Slashdot Mirror
SCO Berates Linus' Approach To Kernel Contributions
Matthias_305 writes "The New York Times has an article about a new court document in which SCO critizes Linus Torvalds touting the 'inability and/or unwillingness of the Linux process manager, Linus Torvalds, to identify the intellectual property origins of contributed source code.' They claim to have got evidence from a conversation on the kernel mailing list in which Torvalds advocates programmers shouldn't care about patents. According to the article he stands by his view which is at least 'candid'." On a related note, BobDowling points to a proposal at The Inquirer ("Shutting down SCO's FUD machine") regarding SCO's claims. "SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA but the article gives a mechanism for publishing appropriate MD5 checksums which allow code trees to be compared without anyone else seeing the code. This is offered as a means to locate the source of SCO's contested code. ... This mechanism gives a concrete procedure that SCO can be challenged to follow as part of the community's "put up or shut up" response. There would be no threat to SCO's claimed IPR."
Is it just me, or is SCO now acting significantly more "evil" than Microsoft is? Talk about frivolous legal harassment! This is just one of many stories like this.
Am I the only one who finds this hilarious. "What will SCO do today". This could start a whole new branch of comedy... and probably will.
free link
Man, I had thought that SCO was losing it.. but this shows that they have totally and completly lost their minds. they are criticizing linus torvalds for not being keen on intellectual property rights when he is one of the biggest proponents of open source?? What is the world coming to?
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
And yet.... tada... another story about SCO. It seems this SCO is the most important thing in the world! Everyday there are a few SCO posts. I think I am becoming immune to SCO stories.
GO LINUS, GO!
of course Linus is going to have little regard for software patents. He's a European and that's one bit of stupidity we have yet to import from the US (please God we never do).
I'm surprised SCO hasn't tried to persuade Linus to support them. "Join me my son!". ;-)
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Where does the the line between "News for Nerds and Stuff that Matter" and Crap end? I can't take another SCO Article. Where is John Katz when you need him.
...that they really are working themselves up to sue Linus personally, perhaps for negligence, and will likely due so if their extortion demands continue not to be met. They really have a scortched earth anything goes mentality there.
Well if the SCO group had ANY technical knowledge in their company I might care. However I rank their comments below pond scum's. Heck even Microsoft knows more than the SCO group.
This is great :)
:)
;)
I've been waiting for my SCO comedy shot of Slashdot comments ALL day
Ok people, MAKE ME ROAR plz
- Kj
'inability and/or unwillingness of the Linux process manager, Linus Torvalds, to identify the intellectual property origins of contributed source code.'
Seems they want to bully Linus to present the evidence for their cause they failed to present. This seems at least irrational to me.
SCO's approach seems to scare everyone that Linux is illegal dynamite, waiting to blow a hole through their purses. If they're really concerned and ethical, should they not go upfront and declare the violations in the code and be done with it?
Secondly, what if someone had poisoned the code over a period and SCO's blowing the whistle now? Something like the tcpdump files getting infected with a trojan?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Did anyone RTFA, Linus' comments struck me at first, until I realized that having engineers trying to be patent lawyers just makes the situation worse. However the quotes are quite bloody loaded and could do substantial harm.
Also, Linus was advising developers that they don't look at patents, for if the kernel is hit by one of them (some are pretty broad), it would be much more trouble if the alleged patent infringement were done knowingly.
I suppose this is a reasonable tactic used by everyone, yet one can criticize it if he like.
As all hashes go, and I know, it's mathimatically "very hard", two different byte segments CAN have the same md5 sum. Longer they get, harder it is... but then again, anything is possible.. just not probable.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
So, he added, if there are intellectual property transgressions, they are easier to track. ...and community will replace it, when you told them where is it. But SCO wants nothing but sue.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
We need a special SCO icon; something that looks Darth Vaderish. Either that, or make it look like Lionel Hutz.
"kernal"???
First the NY Times makes stuff up, now they can't spell kernel?
has zero real claims against Linux. They have no smoking gun, no bloody glove, nothing, nada, zip...
I hope the SEC has fun with them today...
I used to work in pharma research. The patent lawyers used to tell us not to worry about patents until close to the end of our research. And then let the lawyers look at patents.
The reason for this is that patents are complicated and claims are not easy to understand. For instance some chemical/protein/DNA/whatever could be patented for a very specific use (it normally is). You can still use it for a totally different reason.
So from my own experience I can see that Linus attitude is perfectly correct.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
My advice to Linus would be to get yourself a good intellectual property lawyer, and talk to him about all your potential liability issues. Do it now.
SCO is now goping after the Father/Son/Holy Ghost that is Linus T.? Where's my pitchfork?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
You'd want Linus to compare both codes and after that sue him for "inspiration"?
Look, Linux, you've seen all SCO code, now don't say you weren't influenced by it. As we said earlier, it is technologically impossible for anyone to produce great code without copying it from us.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, and remove their shoes beforehand!
That would stand to reason, since he is obviously the head of SCO's legal department...
Mr. Torvalds developed the software engine, or kernal, blah blah blah
:)
Maybe we should ask Mister Steve Lohr to become a slashdot editor
Sig you!
The arguments used by SCO indicate strongly that they have completely lost track. If anyone (e.g. a programer) does not respect a patent, it doesn't say anything about the origin of the program.
No more cute cuddly symbol anymore.
then perhaps we could avoid dupes.
I was getting worried. It had been almost a whole 24 hours without an SCO update. If it reached a full day I don't know what I would have done.
GeekButtons.com has put this together , SCO Sucks" button
It is the responsibility of copyright holders to find violations and defend their own hold on ideas. It is not the responsibility of everyone else to police their claim. If someone, like the moderator of an open source software development community, is notified that they are directly or indirectly violating such claims, then they have they will have to remove the proveably unsanctioned content, but that is not a blank check to stop others from speaking or sharing ideas. Until a law is passed to actively restrict all communications on the basis of "defending" the rights of copyright holders, then I'd understand such accusations - but otherwise, I can't imagine how Linus could have done anything wrong here.
Perhaps it's the ones who complain about their rights the loudest/with the most money that may end up getting their way. But here, unlike many copyright cases, you can expect everyone present to stand up for their rights, loudly. Unfortunately for SCO, it appears that IBM and many other powerful companies are in favor of Linus' and other's rights.
Ryan Fenton
insert this title onto previous comment
5468652047616D65
SCO is to linux
as
Tanya Harding is to Nancy Kerrigan
New Slogan:
"SCO, the Tanya Harding of Software Companies..."
OOPS,
that tarnishes Ms. Harding.
I think (unless I misread it) that there's a flaw in the shredding mechanism -- the grouping into clusters of 5 lines before computing the md5 checksum means that if there is identical code in two files, but the positions of the code in the files is shifted by a line, they won't match.
For example:
File 1 contains lines A B C D E.
File 2 contains Q A B C D E W X Y Z.
The first MD5 generated from file 1 would be for A B C D E. The first MD5 generated from file 2 would be for Q A B C D, followed by E W X Y Z. So even though the the lines A B C D E are duplicated between the two files, there's no 'match' according to the MD5's. This means that you could duplicate a 100K line file, with a comment at the top, and nothing would match.
So the output of this script, while interesting, wouldn't allow anyone to make precise statements about how the files compared.
The idea of clustering is good (matching individual lines would have too much noise) but perhaps the MD5's could be computed for every line as the start of a cluster of 5 lines? That way the offset wouldn't break the comparison...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Mr. Torvalds developed the software engine, or kernal, of Linux as a university student in Finland in 1991. Today, Mr. Torvalds lives in Silicon Valley and he still oversees the Linux kernal, though with many contributions from others.
Commander Taco should consider renaming this place.
After they defeat Linus, they can come out with their new "Black Hat" (or "Black Helmet") Linux.
Apparently, Linus should have hired an IP lawyer before he started Linux. If Linus had tried to do this, he would have ended up in more trouble, and Linux would not have been as good.
--LordKaT
As I understand it, the lawsuit is about IBM contributing code to Linux that SCO claims it owned the rights to, and which they didn't have the right to distribute. There was no way Linus or anyone else who didn't have access to IBM's contracts with SCO, could determine that. In any event, the case certainly doesn't seem to have anything to do with patents.
One can only draw the conclusion that they're throwing mud in the hope that some will stick.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Dunno, but I have this mental image of the SCO board all squeezing into Jackie Chiles' office.
(He's the lawyer Kramer often hires in Seinfeld, for those short of memory)
The stars that shine and the stars that shrink
in the face of stagnation the water runs before your eyes
Here's the relevant section:
*SNIP*
"I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know."
"The fact is technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them," Mr. Torvalds wrote in the e-mail message last August.
In an e-mail interview earlier this month, Mr. Torvalds explained that his was a candid view in the murky, complex realm of software patents these days.
"Hey, one of the advantages of not personally being involved in any of the commercial Linux players is that I can be honest," Mr. Torvalds wrote. "In fact, openness pretty much requires it â" there is no corporate speak here. Ask any lawyer in a tech company (off the record, so that he can be honest too), and he'll tell you that engineers should absolutely not try to look up other people's patents. It's not their job, and you don't want them tainted."
What's so terrible about that? Why would you bias yourself (and waste a LOT of time) by poring over someone's code before writing your own? You may subconsciously emulate what they've done, and taint any originality you might have started with.
Same thing goes for other disciplines. In medicine, one should talk to the patient first, THEN read their medical records... you want an honest gestalt, unbiased by somebody else's interpretation of signs and symptoms. Isn't that what a second opinion is supposed to be?
This sounds to me like the old "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" philosophy. Big whoop... give linus a break, SCO.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
He's extremely patient and reasonable, which about sums up SCO's most obvious deficiencies, and not at all greedy for either money or attention, which apparently sums up SCO's entire motivation (or more specifically, D'ohl's entire motivation). Is it any wonder that they're jealous of him?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A point seems of major importance and I have not seen it addressed so far. In such a situation, how could SCO prove they did not steal a part of the linux kernel ? Is there an official organism in the US where companies can register source code for future legal problems ? If not, how is that supposed to work ? Experts would look around at SCO's and get convinced (or not) by the internal memos and CVS logs ? I know we are talking about the US legal system, but that's totally surrealistic to me ...
Like a Microsoft smear campaign. SCO clearly isn't concerned about 'resolving IP issues' -- if they were, they would only have to produce the code and show they have clear title to it, and I'm quite certain the 'programmer's should ignore patents' Linus they are slamming, would quickly remove the code. Problem solved.
Judging from IBM's stance, SCO probably doesn't have have the goods to win anything in court; and they won't even have good FUD if they tip their hand. Clearly the gain for SCO is coming from another source. I'd love to know how much Microsoft is paying them for those 'unix patent rights' it clearly doesn't need. I'm certain if we could see the flow of money from Microsoft to SCO (or at least SCO's execs), all would become clear.....
And inform them politely but firmly that you are against software patents.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
SCO = dead enders
What I don't understand about the SCO/IBM case, is why IBM isn't taking action to immediately stop SCO from doing what they are doing. I am sure it must be affecting their AIX business, and I can't believe that there isn't a legal method they can use to take some kind of cease and desist out on SCO.
If such a law doesn't exist in the USA, does that mean Pepsi can say they have proof that Coke has dog poo in it, but they aren't going to show the proof? I doubt it somehow.
Furthermore, if SCO are doing these things just to manipulate their share price, and the allegations turn out to be baseless, surely that is fraud?
The scheme instead computes an MD5 sum for each line (actually each five lines together) and publishes the hashed versions of the files. Then anybody can do the line by line compare without ever seeing a readable version of the source code.
The theory is that SCO can't complain about somebody distributing these hashes because you can't get the source code from it.
The only problem I see is that the hashes are still derived from SCO's intellectual property and are therefore still covered by copyright. SCO could still put up a stink about it. Especially since they have stated that their goal is to sue IBM for money rather than to identify the peices and rectify the situation. SCO has said that they are afraid that if the lines are known, the problem will be fixed and they won't be able to sue any more. (Poor babies.)
Go into Management.
When was the last time that anyone at SCO's technical or legal departments created anything? Anyone? Anyone? This is jealousy of the inept for the creative, the lazy for the motivated, and the weak for the strong. Linus is an intellectual Giant for creating Linux - maybe its not the best OS, and maybe parts of his management style are annoying, but who else has created something this significant (besides Al Gore, who created the Internet)?
P.S. Dear Slashdot editors, the 'story' about SCO trashing Linus is mentioned in any of the innumerable SCO articles out there. Please actually read some and become acquianted with the case so that these pseudo-dupes stop crowing the front page.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Pardon my ignorance, but how is using MD5 to find the allegedly copied code snippets going to "help" keeping them keep their trade secrets? The Linux source code is publically available and the only thing which "protects" the alleged SCO code snippets is that nobody knows exactly where in the heap of non-SCO code they are supposed to be. Sure, you wouldn't have to look at any other SCO code, but the same result could be achieved if they simply told us which parts they believe are stolen code.
SCO bought the source code and license rights to Unix in 1995
I thought they bought a license to the source code and license rights to the code, but not ownership of the source, and that Novell owns the code
So this article is not entirely accurate
In re: your sig, that should probably be an exclusive or. It still doesn't make any sense. TheQuestion() should be a function that compares the nobleness of suffering outrageous fortune to that of killing oneself, taking into account that the dreams that may come after death may be as bad as, or worse than, living. Then it should return a boolean value indicating whether or not to be.
If you were to make these changes, you would still be a dork. But at least you wouldn't seem illiterate.
