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No Business Like SCO Business
The SCO must go on. Informationweek has a roundup. News.com has some analysis of the legal case. SCO reiterates their threat to revoke IBM's license. Reader hobsonchoice sends a blurb: "Also more from analysts who saw SCO/Linux code comparisons under NDA. Bill Claybrook, of Aberdeen Group Inc., says SCO changed their story to him about whether they had any "direct evidence" that IBM copied any System V code into Linux.
Laura Didio of Yankee Group has answered some detailed questions about her code review process. Lastly Fujitsu Siemens have joined in the debate: they don't think SCO's case is going anywhere." One observer of the SCO case has compiled some notes about Caldera's active participation in the IA-64 project. And look on the bright side: if you follow the school of thought that all publicity is good publicity, at least this suit has gotten Linux mentioned in many places where it normally wouldn't be.
Maybe IBM did do some work in Linux, but it would seem that Intel and HP had more to do with making it scale better.
I notice a lot of these articles in Businessweek, Etc. seem to very negative. Is anyone noticing a different trend toward linux at their place of business due to this FUD? SCO=Trash
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
Well, SCO is still not out of cash... aparantly. So, for them to stop, they need to run out first. Since they have to pay for bandwidth... I guess using a little wouldn't hurt.
/comv/null them if you don't want to use disk space, but still want to download them...
z ip
So, got bandwidth? Mad at SCO? Want to learn more about their products and/or hear them talk? Last time they pulled the file when slashdot wanted to know how to administrate their Linux server. This time...
Download a 36.6mb ZIP from the SCO Authorized Eduaction Partner program from here
(for all you non-English speakers)
a 12.9mb Italian OpenLinux manual pdf from here
a 10mb Unixware administration pdf from here
a 7.9mb mp3 of a Calcomra confrence call (May 2002) from here
a 4.2mb mp3 of a SCO confrence call from here
a 4.5mb vector image of the Calcomra logo from here
OR
a 6.8mb SCO education Linux courseware pdf from here
***If you want to get these interesting files easier, you can also launch an unspecified number of wget processes. You can even -O
36.6mb: (removing the space in 'zip')
wget sco.com/images/pdf/education/SCO_AEP_posterfiles.
12.9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/ecomsktop/ecomsktop_24_it.pdf
10mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/aep/UW7NET~1.PDF
7.9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/06032002.mp3
4.2mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/q2.mp3
5.4mb:
wget http://www.sco.com/images/pdf/12-11-01.mp3
9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/aep/OS5NET~1.PDF
4mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/unixware/946000000b.pdf
And, if you need their entire website for offline viewing... not wanting to waste bandwidth downloading things multiple times:
wget -r -l0 http://www.sco.com/
I have no idea if there really is a BSD common root to that code, but it's at least one possible explanation. Hard for anyone to tell when they won't tell people what they think is stolen.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
All publicity is good publicity? If that was the case, Saddam should run for president.
Linux needs to be the next version of smoking in Hollywood. A character isn't cool unless he uses Linux in the movie.
To an outsider, this lawsuit probably sounds like the computer world fighting with itself. "I don't need this Unix/Linux stuff. Microsoft is for me!"
SCO wants money. IBM has some. This only hurts the *nix world. Even more if SCO wins.
If I had something intelligent to say, I would have said it.
This is an interesting tidbit. Sun's license gives them rights to all and any derivative works of Unix.
In the informationweek article, SCO calls Linux the equivalent of napster in the enterprise world, which really isn't proper at all. Is it just me, or does it sound like SCO is starting to throw really wild punches? It seems their attacks are getting pretty libelous. The informationweek view seems to be that SCO might have a case, but SCO's press behavior is very, very odd.
Oh, well, it's all FUD until IBM decides to act publicly. Like everyone else here, I'm really curious to see where they plan to go with this charge.
Laura Didio says, "There are "bits and pieces" of copied material in Linux version 2.2, according to SCO. However, the vast majority of their claims centre around the later Linux 2.4 and 2.5 versions."
and then says that she was shown similar code in "Unix System V, version 4.1. Incidentally, this particular code is from the early 1980s, and hence predates Linus Torvalds' first Linux code."
But hang on a minute. Wouldn't early 80's Unix code be extremely primitive compared to Linux 2.2 and above? Would the kernel hackers really need to steal such ancient code for versions 2.4 and 2.5? Surely the Linux kernel must have been functionally equivalent (or superior) to early 80's Unix a long time ago?
