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SCO has discovered an amendment to their contract with Novell that may clarify that they did purchase the copyright to System V after all. Heise has an interview in German with a former employee. Cringely says SCO probably was responsible for any duplicated code itself, with a theory that is quite plausible. One non-programmer corporate analyst has looked at SCO's alleged evidence. And SCO has another press conference today.
The teleconference is at 12:00PM (EST). Be sure to join in!
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This time, I won't miss it!
All Hail Discordia. Hail Eris. Fnord.
What is Hara-Kiri?!
Hara-Kiri is Japanese for "belly-splitting and refers to the method of seppuku (ritual suicide) used by male samurai.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
"Seppuko" is what, "hara-kiri" is how.
From Linuxjournal
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I can't tell you how many hours of my life I've spent trying to figure out what the hell a piece of "brilliant" code is doing just because it lacks comments...
While not a codemonkey, Laura seems to have reasonable credentials.
Here is her gigaweb bio, and a brief from the Yankee Group (scroll down, page 2).
This is more like asking a Pilot or an Air Traffic Controller to compare two planes than a farmer (as others have suggested), but I don't think anyone will be satisfied until at least a few mechanics can get into the systems with wrenches.
Even then, if SCO would kindly display what lines they believe are duplicated so that the Linux community can begin the task of tracking down the contributors, then we can have a discussion. Having NDA'd analyists examine the code only is like having the city and a city-appointed lawyer have discussions about the legality of your house while you are explicitly forbidden from coming to the table. Because so much of our livelihood depends upon it, and we have invested so much in it, nobody will accept the judgement unless we are allowed to see the proof.
And even then, of course, there will need to be proof that this *is* SCO code, and not just same-function code, statistical coincidence, or code that SCO stole from Linux.
BTW, caldera has a list (with pictures!) of the board of directors here. Perhaps a few million phone calls will convince them to do what they should have done in the first place and tell us what code exactly they think is copied. Without being able to research their claims due to the choice of the board of directors, we should at least investigate their board of directors.
-C
The ______ Agenda
Currently the arguments circulated by SCO about Linux and the code transfer from Unix read like the film script of an IT variant of Dallas.
Daily, new companies and experts announce their opinions.
Some, like Novell, have serious points, others like Lindows spread hot air.
Both IBM and SCO, in their billion dollar suit, have ordered their technicians to maintain strict silence, as have Novell.
There, even the lawyers involved with the SCO contract refer to a statement from their legal department prohibiting them from discussing the matter.
There is also some deeper gossip. Many developers have quietly expressed their surprise, that the code and technical information generated for the Monterey project, supplied by SCO to IBM, could be at all rewarding for Linux:
Disbelief faces the suppliers. Any real proof over the Cut & Paste allegations by SCO is missing, until the code is revealed.
Now Christoph Hellwig has unexpectedly become an in demand figure.
The German software developer worked at Caldera (the old name for SCO) as a code maintainer and was part of the team, concerned with patches and bugfixes for the Linux Kernel.
Later they developed the Linux ABI Project further, which allowed implementation of unmodified Unix programs, making it possible to run software written for UnixWare and Open Server, under Caldera's Linux.
At present Hellwig is busy with SGI.
While Hellwig worked at Caldera, he commented on the relationship of SCO Unixware and Linux.
Hellwig explained at that time, copying from Unix code to Linux and vice versa were impractical:
"the Internals of the Kernels are so different that one would need a big glue compatibility layer. And that will promptly, with the next kernel review, be ripped apart."
Now that Hellwig's comments are widely discussed. We have reason enough to ask about their relation to this case.heise on-line: Do you stand by these comments?
Hellwig : Naturally.
heise on-line: SCO compared the condition of Linux with that of a bicycle, until IBM came along and then the project became a car.
Hellwig : The comparison may sound beautiful for people without any specialized knowledge, however it has purely nothing to do with reality.
Linux existed before the commitment of IBM, before the participation of large enterprises in it's development for which, in most areas of application, it was substantially more useful than UnixWare or Open Server ever were.
I see the participation of large enterprises in Linux development as a very positive move.
I do not consider it meaningful however, to place the desires of these enterprises ahead of the development of the official Linux releases.
Large enterprises tend to be inclined to be satisfied with technical solutions which are suboptimal, and to neglect areas of application which do not offer sufficient sales opportunities.
heise on-line: Will SCOs actions be successful?
Hellwig : I doubt that SCO will succeed in the legal sense with this action.
On the other hand SCO is already now successful in the sense that the share price rose and they have received other financial injections (for example the Microsoft Deal).
As long as SCO does not possess the rights to SVR4, SCO can only sue IBM for for publishing trade secrets.
Proving this will be very difficult, I don't need to say any more on that.