I have not seen any post from any SCO people standing up for or against anything lately. Can SCO management legally gag their employees during this litigation? Not trolling or stirring, just deafen by the silence.
1. Linus never looks at patents, so he can't tell if SCO's source is in the linux kernel, even if he wanted to.
2. If Linus can't, then nobody can...
3. ???
4. err, prove us wrong. See our code's in there after all. Profit! IPO! Riiiiiich! Me, me, me! Look at the monkey!
SCO seems to be trying to pull the strings of the Linux community, hoping for an irrational response. The more of an uproar, the more news coverage, the better the situation for SCO.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath. We all know what they are trying to do. We need to just turn the other cheek and let IBM deal with it. SCO is now threatening IBM's bread and butter. It will be over soon. I doubt IBM would drag this out in the courts, because this type of FUD would continue to be spouted off throughout that entire time. If IBM comes up with a solidified argument demonstrating that SCO was near perjury with this lawsuit, its all over.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10061
I... conquer.
I told you those Linux zealots would try to hide the SCO stuff if we identified it!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It's all clear now. Like Cringely said, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft turns out to be paying for SCO lawyers. Consider the declarations of Ballmer about OSS being "a virus", and now all this thing about Linus being candid with patent ... This is yet another attack on OSS, funded by Ol' Mighty Bill!
Mondongo
---
"What does 'saved' mean?"
"It means not dying."
"Ooooo! A new concept!"
--Dork Tower
According to Merriam-webster.com: Main Entry: beÂrate Pronunciation: bi-'rAt Function: transitive verb Date: 1548 : to scold or condemn vehemently and at length synonym see SCOLD
Is there anyone besides SCO that is supporting SCO? Seriously, it's obvious that many people here are on Linux/IBM's side, suprise suprise. Microsoft seemed to support them in a round-about way, but now SCO is trying to bite the hand that feeds them.
They're shooting themselves in the foot, and remove their shoes beforehand!
:-D
Now, if we're really lucky we can get them to shove their foot in their mouth first too!
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Ok - so SCO is all pissy because they state that IBM copied some proprietary code from SCO's UNIX distro and pasted it into their(Big Blue's) Linux distro.
And why is Linus involved in this mess?
Wasn't on of the reasons that he decided to open the code to the kernal is so that he would explicitly *not* have to deal with this type of crap?
And what's all this about some kind of blackbox Scientology-type diff application that SCO has put together that supposedly allows someone to check your code against their code w/o showing their code? Is the code to *this* program open-source?
If that is the case (and I'm an idiot witht he IQ of a rock, so don't go beleived every word I say), then SCO is really barking up the wrong tree. Linus simply stated hat hey, he's not a lawyer and not the copyright holder, and neither are the kernel engineers. If something isn't kosher, the thousands of Kernel hackers will come up with a new solution.
--LordKaT
Pardon my ignorance, but how is using MD5 to find the allegedly copied code snippets going to "help" them keep their trade secrets? The Linux source code is publically available and the only thing which "protects" the alleged SCO code snippets is that nobody knows exactly where in the heap of non-SCO code they are supposed to be. Sure, you wouldn't have to look at any other SCO code, but the same result could be achieved if they simply told us which parts they believe are stolen code.
SCO will be a tiny footnote in the big Linux/Unix history file.
If they miraculously prevail, then you can really spell out the end of U.S. IT dominance in this generation, as significant work - Linux and otherwise - moves offshore and never looks back.
You put the genie back in its bottle!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Come on people,
;^)
;)
It was merely a matter of time before SCO would lay the blame at Linus feet...
He's an obvious target, after all...there's not much elso TO target in the 'open source world'
(not saying there's nobody participating in OS, they're all just running targets
It is the inevitable faith of the innovator...
(As for myself, I'm developing a mild case of SCOverdose, expressed by a strange feeling that there is something inside of me that *might* not belong there....but I'm not quite sure about it. Must be something I had for dinner lastnight
Everyone Technical understands that SCO is just
a big Microsoft FUD Machine. Well pretty soon
the SCOX stock will be worthless!
Oh, yes, and pork the unprintable lameness filter sideways with a rusty barbed-wire condom: it stinks! There should at least be a "yes, I know it's lame, post it anyway" checkbox.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
European Software Patents
The idea to use computer programs against plagiarism is not new.
Professor Queinnec has a nice Perl script:
In general for the comparion of the Linux-kernel and BSD (or SCO) the theory behind rsync (by Tridge
the creator of Samba) is probably the best tool.
His Ph.D thesis is full of theory of how to compare files:
http://samba.org/~tridge/phd_thesis.pdf
-- A Mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. - Paul Erdös
Someone please shut SCO up. I know germany has forced SCO to withdraw their case as it was impacting on other businesses without proof... Why can't this also be done in the USofA?
SCO has 12.9 million shares, All linux users buy a one lone share per machine, and give it to linus/(someone sensible) we only need to get 51%.
This whole case highlights everything that is wrong with IP, copyright, RIAA, and fair use law.. We are the people, it's time that *WE* did something.
BTW: I hate been a SCO sysadmin... thank linus we are still ported it to debian.
...and that only where syntactically necessary, and remove blank lines and case-fold.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
NYTimes wrote: [snip] One programmer said there was a patent matter that "we can't just ignore." Mr. Torvalds replied, "Actually, we can, and I will." "I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know." [snip] SCO mentioned this as some sort of proof that Linus will not acknowledge IP. But I think IP is something totally different than patents, which btw is utterly stupid in the software world, but that's just my view on it. If I write some sort of program, then it is my Intellectual Property, but I don't have a patent on it, unless I request it, and pay big bucks to maintain it. SCO is really missing the point here.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
If I were a CIO or CTO debating the TCO of *nix vs. Win2K3 to a CEO, would IBM vs. SCO be the TKO that stops the CEO from approving A/P to pay my PO for RH's LGX?
FWIW, even if OSS is FAIB, if the DOJ considers *nix IP with a TM, then it basically become's SCO's LIC, meaning our OSS becomes a CSS OS, which would RSTBO.
AIBO going w/ an ASP that manages our OS? BTA, we might end up w/ a BOFH giving us ZA, which WWAD PMS.
AFAIK, INMP if SCO wants to be ITM by enforcing its supposed IPR - *nix IP should be PD or GNU, like BSD just on GP, IYKWIM. I keep asking myself in this situation - WWLD?
Oh, BTW - IITYWIMWYBMAD?
Two words:
CHEWBACCA DEFENCE
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
what a bunch of nutballs
SCO the seething pool of corrupt bastards doing anything for a buck, criticizing Linus for an MO which he promotes to maintain openess and fairness. "Hey pot you also happen to be the kettle."
I remember seeing that when he first made the statement to 'not care about patents'.. that was pretty stupid to say and opens up a can of worms where he cant prove people didnt take him up on his suggestion in their contributions.
Its also pretty irresponsible.. Regardless of ones beliefs.. if you are in a position of authority you really need to not advocate breaking the law..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
SCO announced that IBM will face severe repercussions if they continue to threaten the DPRK. SCO also defended its nuclear program as a deterrent to an unprovoked IBM attack. 2 million SCO demonstrators took to the streets yesterday to show support for Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il.
SCO has 12.9 million shares, All linux users buy a one lone share per machine, and give it to linus/(someone sensible) we only need to get 51%.
Wrong answer. You'd actually be rewarding SCO's behavior by increasing their stock price. As soon as the general public got wind that the Linux community at large (or anybody else, for that matter) was doing a "group buy" on SCO's stock, the price would increase. It's a simple supply and demand. When there's suddenly a huge demand (like a takeover attempt), the stock price will just suddenly go up.
What's your damage, Heather?
Yep, I'd say that's an accurate statement, really.
If you are trying to identify closed source/proprietary origins of submitted linux code, there is just one thing you need.
God-like omniscience.
Linus is good, but he isn't that good.
Oh, if you wanted a horrible paperwork audit trail, you could make people include a signed document stating "I am the copyright holder for submitted code" or something like that. But part of the draw of working on OSS is to get away from all the icky lawyers and legal documents.
In this one specific instance, SCO is correct. It doesn't really affect their case at all, but they are still correct about this.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
If SCO tries to make this case at trial, they're gonna get reamed when IBM inquires into their patent clearance process.
Nobody can afford to do prior patent clearance. All engineering work would stop dead if we did.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
How's the OpenServer SMP code doing for you?
...or is anyone else sick and tired of the US legal system being dragged through the media and the court of public opinion? It's comments like this, "...that SCO can be challenged to follow as part of the community's "put up or shut up" response", that make me want to throttle the morons who believe this. SCO has legitimate reasons for keeping the alleged infringed code under wraps until a court of law can determine whether or not infringement actually occured. To do otherwise would be stupid.
And someone should toss a ring around it... this needs to stop immediately, the thing is that most people don't get to hash this out all they get is the very loud cries from the SCO encampment. That's ok though, soon, very soon, the gorilla will begin the fecal rain, and Darl and his other brother Darl will be drowning in it.
Go see the new SCO-Wear that all slaves err... minions at SCO must don for an interview, shareholders meeting et. al.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
SCO themselves said it..
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact."
So, there's no way he could have known in advance if a contribution came from somewhere else? Sounds like they are pointing at the process as the problem, rather than setting Linus up to take the hit.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
McBride --> SEC?
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2002- 32/0160.html
I thought it was "contract rights" or was it "control rights" or "intellectual property rights" or "copyrights" or "trade-secrets" or "license rights"?
;-/
<sarcasm>
They seem to have made it crystal clear over the past few months what rights they really mean
</sarcasm>
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
It seems to me the proposed use of MD5 sums is quite dangerous here, meaning that the md5 sum list might give away the original source. /*, the words copyright and SCO and such.
The next line can then be guessed, and this will be relatively easy because it has to be valid C. I don't think there is much 'randomness'in C, so it should be fairly easy.
It won't be hard to find the source matching the first 5 lines. probably somethine with
Fairly easy meaning with the use of brute force, which seems quite an appropriate term in this matter.
A friend of mine yesterday was telling me that an older version of SCO he has has some excellent tools that he has never seen anyone else write. I dont have any details, but if anyone knows what tools these are write a GPL version and release (out of the US of course) just to piss SCO off. And do it quickly, before IBM destroys them.
- The procedure throws away all code pieces
which occur more than once in the same version
of the code. Okay, most of them will be
trivial, but there might be some that aren't.
These pieces aren't compared to the other
version of the code. Might be an idea to use
a frequency threshold instead.
- During comparison of the two versions, all code
pieces with the same checksum are disregarded.
But different checksum does not mean different
code! MD5 are computed on string level - let
there be an additional comment, or a linebreak,
and you won't get a match. Some simple
operation to bring the code into a kind of
canonical formatting can take care of that.
If you don't do that, you run the risk of losing some correspondences, I'm afraid.I wonder if SCO programmers scour Linux code when they add/edit their Unix modules. Or if SCO managers scour the Patent Office when their programmers check source files in. Yeah, right.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
...the SCOsueme petition? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Linus is finnish: he is european. As far as I know there are no such things as patents on software in Europe.
So why the hell would Linux waste his time looking up for patents on submissions, since these are not applicable ?
The SCO comment just shows how this company does not understand IP issues on the international scale, just like their previous accusation of "export law violation".
There will be some code commonality between SCO SysV and Linux. But just because SCO has a copyright (as does Linux BTW) does NOT mean they own copyright on every single snippet of their source. A lot of snippets would have come from third-parties -- hardware manufacturers, journal articles, BSD, standards ... Those snippet
(or whole routine) authors still retain copyright in their works,
not SCO.
No, SCO does not want to sue. The courts would not be very friendly to their baseless claims. If the courts were friendly or their claims had basis in fact, then they would just file suit, and demand settlement.
SCO is a little yappy dog on the other side of a chain-link fence barking and barking because they get no other attention. Maybe we should track a certain executive's tax records along with the SCO corporate filings to detect the payoff from some interested third party?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
So it's patents now? SCO don't have any patents that are relevant. If they did, they would have included reference to them in their lawsuit. This is premium-quality BS. The "issue" that SCO has is that IBM and other UNIX licensees have been GPL-ing and submitting stuff that SCO claims is their intellectual property. If this is what has been happening, that cannot be Torvalds' fault. The fault (if any) lies with the submitters. It's not unreasonable for Torvalds to assume that if a patch comes from IBM that IBM has the right to submit it.
Essentially, what SCO is now saying is that if you license UNIX, any ideas that you (perfectly legally) incorporate into your version of Unix belong to SCO, because... well because of course, you couldn't have created it without SCO's huge contribution. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call "shenanigans" at this point.
Incidentally, I would point to this link, where the FSF argue that the term "intellectual property" is not useful - because it can be used by disreputable organizations (like SCO for example) to confuse matters relating to copyright, patents, trade secrets etc.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
previous SCO articles were posted under calderatopic, that one is missing again. There are too much topics for the editors.
The only problem I see is that the hashes are still derived from SCO's intellectual property and are therefore still covered by copyright.
Nope, not a problem at all. I'm not a copyright expert, but the hashes would certainly not be covered by SCO copyright for two reasons: 1) They are not an original work of authorship, but instead an application of a mathematical algorithm to "fingerprint" a file; they're just a list of numbers. That would be like copyrighting the output of "ls -l". 2) Even if a judge somehow finds 1) above to be inapplicable, the hashes would certainly fall under the "fair use" exception to the copyright on the SCO files, as they are a form of commentary on them.
