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SCO Taking Linux Discussion To Japan
levin writes "EETimes is carrying a new story about our good friend Darl McBride, CEO of SCO. His latest escapades include a trip to Japan in response to the CE Linux Forum initiative undertaken by several big-name Japanese tech firms such as Sony and Toshiba. He's putting his famous tainted code dog-and-pony show on parade, trying to influence some of the major CELF founders."
"I saw what appeared to be a word-for-word copy of about every third line of code in the central module of the Linux kernel," said Enderle of Giga Information Group, who viewed the alleged code violations two weeks ago. "The lines of code contained typos, misspellings and even copyright disclaimers. It appeared to constitute a violation of the license."
Where can I get me one of these central modules?Why do we keep posting articles that we know are only to impose FUD on the Linux/Open source community?
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
Why is it that articles that mention SCO vs Linux always call Linux" "Linux," but the articles that don't seem to remember to call Linux "GNU/Linux?"
Is this a coincidence? It's been done what seems like 30 times in the last couple months.
The headline makes it seem like they are trying to get as many countries to discredit SCO's claims, before they get there.
It can be done as it has been already proven in Germany.
Nobody can make false accusations without giving proof. Any Linux distributer or the EFF or other interest groups can sue them. And if one does this SCO would to have to show the code or STFU.
It also raises the question why IBM doesn't do this.
The only sensible explanation for this strange behavior seems to me that SCO has some (perhaps weak) point and such a countersuit would fail. It seems to me that some of the players in this game have much more knowledge then they admit openly.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
This is just more evidence that SCO has no intent other than to harm Linux. There seems to be nothing to gain, for SCO anyway, from this escapade in Japan.
If this were an attempted murder, the victim would be Linux. The weapon would be SCO and the detective would now be visiting everyone with a motive. Hmmm who could that be?
"The 1,500 companies who received letters from SCO [about potential infringements] should be worried, big time," said Rob Enderle, a research fellow for the Giga Information Group (Santa Clara, Calif.). Based on what he saw, Enderle said, "The evidence appears to be very compelling."
/. viewers in a second (and if you mention WMD or politics here, you should get modded down to obliteration)
Prepare for the leter with very compelling information.
Ahh lets cut the crap right now.
All SCO would need to do is publish one example of where Linux has there source code here to slashdot and it would probably sway 50% of the
I would very much like to see one of these 1500 letters and this very compelling information.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
What the hell, I got karma to burn. You know, I really want to kick that guys ass. Doesn't even really have to be a full out fight, just give me one shot. Just one little shot and I'll knock him out, easy.
SCO has lawyers. Linux has a bunch of geeks with thousands of hours of experience with the bloodiest video games on earth.
-1 Offtopic.
It comes from the circus. Well trained animals.
It doesn't take much to do a search online.
Right, but follow me here.
If there is something in SCO code that has a copyright notice, it has to be either a SCO copyright notice or someone else's copyright notice. (For the purposes of this, anything that SCO has rights to will be a considered to be an SCO notice.)
If it is an SCO notice, then it should be very easy to find in the Linux source. Then we know what it is.
Alternately, it is someone else's copyright notice. And if the copyright notices match, then it is code that was put into both SCO's and Linux's codebase. If it were a GPL copyright notice, then SCO is guilty of bringing code into their codebase without releasing it. I can't really believe they would be that stupid.
Therefor, the notice must be for something that SCO thinks they have rights to. Whether this is AT&T or Novell derived stuff or something else, we don't know yet.
The project then becomes thus:
1) Identify all copyright notices in the Linux codebase.
2) Eliminate all code sections with GPL notices, as that can't be in the SCO codebase (again, unless they are really stupid).
3) Tabulate all remaining entries, and determine when and how they entered Linux. If necessary and possible, contact the contributors.
4) Post the results, send links to the world.
and, 5) Profit from the fact that SCO is driven into the dirt.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
(Why must Mods automatically assume that something is offtopic. If anything bad it's flamebait, but I hardly see that it is)
This seems to be central behind this debate. What is SCO claiming is infringing? Some seem to say that it's claiming that the Linux kernel has IP source code in it. If this is the case, then no, it's Linux that's infringing and NOT GNU/Linux. If it's GNU/Linux that's infringing, then I think they also have to accuse Berkeley of the same thing, as the GNU operating system is designed on the same general theory as BSD (A UNIX-like operating system). As I recall, all BSD ever got in trouble for was naming their OS UNIX. GNU's already got that area covered pretty easily, wouldn't you say?
Now, if there's a specific COMPONENT of GNU/Linux that infringes (which would be a bit difficult to pinpoint... X11? Bash? What?) Then they should stop mentioning Linux in its entirety and shouldn't come after it so much as they should go after the project developers or the FSF. Not to mention the GNU/HURD developers.
The most plausible case that SCO seems to have is over the Linux kernel, honestly. In which case it has nothing to do with GNU except that the GNU/Linux system is distributed with the infringing kernel. However, that's something that SCO should take up with Linus et al instead of the distros themselves.
More FUD, more FUD, more FUD.
Karma: Non-Heinous
The EETimes article makes several mentions of SCO's "Unix patents", as if patent infringement were at the core of this controversy. I was under the impression from the other articles I've read that the issues were 1) breach of contract (with respect to IBM) and 2) copyright infringement (with respect to everyone else, including the 1500 recipients of letters from SCO). This is the first mention I've heard of patents. Is it really about patents, or is Charles J. Murray (the article's author) deserving of an AssHat Award too?
