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The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance
akahige writes "Forbes has a fairly detailed story about the sordid history of The Canopy Group and all the various companies they've sued -- Microsoft (who they beat) and CA (this case is still pending), among them. Before joining Caldera, Darl McBride sued IKON Office Solutions, for whom he worked -- and won. And it also seems that a bunch of Canopy power players also sit on SCO's board of directors. The short summary is, 'these guys are professional litigious bastards -- be exceptionally wary.'" A local user's group is planning a protest for tomorrow. Reader myst564 writes: "After reading all of this SCO press I remembered that SCO once offered up all of their 'Ancient UNIX' (their words, not mine) source to the world while retaining all copyrights (i.e, no OSS license). Interestingly enough it WAS located here but isn't any longer: SCO's Ancient Unix. What's more you can read about the original release here at: Linux Today. I downloaded the source myself way back then but never did anything but delete it! Anyway, check out this comment. It's interesting that this was predicted in 2000!"
You did not count on the Way Back machine Herr Doktor SCO?
Here's a working link..
Enjoy!
This is what Linux Today says:
Santa Cruz Operations often referred to as "SCO" but known internally as "S-C-O" has made a number of straight UNIX source codes available to the public. The source code for:
Mini UNIX
UNIX V6
PWB UNIX
UNIX V7 (which also covers Editions 1-5, and the 32V)
--------
Free your mind.
Courtesy of the wayback machine:
http://www.sco.com/offers/ancient_unix.html
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Perhaps there was meant to be a NOT in there somewhere?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Hit the "wayback" links and read the License Agreement SCO was offering these sources under.
It's sufficiently restrictive such that you most certainly can't copy the code into a GPL'd product -- not legally, at least.
Of course, that's assuming the source SCO's providing you (for 100 bucks, by and large) is your ONLY way of accessing the code. The case IBM and the Linux community at large will make (I'm pretty sure) is that the violations SCO claims are NOT violations because SCO's code wasn't the only means of obtaining that code, or at least the algorithms in question.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
SCO Ancient Unix
.
Software License Agreement
THE SANTA CRUZ OPERATION, INC. ("SCO") HEREBY GRANTS TO YOU THE SPECIAL SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT STATED BELOW ONLY FOR THE PURPOSES STATED IN THIS SPECIAL SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT. BY DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, OR USING THE ANCIENT UNIX SOURCE CODE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS SPECIAL SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY IT.
THE SANTA CRUZ OPERATION, INC. SPECIAL SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR ANCIENT UNIX SOURCE CODE (AGREEMENT)
A. THE SANTA CRUZ OPERATION, INC., a California corporation (SCO), having an office at 400 Encinal Street, Santa Cruz, California 95061-1900 and you as LICENSEE, agree that, as of the Effective Date hereof, as defined in Section 7.1, the terms and conditions set forth in this AGREEMENT shall apply to use by LICENSEE of SOURCE CODE PRODUCTS subject to this AGREEMENT.
B. SCO makes certain licensing rights for SOURCE CODE PRODUCTS available under this AGREEMENT, including rights to make and use DERIVED BINARY PRODUCTS. Such SOURCE CODE PRODUCT is identified in Section 3 of this AGREEMENT
C. This AGREEMENT sets forth the entire agreement and understanding between the parties as to the subject matter hereof and merges all prior discussions between them, and neither of the parties shall be bound by any conditions, definitions, warranties, understandings or representations with respect to such subject matter other than as expressly provided herein or as duly set forth on or subsequent to the date of acceptance hereof in writing and signed by a proper and duly authorized representative of the party to be bound thereby. No provision appearing on any form originated by LICENSEE shall be applicable unless such provision is expressly accepted in writing by an authorized representative of SCO.