Of course, SCO will never agree to such reasonable measures, since they are not fundamentally looking for something reasonable, so the whole thing is moot. A far more likely scenario is that SCO may *eventually* be forced to submit their code base and backups to a court-appointed special master tasked with analyzing the issue of code derivation (what, when, and in which direction), and will be required to fully disclose their development logs to the court. At which time,assuming it ever gets to trial, the case will finally, finally collapse for good and all, and we can get back to sniping at Microsoft.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
starring...
.... Lord of Fear .... Lord of Doubt
Darl McPhisto... Lord of Uncertainty
Stevablo Balmer
Baal Gates
Stevablo II Lord of FUD from Gizzard entertainment
special guests:
Larry Ellison as Duracle
Carly Fiorina as Andariel (figure some pun out here)
Scott McNealy as the Sunmoaner
The following describes the common sections found by the Inquirer reader (although I have only looked at the linux source files).
Of course, this assumes that the line numbers the Inquirer published are for the linux files and not the BSD files (why did they only publish one set?!?)
...in that when you started getting matches here and there, each side would have some idea of how chunks of the other worked. It might be possible to finesse boundary conditions to get even more precise info (ie, divine the entire content of matching sections as long as or longer than and not necessarily a multiple of the shredding chunk size (5 in this example)).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Satirical Analogy Of The Day:
SCO=Henery Hawk, IBM=Foghorn Leghorn
...SCO's entire staff, and any other buildings within half a block of ground zero. An implosion can be a messy thing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Your case [statement] is my case!"
The Army reading list
Do I smell Microsoft and SCO lawyers having coffee and cookies behind the doors ?
Can we please keep these SCO stories in the Caldera category? I literal signed up for an account solely so that I could filter them out. Now you're disguising them as Linux stories!? Argh!!
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact."
True. It is impossible to find out if someone else has a tradesecret.
But then there is a lawyer problem. Linus (or some other kernel hacker) puts a GPL tag on the source. Is he/she allowed to do that? Is the GPL legal? The point is, who GPLed it, and does that make the GPL viral? (And is the Sys V copyright viral?)
They could always sue linus for being a basterd that who not care . He called himself that multiple times in interviews.
Go buy yourself some more vowels.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
SCO's CEO In a private conversation with the company lawyers: I knew it. I'm surrounded by Assholes. Keep suing, Assholes.
SCO's CEO: Evil will always triumph over good because good is dumb.
SCO's Techs in regards to their latest DoS attack: DoSed? Raspberry packets! There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry. Linus Torvalds!
The statutes are for manufacturing and selling such a system. Technically code is not manufactured until it is compiled.
Linus is off scott free.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Do _NOT_ put this bumper sticker on your car. I still have a headache from all the honking...
I hate it when these suits try to make everything look like a Process
Linus is not a process manager in any conventional sort of way, used by companies. So Linus is far from being accountable for all the changes to the Kernel.
So what if they found Linux violated one of those billion patents out there ? Can they throw Linus in the lam ?
I am not a lawyer. This is just my opinion, but I can't see how claims of IBM breaking SCO's trade secrets can fly even if SCO's other claims (like they have some rights on RCU etc) did:
1. If IBM patented something (RCU I understand on the basis of previous Slashdot posts), it is available for everybody to see at USPTO, so how can it be a trade secret?
2. SCO's claim seems to include stuff they didn't create themselves put other companies put into both Sys V and Linux. If the other company who put it into Sys V didn't keep it a trade secret themselves, it would be public knowledge, so how can it become a SCO trade secret - as the secret would have already been revealed.
3. Sun is golden in SCO's book. Sun have a Linux. So isn't the trade secret revealed anyway by Sun publishing Linux. Same applies for Lindows.
4. Linus is supposedly guilty of not filtering out SCO's properietary trade secrets. But how could he? If he knows it shouldn't go in because it's a SCO trade secret - then unless he works for SCO or has agreed to keep it secret (neither of which is true) - then how could he know a certain piece of code is somebody's trade secret.
And 5. SCO give out their Linux distro with source, so presumably this no longer makes it a trade secret.
... is to hijack Unix and all derived works. If they can con a court into revoking the AIX license, it will not be long before they go after all the other whose business is based on Unix.
As their business depends on the "trade secret" which is the Unix sources, merely winning damages from anyone who leaks the secret DOESN'T help SCO (apart from the money.)
SCO has to recreate the situation where ALL existing Unix licenses are revoked and all Unix-like code is awarded to SCO for safe keeping. Then they can make massive amounts of money re-licensing Unix to IBM etc.
(BTW, Sun invested $5M in SCO/Caldera in 2000)
No jobs currently availiable. Surprise, Surprise...
Step 1. Write code. Step 2. ??? Step 3. Profit!
It seems that somehow the geniuses at SCO have been scheming and managed to come up with the following strategy:
1) Piss off every person and company in your industry - really make them hate you
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
The MD5 sums will only match if the lines are identicaly.
Change 8 spaces to a tab? MD5 mismatch.
Change indentation? MD5 mismatch.
Add a comment? MD5 mismatch.
Rename a variable from i to counter? MD5 mismatch.
Rename a function from calculatechecksum to CalculateChecksum? MD5 mismatch.
I don't think we should be spending time thinking of ways to adhere to SCO's ridiculous claims. If they say the code is already published in the Linux kernel, how can any further damage happen if they publish it again? This is beyond ridiculous.
stop reading the sco articles and for sure stop posting on their boards. when you see that sco icon, simply skip past it.
i sell illegal drugs
rotflmao + 411 7#47. xclnt j03. n e 1 p05t a 724/\/514710/\/?
Someone posted in the SCO article yesterday, that SCO was in a stock scam, and that their aim was to make money for the board for a while by keeping a high volume in the press before going under when the actual court case proves they do not have any real basis in their case.
I agree that SCO must be one or more of the following things:
1.SCO is indeed doing a stock scam as their actual products are close to worthless. An SEC investigation would be very apropriate here, but would only happen after the fact, sadly.
2.SCO is being funded by another party to persue this scheme, the most likely candidates being Microsoft or SUN, both of whom have a vested interest in seeing Linux and IBM suffer. I would go for Microsoft because while SUN has something to gain in seeing IBM suffer, they also have something to lose if Linux suffers. Microsoft is the only party that has something to gain if both Linux and IBM suffer. It would need a leaked email or something to start the ball rolling on an investigation into this side of the matter though. I also wonder at the same time why no leaked emails have as yet appeared from any SCO employees.
3.SCO's products are absolutely worthless and SCO is indeed trying to do a last ditch fight in order to legally force some kind of artificial marketshare for it's products. The fact that SCO has changed it's public statements on numerous occiasions and even changed the official claim recently (IBM bypassing export controls even though it is no business of SCO to enforce this and the RCU claim which is as patchy as well), means that SCO knows it is on shaky ground. The latest official claims show that SCO is indeed scraping the bottom of the barrel and are truly frightened by the fact that IBM hasn't taken them seriously. Their lawyers nerves must be blank. The accusation against Linux is simply something they are doing in order to try and strengthen their claim. It does however mean that they are actually pouring through every piece of available information in order to come up with some kind of evidence because they truly do not have any that would stand up in court.
The only thing that worries me is that Linus should perhaps learn when to shut the fuck up and think before he speaks. Courts are not democracies and crap like his statments on patents can and will be used against him.
I am getting a little tired of seeing this SCO, IBM, Linux/Linus, *nix, crap everyday, but I cant seem to stop myself from looking for more each day. It's like a bad episode of Survivor and we all have our fav's, but in the end we're pissed our player didn't make it.
...
Anywho here's a thought....
M$ gets its start b/c of IBM with DOS,
M$ splits in two and second part forms Apple/Mac b/c of a spat,
M$ buys some form of *nix,
many happenings and going ons occur which befuddle my mind,
Finally we have some one (SCO) who claims ownership of UNIX, and after dealing with IBM they find (supposed) IP in Linux. (Meanwhile Apple switches their core OS to some form of *nix (BSD?). M$, SUN ( a patsy here), and (yes!) IBM, all want money for their work (As do most corps.). So
I propose that IBM and SCO and M$ and SUN have arranged for the death nell of Linux (which threatens their bottom line). IBM *purposely* puts
IP code into Linux to begin this lawsuit. SCO finds said IP and sues (read as previously arranged) IBM, as it has the deepest pockets. IBM does nothing to create more FUD surrounding Linux, M$ buys the best A/V solution for Linux and kills it and as well buys a licsence for NIX from SCO. Sun (who also buys a liscence) sits there looking like a tiger in for the kill when in reality it's just a kitten purring. All they need to do is keep this in the courts for a few years and Linux is no longer cutting edge, or a threat, then M$, Sun, IBM all profit from their greed.
What happens to Apple? Well because there must be cross contamination from Linux to BSD, BSD goes down with Linux and so does Apple. This is the end result that would make Uncle Bill soooo happy.
Just a thought...
...it simply wants to OWN it.
SCO's plan at the end of the day is to claim that Linux is a derivative of UNIX, and hence, intellectual property of SCO.
Free IP for SCO.
Has anyone started collection all these news-snipplets and glue them toegether as a big Soap-Opera?
http://blog.gauner.org - just a blog
That worked when the difference between proof-of-concept and production capacity was an extra mule. This doesn't work anymore. I know a bit about a lot of technical equipment from graduate school, equipment that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let's say I invented something completely new and cool that was meant to work with complicated lasers. Under your idea, the best I can do is draw it and patent it. I can't test it, let alone produce it, because I can't afford lasers.
There's just no reason anymore to tie inventing to production. There's no reason, necessarily, why the two activities should be tied. And under your approach, you have made it impossible for anyone who's not already a millionaire to invent ANYTHING.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I find it rather amusing that this article (prompting complete hatred of SCO from almost every /.er reading it) has the ads to "Buy SCO OpenServer 5.0.7", get "SCO Unix and Linux help", buy "SCO Unix".....
'people are reading articles about SCO, they ~must~ be interested in buying it!'
So here's what I'm curious about - how illegal is it to receive and redistribute copyrighted code if you don't know it's copyrighted? SCO is implying that Linus is negligent for not verifying the legality of the code he redistributes. This seems like an extremely impractical amount of onus to place on a publisher. Is he supposed to diff each contribution against every line of code ever written?
They specifically mention patents, and the same concept seems to apply - is a person liable to check all 6 million patents before publishing any code?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I posted this before, and it's more valid than ever...
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left."
Margaret Thatcher
http://www.masquilier.org/republic/election/ Condorcet, Plurality voting and alternative voting enabled bulletin board.
At least the box is pretty.
A simple variable name change will cause the checksums do be different. What you would need to do is apply one of those code checking algorithms that compares code while ignoring variable names, output strings, etc. They use them in cs101 to catch 'cheaters' at most schools. However this requires access to the code, since checksums are obviously insufficient. I suppose one could build something that takes all the code and replaces all the variable names with the same dummy name, and then computes a checksum, and then we can compare each checksum with a checksum of a similarly processed piece of the linux source code.
Right, so when some developer who is ignorant of US IP law asks Linus for his advice on a patent problem, Linus basically told him to STFU. And it was a good thing he did too - look at the riffraff who ends up pointing at things like that. What if the company owning the patent in question found that email? They wouldn't have to work at all to build a case - you've already proven that Linus and the other developers were aware of your IP at time they were developing a competing product. How smart would it be to document this freaking publicly?
Now, I expect Linus was expecting his flock to read bteween the lines there - it's not good necessarily to be ignorant of other patents - but it's a bad idea to let anyone, inside the company or out, to know about the knowledge. You can't exactly make this official corporate policy, but unofficial policy should be "do your own patent searches. Talk about them with no one."
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
a bunch of fags!!!
Well, at any rate, Linux was Distro'd under GPL to keep anyone person from controlling the source for linux. The long and short of Linux as I get it kinda remains the same. Linus wanted it to get out, be modified, and have the changes redistributed to be changed again, Etc, Etc. Thanks to those for hooking me up on a GPL history.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
Looks like a lawsuit against Linus might be on the way. One could object to this surmise by saying that any such lawsuit would be meritless, but that hasn't stopped SCO so far.
Linus would probably come away from a legal wrangle with SCO without any penalties from the court, but he would be faced with daunting legal bills and a distracting, upsetting strain on his time. Whatever they do, they can hurt him just by putting him through the ordeal.
So is somebody going to have to set up a "Save Linus" website pretty soon, asking for donations to his defense fund? Remember Randal Schwartz and his court battle with Intel? (Here's the Friends of Randal Schwartz site.) The whole thing could turn into quite a media frenzy with Linus at the center, honored as a hero by one side but demonized as a pirate by the other. I wish there were some way to prevent it from happening, but it's all up to SCO.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
It is based on something like this:
- Preprocess the code (replace all variables with the letter 'V', strip the comments, replace white space strings with a single character)
- Divide the result into fixed sized units of length k that overlap, each starting at a succeeding character. They call these k-grams
- Efficiently calculate a hash for each of these k-grams
- Divide the result into windows that contain a number of these k-grams
- Within each window, use a method of selecting a subset of these k-grams that does not depend on position, but rather on the k-gram itself, such as the minimum hash value within that window; if there are ties, select the right-most hash value within the window
- The result is the fingerprint of the code
- Any document with fingerprints in common has some code in common with the original source
Okay, that's a very rough idea of the process, but you might have some idea of it now. Check it out yourself if you're interested.Finally, I mentioned to the board that the Linux Kernel development team has the greatest amount of programmer talent on the planet... Greater than Microsoft,SCO,SUN,Apple,IBM and Silicon Graphics combined.
If your board bought that line, I want to avoid your products, short your stock, and make sure my resume never reaches your HR department.
In related news SCO claims it hold the trademark for the three letter acronym IBM. "We bought it from a guy in Brooklyn for $7.50 and 17 glass beads."
