough every Linuxer is going to buy a LOT, performing a hostile takeover, ultimately :-))
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
In other words, anything in Linux which ``belongs to SCO'' has probably actually been copied, perfectly legitimately, from BSD. And of course, anything BSD is safe from SCO, whether SCO has the copyrights or not. At worst, Linux will have to incorporate the BSD advertising. More likely, the advertising clause was removed before the copying was done.
I suspect that IBM knows this. It would help explain their lack of panic.
See what I've been reading.
Admit this: Who of you purchased any SCO product over the last years? How many of you didn't hear about SCO before, or just heard the name without associating it with anything? What share of the computer market does SCO control?
SCO is forgotten.
So, what's the best way to get out of shadow and stand in spotlight? Oh well, miss Lewinsky showed that to all of us.
1. Make a lot of noise around something famous.
2. Gain fame.
3. Sell products, make claims.
4. PROFIT
The best target would be something as big as M$, 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
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:
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
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
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 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.
"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.