D. The AUTHORIZED COUNTRY for this AGREEMENT shall be any countries not excluded by Section 5.2
I. DEFINITIONS
1.1 AUTHORIZED COUNTRY means one or more countries specified above.
1.2 CPU means a computer having one or more processing units and a single global memory space.
1.3 COMPUTER PROGRAM means any instruction or instructions for controlling the operation of a CPU.
1.4 DERIVED BINARY PRODUCT means COMPUTER PROGRAMS in OBJECT CODE format based on a SOURCE CODE PRODUCT.
1.5 DESIGNATED CPU means all CPUs licensed as such for a specific SOURCE CODE PRODUCT.
1.6 OBJECT CODE means a COMPUTER PROGRAM in binary form, resulting from the compilation of SOURCE CODE by computer or compiler into machine executable code and which is in a form of computer programs not convenient to human understanding of the program logic, but which is appropriate for execution or interpretation by computer.
1.7 SOURCE CODE means COMPUTER PROGRAMS written in certain programming languages in electronic media form and in a form convenient for reading and review by a trained individual, such
as a printed or written listing of programs, containing specific algorithms, instructions, plans, routines and the like, for controlling the operation of a computer system, but which is not in a form that would be suitable for execution directly on computer hardware.
1.8 SOURCE CODE PRODUCT means a SCO software offering, primarily in SOURCE CODE form. Such offering may also include OBJECT CODE components.
1.9 SUCCESSOR OPERATING SYSTEM means a SCO software offering that is (i) specifically designed for a 16-Bit computer, or (ii) the 32V version, and (iii) specifically excludes UNIX System V and
successor operating systems.
2. GRANT OF RIGHTS
2.1 (a) SCO grants to LICENSEE a personal, nontransferable and nonexclusive right to use, in the AUTHORIZED COUNTRY, each SOURCE CODE PRODUCT identified in Section 3 of this AGREEMENT, solely for personal use (as restricted in Section 2.1(b)) and solely on or in conjunction with DESIGNATED CPUs, and/or Networks of CPUs, licensed by LICENSEE through this SPECIAL SOFTW
You can find the archived pages for SCO's Ancient Unix Source Code here.
Press any key to continue, any other key to quit.
Their suit against IBM is based largely on trade secret missappropriation. So it is very relevant, should any of those "trade secrets" turn out to be in that code.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
"The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. P.O. Box 7745
San Francisco, CA 94120-7745
United States of America"
The current SCO is NOT the same as the former SCO. (Now the Tarantella Group.)
If you read the article, you'll see that the current SCO was formerly Caldera. Caldera bought the Unix rights from SCO, the old SCO became Tarantella (which was one of their products IIRC...), and then Caldera renamed to The SCO Group.
That source offer was made by people with no management connection to McBride...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
For example: TMake 1.3 Release Notes
I know which side I'm on, and I know everyone is pretty sure they know what side they are on, but I cant help getting the feeling that Linux side is relying way to much on the Fair principle and forgetting that it is quite difference from Justice in the legal systems.
I have no idea exactly how the american justice system works, but it sounds like its not fair!
Where I live(In denmark), I cant remember a single case where I thought the decision was definately unfair - usually they get it right!
So I really only see this SCO problem as an american problem - if needs be, I'm sure linux will continue outside US as GPL'ed software!
If there are any offending code in linux, a danish judge would most likely say that Linus didnt have a chance to know that it was copyrighted code, and order the infringing code to be removed imidiately - but we all know thats pretty unlikely to pose a problem!
And this would imho be a fair verdict!
It depends really. A MD5 hash will only tell if entire files were misappropriated verbatim. So throwing on a GNU header, adding in a changelog entry for a bug fix etc would all invalidate the MD5 hash. I do not believe that there is any truth to the SCO claims, but MD5 hashes wouldn't be proof in favour of linux either.
A first step would be to use a regexp to spit out all the comments into a file sorted by some key. Do this for both the SCO and linux code bases. Toss out all the comments which aren't in both lists and you now have a file with common comments. This would be where to start looking, if you see non-trivial verbatim comments then further investigation would be needed.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
See breakdown at TrollTech investors
So - yes, Virginia, they have an interest in Trolltech, and no, it's not a controlling intrest. Though maybe they could sue their way to the top?
