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Did SCO 'Borrow' Linux Code?
An Anonymous Reader writes "Apparently someone inside SCO has stated that SCO(actually Caldera) copied Linux code into System V. They did it to build what they now market as Linux Kernel Personality - the ability to run Linux software on their Unix. Now, the open source community(of course they don't mention who) is jumping on this, because they didn't return the changes to the OS community or give the community credit. Of course, SCO says it's a misunderstanding and, get this 'SCO also never used any of the Linux kernel code.'"
Someone heard something that someone said that someone else knew someone in some other division that stole Linux code and put it into the SCO code.
Hints and allegations! Jump on it!
I have been pwned because my
more correctly at slashdot it's:
Microsoft
SCO
RIAA/MPAA
Mike
I would really like to see documentation on this "offending code" to prove that it was theirs.
... no answers.
Otherwise, how do we really know who added it and when? What if it was pre Sys V code? What if the code came from Linux in the first place?
I have heard that the comments were the same, but who made the comments? Is there a name? Does he/she work for SCO?
Lot's of questions
This is the last gurgle of a dying corperation. SCO produces, for all purposes, nothing. Why didn't they pursue these claims when they manufactured Caladra, a form of Linux? because they know they're groundless. There's no way that the Linux kernel isn't in public domain. To try to prevent distribution based on 80 lines of code of a program with thousands of lines is ridiculous. Not only that, but any 80 lines of code could be easily removed, thus SCO can't reveal it. When this goes to trial and they're forced to reveal the lines of code and the lines are promptly removed, no one will care and SCO will fade into obscurity. Good Riddance.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
If you belive the merits of this claim....If you belive them, now's your chance to cash out from the pot those greedy bastards at SCO have on the table...it's something like $9.50 / share now! ....grab it... .....SELL SHORT.....first thing when the market opens....
Take all of that money before the greedy bastards grab it off the table!!!!....Monetary damages are the only thing the SCO mgmt. and the speculators funding this operation respect. Take their money before they figure out that the knife cuts both ways...
read Eric S. Raymond's OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs.-IBM Complaint, I suggest to read it. It is very interesting and shows that we have nothing at all to worry about. Great job, ESR!
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
SCO sues IBM because they use Linux code that SCO says has SCO code in it. Novell says Unix isn't SCO's. SCO says Unix is theirs to exploit. Linux geeks angered by SCO says SCO copied Linux code into its products, ... etc etc ...
:
...
When I was, oh what?, five years old, I remember that kind of talk in the courtyard at school during recess
- Hey, Johnny stole my yellow marble
- No I DID NOT !
- YES YOU DID !
- It's not your marble anyway, it was mine, I just told you to borrow it, I didn't give it to you
- I'll tell my Mom Bruce stole Robert's marble, and you'll be GROUNDED !
- I DID NOT !
- YES YOU DID !
Replace one of these kids by SCO, another by Novell, a third by IBM, a fourth by the Linux community, the one who tells Mom by Microsoft, the courtyard by the computer industry and Mom by the DOJ and there you have it.
*sigh*
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
No duh. How many people have been saying this? AND how many people are ignoring the fact that SCO group themselves released the "offending" code under Caldera? Everyone but IBM it seems, since they think this lawsuit is frivolous.
The moderator who modded you "insightful" was on crack, because you completely failed to read the article. Timothy is suggesting that SCO may have copied (presumably GPLed) code from Linux into their proprietary Unix[tm]. If true, the repurcussions could be, erm, quite interesting.
As lore would have it, the original USL suit against BSD and Berkely University broke up on the rocks for a similar reason.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
At Microsoft, Windows NT (XP) source code is only available to general employees through a web based search engine. It would be very interesting if segments of open source code were found inside Windows itself.
At the policy level, Microsoft is extremely paranoid of Open Source. At the individual developer level, the quality and depth of code reviews varries substantially from group to group. As a result, Microsoft is highly unlikely to be aware, as a company, if Open Source has penetrated its products. This presents a significant risk to shareholders.
Apple, on the other hand, has done an excellent job of integrating Open Source into their commercial product(s). They are certainly aware at the marketing level that there is a combination of Open Source and Apple code in OS X, so I assume they have a very good handle on the situation at an engineering level.
Now SCO is in the worst position. Not only do they have the same tech-industry turnover rate as companies like Apple and Microsoft to deal with, but they've changed hands repeatedly in the last decade, further randomizing the org structure. While the SCO legal team may be able to construct threatening arguments aimed at IBM, Linux and friends, they are really exposing their vulnerability to counter suit. Again, significant shareholder risk exists in SCO.
I have already sent threatening letters to all of SCO's customers telling them to cease and desist. It was a hassle and cost me almost three dollars in stamps, but in the end I think it will pay off.
I have warned them that I am seeking 4.2 trillion dollars in damages, plus they must give ESR a full body massage.
This seems more than reasonable to me.
I think nearly everybody is missing what SCO's real goal is. Of course they would like it IBM gives them a truckload of money, or SCO's own product sales pick up, but they do NOT really expect either to happen.
What they actual want: Defacto or Actual CONTROL OVER LINUX.
Chris Sonntag made it completely clear when he publcly said 'we hope to get our arms around all the Linux out there' and 'there is no legal use of Linux'?
Defacto control can be achieved by establishing (at least in business people's minds) that Linux infringes their IP, but never revealing exactly how. They will simply say: Look MS settled (and yes they really were threatened with a SCO lawsuit), Look IBM settled (they might, I bet they would if SCO offered to settle for a undisclosed ($1) amount), Gartner, Aberdeen, Yankee Consulting say Linux may infringe, etc.
