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USL vs BSDI Documents
Dibyendu Majumdar writes "Dennis Ritchie has posted some court papers from the lawsuit by USL against BSDI about UNIX intellectual property. Some of the SCO claims, such as identical comments in the code, etc. also occur in the claims made by USL. Interesting read in the context of SCO vs IBM case."
You want to talk about identical comments, read below.
From reading this story you might get the impression this case was ongoing or perhaps recent. But actually, this case was settled over 10 years ago (February 4, 1994). BSDI agreed to substitute a port of the University of California's in a release which became known as 4.4 BSD(Lite) for BSD/386.
Interestingly, this settlement also contained this ominous clause : "Additionally, engineers will be completing the SCO binary emulation mode and completing the port of BSDI's operating system to the SPARC architecture." (Emphasis mine)
It must be a slow news day because I submitted this story 2 months ago and it was rejected. So I wrote a comment about it here.
The most interesting thing recently in this case is the Daryl McBride approaching CELF consortium, who haven't even distributed any code yet. I wonder how long this pr blitz will last until Microsoft is required to license another ancient unix patent.
I feel the SCO vs IBM suit will end up the same as the AT&T vs BSD one: Duplicate code will be found, IBM will pay no damages but the duplicate code will be removed and everyone will move on. Assuming SCO's evidence is true, this will more than likely be the case since the UNIX concepts are widely known and no truly secret IP was "stolen".
The major downside is if IBM found guilty Linux could to the way of *BSD: Small scale adoption with a large hobbyist following.
Only time will tell.
...this has happened before and it will happen again. They (BSDI, SCO, et al) are thinking "free as in beer", I would guess, and are trying to grab the keg so they can charge everyone a Euro a glass.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I see very little sense in imagining all sorts of things and reading thru all sorts of notes, briefs and voluminous snippets. Isn't it SCO's job to do this, and tell the court (in the matter of their IBM case), the 1,500 corporates (to whom they sent the infamous letters) or the Linux crowd (whom they point fingers at without sufficient prrof or data)?
/.ers pore into these details every day? It almost appears as if we are doing all the legwork for SCO. Let SCO do all the imagining, when they say something - then, let's debate it over here.
Why should
Peace.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
IANAL, but is USL SOL if SCO says BFD about IBM's IP?
...have been on Ritchie's site for a L O N G time. You just notice now? What kind of UN*X hacker are you!?!
You should not. Nobody is forcing you. However, don't you think that someone may actually find those interesting??????
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
It was fun at first, but the whole SCO/IBM thing is turning into a three ring circus here. One article blends into another, no new insight is made.
We all know SCO is bad, IBM is less bad, the enemy of my enemy yadda yadda, so why keep bringing it up.
I'm as interested in the lawsuit as the next guy (providing the next guy isn't Darl McBride), but I want new info, not a rehash of how much we hate SCO.
Let me put on my Kreskin hat here. Three links to a huge PDF on SCO's site, three following comments on a wget/crontab combo to increase effectiveness, one righteous prick saying not to do it.
Next thread. "I don't care anymore, let's buy all the SCO stock and shut them down". Here it forks, one saying it's SCOX, not SCO and one thread about shorting the stock.
everything else is a rehash of old trolls, old comments, one guy searching caldera stories and cutting and pasting +5 comments, sprinkle with insight, set at 350 degrees, and bake until done. Serves 10,000.
In this mad world, I'd not wonder much if SCO sues USL for using the same claims in their suit ...
Wish I had mod points... ouch! by the time I hit Reply, your post seems to have gone fown a notch! Looks like /. has some sort of arrangement with SCO, to promote FUD around here.
Your earlier post, linked above, is 2 months old (??) Very curious indeed.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
hehehehe... exactly!
has anyone been paying attention to the SCOX stock, and watched how it has been climbing. Does anyone else think that this all might just be a setup for the years to come.
Think about it like this, its a win/win situation for SCO.
a. If they win, they're set for some serious time to come, they can claim all kinds of proprietary rights and live off licensing - or be bought out by a larger corporation, ala IBM.
-or-
b. If they lose, (personal feeling) IBM will pick up the license from SCO and they'll be bought out anyway, possibly remaining an independant, but under new ownership.
Either way, the SCO CEOs stand to make a buttload of money. I think its interesting to see the amount of FUD that SCO has been putting out. I think the case will probably get dropped before it gets too far, and that IBM will probably just brush off SCO like a bad cold.
I guess we'll see.
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
I don't think this time the consequences would be so important because, as far as I know, the pieces of code SCO claims to own, are located in parts of the Linux Kernel that almost nobody uses, like JFS and NUMA.
I think we can expect to see more of this -
Indeed, ignoring header files and comments (see below), the overlap in the critical "kernel" region is but 56 lines out of 230,9995, and the overlap elsewhere is 130 lines out of 1.3 million. However, as both sides argue (but to different effect), the nature of the overlap is more significant than its size.