I am getting sick of reading this inane and insane quote: How the hell do you copy every third line, without copying the other two? It would be like making a knock-off of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where I copied every third line, and I got the other two lines from the public domain Moby Dick.
Don't even get me started on the meaningless phrase "central module of the Linux kernel".
It would be much more believable if he just said the whole damn thing was copied. I guess he thinks it sounds more "technical" than saying 33% was copied, because he can show off that he knows "code" is made up of "lines".
Why doesn't he just say every third byte was copied from the Evil Master Control Program, and then scoot off on his little Tron light-cycle?
I am getting sick of hearing that quote from that jackhole of the universe.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though SCO has absolutely no interest in consumer electronics and embedded devices. (And yet Microsoft certainly does.) So why would SCO waste time specifically targeting an upstart organization aiming to promote Linux for consumer electronics? It's not a threat to their marketshare. Seems fishy, albeit unprovable at this stage. Granted, they may only be making as much fuss as possible.
"Darl McBride, whose company recently launched a legal attack on Linux for alleged contract infringements"
No... the legal attack was against IBM (which was mentioned later) but that is a horrid opening to an even worse article.
McBride says he is going to Japan to warn them of dangers they are not aware of. But everyone of these companies has thousands of lawyers. They know all about SCO's claims and they decided to go ahead anyway. So he won't be telling them anything they don't know about already
I think the trip to Japan is just another publicity stunt.
The problem is that Japanese companies are also very risk-averse, and Daryl's blathering is going to give ammunition to those who view linux as `too risky' or `too weird.'
It's extremely unlikely that these major companies made their announcement without having found out about the SCO claims. If they didn't ask to talk to Darth first then he's going to have a hard time convincing them now.
Well, not literally.. SCO doesn't have a patent on my ass. Quote from article.
McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman.
According to the patent search I just did, there are only three patents, one by Caldera and two by Santa Cruz Operation. While they have patented some useful things, like using a network, you would not have to view code when you're trying to see if something violates a patent. Patents are about what things do, not specifically how they are built. If you had a patent on 'a method of printing "Hello World!", I could copy almost all of your code, but change mine to printf("SCO sucks"); and it would not be patent infringement. This would be a case of copyright infringement, so the question is 'why aren't they suing for copyright infringement'... if someone was infringing on my copyrights that's probably what I would sue them for. Unless, that is, I had no case whatsoever. What they are suing for is contract violation.... there is no way anyone can say jack shit about that unless they have read the contracts. What I will say though is that it is clear SCO is claiming rights to technologies: NUMA, SMP, etc. based on the fact that they were incorporated into an operating system that was derivative of Unix. This is what they do in the press.... this completely irresponsible slander.. but what they will say in court remains to be seen.
My Blog
The thing is that these mom and pop operations dropped a few grand on a 386, a five user Xenix license, and this software package and as long as it works, they'll keep using it. Not to mention it's a minicomputer, they just get to use dumb terminals which are available at garage sales and whatnot, rather than having to have PCs. The package does everything, including financials and such, so why use something else? When the hardware fails and they find out they can't run 386 Xenix on modern hardware and they need a SCO license, then they decide they might as well buy a used Sparc or something, and that's the time to transition. However I do recall assisting one customer on transitioning to SCO Unix on a Pentium 2 instead of going to the other product. Poor bastard.
However the point remains that if it ain't broke, why screw with it? If you're trying to make any kind of customizations, then you would like a much better OS, especially something better-supported. If you're just using something for a turnkey system, then you want something with low overhead and high stability, and while SCO Unix doesn't really fit the bill there in either category, good old SCO Xenix was amazing. Unix on a 286 in 1mb of ram, installed in 20mb of disk is nothing to sneeze at. Of course there are older examples of Unix on even lesser hardware, and there's always Minix but hell, it's almost as restricted as Xenix :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This move just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this whole SCO escapade is publicity stunt designed to hurt Linux.
The only way to get fluent in Japanese is to live in Japan. If the article is true and McBride is fluent, then we can assume he has spent some time in Japan and knows something about business in Japan. This means he knows, that no matter what he tries in Japan, he will get absolutely nothing accomplished as far as suing the major Japanese players is concerned.
What he will get, however, is many industry leading, powerful corporations agreeing with him publically.
That is the Japanese way, maintain the "wa" (harmony.) Stay in agreement publically, while internally things are very different. McBride will use this "Public agreement" of Sony, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sharp, Phillips, Samsung, NEC, and Toshiba to cast even more FUD about linux. "Hey look, IBM may not think we have a case, but the Japanese giants unanimously agreed with everything we said."
This move is very, very smart for McBride if he plays it right. May he fry in hell.
If there were anything even remotely real about SCO's allegations, then this would be extremely significant in Japan. It is not to do with the legal position. The business climate in Japan is totally different to that in the US. In Japan, ethics and probity are critical. If SCO could provide convincing evidence that their trade secrets had been infringed in Linux, Japanese organisations would take a big financial hit to avoid using it. However, they will look at any claims with a fine toothcomb before accepting them. Actually, the impact of McBride's visit will be an excellent indication of whether we have anything at all to worry about.