The MD5 idea is a good idea, but I think it needs some refining.
//) [obviously additional rules for script files, maybe #]
- You want to get EVERY example, for potential manual review
- You want to avoid any problems with white space leading to different MD5s for "identical" code
- Doing a 5 line compare seems flawed as what if you compare lines 1-5 in A and B, but lines 1-5 in A match lines 2-6 in B
I therefore propose that:
1. before calculating any check sums, both files should be massaged into some common "base" format.
- Remove all white space inc. tabs and spaces
- Concatenate on one long line, but line break immediately after any semi-colon (;) or end-comment (*/) or immediately before begin comment (/* or
- With comments, line break at least every (say) 20 characters or if there was a line break in original file.
- Maintain some kind of map back from massaged file to Linux source (line 237 in massaged = line 40-42 in Linux source)
- In the massaged file, mark any line less than say 20 characters in a non-comment section as being potentially and probably too small to be copyrightable. This would eliminate stuff like i++; or #include . Matches for these should still show up in the overall results, but be considered as less important unless there are also lots of "more important" matches in the same source file as well.
2. Run both sets of sources thru this algorithm, and calculate two or more hashes for each line, say MD5 and some kind of CRC. If both sets of sources match for all the hashes, a match is found. This is to reduce number of false positives.
If I open a bit of code, add a space, change a comment, and then submit it, the MD5 Checksum will be wildly different than the original. Assuming that the original was code I stole, there would be no protection for SCO (or anyone else for that matter). Heck, even opening and saving will modify the code (as my editor's settings automatically convert all tabs to spaces)
I can't imagine that SCO doesn't know their "solution" is flawed, but I can imagine that they really don't care. I mean, an MD5 checksum of even their alledgedly "stolen" code would still differ, since they have stated that the files "contain" their code and are not their files outright).
MD5 checksums per line? Won't work. Too many lines creating false positives (Anyone hold the rights to a line containing only ""? how about "/*"?) MD5 checksums per function / block / class / 20 lines? Still won't work. One quick pass through a code formatter, and all bets on a match are off.
Of course, this isn't the only "broken" idea that will be thrown overboard as the SCO ship sinks, but Heaven help me, they can't sink fast enough.
Well, perhaps Linus is right about programmar should not look up the patten because it only limits our ability to innovate freely, which is the main reason why open source exists. We don't want to be controlled by some big corporate like M$. Nonetheless, we are living in USA, and USA is full of laws that you can't just simply ignore. If you do, others can exercise the right to take actions against you, and in the end, it is the court decision and the law/rules that would prevail. Linus may feel that it is just a waste of time to look up pattens, but as an innovator/programmar, I don't want to be sued in the ass for not knowing.
You dont have to share the MD5 hashes, just point out the lines in the Linux code that colide with SCO/SysV/BSD/helloworld.c code.
Why should this be illegal? We already have the Linxu code, giving some filenames and line-numbers wouldn't kill anyone??
Linus wrote:
"...the transparency in the process also means that if dishonesty happens, you can go back and see what went on."
Right on. In other words, if SCO would release info on what was copied, then by going through the archives it will be possible to see who contributed it, and under what auspices. So we can see if IBM did it, if Caldera did it, if John Quackenschmoe did it, and if there is a violation hold the appropriate party responsible and stop the FUD.
Of course, the fact that SCO hasn't done this only shows that the pieces of paper they hold in their hands, probably don't have the names on it they say they do.
here.
Torvalds might think he can stick his head in the sand regarding potential patent infringements, but when someone directly brings a specific instance to his attention, as was done, and he subsequently chooses to ignore it (in writng, no less), IMO he is guilty of infringement.
The NY Times article had a surprisingly insightful closing quote.
/. readers, but it's refreshing when a mainstream article makes this point explicit. Slowly, perhaps, the general (non-geek) public will understand open source software and the issues surrounding it.
Indeed, because Linux code is published publicly, it is easier to track what I.B.M. contributed to the operating system. But the issue, of course, is whether SCO's Unix license covered any of the code I.B.M. put into Linux.
Should the SCO suit turn up any offending code, the open nature of Linux â" and the many programmers working on it â" will ensure a quick solution, according to open- source software experts.
Now, that should be old news for
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
have you?
Mr. Torvalds developed the software engine, or kernal, of Linux as a university student in Finland in 1991. Today, Mr. Torvalds lives in Silicon Valley and he still oversees the Linux kernal, though with many contributions from others. ...........
If you are a small entity your licensing leverage may be nil because big corp knows you don't have enough money to enforce the patent.
But, your patent may be of value for big corp to own because perception exists that they do have $ to enforce, so they would be more effective at licensing it to others.
So selling patent might be only realistic option for small entity.
The Linus approach to IP is correct. If you know about a patent (or code) your new code based (based, not original, since you read the patent before, remember?) is "tainted".
That approach was used by Compaq in the 80's to create a PC BIOS equivalent to the one used by IBM.
IBM BIOS was copyrighted AND published, so it was almost impossible to somebody say that had written a BIOS that wasn't violating IBM rights. And sure as hell you won't to violate IBM rights. The anger of Armonk is notorious.
To create a new BIOS Compaq hired programmers that had to sign a term stating that didn't read the work published by IBM nor tried to disassemble or reverse-engineer the BIOS.
These programmers received input from another team at Compaq that had access to the IBM code and that team told to the programmers how each function of BIOS should work and them compared the Compaq code with IBM code to see if they performed equally (equal performance doesn't mean that the code is the same).
More details at the book "Accidental Empires" by Robert Cringley.
1.) It's DECEIT, and DECEITFUL. Not DECIET. I before E except after C.
2.) When one issues an imperative, it is best that said one have some sort of plan in mind for the outcome not turning up their way. For instance, when you warn that USians should "Watch [their] tongues", it lacks gravity, as if they decide not to, the only thing you can do is continue to run your mouth. The correct way to handle it, of course, is to issue an imperative backed up by the threat of military action, but since you aren't in control of the world's most powerful military, doing that will only result in your death. Your not liking something doesn't change the fact that you, sir, are COMPLETELY POWERLESS. In your case, I think your only option is therapy to learn to deal with your irrelevance. HTH.
/*- Mohammed -*/
Supposing that *nix and SCO's Unix codebase come from (or at least are inspired by) the same ancestor codebase...isn't there a good change that some of the code is going to be very very similar...maybe even exactly the same?? My next question is whether these MD5 sums are going to show false positives because of this fact? I don't know enough about this history...does anybody have any answers??
In all reality, microsoft has been paying SCO big bucks to do these things; why would a unix distributor decide to go completly nuts like this all of a sudden out of the blue? Something doesn't fit here. Then Microsoft comes along and buys a crapton of unix lisences for an undiscoled amount of moolah. So it's obvious (and anyone who doubts me is an idiot supreme) that SCO is doing this for Microsoft.
I don't think any major victory will come about for the linux community. Most likely, the linux source code will be contested for several years while hackers ignore the law and their contracts and do what they will, as they always have.
Something you've got to understand here is that microsoft doesn't want to spread fud about linux. They'd rather get the IP and whatnot for it, contest they own it and then sell it.
SCO will use the same tactics (and most likely, legal department) microsoft has to try to get the rights to use linux any way they feel fit. And if that happens, then I think there will be an outcry from the open source community, and probably people organizing to take down microsoft's computer network in it's entirety. I'd be angry if some multibillion doller corperation destroyed my community, way of life, and said my code was theirs and there was nothing I could do about it. Angry enough to get out the souce code, start finding errors and make a killer virus with the same people with whom I built the thing with.
And fine, mod me down if you must but there's only one resolution in a democratic system after all nonviolent solutions (including protest, due process, etc) have been tried, and that's violent protest, aka, war. I don't like violent protest, but if that's what they want to start than that's what they are going to get.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What I find beautifully ironic about this is that I tried the same defense when writing a paper in school once -- I didn't want to taint my ideas unnecessarily with those others had -- but my professor disagreed and I ended up writing a paper that was simply a summation of everyone elses's ideas -- and got an A. I hated that.
SCO seems to think it is up to Linus to make sure that he puts no patented software into linux. But is it up to Linus to check the patent library or is it up to the patent holder to make sure no one is violating their patent? If you don't enforce your patent do you loose it? Shouldn't the companies be the ones that are searching through the kernel trying to see if there is a problem? This is a legal question and I am not sure what the answer is.
Also it is obvious that SCO is not interested in protecting their property they are insterested in making money off of it. If they tell Linus the parts of the code that violate their patent then I am sure in the next version of Linux those parts will be removed. SCO doesn't want to tell us the parts of the kernel with the problems now so they can sue us later for damages.
You are not supposed to be able to patent something that is obvious to an engineer working in the field. If an open source developer comes up with the same idea independently then wouldn't that be a good arguement that your idea was obvious and then you wouldn't be able to patent it?
Nope. It is the responsibility of copyright holders to find violations and defend infringement of the particular expression protected. Patents cover ideas, copyright covers expression. Copyright must be defended or it becomes void, patents can be enforced at any time. (With some exceptions.) And since patents are registered and publicly available, it is the responsibility of the author to ensure it doesn't violate existing patents.
When SCO says there are line-for-line copies of their code, they are referring to copyright violation (and possibly also patent violation). When they claim that anything that does the same type of thing as their code is a violation, they seem to be talking about patent violation.
Of course their answer to this has been that they're really talking about violation of a license agreement, which purportedly governed use of the copyright- and/or patent-protected code they showed IBM, even though they may not have held those patents or copyrights themselves.
So while SCO seems to have been intentionally vague, it still helps to know there is a difference between patent and copyright.
Nope, no sig
RMS has always insisted on GCC authors handing over copyright assignments on paper to the FSF before contributing any non-trivial (over a few lines) patch to GCC. Many thought this was being overly paranoid but in light of SCO's irresposible corporate behavior history has proven Stallman right. Yes, this slows progress down tremendously, but with the litigious nature of US firms - what choice do you really have?
Any chance we can send these guys after SCO? After all ... I checked out their website and they've got boatloads of hyperlinks.
The lawsuit is about as reasonable....
"IBM's Opponent in Suit Criticizes Linux Advocate"
WTF?I thought it was the IBM guys who traditionally were in suits?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Did Linux steal from SCO or Did SCO steal from Linux or Did they both borrow from BSD? Here is a better way to see who is stealing code from whom. AT&T/USL/Novell/SCO licensed their SysV source to other Unix vendors for years. Somewhere somebody has a copy of their older stuff. I wouldn't be suprised if IBM or Sun have old archived copies sitting around somewhere. Bascially, subpoena the source to each SCO, Linux, & BSD version and have them examined (under court seal, of course) to determine when the alleged offending code snippets where included. The earlier implementation wins.
to those smart enough to short it when this whole scheme of theirs to bet the company comes crashing down.
Sure, SCO can badmouth Linux. Feh, Microsoft says worse.
Sure, they can take on Big Blue. Good luck to 'em.
They can even claim to own something that Novell says they don't. The lawyers can wrestle over the semantics.
But mess with Linus, and they're asking for trouble!
the open source flamewar fedaykin commandos are on hair-trigger alert as it is, and everyone knows they are willing to lay down their lives for their chubby Finnish madhi.
oh, the carnage.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I think it has become painfully obvious that this whole SCO deal has been a poorly-veiled attempt to slam Linux and boost SCO's value so the execs can have a golden exit strategy.
I think it is time to turn the tables, and I think Linus should hire some big guns himself and sue SCO for defamation, libel, and/or whatever else a gaggle of sleazy lawyers think will fit in a suit filing. Kinda like what the German Linux group did to SCO about their spurious claims in Germany, but magnified to match the level of rhetoric that SCO is spewing.
Surely, with all the ambulance-chasing litigation going on in the US, there should be a line of lawyers just drooling at the opportunity to make an easy buck, what with SCO's market value right now. It's not like SCO is making it HARD for anyone to smack them around in court right now.
I say go for it! Time for SCO to put up or shut up. Permanently. If Linus won the case, and SCO couldn't pay, I think he should pursue the execs' personal holdings and pursue the bastards to the ends of the Earth for the rest of their worthless lives.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Hey, if the government can use it why can't we?
Everyone is insane, here in America. See, for us, this sort of thing is normal.
SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA
This SCO thing is really starting to f**k me off. It's all just insubstantial FUD with sod-all solid facts. SCO's even looks like it's aiming it's guns at BSD - which is crazy as there has NEVER EVER been any System V code in any of the BSDs. I'm of the opinion that SCO's strategy is to declare total war on the entire Unix community in the hope that people fold. Criticize SCO and you'll be next....
So my message to SCO has to be put-up or shut-up.
I'm not a Linux user, I don't hack kernels. But I can find my way around source-code. So come on SCO I'll sign your fscking NDA to see what you're carping on about. I'll even check it against the BSD sources too....
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
bool be( noble_t suffering, noble_t suicide ) /* To be *. /* Not to be */
{
if( (suffering < suicide) && (get_dreams( death ) < get_existence( living )) )
return( true );
else
return( false );
}
Also... Yahoo news for SCOX (and maybe even message board) and news.google.com search for SCO are both good for as many updates of SCO wheel-spinning as you can possibly stand.
I believe that our efforts should be aimed at identifying and exposing the top managers at SCO.
SCO is a company but it is also a group of people. SCO's current actions have to had been sanctioned by management at the highest level. Someone made a choice, someone said "let's go ahead with this".
So make it personal. By exposing each and every of SCO's top-level managers as being associated and willing participants in this mess their chances of ever again be employeed in a top-level management position (at least in this industry) are highly decreased.
