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."

Comments

free link

[Anonymous Coward]

free link

Old...

[r6144]

I think this thing has been discussed here before.

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.

patents are for lawyers

[lovebyte]

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.

Re:Not normally a Linus fan but..

[streepje]

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).

Emphasis on the "yet".
Have a look at this European Commission proposal to make all useful ideas patentable

Seems fair enough

[The Tyro]

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.

Re:Not normally a Linus fan but..

[laird]

Actually, I've been told exactly the same thing by a number of US patent lawyers. In the US you're liable for greater damages if you violate someone else's patent if you know about it than if you don't. So the last thing any engineer should ever do is admit publicly that they know anything about any patent, because they open their employer up to (IIRC) treble damages. Given how well known this is, I am surprised that it's "news".

The MD5 stuff is quite clever

[DeadSea]

When I read the headline, I thought how could comparing MD5 sums of files work? I'm sure the files have been modified at both ends. Even if they were from the same source orginally, there is no way they would match now.

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.)

Strange

[TheDredd]

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

Re:Flaw in the 'shredding' mechanism?

[deepchasm]

Parent post contains:

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.

Erm, no. If you had read the article carefully, you would know that the pieces overlap. The article says:

each source tree is "shredded" into 5 line pieces (1-5, 2-6, 3-7, etc.)

Re:Not normally a Linus fan but..

[Simon Garlick]

It's nice to see that Linus is getting a bit more riled up about SCO now that SCO has started taking personal potshots at him. In a recent interview:

"I care deeply about IP (intellectual property) rights. I've personally got more IP rights than the average bear, and as the owner of the copyright in the collective of the Linux kernel, I shepherd even more. It's what I do, every day. I personally manage more valuable IP rights than SCO has ever held, and I take it damn seriously," Torvalds said in an e-mail interview.

Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the difference between a patent and a copyright. Source code is copyrighted. Processes for doing things are patented. A copyright prevents a code copy. A patent prevents the implementation of an idea. I think you will find large percentages of open source advocates will agree that ideas should be freely exchanged. And many also believe code should be freely exchanged (see BSD style licenses).

Re:md5

[AftanGustur]

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...

Uhh, well, the probability that a given line of code has a certain MD5 checksum is 1 to 340282366920938463463374607431768211456.

That's way less probable than the probability of a false positive in a DNA test. (I.e. "Good enough" for a match)

So, unless I see a two headed guy with dark sunglasses, climb into his shiny spaceship and start it's engines, I belive SCO could very well use this technique to demonstrate what part of their code is in Linux.

Patent Clearance

[overshoot]

Linus certainly has good company. I know that my employer, at least, tells us the same thing: don't sweat the patents. Our Corporate IP department (not a small one, either) doesn't even do patent clearances on request, because it's too expensive.

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.

Re:Dumb statment for linus to make

[budGibson]

Well no, his position is more subtle than that. Patent law is based on knowing infringement. By not looking at patents, one cannot knowlingly infringe on a patent. As he points out, this is why engineers should not look at patents.

Linus then goes on to state that the *open* publication process is the best defense. How could Linus or anyone else possibly be aware of all patents? By openly publishing the code and its source, Linus notes that it is possible to back trace to the true "offenders". Linus could have been named as a co-party to the suit. Note that he is not. In a recent interview with CNET, Darl McBride even seemed to agree with Linus' point by stating that having thousands of eyes, open source led to better quality. Well, those eyes might lead to better IP protection too.

SCO's statements just strike me as a tactic to impugn Linus and the whole OS process without going to the mat where they would not have a case. It casts further doubts on SCO's motives.

Patents? WHAT patents?

[ctid]

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.

Re:SCO is criticizing Linus for What??!!

[Theatetus]

OK, I smell troll, but I'll bite anyways:

as I understand it, Linus created the GPL to get Linux out there

Richard Stallman created the GPL in the late 1980's after Gosling forked EMACS and made his version proprietary. Linus didn't start working on his Minix workalike until several years later.