The case against Microsoft was not won. MS settled out of court. This is what they are hoping will happen with the IBM suit.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
No, no, this was gone over before; you MD5 hash each consecutive five-line set (including overlapping ones) for each set of source, sort the list of hashes, do the same for Linux, and then run through the list of MD5s looking for matches.
That'll give you hits for any five-line segment of code that matches anywhere between the two.
Anyone in the Utah area should try to give Mr. McBridge a visit. His address is here. According to MapQuest, the address appears to be in some really dense suburban area. Not what I had imagined some fancy lawyer. Though, according to Yahoo! Financials, a Mr. Darl C. McBride is also the president of SCO. I wonder what is his middle name? Any Linux Users that live on Vintage Oak Lane, or close to his house?
The sad thing is that Forbes was the first business mag to put Linus Torvalds on its cover. They really appeared to "get it". Ad revenue wasn't so hard to come by in those blissful dot-com days, though.
Oh well.
Speaking of conspiracies: Is the mainstream IT media in Intel's pocket?
And on this linke http://web.archive.org/web/20000816145931/www.sco. com/linux/
you will find this... "A corporate sponsor of Linux International, SCO has always supported open standards, UNIX Systems and server-based technologies and solutions that benefit business computing. Our engineers have continuously participated in the Open Source movement, providing source code such as lxrun, and the OpenSAR kernel monitoring utility. We offer a free Open Source software supplement that includes many Open Source technologies as well as making our commercial UNIX products available free for non-commercial use. "
Check the link, though. The latest code they offer is System III. SCO's suing over System V. So the link is interesting, but not as helpful as we would like (if at all).
You should read some Linux articles by Lisa DiCarlo.
;-)
The way she writes, you'd think that Linus personally stood her up on prom night...
So you're like -- interested in all the countless other stories using the Caldera icon, but not the SCO vs IBM stories?
Turn off the Caldera stories in your user preferences, then hush and enjoy your peace while the rest of us keep an eye on the most important thing to happen to free software this century.
I'll bet you use Mandrake.
Yes, MS settled out of court. For what this BBC article* describes as "hundreds of millions of dollars". While Caldera's purchase of the DR properties (DR-DOS, etc) cost around $400,000. This O'Reilly article quotes the Wall Street Journal as putting the number at $275 mil. So, in the strict legal sense, MS didn't "lose". But by every definition that matters, Caldera won and won big.
I, for one, hope that SCO loses for real on this one.
* This article also contains the single worst picture of Bill Gates I've ever seen. Worth clicking-through just for that.
the no
Or maybe you could look here for a whole list of mirrors containing the v6, v7, 2.2BSD 4BSD etc releases and sources.
All helpfully provided by the Unix Heritage Society
Economic Left/Right: -0.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.69
In the army, infantry are refered to as "crunchies" because of the sound they make while marching in formation. Crunch, crunch, crunch. So they're the crunchies.
In context, she was referring to the army of Linux developers, and specifically, the ones doing the dirty work.
A simple run through indent would mask code copying this way. As an undergrad our software engineering class had us write a cheat detector for C source code. Our code removed white space and comments and then tokenized the C code. It compared the tokenized versions across multiple lines. You could move functions around, change variable names, add white space and comments and our program could detect a similarity.
Running a MD5 hash is quite frankly useless. Almost certainly the two kernel trees have different code styles. Linus uses an 8 space indent, which as far as I can tell is pretty rare. Any code that would have been inserted would have at least been ran through indent.
The more you know, the less you understand.
IBM should follow Jerry Jones's (owner of the Dallas Cowboys) lead.
NFL Properties, the league's business and marketing arm, filed a $300 million lawsuit in September 1995 that challenged licensing and sponsorship agreements involving Jones and Texas Stadium that included private contracts with Nike, AT&T, Dr Pepper, American Express and Pepsi. The suit contended those arrangements violated NFL Properties' centralized licensing and marketing role.
In response, the Cowboys filed a $700 million lawsuit in November 1995, charging that NFL Properties' centralized role violated antitrust laws. The suit also claims the Texas Stadium sponsorships don't involve Cowboys trademarks and are consistent with NFL Properties' rules.