This is especially true if they are tracked into any new job they go into and the company that employes them is exposed (thus being smeared along with SCO by their choice of managers) - any company that hires any one of those persons has a business ethics (or more precisely lack of it) that accepts this type of attitude.
Decisions are taken by someone (companies do not take decisions). Those that take the decisions (or are willing participiants in taking those decisions) should be made to assume their responsabilities instead of being allowed to hid behind a SCO-mask.
MAKE YOUR TIME!!
HA HA HA HA!
end of story SCO.
So SCO off!
Not only is examining patents beyond Linus' capabilities, and beyond his means (due to the cost of hiring lawyers); but it is also beyond the capabilities and means of any FOSS developer and of any company.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
They don't own the patent. Novell does. But SCO is claiming copyright.
I'll agree with you there.
Oh, but they are.
My emphasis.
My emphasis again
... and again
... and again.
Well there's the problem! And I completely agree with you. But that is the current system. Lawyers don't generally get to argue what the system "should" be, unless they make it to the Supreme Court. It's highly unlikely this case will go that far, so the current "completely corrupt and obfuscated" system is in no immanent danger of reform.
Nope, no sig
I'm wondering why nobody in OSS community is considering hitting SCO where it hurts - in the pocket book.
Is there any legal or other reason why this is not feasible?
1. Find out what applications run on SCO and drive their O/S sales. Then write free clean-room, better, free, open source versions to run on any platform (Linux, other UNIX, Apple, even Windows) other than SCO Unices
2. Some Linux organization in each country, contact all Linux developers in that country and invite them to a free legal briefing. The company can pay their travel, etc, and for a lawyer to come brief them about their legal rights, etc. This would be peanuts for a big company, and would get the ball rolling if Linux contributors wanted to follow the example of (and actually follow up properly on) the guy who sent the Cease and Desist about SCO's Linux distribution of his GPL code in Germany.
SCO critizes Linus Torvalds
linus torvalds is a guest in this country, and a business organization like sco takes time out of their 'productive' business day to berate this person; behind their back? someone tell me i'm not reading this properly! i know its a gray area were non-nationals are subject to our country's law's. but if sco is being sourcastic, i don't see the anology. i'm begining to think that sco has crossed a line, and is in the process of damaging another person's characater. i'm not comfortable about this at all.
MD5 is their to show differences, not similarities.
The slightest benign difference will throw off the MD5. Just like you can have a 1K file encrypted. in a text comparison you have 1 character difference. But in the encrypted comparison you have 1K differences.
Its the opposite of what the MD5 is supposed to do and a backwards idea.
Yep. and that's because SCO refuses to identify the protected code.
They also complain that Torvalds refuses to go hunting patents.. That's also appropriate. One of the best ways to avoid violating patented methods is to not know about them. If the solution is an obvious one, then the fact that you came to the same solution without konwing about the patent is almost a sufficient defence. On the other hand, if the solution is not an obvious one, then chances ar that you'll come up with a solution different enough from the pattern that the difference is a sufficient defence.
The purpose of a patent is to document a method such that (once the patent expires) anybody else can use it. The patent monopoly is just to ensure that people have an incentive to register their patents so that they ultimately do go into the public domain.
An interesting feature about the OS process is that -- once something goes into an OS project, it is (or at least should be) essentially unpatentable -- this is because any open source project is effectively published.. Especially for large and well-distributed projects like Linus, it's almost trivial to prove when that idea was published.
If you take the time to hunt patents before you use an idea, you run the risk of delaying the publication of an idea long enough for someone else to patent it.
The long and short result is that it's easier (and even better) to implement an idea and then wait to see if someone complains about a patent infringement than to go wandering through the patent office looking for something that may be the same as what you are using.
Reading through a patent application well enough to understand whether or not it applies to an idea is a long, difficult and dirty job. I'd much rather leave that to someone who's paid to do it (like the patent owner's lawer). Once the issue is raised by somene who cares about it then I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it.
I think that Linus has the same idea, and it sounds like he got it from his business colleagues.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Wow! How much money can you get? I'm going to go start making a "bastards list"! Man, this is gonna be sweet...
The problem is that suppose in files X and Y there is a checksum match at lines n and m respectively? You can't say anything more than that the lines match. X could have copied from Y, Y from X, or both could duplicate some other source Z.
At least if we knew which lines were supposedly copied, we could find out who contributed the code and ask them where it came from. Right now all we can listen to SCO babble and wait for them to decide if they have any specific claims to make.
...It's almost like there needs to be an even more free license than even the GPL or BSD license. The ideal "free" license would end this nonsense once and for all, ALL code, no matter where developed, once it touches the base kernel, is free, available to anyone to use, you can't keep it hidden if anyone but you personally use it or see it. An individual could play around with it on his own machine, past that, it had to be offered back, and _no_ sales of code. You do your work with the code, sell your other products, but the code is a _shared tool design and implementation_, it is _never the product itself_ no matter what. There needs to be a seperate effort for people who want to share *completely*, and *everyone else*. Seperate. This half way with exceptions and this or that is nuts. One or the other would appear to be ideal. Half way leads to stuff like this.
I have no idea if it could or would happen, but I think it "should" happen because that is the OS and apps I would support. This crap with SCO is going to be tip of the iceberg, there's even more out there and the world is full of lawyers and ceos and whatnot, who if they can't think of anything to do, they'll make sure more laws are written so they can create more busy work for themselves. and now we have differing europaen and US law, which will further bollocks it up. Enough already, if any OS is really free as in all aspects of free except turning it into not free, then it is less likely to lead to controversy, any not free-bent efforts/companies/people wouldn't even mess with it then, it would be a waste of time. It would have to have an exact source trail, with named humans responsible, any inserted poisoned code could be traced back to the poisoner, then it's not the over-all maintainers fault.
And it probably should never be distributed from any US servers, but kept someplace else at some country that understands "totally shared and free" as in "free and shared totally". And you have to completely remove any possibility of money being tied to it, that will eliminate 99% of the nonsense right off the bat.
Ok, here's what happens.
/. Biggest slashdot effect ever. Defense fund set up for Linus. I (and millions of other geeks) pony up $100 for the defense fund. Defense fund now has more money than SCO.
SCO sues Linus (as you predict).
News hits
SCO gets scorched. Completely.
No one associated with SCO *ever* works in the industry again.
Here's the warning, SCO. Don't fuck with us.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I'm convinced the CEO of SCO is dead, and his incompetent son has taken over resulting in the fiasco we've been witnessing. It's just like a sequel to Tommy Boy.
"BFD"
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I think not. The company obviously got cold feet with him on-board doing all this illegal (according to SCOcrosoft) stuff on company time ....
AC
They attack our sacred leader? JIHAD!
. "SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA but the article gives a mechanism for publishing appropriate MD5 checksums which allow code trees to be compared without anyone else seeing the code - All they have to do now is to convince judge that and simply run a check sum on some arbitrary portions of Linux Kernel and then give them to judge insisting that those MD5 check sums are from their own code snippets!
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe you're missing something--SCO has filed suit, back in March, against IBM.
One telling comment in the NY Times article says,
"Should the SCO suit turn up any offending code, the open nature of Linux â" and the many programmers working on it â" will ensure a quick solution, according to open- source software experts."
This is a very obvious reason to _stay_ with Linux. If there are sections of code that have IP problems, they can be rapidly replaced by the community. Closed source OS's would not allow such discovery or remediation.
Of course, such a solution would require SCO to actually reveal publicly where the 'offending code' is so we (the community) could check it out and replace the parts in question.
SCO thought Linux was a great idea until nobody wanted the flavor they created. This is what will sink them anybody can see they are flapping in the wind here it is fodder for the bashers of Linux...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
Everyone sees what is next, right? SCO is going to sue Linus Torvalds too.
Set DEFCON 2. Get yer checkbooks ready to contribute. Keep those pens in your pocket for now, but keep 'em handy.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
No, it isn't my blog. Just a site that is covering this issue very thoroughly.
-----------
Anyone. can. be. a. lawyer. and learn laws/code and learn court procedure and argue cases, for themselves or even others. The major difference(there are several just speaking very generally) is whether or not you charge money for it, making you a professional. Just like any qualified juror can "rule" on the law itself in any particular case, although monopolist professional lawyers and professional lawyer-judges hate to have any jurists even know about either of those data points (US anyway).
What I don't understand about the SCO/IBM case, is why IBM isn't taking action to immediately stop SCO from doing what they are doing.
The burden of proof is on whoever launches the law suit. It will be much easier for IBM to win if they wait for the SCO suit. That way SCO will have to prove their case. It would be much harder for IBM to prove SCO is wrong before they (IBM) get a chance to see SCO's "proof".
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
To increase the likelyhood of a collision, we could use a 160-bit hash, like SHA1 or RIPEMD160. It might add a bit to the calculation time, but it would be less likely to collide.
Anybody here see the irony of SCO's comments appearing in the New York Times, previous employer of Jayson Blair. Now we have two reality distortion fields to deal with.
Good!
I would be the first to ask someone to end the SCO Bullshit, but screw it! I will do it myself now. This reign of total stink-mass has gotten way the hell out of hand. Can't we just "shut-them down?"
Except he doesn't cry all the time! I am so looking forward to seeing SCO proven wrong, and then watch them die off as a bogus joke.
Therefore, in the long run, this is probably great advertising for Linux - think of all the CTOs and CIOs who can actually tell the difference between Linus and Linux now?
SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA but the article gives a mechanism for publishing appropriate MD5 checksums which allow code trees to be compared without anyone else seeing the code.
However, the point is that SCO is claiming that their code has already been released (unauthorized) into the wild. This means that anyone who can read the linux kernel code can also view the (supposed) SCO code as well, because it is (supposedly) in the linux kernel. While the fact that SCO won't likely even support the MD5 summing method (which wouldn't work very well if the code is only "similar" as opposed to "identical") is more damning to them, even describing *where* the two equivilent chunks of code are will not hurt them anymore than they are claiming they have already been hurt.
the theme song of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office!
"Stifle innovation through support of litigation!"
impossible to trace the code's source (ie if a naughty person stole it or SCO put it into the kernel themselves). therefore i would throw out the case on the basis of insufficient evidence.
i am not a law person and stuff.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
Apologies if this a redundant comment, but did anyone think it strange that the word "kernel" is spelled as "kernal" thoughout this entire article?
Methinks the NYT is in big trouble these days if they can't even be bothered to proof-read their articles.
Managers. Lots and lots of managers. (Perhaps I'm being funny here, but it's true at the same time.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
In other news, Linus will be leaving Transmeta and enrolling in the NYU School of Law.
When interviewed, Torvalds had this to say: "Lawyers are the ones responsible for the future of modern computing - programming just isn't what it used to be..."
I.B.M.'s Opponent in Suit Criticizes Linux Advocate
SCO is so insignificant it is not mentioned the headline! Those guys at the Times are smarter than I thought, I may have to kick down for a subscription.
It is just so sad, I learned Unix on SCO, back in '92. Shame to see the old girl is on crack.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Even if every single line of code the SCO is objecting to happened to get removed by some massive kernel overhaul by someone who had never had the opportunity to see SCO's "evidence", SCO would still claims rights over the changes as a derivative work because they consider the fact that their code was merely inspiration to be a cause for the new code to be "derivative".
SCO would consider any code developed based merely on what one had learned from Unix code to be derivative. This would mean that at least 3/4 of the programs I wrote in Operating Systems class were probably infringing in some way on SCO's IP. The GPL does not consider code developed based on what one learned from GPL code to be derivative -- The GPL only considers a derivative if it is copied and modified, not if it is completely rewritten from scratch by the application of actually understanding what the code does.
Let's say, for example, I wrote a book that had all the same concepts and ideas as Lord of the Rings, but didn't use any of Tolkien's names or trademarks. Having already read LotR, my book would obviously be a "derivative". Indeed many people might say my book was just a knockoff of LotR. While many Tolkien fans would likely be outraged at my writing it, I wouldn't actually be breaking any copyright laws, however. The most anyone could do would be to personally boycott my work, but they couldn't stop me from publishing it or from it being distributed anywhere I chose.
Just as a quick recap, here are the four major IP's. I find it interesting that SCO has changed its story so many times, it's hard to actually tell which sort of IP they actually have that they are referring to. It seems like the premise of trade secret is closest to what they mean, but they keep talking about owning rights to derivative works, which has to fall back on the strength of copyright, not trade secrets.
Copyright only protects content, it cannot protect ideas. Copyright also has provisions for protecting works that can reasonably be considered derivatives, such as translation into another language, changing the media of distribution, and several others. Trade secret can protect ideas, but it cannot protect them once they are publically known (although it is entirely reasonable to make a claim for damages from the party that caused ones trade secret to become public in the first place). Further, trade secrets do not protect against reverse engineering or reinvention. Patents more completely protect inventions and methods, even to the point of stopping reverse engineering, but unlike trade secrets, *MUST* be public knowledge in order to retain patent protection. Trademarks protect terminology, must be publically known, must be defended in order to be retained, and only apply to the field in which the trademark itself is applied (for example, a person should be able to start a plumbing business called "Apple Plumbing", without violating Apple's trademark).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Candygram.
...that Linus would get a SCO. I mean, for all we know, he's working on a fourth kid. A SCO would prevent that! (Not to mention, if Linus got a SCO and stayed married, that'd make a lesbian couple...)
What's so terrible about that? Why would you bias yourself (and waste a LOT of time) by poring over someone's code before writing your own? You may subconsciously emulate what they've done, and taint any originality you might have started with.