However, by making the linux kernal open source, Linus does not really retain any rights either. Essentially the Linux Kernel is really not owned by anyone individual or group.

Mr. Torvalds retains ownership and copyright of the code he wrote (check the AUTHORS file; in addition, several files contain "copyright [whatever year] Linus Torvalds"). To my knowledge, the other Linux programmers all retained copyright to their code as well. The fact that they have adopted a particular distribution license scheme does not change this fact.

For example, you could not take part of the Linux kernel and publish it claiming you wrote it (for that matter, you can't even do that with BSD). And, if you decide to fork the kernel and start making your own changes, you can't call it Linux (which is a trademark of Linus Torvalds).

IHBT. IHL. HAND.

Re:Common contents

[ratboy666]

amd7930.c

A couple of points. *If* this appears in SCO source, this would be very strange. The 7930 is ONLY used in some 4c and 4m Sparcs. That would be 32 bit SPARC, SBUS based machines. I don't even think these are SUPPORTED by recent Solaris releases.

Nobody uses this for Intel, and these machines are not current anymore.

If SCO has this in THEIR code base, they are really smoking some strange drugs... The only reason this is in Linux is because it was ported to old SUN boxen. Trust me, IBM wouldn't have ANY involvement with that.

Ratboy.

Re:Will someone berate SCO' spproach here??

[dh003i]

Simply put, he's right. There are more talented individuals in the FOSS community than in every software company in the world. Let's see, one guy creates an OS kernel by himself -- without an entire development team -- that evolves to be better than anything MS or proprietary UNIX vendors crank out. Another guy creates what is arguably the best compiler in the world. Etc.

Then, of course, just consider the sheer amount of talent. There are probably more FOSS programmers than proprietary programmers...by a long shot. That means that there is a huge amount of total talent.

Companies should also not bother with the impossible burden of finding all patents that they may be infringing on. The legal bill to lawyers to interpret patents would be outrageous, and it is simply impossible -- period -- to do, due to the clear lack of organization in freely available patent databases and due to the sheer number of patents.

Start here

[utahjazz]

Here is a good old one-liner that produces a list of files with duplicate contents:

find . -type f -exec md5sum '{}' ';' | sort | uniq --all-repeated=prepend -w 33 | cut -c 35-

I'll bet you could do the 5-line splitting, and some whitespace ignoring and still keep it a one-liner.

Re:Will someone berate SCO' spproach here??

[tomhudson]

And how many at microsoft are working on their kernels? Let's compare apples w. apples. Microsoft doesn't have thousands of people coding their next kernel. They may have a few hundred. So the numbers ARE comparable.

Now, as to talent ... that's something that we can only objectively measure by the results. It seems to me that the linux kernel surpasses the competitors, and that's why most of the "competition" have supported linux development. This includes SCO in times past.

So it may not be a lie to say that the Linux Kernel development team has the greatest amount of programmer talent on the planet, as far as OS kernel development is concerned.

Sure, IBM, Sun and Microsoft may have thousands of programmers working for them. This has nothing to do with OS kernel development. Most of Microsofts' programmers are NOT working on their kernels. Ditto Sun. Ditto IBM. Ditto Apple.

And we can't count those who do testing, unless we also count those who do testing of the linux kernel, in which case the linux kernel wins hands down over all the proprietary kernels combined.

Go after SCO's management - yer wish is my command

[GojiraDeMonstah]

http://www.caldera.com/company/execs/ tells us:

• 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.

Re:SCO totally evil?

[john bigbootay]

Research a little further into the personalities behind SCO, and you'll find a very committed group of opportunists that have run this scam before, and won. Read this backgrounder at Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.h tml

Pump and dump? SCO insider trades

[wrestler]

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.

Linus' "anti-patent" message

[JWSmythe]

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).

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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

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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

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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