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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."
free link
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.
'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....
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
A common fallacy, but both Open Source and Free software *depend* on intellectual property rights.
Without it there would be no reason to agree to the OS or Free license terms (you could just ignore them and do what you like) and therefore no onus to put back into the pool any improvements etc you might make.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
We need a special SCO icon; something that looks Darth Vaderish. Either that, or make it look like Lionel Hutz.
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.
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!
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.
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
After they defeat Linus, they can come out with their new "Black Hat" (or "Black Helmet") Linux.
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?)
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.
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 ...
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.)
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
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.
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
Parent post contains:
Erm, no. If you had read the article carefully, you would know that the pieces overlap. The article says:
If there were no IPR (and thus no copyright), all source code anybody publishes could be used approximately as if it was published under a BSD license today.
It would always be possible to publish only binaries, but it would not be possible to restrict distribution of these licenses. (It would also be allowed to re-engineer the binaries.)
So while we couldn't have the protection that the GPL offers today, we would have BSD-like Free Software (you don't deny that the BSDs are FS/OSS?) plus the right to re-distribute, change or disassemble any binaries anybody might publish.
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.
The shredding was done in 5 line groups but on each line.
Thus while A B C D E wouldn't match Q A B C D the next hash value in file 2 would be A B C D E which WOULD match.
The idea was that the process would ONLY hit on 5 line matches to avoid all of the things like #include <stdio.h> hits.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
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
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).
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,
Much as I'm also getting slightly bored by these stories, it really is the biggest thing going on for years in the Linux (and maybe the whole Open Source) community. If, somehow, SCO succeeds in winning any of these cases it does have significant repercussions for most people who read Slashdot, somewhere down the line. (I know we all think it can't happen, but someone at SCO obviously believes they stand at least some chance..)
I know, I know, if there's infringing code it can just be pulled out etc, etc, but the PR disaster that would follow could spell real trouble for open source in general - we have to be careful here and not dismiss this totally, just in case it really does happen.
The blanket coverage is justified I think, because the open source movement as a whole really depends on this case being thrown out, or at least won heavily by IBM.
Q.
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.
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.
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
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."
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?!?)
Go buy yourself some more vowels.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I think SCO is starting a patent war that may expose SW patents for what they are and the destructive capability they have - while not possessing many (any?) redeeming features.
And what's their winner argument in this case?
Linus is not checking all contributions against potential patents. Are you kidding me? So for every contribution he has to go search the patent database?
SCO and Software Patents, man if we could only hit 2 birds with one stone...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
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.
OK, I smell troll, but I'll bite anyways:
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.
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.
All's true that is mistrusted
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
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.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.
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.
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.
Linus is not checking all contributions against potential patents. Are you kidding me? So for every contribution he has to go search the patent database?
From the article:
"If source code is copied from protected Unix code," the SCO document adds, "there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact." (emphasis added)
So they are saying Linus is a bad boy because he is NOT doing something THEY ACKNOWLEDGE HE CAN'T DO, even if he wanted to - which he has said he does not want to, and for good, sound, and sufficient reasons.
SCO(Caldera), I don't care how many lawyers you bring into the case, you are not able to hold someone to a standard that you then point out is unattainable.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
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.
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.
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'
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
- 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
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
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
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.
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
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.