The NFL backed off because they were going to get stomped. (They don't own Texas Stadium; The Cowboys lease it from Jerry Jones even though Jerry Jones own both the Cowboys and Texas Stadium)
IANAB (I am not a biologist) but this sounds vaguely to me like the way the human genome was sequenced. They broke up the chromosomes into millions of short overlapping sequences, sequenced the pieces and then worked out how to put them together again. I know nothing about either process but maybe someone who knows more may make something of this connection (maybe use genome algorithms, DNA fingerprinting to check code fragments ???)
Let's look at this from another perspective. The proposed link between the LDS church and SCO is based on a weak speculation that the church sees Linux as a threat to the constitution? That's a sorry guess, especially when allowing a broader analysis of Mormon history than a single quote from 1863 whose context is questionable at best.
Canopy owns 5.8% of trolltech.
Not ownership.
Safari has an emulation layer to make signals and slots work with khtml. I wouldn't say it is based on Trolltech's Qt.
And even if Canopy goes nuts, there is the Trolltech/KDE agreement. Nobody can do anything about that.
What I am trying to say is that
Justice does not equal Fairness.
Ie It may not be Fair what SCO is trying to pull, but the legal courts are also concerned with what is Just and in this we are talking money and if the legal courts are about anything, they are about money. Making sure there are legal grounds to protect property (money).
Justice is supposed to be fair, but in the U.S., it is not. Sad to say, but the American legal system, once the best in the world, has become hopelessly corrupt. This is why I choose to live elsewhere.
Now, if you are an American, please note: when one has a serious problem such as alcoholism or corruption of one's legal system, the first step in curing it is to stop denying that, which is plainly obvious to everybody but oneself.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
OK, now I am confused...
Understandable. SCO is deliberately sowing confusion (not showing any evidence while screaming accusations publicly most of which can be proven false without their proported evidence, changing their accusations every five minutes, deliberately obfuscating and misrepresenting diverse areas of law, including trademark, trade secret, contract, copyright, and patent law, etc. etc.).
IANAL, but I have been following this rather closely, at first with consternation and concern, now with irritation and amusement.
The release of Ancient UNIX undermines any trade secret violations; The SCO Group failed to register and copyrights, making accusations of copyright infringement impossible; SCO isn't accusing IBM of patent infringement, and another company owns the trademark to UNIX.
That is essentially correct. The only thing which could hold legal water would be a contract violation. There is some speculation that SCO is persuing some of the more onerous AT&T licensing provisions, which might give AT&T/SCO some control over IBM's own code written for UNIX system V. However, even if this 'worst case scenerio' were to be true, the provisions are so onerous and absurd that they are likely to be declared unenforcable by a court of law.
There is further evidence that the case is extraordinarilly weak, although this evidence isn't admissable in court. Namely, SCO wants a jury trial, and while a courtroom is neutral on whether or not a jury vs. judge trial is selected, attorney friends of mine assure me that when a litigant chooses a jury trial it is almost always because they are uncertain of their case and hope to baboozle lay people and get a judgement anyway.
In contrast, folks who have a very good case generally choose to have a judge preside over the trial, as juries are much less predictable than judges.
So it boils down to a possible contract violation, nothing more. No copyright violation (despite their public rhetoric to the contrary), probably little or no trade secret issues given that they themselves have contributed to and distibuted Linux code long after making the allegations publicly (and continue to do so to this day), no patent violation as they do not own the patents, and as you rightly point out, no trademark violation as (a) Linux does not use the UNIX trademark and (b) they don't own the trademark anyway.
So it amounts to some arcane contract law which, in the extraordinarilly unlikely event that IBM did in fact violate their contract with AT&T/SCO in some way and lost the lawsuit, wouldn't affect the legality of Linux in any way.