Same thing goes for other disciplines. In medicine, one should talk to the patient first, THEN read their medical records... you want an honest gestalt, unbiased by somebody else's interpretation of signs and symptoms. Isn't that what a second opinion is supposed to be?
I heard one major reason for having a patent system is so ideas can be developed and understood by all. How does a patent system like this one promote such a thing? Is the system crazy or am I? Who wins here?
IBM knows how to handle public relations, they have some experience in the matter. Slashot (especially Slahdot) shouldn't be trying to play with the big boys by printing every story they see.
If SCO wants to claim Linus was behind the WTC terrorist attack, let them. If they want to sue Alan Cox for 98 billion dollars, let them. Whether or not they have a case is irrelevent (and for any mis-quoters out there in SCO-land, you don't). You do not ever argue with a fool or a drunk.
Leave them shout from the hill-tops that the entire world is against them, let them buy the senators if they want to/can afford to, if you ignore them, they'll have nothing left to do except go to court and show IBM's big hairy lawyer their ass.
If and when this does go to court, OSS doesn't need SCO to be able to say "look at these terrorists, they saying stealing is ok".
Whilst the tech-news sites keep reporting this as the story, SCO has no reason to go to court because having their name in the NYTimes is what they want, it doesn't matter if their in the cookery section with a recipe for SCO-nuts (Tm) or whether they have a fifteen page expose on Linus and his law-breaking dog (does Linus have a dog, I don't know, geeks seem to like cars more..go figure).
While everybody is running around like headless chickens talking about how SCO is evil,SCO is wrong, no way can SCO be right.... the SCO-board are sitting in their office laughing at your comments. They set up the fire and you are stoking it for them.
They know their going to lose a court-case against IBM, whether by fair or patent-foul. They don't want the court-case, they can't have the court case. What they want is "IBM" to appear next to "owe 3 billion" or "can't be trusted" in the Post or Times so the Big Blue has no choice but to make it go away.
If the tech-savy readers start talking about this to their friends, their friends become interested and so will the Post and Times, suddenly the headlines appear...(yes, more often and wilder than at present)
Ignore the lunatics, ignore the fools and the drunks, this will go away if you let it go away, it very likely doesn't involve you, don't demand retribution, don't demand countersuits. If you must do something find a nice OSS-hackers email address and express your support, email IBM and tell them you love them (all they really want is love :). If you want to be more substantial, donate to the EFF, donate to Linus, donate to the FSF or the OSI.
You can't win by shouting louder, you only lose your voice.
This is (at best) misleading.
and from the wikipedia article on Gosling Emacs:Here's some excerpts from the wikipedia article on Emacs:
I don't know whether SCO is making a fair claim but I know that winning this lawsuit would mean opening of floodgates for SCO. Linux is a religion and its not a good idea to go against it specially when they have best of the programmers on their side.
I noted an article where Microsoft lawyers signed the NDA to look at SCO's claims. I thought it odd. So while you can't say Microsoft is behind it, you might say Microsoft is looking at it to see if they can make trouble - based on previous bad spirited memos they've released in the past.
and we all lived happily ever after.
Seriously. What antigun fantasy site did you read
this on? vpa.org? Just for the record and any
other poor slashdotters that read this crap and
feel moved, THE PARENT POST IS AN URBAN LEGEND.
Thank you.
Quite simply, I think SCO know they're f**ked with Linux stomping on their market share. So, if you're going down, you can always kick, shout and scream on the way and attempt to make the opposition look untrustworthy - it might buy you more time before your head finally sinks below the water... *blob*
When you buy SCO Unix (ha!) or AIX, or MS Windows, or anything, how do you know, as a customer, that its unemcumbered by patents?
As a developer, when you write a bubble sort, how do you know someone hasn't patented the idea?
As a company, given the vague nature of software patents ("A method to do ecommerce using a single button on a web page..."), and also given that developers don't necessary explicitly say what methods they're using. So a search is not reasonably possible.
Finally, even if you buy into the idea of software patents, how would you know if MS had infringed? Unless you have access to the source code, you have no idea. And last I check, MS doesn't readily hand out source code to make sure they're not violating any software patents.
In points out the fallacy of software patents, it highlights the stupidity of granting them, and it shows why all software patents are unenforceable, *except* against open source software.
Software patents must be eliminated: they serve no purpose except as litigation tools for large companies.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
..were you even in port?
What you're saying is that some kind of license that exists that would allow me to steal code from you, stick it in the kernel, and have it become free.
That's completely stupid, the only way that could happen is to globally strike down all copy right laws, so that the concept of ownership no longer existed, making that license useless.
It's like saying, "Let's make a parking lot where when a car enters, it becomes community property. Then nobody can claim they own one of the cars in there!". Even if you made one, do you really think that car owners wouldn't be able to retrieve their stolen vehicles?
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
"Indeed, because Linux code is published publicly..."
.
As opposed to publishing something just to yourself.
Howell Raines, please call your office! Wait, you don't have an office anymore . .
This is legal terrorism, fur sure.
Its best to ignore it like Linus is, instead of allowing your reaction to build up the mess. That is what *they* want, and they are counting on it, because most of the techies grew up under this as kids, and used to react like kids.
Times have changed. We grew up.
You could win if you had an objective. Taking down SCO wouldn't be much of an objective, it isn't worth much.
Getting Hatch and his son really involved in this, and making him look like a fool to the entire United States might be an objective. It would hurt the RIAA.
Using this as a method to promote how good Linux and open source software is might be good. Its free publicity, but it only turns into good publicity when you use the oppurtunity to promote all the things Linux can do.
But you're right, running around worrying isn't beneficial. Pick your objectives and win.
Your identification of 'dog poo' shows clear knowledge of our trade secrets, and any further revelations of any of the secret ingredients that make up Coca Cola will be met with the fullest force of the law.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
That's the correct analogy. Now let's translate yours back.
"reading law":"reading code"::"thinking of a crime":"thinking of an exception"
This is a reasonable back-analogy. It would be fun to kick around what a "crime" is in a program, but leave it be. You can fill in "crossing the MCP" if you like.
Clearly, programmers reading code to see where there are possible exceptions is a whole different matter. That's a stage in white-box testing, we do it all the time. So watch those analogies. They're math, so they can end up pointing in the wrong direction and look perfectly normal.
One thing to keep in mind is that the code SCO claims is infringing on their rights did not already exist in SCO's copies of System V and their own derived code.
What SCO is claiming is that their rights include the modifications made by companies licensing the AT&T System V code.
Their contracts specify that any derived works created by the licensees is also covered by the license.
But their use of the phrase "derived works" does not seem at all reasonable or acceptable.
The question is what does the phrase mean? If you look at Title 17 of the U.S. Code (available from wwww.law.cornell.edu), you find the following definition:
In other words, when you modify SCO's licensed code, the result is a derivative work and is consequently covered by the license.
However, they are claiming that the modifications themselves are also derivative works, apart from the object being modified.
But if you look at the definition, the derivative work is a transformation, adaptation, revision, ..., of the original work.
The code in question is largely or maybe entirely code that was done by others apart from AT&T/Novell/SCO and added to their licensed copy of the code to create something better. The code that you get when you add the additional code to the original code is clearly a derivative work and SCO clearly has interests in keeping you from distributing the resulting derivative work.
But SCO seems to be claiming that the code added to System V to create a derivative work of System V is itself a derivative work.
The only other possibility I can imagine is that they are claiming that you can't copy code directly from the derivative work into another product because of the licenses. (See Exhibit C of their lawsuit.)
But I haven't seen any evidence that IBM has done that. If someone at IBM excerpted the additions to the code so that none of the System V code was present and those excerpts were added to the Linux code, I don't think think there would be any violations at all.
If someone at IBM did copy the additions directly from the derived work and was careful to avoid copying any System V code over, I suppose that would be a technical violation of the contract. I think a technical violation of that sort would be so minor that they wouldn't warrant anything more than a letter from SCO to IBM demanding that they be more careful.
And there are no allegations that I've heard that IBM did a copy and paste of their own additions directly from the SCO code to their own code.
It would be nice to find out what some knowledgeable lawyers thought about the issue of whether or not adding Sequent or IBM's own code to System V makes their own code a "derived work" of System V. It could be that the legal system sees it some other way.
One other point. If SCO is interpreting the phrase "derived work" in an unobvious way, then the phrase should probably have been clarified in the agreement instead of leaving it ambiguous. In law, isn't an ambiguity in a contract generally interpreted against the side who wrote the contract? Since the basic contract was probably written by AT&T and then hammered out between both sides, I think that any ambiguity would likely be decided in IBM's favor.
- Darl C. McBride - President and Chief Executive Officer
- Robert K. Bench - Chief Financial Officer
- Sean Wilson - Senior Vice President, Corporate Development
- Jeff Hunsaker - Senior Vice President, Worldwide Marketing
- Chris Sontag - Senior Vice President and General Manager, SCOsource Division
- Opinder Bawa - Senior Vice President, Engineering and Global Services
- Reg Broughton - Senior Vice President, Worldwide Operations
- Larry Gasparro - Senior Vice President, North America Sales
Each has a bio page, but no email address."Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Funny how Linus shows complete disregard for patents and IBM steals code from SCO, and somehow SCO is the villian. I think it's pretty clear who's in the wrong here. If MS was suing MS over the same issues, they'd be heroes here. Stop being such biased hypocrites and stop making judgements based on who's being accused, rather than the issues at stake.
Vote for Pedro
We know that SCO is despicable, and a has-been.
So, what's the point of whining that SCO's complaining about Linus, now?
Is it to rally the troops up? I'd say they're already rallied.
Is it to make fun of their idiocy? It's not funny anymore. It's sad.
Maybe I should have a press conference where I tell various SCO executives that they can have my my Linux distribution when they suck it out of my white American ass.
I don't know about you, but I'm picturing an early morning helicopter raid on SCO Headquarters, with the helicopters blaring "Flight of the Valkyries", missles destroying walkways, demolishing buildings, and obliterating the place... Or, I picture that lone helicopter gunner taking shots at SCO management, yelling, "Get some! Get some!" (a la "Full Metal Jacket")
A very interesting article6 18linux.h tml
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0
(OS = operating system not open source, he is attached to the CS department) at the University of Texas @ Austin. In his pre-academic career he wrote systems that helped land men on the moon. Though his classes are usually more theoretical than practical, *nix is a standard tool for class projects. I tried to tell him he was fscked because SCO ownzered all his course material, but he just kept saying SC-who? Jeez, the Fresh Prince was right, parents just don't understand.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Furthermore, his statements about patents have no bearing on the lawsuit as SCO never claimed any patent infringement -- only stolen code (which is a copyright claim).
It's a little more subtle than this. SCO isn't even calling it a copyright infringement; they are suing for breach of contract. Part of the breach of contract claims IBM used parts of System V (which SCO claims as their own) in beefing up Linux.
Now, which parts? Apperantly, SCO claims that one specific area of infringement is in the RCU code, which removes a major bottleneck for >4 CPU machines. Sequent "invented" the RCU algorithm; Sequent was later purchased by IBM.
So how does this constitute breach of contract? SCO claims that the Unix contract signed by IBM (and, in fact, by every Unix signee) includes provisions for SCO to claim all derivitive works.
This is the crux; SCO has stated (through its top administrators) that all modern operating systems are merely derived works; they have hinted this includes MS-Windows, and they also want to re-visit the BSD decision.
This is patently rediculous. (Excuse the pun. Couldn't resist.) But, if SCO succeeds in their assault on IBM, they will have a case against every other Unix provider, and against Linux. They will probably have no case against Microsoft (who would most likely pay SCO off anyway, rather than face more bad publicity) or BSD, but that wouldn't stop them from trying with their new-found booty.
This is shares some attributes of the British Telecom case against (Compuserve? Prodigy? Don't remember off the top of my head), based on the scope of the claims. BT wanted to own the Internet; SCO wants to own every OS. The greatness of their chutzpah is stunning.
These guys must have Epcot-sized testicles.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It could be argued that way in the earlier days, when people went around Microsoft wearing buttons saying "B.O.G.U.S." (bend over, grease up, sucker) to remind those whose stocks hadn't yet been vested that their stock holdings were (also a not-so-subtle badge of seniority)
Let's face it - you've become a millionare, you want a home life, you leave. Lots of talent left - some temporarily (gone to pick lettuce, as one employee did, just to get a break), and others, well, they either retired, or created/joined start-ups.
Remember - no overtime/weekend pay, the expectation of 80-100 hour weeks as normal, etc. And fewer interesting challenges for top coders. Under those conditions, the ones who stay are the ones you would want to leave, so we're probably seeing a rush to the bottom in terms of code talent/quality at Microsoft.
This would explain why they had to take a couple of months to "refresh" people on the idea that buffer overflows are a "bad thing". And, when taht didn't work, appoint a group of code reviewers just to check for such inanities.
Not quite. SCO does seem intent on dancing on the thin edge, but their strategy appears to be placing Linux and IBM on the defensive, i.e., making the Linux community prove it didn't steal code. In this instance, SCO is positioning itself to assert that someone could easily slip proprietary code into Linux because no one is checking to make sure they don't. To bolster that assertion, they can produce Linus' statement counseling contributors to avoid reviewing patents. Can the Linux community show a court anything to the contrary?
Knowledge of the technical issues isn't required of the court. Knowledge of patent law is required. If SCO does, in fact, show a court proprietary code copied into Linux, IBM and the Linux community will need good lawyers, not more assertions that the openness of their development process keeps people honest.