HH
--
One thing I found incredibly annoying is her style -- why does she want to sould like a bimbo? Random crap about MIT and Stanford, and many!!! exclamation!!! points!!!!!!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I'd like to note that if SCO Unix employed DRM technology, then they would have the power to remotely shutdown everyone who was no longer 'licensed'.
You know, I have not read every bit of press related to the SCO case, but this part is news to me. Laura Didio, the analyst who was so impressed with SCO's evidence, says:
I saw Unix System V, version 4.1. Incidentally, this particular code is from the early 1980s, and hence predates Linus Torvalds' first Linux code.
This answers the question about how SCO can be claiming that Linux copied features that don't exist in SCO Unix. Their claims of copied code revolve around AT&T's System V Code!
This means that in order to even get started on this case, SCO has to establish:
1) SCO has free and clear ownership of the AT&T System V code
2) IP rights to the AT&T System V code were not dilluted by the BSD settlement
I am not an expert on these issues, but they seem to be very high hurdles to clear.
Posting anon for obvious reasons. Plus I'm preturbed that my project got soused.
My company was one of those who recieved the letter from SCO a month ago. We think this is because we've successfully deployed Linux for a some high profile projects and my boss has been quoted on the topic in InfoWorld several times. Naturally, it wasn't taken that seriously, but the information tech advisory committee decided to look into it, and the (Linux-based) project I was heading up got temporarily put on hold.
As we're also a big IBM RS/6000 shop, someone called the rep and asked for IBM to clarify their position on the lawsuit. From what I heard, the guy clammed up and suggested that we arrange a face-to-face meeting with one of their representatives specializing in intellectual property issues. Well, ears perked up at that.
So, the special IBM IP salesdroid flys out from Boulder CA just for a meeting with the IT committee. According my boss, he basically assures them that AIX has no problems and won't be taken off the market, so our existing investment in P-SERIES is safe. Nobody had even thought about AIX up to this point -- the huge question on their minds was the legality of Linux.
But then, as my boss told it, the rep basically "Took The Fifth" on the Linux question and refused to deny SCO's claims. Then he started a pitch on 'Grid Computing', but was cut off. The committee then decided that without IBM's assurances, all Linux-based projects would be suspended indefinitely! As a long time supporter of IBM and Linux (ran RedHat 2.1 on a PS/2 Model 69, as a matter of fact), I was rightfully pissed off at the fact that IBM wouldn;t stand behind their excessive advertisements of LInux! (plus my job was at stake)
Soon the political gears were in motion. I tried to pass along Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond's excellent legally sound arguments, but they were too no avail. Ostpus Gusbosus. Now, there's lots of old time SUN admins here who never really liked the idea of Linux coming in. So, before I knew it, SUN reps had converged in touting their renewed commitment to Solaris x86. Given the lack of legal issues, they successfully sold the PHBs on top.
Well, at least my project was given a tentative go-ahead (no pink slip, w00t!), but I had to deal with "Slowaris"! (At least it looked like that M$ won't get to make another proposal.) After confirming that our DELL servers were supported, I went ahead with my testing. Turns out that with Solaris x86, we could handle a 20% higher sustained O(1) load pattern on the same hardware cluster, and the n-to-m thread management interface solved several long standing problems we were having with Linux 9.0. Slowlaris Indeed!
I have to admit I was all wrong about SUN -- this is a very nice operating environment for our porpoises. In a matter of a couple weeks, I've become a convert to the power and elegance of genuine UNIX System V Release 4. In fact, if this goes well, management will probably move all of our existing Linux installations over to SUN, with the exception of the big 8-way ComPAQ. (Ironically we'll have to test UnixWare there for SMP scalability reasons. No way Win2003 can take it, I'm sure.)
I recommend to all slashdotters affected by SCO's bullshit IP claims that they look into SUN's very performant and affordable Open Systems OS. As they say, UNIX is like sex -- It's better if you don't have to fake it!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
SCO Group's goal isn't to "chase every company that's selling Linux," McBride says. The goal is to get its fair share of revenue from its intellectual property.