It is all FUD and nonsense, created in a desperate attempt to extort money and defraud investors, underwritten by Microsoft and a nameless second entity, and will likely be viewed as a mockery of the beleagered American legal system for some time to come.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong..."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Officially the company is still Caldera. The name has not yet changed officially. Caldera was never bought out. Caldera bought SCO's unix business. SCO is now called Tarantella, and Caldera has decided to change its name to The SCO Group.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
In the March trade, notice section 2. The issuer is listed as Caldera, but notice the trading symbol is SCOX. That's the same trading symbol as the Friday filing in section 2, even though the Friday one lists the issuer as The SCO Group.
So, I'm comparing oranges and oranges. (Or maybe rotten apples to rotten apples.) Also, if you look at a 5 day intraday trading chart for SCOX, you'll notice that there were some really large volume trades on Friday and Monday. Some approaching 100K in a single transaction. This for a stock that normally averages around 200K/day total. I believe that last Friday's total was 2.4M changing hands. A lot of people unloaded a lot of SCOX stock on Friday and Monday.
IAABAAP (i am a biologist and a programmer), and the 2 processes are not really similar. most higher organism genomes are chock full of very highly repetitive genetic filler/rubbish/crap, which makes the gene assembly *way* more difficult.
Running a MD5 hash is quite frankly useless.
Stop arguing the point! The instructions for using MD5 to compare the source code were given yesterday as a way of determining the matching code without violating the NDA. The inquirer article.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
http://bankrupt.com/CAR_Public/020924.mbx
CALDERA INTERNATIONAL: Faces Securities Fraud Lawsuits in S.D. New York
Four class action lawsuits were filed against the Company, certain of
its officers and directors, and the underwriters of the Company's
initial public offering in the Unites States District Court for the
Southern District of New York by parties alleging violations of the
securities laws.
The complaints allege certain improprieties regarding the circumstances
surrounding the underwriters' conduct during the IPO and the failure to
disclose such conduct in the registration statement. The complaints
have recently been amended and consolidated into a single complaint.
Over 300 other issuers, and their underwriters and officers and
directors, have been sued in similar cases pending in the same court.
The Company is not aware of any improper conduct by the Company, its
officers and directors, or its underwriters, and the Company denies any
liability relating thereto. The Company has notified its underwriters
and insurance carriers of the existence of the claims and plans to
vigorously defend the action.
Caldera International, which plans to change its name to The SCO Group,
develops operating systems and network management software for PCs and
servers. In addition to its OpenLinux and OpenServer operating
systems, Caldera also sells its OpenUnix business software and
Volution, a Web and directory-based network management application.
Services such as consulting, custom development, technical support, and
training account for about 15% of sales, a Hoover.com dossier says.
Chairman Ralph Yarro and director Raymond Noorda share control of 47%
of the company through The Canopy Group (a venture capital firm) and
MTI Technology.
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
This is the official press release from the Provo Linux Users Group:
----
To whom it may concern:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jason Hall
jason@plug.org
http://www.plug.org/
UTAH LINUX USERS DEMONSTRATE OPPOSITION TO SCO LAWSUIT
Provo, Utah (June 19, 2003) -- To voice their opposition to SCO's
lawsuit against IBM and their malignment of the Linux programmers
community, members of the Provo Linux Users Group (PLUG) and other
Utah-based Linux Users Groups will protest in front of SCO's Lindon,
UT office on Friday, June 20, 2003 from 3 to 5 pm.
SCO's lawsuit claims that IBM copied parts of SCO's UNIX computer
operating system into Linux, a freely-distributed operating system
written by an international community of computer programmers.
They have therefore revoked IBM's license to distribute AIX (IBM's
version of UNIX) and are seeking $3 billion in damages for theft of
intellectual property. Furthermore, they have sent letters to 1500
corporations warning them that Linux contains computer code belonging to
SCO and continued use of Linux may result in SCO taking legal action
against them.
With this suit, SCO has raised the ire of computing professionals
worldwide by overstating its contributions to UNIX operating systems
(which include Linux and AIX), claiming ownership of Linux and denying
past involvement in its development, and making inaccurate and derisive
comments about the Linux development community. Under the auspices of
the Provo Linux Users Group, Linux users and programmers from northern
Utah will meet on Friday in front of SCO's headquarters in Lindon, UT
to demonstrate the opposition to SCO's actions and to show their support
of IBM, the Linux development community, and any other companies against
which SCO takes legal action.