It only takes one dishonest developer to make SCO right.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Hi, I was wondering if I could sue SCO for damages and finacial losses if I get a linux kernel panic due to their code?
o/~ Join us now and share the software
I actually woke up this morning wondering what was happening with SCO. And, unlike most slashdotters, I awoke with a chick in my bed. What's wrong with me!!??
.... of every person of integrity in the IT community to make sure:
a) That none of these individuals ever gets a job in an IT related position.
b) To be vigiliant and when one of these individuals is trying to apply for a position anywhere, the prospective employer should be informed of the kind of person they are intending to hire. They also should be informed that any interest in their company (shares, as a client or provider, etc) will be damaged by hiring any of these people.
I am tired that "businessmen" like these can go unpunished by clearly devious tactics.
If the law does not the job, the IT industry should do it, ensuring that these individuals never ever damage the IT industry' reputation any more by meand of gainful employment.
All IBM needs is it's patent portfolio. IBM can take care of itself regardless of the actual facts of the case.
OTOH, SCO has "threatened IBM's child". This gives IBM no other option but to brutally destroy SCO. Any other action on the part of IBM would undermine it's reputation and business.
All of the comments about Pearl Harbor are completely on point.
You simply do not hit a polar bear on the nose with a 2x4 if you wish to live.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
why didn't they publish the scripts? or did i miss something?
You can read it here yourself. Basically, IBM is going to work this issue through the courts.
Ruger
1) I am convinced that each of these people has a golden parachute, either through stock manipulation or M$ "contribution" to their cause. Otherwise, why commit suicide? They may never *have* to work again
2) People have short memroies. Remember Mark Fuhrman? Although he was publicly shown to be a racist, fascist a-hole, he is alive and well and "continues his work as an award-winning author and radio show host."
Do his listeners know or care? Probably not. He's famous, that's what's important.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
1. Linus manages the production of software with all of the available source published in the public domain.
2. Linus tracks each individual contributor to the kernel back to the start of Linux development.
3. We think that your auditing process ought to include a laborious process of researching every patent ever filed for any technology related to kernel development.
4. We find that this process is flawed compared to our model of:
a) closing our source from public view, thereby increasing the potential that stolen code is in our source,
b) not identifying who is working on particular aspects of kernel development and the potential conflicts of interest that might develop (e.g., hiring a Sun developer and then using their expertise to enhance SCO's code), and
c) not researching every patent ever filed for any technology related to kernel development thereby giving us plausible deniability if we develop code that is similar to a competitor's IP.
Does anyone but me think that SCO is getting funnier as time drags on?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
It is however illegal to be in a position of authority and recommend others DO violate the law. And arguably Linus is in a position of authority.
That is what I am talking about specifically.
Yes unintentional violation is not a crime, however you can be sued for the lost revenue that you caused.. The responsibility is on you, not the patent holder..
Its their responsibly to catch you. I agree, but you are still libel for damages in civil court so it only makes since to be dammed sure you aren't violating anything first.
And no, I've not searched for prior patent on eating my lunch. but I have searched on other things that I wanted to patent and I DO understand how difficult it is.. and why many companies just take a risk on new products..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
--not saying that at all. Absolutely postively not. Obviously if there's stolen "poisoned" code, it would need to be removed immediately. And all the code would have a clear cut audit trail from day one, with a named real human associated with it, line by line someplace. And any accuser would have to show it immediately,say "this is mine, right here, see?", not like what is going on now with SCO where they have been just alluding to it, but not showing it, what everyone asked them to do since day one, which seems most reasonable, unless you think they are within their "rights" to just cast aspersions with no public proof.
I think you missed the boat, missed the ocean, and don't know the difference between a boat and a turnip truck. Your analogy is nothing like I meant, not even close.
I am proposing just a more valid, more clear, more free sort of contributed shared code macro project, that's all, and from day zero on the start. The GPL, although coming closer than most, allows exceptions to the rule (in house not distributed), that's where I think it (starts to)falls apart, and why there's this problem now. You can still have "secret" code but you must keep it your single self, that's it. I would rather see the only exception to be to a single human being, once it's shared with even one other person, then you are required to disclose it openly, and you can never sell it. It's either shared with any one else, or it isn't, and I can't write it any simpler than that. It can't be stolen, if it is, there's an easy formula to fix it, any accusations must say "such and such is stolen", you'd have to identify it, show that you had it first, so it could be removed, and whomever stole it and entered it could then be dealt with by your other normal laws that apply to copyright and other sorts of IP property. You get all your rights, all the time, without having to wait. The honest maintainers and developers and sharers of code get their use, and you as someone elese have immediate and full cooperation if you claim your code got stolen from you. All that would be asked is if you would please detail what was stolen that you claim was yours, and you do it immediately on the accusation. Is that not reasonable? How else are the ones accused of theft and diversion supposed to know, ask the psychic hotline? Isn't that what the entire linux community been asking for months now, and being denied? And conversely, you are asked to not steal what is to be all-shared only. You may not take code and modify it and not share it. You may take it, play with it individually on your own machine, but your multiple person company may not use it for business without sharing all the modifications to anyone who wants it, and you can't sell it per se, but you can use it yourself, but it MUST be shared. Not your personal data, of course not that, but the tools themselves-the code improvements, must be shared once it gets past one human seeing it or using it. That's the trade. You are still free to use any other code on the planet according to whatever that license states.
It's a variant idea on GPL, that's all, just carried further.
While the MD5 checking algorithm is pretty cool, aren't we forgetting that the point here that IBM has access to *both* source trees? Can't IBM just do a straight line by line diff themselves? I.e., can't IBM settle this once and for all by themselves? (After all isn't that what SCO did?)
One scenario no one's speculated about yet is a possible mutiny from within SCO.
If you're a programmer for SCO right now, there's a good chance you're taking serious inventory of things. Suppose SCO is bought out? You'd always be scorned by the new owner and very well sent home with your ball. Suppose SCO simply exhausts itself financially? There's a good chance that in this economy replacement work may be difficult to find.
The solution? Rat out the finks. Someone there knows the truth. And you can sure as hell bet it ain't just the CEO. If the SYS V source code has been massaged to appear as though it were copied into Linux someone would have had to have done it right? Approach IBM, tell the truth, and secure a nice programmer's job with Big Blue through to retirement.
It very well could happen!
Just run both pieces of code through the same compiler and see if the object code comes out identical.
So now SCO come along and say that they own blah blah blah, because I implemented it into AndyIX first. As far as I can see, this seems to be the basis of SCO's "case". If the GPL is "viral", then SCO's Unix licence must surely qualify as a WMD?!
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
.....The money making scheme, or whate ver it is isn't going to work. Linux is far in excess of System V or any SCO product for that matter, and that includes SMP. I think I speak for everyone when I say - "Oh, fuck off!".
Genomics researchers use essentially the same strategy to look for similarities in DNA (the other source code...)
They take a long string of DNA and compute hashes of base positions
1 - 16
2 - 17
3 - 18
and so on...
53101 - 53116
and so fourth...
They also have a neat hack called dotplots. You make a scatter plot, and put a dot at coordinates (x, y) iff the hash of sequence X at position x equals the hash of sequence Y at position y. Similar regions of code show up as diagnoal runs of dots.
You can also dotplot a piece of code against itself. In DNA, you often see repeated regions, and sometimes see inverted repeats, where the diagonals slant down instead of up.
Large repeated regions in C code would suggest poor coding practice. Inverted repeats in C would be bizarre.
Linus could implement a click through agreement to add new code. Surely that would clear up all the legal issues with copyrighted material.
The average judge and jury are not equipped to make sensible determinations about technical matters.
While you are correct that it only takes one dishonest developer to make SCO right, it would also take the ignorance and dishonesty of all the other developers exposed to the code. Most of those developers are not going to know if the code is infringing, but I'll bet more than a few would be able to say "Hang on, I've seen that somewhere before..."
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Here's Forbes take on the case.
They think IBM should settle because Caldera got Microsoft to settle and because McBride got his former employer to settle.
Here's the link to the story
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
SCO isn't publishing the information because it is in their interest not to do so. MD5 checksums don't change that. If they wanted to publish bits and pieces, they could already do so under copyright laws. But they just want to pretend that this stuff is so valuable and so secret that they can't show even the smallest bits.
Where the Iraqi Information Minister went.
interesting read at forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.h tml?partner=yahoo&referrer=
Rambus?
And is read by many financial business people. Perhaps articles like this are why SCOX retains it stock price.
Forbes Article
There's no doubt in my mind that SCO stole Linux code for their "Linux Personality Module" so it
is time we stop their FUD engine!
I hope IBM squashes them.
RHAT stock is gowing up today!
SCOX is DOWN!
Has anybody ever thought that perhaps SCO is spreading FUD to manipulate their stock?
I think you need to have enough technical savvy to know what a kernel is and is not, what source code is and how it is different from the programs that run on PC's, but that's about all. These things can, and will, be explained ad nauseum by lawyers for both sides if/when this thing gets into court.
The question at issue -- Is there proprietary Unix code in Linux? -- could be answered by completely non-technical people who carefully review the evidence SCO (presumably) produces in court. If non-trivial portions of code from SCO and Linux are absolutely identical, that seems to me to wrap it up. If portions are not identical, but differ only in choice of variable names, style, and the like, then it will depend on IBM's ability to convince the court that it's a coincidence.
I agree, and hope, that developers would raise a flag about potential proprietary code, but what SCO has now done is cast Linus as someone who doesn't care enough about the issue to institutue a formal review process. Suppose Linus is called to give evidence and is asked to describe the procedures he has put in place to ensure no migration of Unix code into Linux takes place. I think SCO is counting on an answer that says no process is in place, other than trusting the good intentions of Linux developers.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
that SCO, out of desparation, decided to try to bully IBM into buying them out. Now they have their pee-pee caught in a wringer and either their egos or maybe plain stupidity won't let them stop turning the handle.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Farenheit 451. The owning of books is banned.
Now, how many people own a copy of "Linux Core Kernal Commentary" by Scott Maxwell and published by CoriolisOpen Press?
Lawyer for SCO "Have you read it?"
You "Yes"
Lawyer "Did you look at the code."
You "Yes"
Lawyer " Your Honor, SCO would like to add this witness to the suit as he has seen SCO's secret code. And to declare him/her a hostile witness."
Think the above is far-fetched? No?
Do you work for SCO?
You can't verify something submited to an open source project isn't a direct copy of something in a closed source code. No fucking way!
Without the co-operation of companies who with to protect their IP can this be accomplished. So... further linux development MUST send an e-mail containing the source to SCO. They must identify specificly what they consider to be a IP violation.
So far, my attempts to do this have failed, e-mail support failed to identify any IP violations in source code i've sent them. Based on this failure to identify their own IP by e-mail support, I must conclude that there are presently no IP violations in the linux kernel.
While I don't represent the linux project, I'm just a user who wants answers. NO IP violations have yet been identified by SCO personal i've e-mailed on the subject.
Mod parent up.
[...] like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree.
They should wake up. SCO may not be very good at making a profit by selling software. (Last year the company lost $24.9 million on sales of $64.2 million.) But it is very good at getting what it wants from other companies. And it has a tight circle of friends.
Source
this may mean that large OSS projects should form not-for-profit (or for-profit) corporations to own the code base, and that fund must be arranged to have a review process so that mistakes, if they happen, are in good faith and recoverable.
-pyrrho
We do not have the SCO source code DUH!
That is the whole friggin problem
Help fight continental drift.
"The fact is technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them," Mr. Torvalds wrote in the e-mail message last August.
And he is completely right. That approach is standard policy at many companies. SCO probably has done the same thing. I fail to see how adopting a common corporate policy towards patents is indicative of a "disregard" for IP rights.
BULLSHIT!!
I heard it on NPR (what, THAT's not a credible source?) on the way to work last week.
This evening on C|Net, SCO revealed that they are amending their suit again. They are willing to accept a personal, heart-felt apology from Linus Torvalds in the place of $3 billion dollars. The SCO CEO commented, "This internet isn't big enough for the two of us."
In response, Linus Torvalds said, "you're braindamaged."
Daniel
An idea: the method of 'shingles' (fingerprints of n-grams of lines/words/characters) could be used for creating a big, shared repository of copyrighted code -- without the code. This can avoid this kind of claims in the future, without the need of manually checking for every line of code contributed to open source projects.
A 'client' program is run by people that have access to copyrighted code. Then program generates the fingerprints, that are uploaded to the repository (including information about the copyright holder, software name, version, filename, linenums, fingerprint). Whenever anyone wants to check if a piece of code is copyrighted, s/he can generate the fingerprints and compare them against the repository.
False positives?: MD5 checksums in general don't collide. Poisoning?: probably a person can upload huge amounts of fake MD5 checksums. That's why some redundancy is necessary: an MD5 checksum is valid if it has been uploaded by at least X people.
From the NPR site:
All Things Considered
GUNS -- NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports on a former lobbiest for the gun industry who is now saying that some gun makers are knowingly allowing guns to get into the hands of crimnals. Bob Ricker, now a whistleblower, accuses the gun industry of putting profits before safety, and he is testifying in suits against the industry around the country. Industry repsentatives deny the charge, and so far, most courts agree there is no way to connect gun makers to crimes committed with guns.
Get a transcript!
win some, loose some, get paid for them all.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Didn't SCO themselves say that "patents didn't matter, it's the contracts stupid" recently when their patents were called into question? >
I heard it on NPR (what, THAT's not a credible source?) /. have very little credibility.
