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The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance

Posted by michael on from the luke,-i-am-your-father dept.

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!"

7 of 821 comments (clear)

  1. Here's a working "Ancient Unix" link.... by i_want_you_to_throw_ · · Score: 5, Informative

    You did not count on the Way Back machine Herr Doktor SCO?

    Here's a working link..

    Enjoy!

    1. Re:Here's a working "Ancient Unix" link.... by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 5, Informative
      From here:

      Trolltech's shares are currently owned by employees, the Trolltech Foundation, and 5 investors with the following distribution:

      Employees 71.0%
      Borland 8.3%
      Canopy Group 5.8%
      Trolltech Foundation 5.0%
      Teknoinvest 3.3%
      Orkla 3.3%
      Northzone Ventures 3.3%

      5.8% is hardly 'owning'.
      --
      -- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
    2. Re:Here's a working "Ancient Unix" link.... by peteo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Heres their press relase.
      Those F'in bastards. You cant hide from your lies. Once its on the net its out there for EVER!

      240 West Center Street
      Orem, Utah 84057
      801-765-4999
      Fax 801-765-4481

      January 23, 2002

      Dear UNIX® enthusiasts,
      Caldera International, Inc. hereby grants a fee free license that includes the rights use, modify and distribute this named source code, including creating derived binary products created from the source code. The source code for which Caldera International, Inc. grants rights are limited to the following UNIX® Operating Systems that operate on the 16-Bit PDP-11 CPU and early versions of the 32-Bit UNIX® Operating System, with specific exclusion of UNIX® System III and UNIX® System V and successor operating systems:

      32-bit
      32V UNIX®
      16 bit UNIX®
      Versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
      Caldera International, Inc. makes no guarantees or commitments that any source code is available from Caldera International, Inc. The following copyright notice applies to the source code files for which this license is granted.

      Copyright(C) Caldera International Inc. 2001-2002. All rights reserved.

      Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

      Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
      All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement:
      This product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc.
      Neither the name of Caldera International, Inc. nor the names of other contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
      USE OF THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED FOR UNDER THIS LICENSE BY CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC.AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

      Very truly yours,
      /signed/ Bill Broderick
      Bill Broderick
      Director, Licensing Services

      * UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries.

  2. Joining the protest? by lynx_user_abroad · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the protest link:

    To close, let me re-iterate that this needs to stay legal:

    1) Go onto their property
    2) Talk to ANY customers entering and leaving the premesis
    3) Disturb normal business activities
    4) Block traffic or people on the sidewalk

    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.

  3. Re:Even better, you can still download the code... by eXtro · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  4. Re:Even better, you can still download the code... by mikeee · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Even better, you can still download the code... by d_i_r_t_y · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.