Something which is continuously forgotten in the debate:
Contrary to SCO, I do not refer explicitly to Unix.
Unix a registered trade mark of the OpenGroup, which any certified operating system may use, it is common use of language for any UNIX95/98 to be referred to by the term, and never, specifically to designate SCOs operating systems, Open server and Unixware. Which, as opposed to AIX, are not UNIX98 certified.
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
The wording of amendment is also screwy. Look at this thing from the news.com.com.com.com article:
;)
The amendment changes the intellectual property that wasn't sold to the Santa Cruz Operation. It was modified to exclude from transfer "all copyrights and trademarks, except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the agreement, required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of Unix and UnixWare technologies
(emphasis mine). That's not very clear at all. In fact that's got to be about the most vague and convoluted proof of copyright transfer that has ever existed.
Of course if they didn't register this 'transfer' (assuming it's legit) with the copyright office, then they basically can't claim statutory damages under the law. Which is probably why they're going at it from a trade secret and breach of contract standpoint rather than a copyright standpoint.
Which of course any judge worth his salt is going to see right through that thinly veiled attempt at hiding the fact that they never registered the copyright.
Of course, none of this matters if SCO failed to mitigate their own damages by producing Caldera OpenLinux and IBM lawyers have the brains to bring this up in court. (Of course they will...IBM doesn't exactly hire lackeys for attorneys
My journal has hot
"To Novell's knowledge, this amendment is not present in Novell's files"
l
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030606/sff034_1.htm
One of the first questions to come to mind is "who is Laura Didio?" Some googling around will find a lot of references to her. And a couple of Bios - the already referenced HTML-ized cache copy of a PDF document might be the most recent. There is also an older one from her previous employer, the Giga Information Group. But don't stop there. Hit a few articles where Laura is quoted. Google for her and unix / linux. Look at the quotes there too.
Laura Didio's focus, as her Bios suggest, seems to be Windows and Microsoft products. And in this space, she is sometimes critical. She also comments on some Open Source software with how it competes with the entrenched Microsoft offerings. And she does occasionally comment on Unix and Linux in general. She is cautious towards Open Source and Linux in particular. If she does have a bias against Linux, it does not seem over-the-top (although I don't always agree with her assessments).
But bias isn't the point. It is expertise. She does not focus on Unix and its derivatives. I would find it surprising if she had any idea of the history involved with this system. Much less any sort of additional technical background it would take to hash out the possible origins of any given snippit of code.
And, of course, that is part of the problem. We're dealing with snippits of code. There is no context. Even an expert may have trouble tracking pedigrees in this situation - but at least they would have some chance.
The most Laura can do is get her name in the press. And become an object lesson for the warnings other analysists made over the entire situation presented by SCO and its NDA.
Novel transfered all of the juicy copyrights over to the Open Group before this "Admendment" anyway.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
...
After reviewing the affidavits of Plaintiff's and Defendants, experts, a great deal of uncertainty remains as to what trade secrets Net2 might contain. One fact does seem clear: the header files, filenames, and function names used by Defendants are not trade secrets. Defendants could have printed these off of any of the thousands of unrestricted copies of Plaintiff's binary object code. (Kashtan Aff. at 9-11.) Moreover, the nonfunctional elements of the code, such as comments, cannot be trade secrets because these elements are minimal and confer no competitive advantage on Defendants. The copied elements that contain instructions, such as BREAD and CPIO, might perhaps be trade secrets, but Defendants' experts have argued persuasively that these instructions are either in the public domain or otherwise exempt. As Defendants have repeatedly emphasized, much of 32V seems to be publicly available
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
If the free software has to survive, it will have to do one thing - cut off the damn software patent tree. It is the root of all problem. The companies are now going to the extent of patenting *problems*... without giving a single solution to them (see the european software patent hall of horror).
.
Today its linux kernel... with probably a couple of infringements (if at all)... have you thought of softwares like mplayer ? FYI, mplayer infringes on countless patents, copyrights and EULAs. Thats why it is based in hungary and not US or some other EU country. And you won't be able to do a single thing if its developers are sued. No amount of crying will help because copyright/patent/EULA vilation is a crime in the eyes of court
If you just worry about branches, you won't succeed. If we have to get over this hell, fight the software patent regime not the companies that are using it as a tool to strangle the freedom of people!
- mritunjai
Unless you meant that no SCO product has any Unix98 certification (apparently there are three), which does seem to be true.
-- I avoid spam by accepting only OpenPGP encrypted or signed email at this address. Clear-signed, RFC2015, heck, even
XXX 12:04 est 2003-06-06
Blake Stowell says that Darl McBride and Chris Sontag will be talking today.