While he is not quoted exactly, this is easy to decipher what the article means he really said. The antecedent for the "its" that is right before "intellectual property" is "Linux". The antecedent for the "its" that is right before "fair share" is "SCO Group's". So in another words he said, "The goal is to get SCO Group's fair share of revenue from Linux's intellectual property," or something very similar to this. So they want distro makers to pay them licensing fees?!
You're right, this whole thing is something of a guilty pleasure. Neither SCO the first, nor Caldera were much loved by ./ers anyway, but now there's reason to actively cheer their demise. Watching a company that we all know and are ambivilant about commit suicide like this is facinating in a perverse way.
The other neat aspect of this whole thing is the amount of history that has come out of the woodwork. What begat what, what came from where, who sold what to who. It has been interesting to follow the trail of so many products through so many hands.
the no
and can someone please translate this asap? If genuine (no particular reason to believe that it is of course) this is crucial!
Let's have some good old-boy capitalist discussion here. I'd like to make some money off this situation. I'd like suggestions on how to go about doing so. Here's a couple of facts and/or givens for purposes of this discussion:
1) I firmly believe that SCO is utterly wrong and will eventually be shown so to the entire world
2) I don't know how long it will take for #1 to come about
3) You can't buy or sell options on SCOX (or at least not through the CBOE, is there another market that does trade SCOX options?)
4) SCOX is very illiquid - about 100M shares, only about 3M are in the float
5) Selling short has a max profit of 100% if SCOX goes to zero, I'd like something that would return multiples of my investment should SCOX go to zero, or even just back where it came from a few months ago
6) SCOX closed around $11 a share today, 3 months ago, they were around $3 a share
Ok, there you have it so far. What kind of choices are available for exploiting this current situation with SCOX given that list.
And please, no jokes about:
1) Post to slashdot about SCOX
2) ????
3) Get Rich!!!
Certainly #1, although considered a fact around here is nowhere near set in concrete and that's what makes any investment along these lines risky (and probably why SCOX's share price has more than tripled recently).
"I think this summs it up better"
Damn. That was clever. Heheh. Now if we can just get a Knight Rider parody like that.
SOOooo I looked around on their website....nope...can'e download an entire package of OpenLinux....and then I thought....wait a second..support! shouldn't ceasing support of a product that they sold a few weeks ago put them under some kinda liability?? so i dug around on the ftp site....and it didn't take to long to find exactly what i was looking for. ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Work station/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/.
The Linux kernel packed in source RPM format! yes, they ARE still distributing the source code for very thing which they believe contains their own proprietary code!
Please keep in my that my ADHD keeps me a little scatter brained and I sometimes can't focus long enough to
Did Microsoft or the RIAA/MPAA pay you to say that? Linux is a genuinely powerful OS that could truly change computing. Obviously you've spent more time talking to lawyers and less time talking to your programmers and techs.
My suspicisions of what SCO's true motive is has peaked after reading all the articles mentioned in today's entry in the saga. Is SCO trying to save itself? Is SCO trying to destroy Linux? Is SCO trying to hurt IBM? The Yankee Group's (long time Microsoft friend) high-level involvement in the matter is also suspicious when you factor in Microsoft re-upping licenses of Unix code from SCO. So what exactly ARE you doing SCO?
The fact that SCO is teeter-tottering with its answers to evidence of where the code originated from EXACTLY, is also suspicious. There are a lot of people that could have access to the source of Unix in the past before SCO had rights to it that might have implemented it in to Linux. The fact they haven't released the when, where and how of their claims is very interesting.
Linux can have the code worked out of it. My concern isn't for Linux at this point, Linus and the gang work magic with every kernel release. My concern is for the GPL. Will it be bolstered or destroyed because of this case?
SCO showed code to a German guy. But he didn't sign the NDA. The guy claims that SCO removed al date info from code. Code is 'similar' but not 'identical'. Some comment (and jokes) are the same. Only about 80 lines of Linux scheduler 'identical'
Google translation here
This could be crucial. Please, a better translation from a bilingual. If this says what I think it does it could be quite important, but I don't trust my interpretation of an automatic translation so much...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
If they pull the plug on IBM, they won't be able to pay their own lawyers!