About the Provo Linux Users Group:
The Provo Linux Users Group (PLUG) is a non-profit, volunteer-run
organization dedicated to helping members to learn the Linux operating
system, offering volunteer technical support, and encouraging the use of
Open Source software. Membership is free, meetings are held
monthly, and the group mantains an active email list. For more
information about PLUG, go to
http://www.plug.org/
About other Utah-based Linux users groups:
PLUG is only one of a half-dozen Linux users groups in Utah, and one of
thousands of such groups worldwide. More information about Utah-based
Linux users groups can be found at
http://www.ssc.com:8080/glue/groups/us/utah
If I sue John in a court of law, I can't ask the court to award me Bill's house. That lawsuit has to be against Bill. And I *definitely* can't sue Mary for living in the house that she rented in good faith from Bill, especially before said lawsuit against Bill reaches a conclusion. well, I can think of a real world example when you could do that. if a contractor subcontracts work to someone else (roofing a house, etc) and doesn't pay the subcontractor, the unpaid worker can file for a lien on your house for the money- that's why you need a lien waver. How this relates to SCO, I'm not sure but I'm also not sure that your analogy applies.
Without commenting specifically on SCOX, McBride, etc., as I take no position on this.
If anybody has information about any securities law violations, by any person or company, and wishes to report them to the government (SEC). Go to www.sec.gov (click Enforcement Division) - and there is a form to report online.
Taken from '/usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle':
"Chapter 1: Indentation
Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8 characters. There are heretic movements that try to make indentations 4 (or even 2!) characters deep, and that is akin to trying to define the value of PI to be 3.
Rationale: The whole idea behind indentation is to clearly define where a block of control starts and ends. Especially when you've been looking at your screen for 20 straight hours, you'll find it a lot easier to see how the indentation works if you have large indentations.
Now, some people will claim that having 8-character indentations makes the code move too far to the right, and makes it hard to read on a 80-character terminal screen. The answer to that is that if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.
In short, 8-char indents make things easier to read, and have the added benefit of warning you when you're nesting your functions too deep. Heed that warning."
Not that I personally agree, but that's what the Linux coding Standards says...
rm -rf / is the evil of all root
No that isn't quite right. Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell brough a suit against several parties including Univ. of Calif. Berkeley and Berkely System Design, Inc. over large portions of 4.4BSD. The lawsuit was for trademark violations, copyright infringement and disclosing trade secrets. (Sound familiar?)
The case was settled after it was found that USL and Novell incorporated large swathes of BSD code going back to before 1985. This included code was in violation of the BSD license because the BSD copyrights and license attributions where removed. BSD threaten to countersue, and the judge indicationed that BSD was very likely to win.
The settlement terms were sealed, but depending on who you ask, the settlement only affected 3 or 4 BSD files out of 16,000+ source files. That code base went to become 4.1BSD Lite. The common code base that today BSDs derive.
According to Eric Raymond (from 6/10 TheLinxShow.com, 1:00:00 timemark), AT&T and Novell effectively lost propriatary claim to a large part of the System V code. The code that was common to the System VR4 and 4.1BSD releases. This is due to the 1993 lawsuit settlement. SCO is contrained by that settlement as well.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10061
This is how you can do it.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
After going even further back, this code appears at least as early as Unix Release 5 with a Copyright of 1973 by Bell Telephone Inc. The comments appear later, but the code is basicly the same. I assume it was in BSD at some point, but why does the Linux version claim that Silicon Graphics owns the copyright?
Actually, that's 4.4BSD Lite, released in 1994... there was no 4.1BSD Lite, and 4.1BSD is from 1981, long predating the 1992 USL vs. BSDI lawsuit.
This is due to the 1993 lawsuit settlement. SCO is contrained by that settlement as well.
The lawsuit was settled on February 4, 1994. Check the announcement.
P.S. The BSD Family Tree.