XXX 12:05
Darl McBride talks about the Novell announcement of May 28, 2003. "In fact, Novell does not own the copyrights." "SCO is the only rightful owner of the Unix System 5 source code and copyrights." "Portions of the Unix System 5 code were found in Linux." "Linux users need to obtain opinions from their own legal counsel."
XXX 12:07 Question and Answer session
[question #1] Peter Gally, eWeek magazine
Q: share price was up 29% today ahead of announcements of news. What do you attribute that to? A: "I can't really comment on that." Q: "Did you or any SCO executives buy or sell any shares yesterday?" A: "I personally didn't" ... not aware of any who did.
[question #2] Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe
Q: "When Friday the 13th rolls around ... what are you going to do?" (regarding AIX license revocation)
A: "We have a number of options at our disposal."
[question #3] Stephen Shankland, CNET
Q: Copyright office does not have an assignment on file [for the Unix copyrights from Novell]. "Is it your understanding that the copyrights have not been registered yet?" A: "Stephen is correct ... [if we need] we will change the assignment of copyright ..." [we can do that at any time].
[question #4] "George Weiss", "Gartner Group" [Note: caller #4 was later exposed as an imposter]
Q: "How long can you continue to deceive investors ... if you're not trying to get bought out, what are you trying to do?"
A: "We're trying to protect our IP rights."
[question #5] Todd Weiss, Computer World
Q: "Where can we see the Asset Purchase Agreement?" A: "We have a lot of documents ... 30,000 contracts ... in the case of the Asset Purchase Agreement ... SEC filings on the Internet."
[question #6] Herbert Jackson, Renaissance Ventures
Q: "Were patents addressed?" [in the Novell-SCO asset purchase agreement] A: "Ownership of the patents was not something that SCO has ever claimed."
[question #7] Lenny Brecken, Brecken Capital
Q: "Why wasn't amendment [amendment 2 to Novell Asset Purchase Agreement] immediately available?" A: "[It was available ...] inside of four business days."
Q: "[Patent question] ... is that relevant?"
A: "This isn't a patent case."
A: "30,000 contracts .. methods, concepts, know-how ..." [that is, their 30,000 sub-licensing agreements contain contract language restricting those things]
[question #8] Roger Howerth, IP Week
Q: "Why will you not provide details [of the offending source code]?" A: "Source code is a little bit different ..." [long answer about how revealing source code would damage the trade secret status of their claims] ... "confidentiality protection"
[question #9] George Weiss, Gartner Group [Unlike question #4, this time it's the REAL George Weiss]
Statement: "I didn't ask the earlier question." A: "We already knew that" ... "I appreciate you clarifying that." ... suggestion to the fake George Weiss to drop off the call.
Q: "Are you aware of any organized movement ... to settle the claims with SCO?"
A: "I can't comment" ... "discussions with large players."
[question #10] Lenny Brecken, Brecken Capital
Q: [AIX license revocation] "Are you going to hold a CC on that date [June 13]?" A: "... on the 16th, we will take the appropriate steps ..."
XXX 12:22 Blake Stowell, closing statement
[If you want a replay, or want to followup, contact us
# cd /usr/src/linux /* Fuck me plenty... */ :-) /* Ugly, ugly fucker. */ /* Ugly, ugly fucker. */ /* If you fuck with this, update ret_from_syscall code too. */ \ /* James M doesn't say fuck enough. */ /* This is fucking braindead. There is NO WAY of doing this without /* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface /* This card is _fucking_ hot... */ /* Am I fucking pedantic or what? */ /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* Be careful, we could really get fucked during synchronous /* The four ACI command types are fucked up. [-: /* task can fuck it up GTL */ /* Some BIOS's are fucked and don't set all MTRRs the same! */ /* Some BIOS's are fucked and don't set all MTRRs the same! */ /* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */ /* fuck me plenty */ /* Binary compatibility is good American knowhow fuckin' up. */ /* XXX No fucking way dude... */ /* Why the fuck did they have to change this? */ /* fuck me plenty */ /* Fuck me plenty... */ /* Fucking losing PROM has more mappings in the TLB, but /* ARGH! Fucking brain damage. You don't want to know. */
# find . -name '*.[c|h]' -exec grep -i fuck {} \;
don't fuck up. This is why we have
* Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
* writers) in interrupt handlers someone fucked up and we'd dead-lock
* (And this is the fucking 'basic' method).
* Alexey is a fucking genius?
* Alexey is a fucking genius?
fuck did SONIC_BUS_SCALE come from, and what was it supposed
extern int DRM(release_fuck)(struct inode *inode, struct file *filp);
* how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
* phase things. We don't want to fuck directly with
* how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
blkdev_dequeue_request(req);
* These chips are basically fucked by design, and getting this driver
* fucking with the memory controller because it needs to know the
#if 0
* irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...