Considering that NPR is falsely cited as a source for "Sad News, Stephen King, dead at 60" reports, I'd say that people who cite NPR on
In product liability law, which is the legal theory on which many of these lawsuits are based, prior knowldege of a product defect can increase liability substantially, particlarly if the defect is not corrected in a timely matter. I suppose if the gun manufacturer had no intention of stopping shipments to sloppy dealers, or had determined that such a program would hurt the bottom line--"I don't care if he supplies the Mob, he's our best customer," knowledge of such statistics would be a burden in litigation.
I suppose, however, if Congress decides to write a special exemption from liability for gun manufacturer, the manufacturers will be free to look in the data. (Of course, once relieved from such liabilty, the manufacturers might not have any incentive to act on such information.)
before they use MD5 comparisons, that SCO does not own any of the prorietary algorithms used in MD5 encryption OR decryption.....This could be a big honeypot for some "rainy day" money for SCO.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
"SCO won't let people see the contested source code without signing an outrageous NDA but the article gives a mechanism for publishing appropriate MD5 checksums which allow code trees to be compared without anyone else seeing the code. This is offered as a means to locate the source of SCO's contested code. ... This mechanism gives a concrete procedure that SCO can be challenged to follow as part of the community's "put up or shut up" response. There would be no threat to SCO's claimed IPR."
SCO will never agree to this. They want to own Linux (or kill it). Their goal is to get paid anytime anyone sells or gives away any Unixlike system, including Linux. If they made it possible for the "infringing" code to be identified, even by an indirect mechanism like this, then the code could be removed/replaced and they would no longer be able to say, "all your *nix are belong to us!"
i see thousands of people on /. just waiting for the command, many thousands elsewhere.
can someone not lead?
SCO could already provide us with a list of files and line numbers they claim are infringed, since they have access to both sources.
/foo/bar.c in Linux 2.4.18 violates our IP rights" and it would not violate their IP at all, since it simply a reference to a location in a public work.
They could already have stated "We claim line 13-37 of
To make a more concrete example, I could claim that Stephen King's latest novel has sentences identical to mine. But when asked to point them out, I would answer "No, that would reveal what my sentences are. See you in court." Does that make any kind of sense?
The fact that they won't show it except under an NDA, makes it very clear that they do not *want* to identify the infringing pieces, if there are any at all. They certainly don't want anyone to be able to find them or replace them.
The MD5 approach would be appropriate for two closed source companies disputing the same problem - it allows a comparison by a third party without compromising either codebase. But in this case SCO has already done what the program is meant to do - they just won't tell you the results. Period.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
SCO management has been selling stock lately (June 5 - June 11). Look here for details.
This comes after almost two months of no insider trades.
As an Admin for both AIX and Linux I must say, WHERE IN THE FUCK IS THIS TECHNOLOGY????
Sure Linux has JFS and NUMA and a few other things to boot that all the big and bad UNIXes have, but where are all the good AIX things that make AIX what it is? I mean, no smit or smitty, no websm, no JFS2. For christ sake, they didn't even bring over the lvm, or the damn 'pg' command in.
Jesus Darl, JFS could have come from anyway, SMP was bound to be enhanced, NUMA is throughout the UNIXes. Any BSD Junkie could have felt the need to throw that in there. Quit picking on the big dogs for doing things right.
This just in, SCO sues pfizer for inventing viagra because it violates morality. Guess some Eighty year-old IBMer ran off with Darl's Wife.
Place something witty here
These guys are business men. Check out: this article which talks about some of the deals they've done.
Last I checked, one was innocent until proven guilty. Maybe the media has skewed this, but does this not still hold true in a court of law?
This sig no verb.
I found the thread that they're citing.
:)
:)
In the mlist.linux.kernel From 02-Aug-2002 to 12-Aug-2002
The conversation isn't about SCO at all. The conversation started about virtual memory, and some SGI patents.
Linus' comment was to the effect that it's a waste of time for programmers ("technical people"). It's very likely someone has patented any idea you can come up with. Even if we see the patent, we aren't qualified to judge if it effects us. That's the legal department(s) problem (or your lawyer, or whoever). IANAL. LINAL (Linus is not a lawyer), but a lawyer would be more than happy to tell you that they understand the law better than us technical people.
Think of the recent stories on here about tabbed browsing, hyperlinks, and the one-click purchase. Read the full thread to get it in context, rather than a couple lines thrown in a news story. I doubt that I've written anything that hasn't been patented before, even though I stick (c) on all my code.
BTW, the filters on here really suck. I've been trying to post this message, but have been hitting filters all over the place. The current one I'm hitting is "Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 33.3).", so I'm just filling in some space here to get it to post, without changing any of the quoted material. {sigh}
Now for the real messages (quoted directly from dejanews).
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x- x- x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:42:30 PST
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Daniel Phillips wrote:
>
> It goes on in this vein. I suggest all vm hackers have a close look at
> this. Yes, it's stupid, but we can't just ignore it.
Actually, we can, and I will.
I do not look up any patents on _principle_, because (a) it's a horrible
waste of time and (b) I don't want to know.
The fact is, technical people are better off not looking at patents. If
you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly
infringing on them. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you
just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Linus
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x- x- x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 16:44:17 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a
> hit-man to whack the stupid git.
Btw, I'm not a lawyer, and I suspect this may not be legally tenable
advice. Whatever. I refuse to bother with the crap.
Linus
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x- x- x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
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From: Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Subject: Re: large page patch (fwd) (fwd)
Date: 2002-08-11 19:22:06 PST
On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
>
> This issue is more complicated than you might think.
No, it's not. You miss the point.
> Big companies with
> big pockets are very nervous about being too clo
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
With regards to the law, ignorance is no excuse. You can't say "I didn't know it was illegal to commit murder".
However, patents are not laws.. although they are backed by laws. It is not your responsibility to do a patent search on everything you create, it is merely an option.
Here are the scenarios:
If you know something is patented, and use it anyway, you can be held liable for damages from the point you learned about the patent.
If you don't know about a patent, you cannot be held for past damages, but from the point you are notified of the infringement, you can be held for damages.
Were it to work any other way, every single invention and business in the US would have to do a patent search every time they did ANYTHING new, to check to see if it was patented.. and that's totally unworkable.
The incentive to do a patent search before launching a product is to avoid future problems, not to prevent damages.
I've developed dozens of applications in house for use in my company.. should we have to do a patent search on every single aspect of every single one? I mean, technically we could be violating someone's patent, right?
Everyone should stay away from GPL software. Why? Because this type of software poses real liability problems for its users. Proprietary vendors can actively work to ensure their code is squared away legally so as to indemnify their customers â" because among other things, their code development is a lot more controlled. But GPL software distributors would find it just about impractical to audit all the code they distribute, and ensure that it does not violate any copyright, patent, or other forms of IP. This (and setting up a procedure to carefully check in code that is legally clean) would simply be too expensive an undertaking GPL software distributors. Even if SCO is not terribly successful in its legal effort, SCO has managed to bring great scrutiny to the robustness of GPL software to legal challenges. (This whole affair is so sad. So sad indeed.)
http://saveie6.com/
Granted, I know I will lose my positive karma for this, but businesses have a right to protect their technology through patents and copyrights. However, when software is opened up for all to see, technology can move at a much faster rate. Ofcourse some companies such as IBM and HP decide to embrace this idea and improve upon it, where SCO and Microsoft refute the OSS practices and start condemning them for showing promise. SCO's actions are actually quite typical and predictable. If a company finds a way to exploit an income, they will continue to do so until that option is no longer viable. To back this, SCO will continue to become more of a pain, such as a two year-old child would until they a) get attention, in this case money via purchase or court victory; or b) get knocked on their ass and told to shut the hell up. Currently the legal system has so many holes that b) is not really an option. Back to my original point though, patents allow the corporate world to protect company technology. The original thought was so that Joe Blow Business Man could invent something and not be run over by Evil Corporation X. There are some cases where the small guy still needs help in this matter. Open Source has decimated the need for this in the software world.
Place something witty here
The FSF could take the GNU utilities and start distributing them under a proprietary license as well, as they are the outright copyright holders.
See the subject.
A fairly uningenious way for SCO to play with their stock value. They know their business is dead. But they are shareholders and want to offload stock before the market realises. They need to attract 'greater fools' to buy their worthless stock to keep the price up while they sell up. How do they do it?
File a meritless suit, make a song and dance about it but ringfence it with an NDA so nobody can publicly destroy it until it gets to court where it will fail. By which time, you've offloaded your stock to the idiots you duped into believing you were defending legitimate IPR. And, even though your POS company tanks, you made a packet out of it. One piece of investment advice: treat this stock as you would a handshake from Kevin Lay .
Last I checked, AIX isn't GPLed software.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
If non-trivial portions of code from SCO and Linux are absolutely identical, that seems to me to wrap it up.
So if you were on the jury, you wouldn't even consider the possibility of their being identical because SCO used Linux code or even that it originated from a third source like *Bsd?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
ludicrous speed...
Please don't flame me, because I hate SCO as much as most of you do (if not moreso), but they must be doing something right, at least insofar as their shareholders are concerned, because ever since they announced their lawsuit with IBM, their stock price has gone upward. I consult for a company that does option trading and teaching people how to do risk averse trading, and we're working on software that can be used to view stock trends (among other things).
SCO's stock value has continued to climb, so the general perception among investors is that they have something. Whether they actually have a case or not is irrelevant in a sense, because they've created a perception that they have something, and IBM has deep enough pockets that this lawsuit could be very lucrative for SCO. So it's in SCO's best interests to keep shoveling out the FUD and to not reveal any information publicly, because as long as they do this, their stock price will keep climbing.
Now, if investors start to catch wise and realize that SCO is full of crap, maybe this trend will reverse itself. But as of the market close today, their stock was about 1000% higher in value than it was several months back (before they announced their lawsuit with IBM). Before the lawsuit, they were trading at about $1 a share. Now they're up around $11 a share. Periodic fluctuations aside, I don't see the upward trend stopping. Now, I'm not a stock broker, and I'm not giving anyone advice on what to invest in; I'm merely pointing out what appears to be a correlation.
Personally, I hope people in the investment community realize what we in the software development community already know -- SCO has nothing.
No, not at all, and I shold have said as much. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the same chunks of venerable BSD code in both SCO and Linux.
If that's the case, I'm sure IBM will point it out, if/when they need to.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Rambus Inc today announced that they were suing SCO for infringing on their business strategy of 'suing everything that moves'.
int i;
:D
char *p;
I'm planning to copyright those two lines of code - and I want everyone to pay me 10c if you plan to use those that pattern
It is time for all good hackers to rise to the defense of Linux
Take direct action against these pig fuckers and their investments.
from the Fortune article:
"SCO is basically owned and run by The Canopy Group, a Utah firm with investments in dozens of companies. Canopy's chief executive, __Ralph J. Yarro III__, is chairman of SCO's board of directors and engineered the suit against Microsoft in 1996. __Darcy Mott__, Canopy's chief financial officer, is another SCO director, along with __Thomas Raimondi__, chief executive of a Canopy company called MTI Technology (nasdaq: MTIC ). In this cozy company, SCO even leases its office space from Canopy--a fact disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, along with the fact that SCO's chief financial officer, __Robert Bench__, has a side job as a partner in a Utah consulting firm that last year billed SCO for $71,200. "
Read, Copy, Update (RCU): 1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0393.html
Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/ netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5442758.WKU.& OS=PN/5442758&RS=PN/5442758
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0394.html
IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
3. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0505.html
Andrea Arcangeli confirms that an IBM patent grant letter has been sent to both Linus and him.
Sorry, forgot to set post style to text:
- 36/0393.html
= PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/ netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5442758.WKU.& OS=PN/5442758&RS=PN/5442758
- 36/0394.html
- 36/0505.html
Read, Copy, Update (RCU):
1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
3. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
Andrea Arcangeli confirms that an IBM patent grant letter has been sent to both Linus and him.
Oh, that's right. I forgot. I guess the idea of a lawsuit made no sense without some kind of court reporting. My brain must have thrown it out.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
In which case one is not powerless
SCO's SEC filing says IBM case may be long, costly affair
5 58 28414118.html
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/10
No.
a more direct link Not exactly last week, though--it's slightly older.
{Quote}I'm surprised SCO hasn't tried to persuade Linus to support them. "Join me my son!". ;-) {End Quote}
Oh yeah...
Since SCO claims that they're the ones who owns the original UNIX and originally came out with everything UNIX including Sys V/BSD and SMPs and RCUs and god knows what..
Next we gonna hear SCO say "I am your father"
I am sure Linus will find it hard to resist the dark side :-P
"No, no, no!!", but deep inside his heart Luke(Linus) knows it is true "That's impossible" :-P
SCO said after that "Join me, together we shall rule the UNIXverse as father and son". SCO would even throw in a juicy offer, "You can defeat the software emperor and the services king and everybody else, I have foreseen it", and "Join me" urged SCO
Hoo boy!, they gonna get it.. bigtime!, Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Oracle might as bow to the inevitable
Luke would jump away into the void, thus saving himself.. Whether Linus would, we have to ask him ;-)
Regards all
Will code for food
Will sys-admin for food
My Point exactly.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
int main() {
int x, y;
if (x == 0)
y = 0;
}
MD5 (first.c) = 38c2cf1f11c9523b429d1234538bb3e1
int main() {
int p, q;
if (p == 0)
q = 0;
}
MD5 (second.c) = e79fe2328e03d64bc7c4b7d36f274761
I think that those two snippets of code are similar. What do YOU think?
You can defy gravity... for a short time
Fuck off you dickless queer.
your a dumb fuck.
We don't need comments from M$ suckboys.
Go back to cleaning your Windows.
last post!
--
Ruby says "bwarghhhhh!"