Full control (SCO owns Linux copyright) may be established by asserting Linux is a combination of public domain work (GPL stuff) and copyrighted SCO stuff. In other words, they want the courts to assign them OVERALL COPYRIGHT FOR LINUX. Their Legal complaint makes this 100% clear that this is their position:
Paragraphs 77 to 81 of SCO's complaint describe their view of "General Public License" [sic]. In Paragraph 80, read their claims on GPL copyrights (they say there aren't any). Paragraph 77 (and their general claims overall) seek to thus establish Linux is a combination of public domain and nefariously obtained proprietary SCO IP. If the court accepts this line of reasoning, we are left with the situation, where SCO will be able to claim exclusive copyright on the overall work of Linux.
SCOicide: to kill yourself the SCO way.
SCue: to sue people to your own detrement.
SCOurce code: invisible, yet high value code that does not exist in any physical form. Beyond quantum code.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Perhaps a lot more. Anyone stealing code from SCO would likely at least change the comments, as they know the source code is going to be public. On the other hand, anyone doing code for SCO knows that the code is not open source, and likely never expects anyone who could match it to Linux code to see it. Might have even been done by a coder who wanted a quick fix without the knowledge of the management of SCO (or Caldera or whatever name the software was done under at the time). Then later someone at SCO finds the matching code. What is their first impulse? To say "Oh, we may be stealing code"? Or to say "Our code matches code in Linux so IBM must have stolen our code".
I still like Cringley's explination best, that SCO did exactly what they openly said they were doing and merged Linux with Unix. But assuming they didn't make this up completely and indeed there is some code in Unix that matchs code in Linux down to the comments, it seems much more likely that some of the widely available open source Linux code was improperly put into Unix than some of the closely protected source code for Unix was put into Linux.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The SCO code in question was in the process of being written and could not yet have been copied into the Linux kernel unless someone on the Linux team had a time machine. I repeat, the article is about a SCO engineer encountering supposedly NEW SCO code that appeared to have been cribbed from already existing Linux code.
Please re-read the following quote from the article and evaluate how it fits with your interpretation of the article:
This is not about old SCO code finding its way into Linux, this is about supposedly new SCO code written to implement Linux kernel functions that looked suspiciously like code taken straight out of existing versions of Linux.
not true! they never stole ANY X86 CODE!
/dev/urandom >winsock.dll
they're even willing to show you how they created it!
# cat
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...and...
So... when they distributed their UNIX with the LKPM included (their "work") and that contained GPLed code, they accepted the terms of the GPL. But they have not distributed, or offered to distributed, the source to their (now GPLed, since the accepted the terms) "work".
This means that either they violated the GPL after agreeing to it. The owners of the copied code will band together and sue them for $2G, I hope, and settle for costs plus distribution of the full source of UnixWare 7 distributed as per the licence agreement SCO acceded to. Just to labour the point, they have already distributed derivative code, so halting distribution does not undo their requirement to distribute full source.
Do I need to make it simpler for you?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There is no need to prove the legality of GPL. If it was invalid, or if someone doesn't want to agree with its terms (because no one has to accept GPL, as it is stated in the GPL itself -- you don't have to sign it, after all) then the only rules there are, are those imposed by the copyright law, which makes it illegal to distribute copyrighted works. If anyone wants to distribute GPL'ed software while saying that she doesn't agree with the GPL, or while questioning its legality, then all she has is a copyright law, which clearly states that what she's doing is illegal. I have posted a comment about it, but it has only Score:2, so obviously no one has read it. Basically, if SCO thinks GPL doesn't mean anything from the legal point of view, then, after rejecting the GPL, when they look at the Linux kernel, what they have is just a piece of software with "Copyright (C) 1991-2003 Linus & Co. All right reserved."
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Especially to any one who worked as an engineer at SCO.
My suspicions were raised by the quote:
The source, who has seen both the Unix System V source code and the Linux source code and who assisted with a SCO project to bring the two kernels closer together, said that SCO "basically re-implemented the Linux kernel with functions available in the Unix kernel to build what is now known as the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in SCO Unix."
Unless they were a real newbie no engineer who worked at SCO would refer to SCO Unix because this would be internally confusing. SCO had two flavours of unix - SCO Openserver and Unixware.
LKP was really an enhancement on the basis of the lxrun application developed originally by Mike Davidson - I think Sun now doesn't some work with this - also I think it is open source. By implementing a system call trap handler you can implement a system call handling interface for our linux binaries. The LKP was really about making this system call handling and environment emulation more realistic and efficient. You don't 'necessarily' need to put parts of the linux kernel in your kernel to do this.
It is also quite suprising how much lxrun could actually do without all the LKP stuff.
I get the impression that the 'SCO source' didnt really understand how this emulation worked.
This statement is dodgy: Parts of linux were copied in to "The Unix System V tree".
Presumably this refers to OpenServer, it certainly doesn't refer to Unixware. This is inconsistent because UnixWare is OS on the LKP was implemented - and it certainly would not be refered to as Unix System V.
The facts seem a bit muddled to me. It might be that the engineer was telling truth but some facts got lost in translation - and just don't ring true to me. I left SCO before the LKP project was in full flight and I guess they would want to engineer some system calls into the kernel.
There was a lot of crap (usually ignorant or laughably incorrect) on slashdot about SCO before all of this stuff happened. But I do know that SCO had plenty of customers who were very happy with the products and that it was a great place to work.
And by the way, I and no one I've talked to since have seen any Unixware source in the Linux kernel.
Its a massive shame to me that a decent company was taken over by the bandits and shysters called Caldera. It beats me why they had change the company name back to 'SCO' before launching this pointless action.