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Add this to the mix. Here is an excerpt from a Novell information page on Unixware 2. 4. UnixWare 2 offers greater performance and scalability.UnixWare 2's multiprocessing technology has been in development, testing, tuning, and optimization for Intel SMP platforms since 1991, when it was originally designed as SVR4 ESMP in cooperation with Sequent, Pyramid, and other industry leading SMP platform providers. (http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1995/03/ pr00026.html)
The Unixware SMP capabilities was not developed by Novell alone when it owned Unixware. Who actually owns he copyright for the SMP (NUMA) code in Unixware?
Too much misinformation in the interview is hurting my head now. Just look at the very last line.. once code has been placed under GPL it cannot be altered! But alteration is what GPL is all about.. to take the code and change it.
/*TODO*/ or #include<kernel.h>
They only showed PART of the code, that she recognised as Sys V 4.1 vs linux kernel 2.4. It was from no region of the source.. just here and there. Could even be a line that goes
She also does not have experience with looking at sourcecode. She instead carried with her a tech guy. Where was he from? Who was paying him? whats his name? How much development experience does he have? Did he do a cmp or diff on the code blocks in question? Where is his interview?
Even IBMs customers I suppose are getting a gist of whats happening here. Only the most nervous and illinformed managers will be moved to Windows 2003. They will be deserving it.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
[for investors and speculators only]
As the story about SCO suing IBM is unfolding, SCOX stock went from $1 in Feb this year to $4 in May, then to $8.5 in the end of May, then to $12 today. Some people were already selling short that stock at $8.5, but SCOX, after what happened today, has a good chance to go even higher following a pullback to $9.8. How much higher?, $13-14 is the next high in two-three weeks from now. If you want to ignore this information you can, but I'm going to make some moeny instead.
[the next update will follow in a month]
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
"No one ever got fired by going with IBM"
This SCO crap is all about FUD. IBM invented FUD.
I haven't seen IBM blink yet.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
FYI. There have been several people that have contributed to the kernel from SCO/caldera. Just a word though. Just because they were from Caldera/SCO doesn't mean that they are part and parcel the contributors to any of the "tainted code" the Mr. McBride is claim was "stolen". But, you may find more SCO contribs around the time frame when SCO and HP were working on their Unix project - the one that got dumped in favor of going 64bit Linux - then look at the Linux 64 bit code. I have been search the archives, lkml posts, and many other sources (pun intnded) to see if any other SCO devs have there name on anything - they do. But it still doesn't mean they did or didn't give anything improper or at least in the eyes of any sane person (pretty much excludes McBride).
k 10/0195.html
n ux-ia64/2000-October/000689.html
Tigran Aivazian
Tigran A. Aivazian | http://www.sco.com
Escalations Research Group | tel: +44-(0)1923-813796
Santa Cruz Operation Ltd | http://www.aivazian.demon.co.uk
Mark Hemment (markhe@SCO.com)
Mon, 1 Mar 1999 16:14:18 +0000 (GMT)
http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/1999wee
Jun Nakajima jun@sco.com
Core OS Development
SCO/Murray Hill, NJ
[Linux-ia64] HZ and PROC_CHANGE_PENALTY
Thu, 19 Oct 2000 19:00:12 -0400
https://external-lists.vasoftware.com/archives/li
Hiram Clawson
hiramc@sco.COM
http://www.hiram.ws/resume.html ****
Doug Beattie
Linux Test Architect - Caldera, Inc.
Johannes Poehlmann
Christoph Hellwig has also contributed to the kernel for some time. He worked out of the German office IIRC. He's one of Linus' trusted and in the inner circle - so I'm told. I seriously doubt that he has given anything that could substantiate McBrides claims as well. Oh, and he don't work for SCO anymore either.
So, I can fully understand looking at any dev/contributor that had associations with or was employed by SCO that also did work on the kernels. But just cause they had this, doesn't mean the did or didn't give anything that would give SCOs claims credibility. Frankly I still thing McBride is playing and angle and this is alot of smoke and mirrors.
There are only few (3-4) functions in the Linux 2.4.20 Scheduler matching that number.
One interesting point.. He said something about 60 lines of code and SCO said about 80 lines. There is one functions with about 60 line and the same function may have about 80 lines if we count empty lines inside it.
Now... I do not think there are more than 10 versions for this scheduler since Linux 1.0....
I think we can check against available UNIX versions such as old ones released by SCO and the BSD's.
I have a script in place to do a faster check. Can anyone post schedulers from those old versions. Maybe there is a match but they both came from old ones...