Comments have no role whatsoever in software performance. In summary, Professor Carson has examined the traits shared by Net2, BSD/386, and 32V, and detected a common lineage. Defendants argue that virtually all of these traits reflect publicly available code, copied comments, or overlap dictated by compatibility with industry standards. Professor Carson disagrees, and has allegedly identified at least some overlapping files that are irrelevant to program interfacing. (Carson Reply Aff. at 6(d), 8-15.)
Plaintiff points to several different activities by the University of California that give this court specific jurisdiction over the Regents' alleged misdeeds. The first of these activities was the negotiation and execution of licensing agreements between Plaintiff and the University: "the University `reached out beyond' California and knowingly contracted to obtain and use . . . software developed in New Jersey"
Second, Plaintiff argues that "unlawful act" jurisdiction is proper because Defendants have misappropriated trade secrets and infringed Plaintiff's copyright by licensing Net2 to UUNET. This act inevitably and foreseeably led to the downloading of Net2 by tens of thousands of users, whose use of Net2 foreseeably eroded the value of Plaintiff's trade secrets.
Reading on.....
-b
Originally got this from yahoo message board:
m ai n/0,14179,2877578,00.html
2 _S tory03.html#C++_Issues
6 22 054/0616_marshall.html ...)
2 .swf
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
We get several dozen requests a month just to come in and see AIX
or HP-UX code base. And C++ programming languages, we own those,
have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of
royalties coming to us from C++. It was interesting to see the
depth of Caldera's intellectual capital.
http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-0
C++ Issues
MozillaQuest Magazine: C++ appears to be one of the properties
that SCO acquired through Novell's acquisition of AT&T's UNIX
Systems Laboratories and subsequent purchase of Novell's UNIX
interests by SCO. At this time most Linux and/or GNU/Linux
distributions include C++ compilers and editors. Is this
something for which SCO currently charges? If so, just what
are the current arrangements? If not, will C++ licensing and
enforcement be added to SCO's licensing and enforcement program?
Blake Stowell: C++ is one of the properties that SCO owns today
and we frequently are approached by customers who wish to license
C++ from us and we do charge for that. Those arrangements are
done on a case-by-case basis with each customer and are not
disclosed publicly. C++ licensing is currently part of SCO's
SCOsource licensing program.
MozillaQuest Magazine: How about GNU C++? Does GNU C++ use
SCO IP? If so, could SCO license and/or charge for use of its
IP in GNU C++?
Blake Stowell: I honestly don't know.
MozillaQuest Magazine: Does the C++ that currently is included
in most if not all Linux distributions contain SCO IP?
(a) If so, is that being done with or without SCO
permissions/licensing?
(b) If so, what impact/affect does this have on the ability
of people to freely distribute and use copies of those
Linux distributions? (Under GNU licensing, anyone may
make as many copies of a GNU/Linux distribution as they
please, freely distribute them for no charge and/or for
a charge, and use a GNU/Linux on as many computes as they
please -- at no charge. Etc.)
Blake Stowell: Again, I don't know. That's something we would
have to research.
``Be afraid. Be very afraid.''
regards,
alexander.
P.S. Does anyone here know whether Microsoft was smart enough to include
C++ (in addition to a rather mysterious "applications interface layer")
in their recent license agreement with SCO ?
http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784
(SCO Owns Your Computer: "All Your Base Are Belong To Us",
--
http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/AYB
Personally, I have SCO story macros:
:)
"But SCO/Caldera distributed their own Linux! They violated the GPL!"
"Linux kernel hackers should sue SCO!"
"IBM is the 800lb. gorilla that will crush SCO!"
"Linux kernel hackers should sue SCO!"
"Failure to mitigate their own damages!"
"They haven't produced a single line of evidence!"
"They haven't produced a single line of evidence!"
"They haven't produced a single line of evidence!"
"Linux kernel hackers should sue SCO!"
"Failure to mitigate their own damages!"
See what I mean?
My journal has hot
Shouldn't someone make a claim that SCO could never have been able to make their linux compatibility mode without including Linux IP?
I think it's time you realise that today's SCO is not the same SCO of 10 years ago.
Today's SCO is just Caldera with a different name. That bold portion does not refer to the modern SCO.
Please take note of this in the future.
According to the S-3 filing at SEC
Major investors are going to sell 305,274 shares of Common Stock. Some of them are obvious VC firms dumping all of their shares. (Besides Canopy, the largest single holding listed to be sold are two different firms selling 36,266 shares, which amounts to all of their holdings.)
The Canopy Group itself will be unloading 174,340 of 5,492,834 shares.
There are 13,334,886 total shares of common stock outstanding.
no, the one where he flys on stage. he even goes through a few hoops to show that he's not being suspended.
is the following. Very prescient.
There is an enormous difference between an expert programmer sitting down with a pile of textbooks and disjointed segments of code to write out an operating system from scratch, and that same programmer downloading the operating system intact from a public network.
can't do that. I am also a w3c zealot, and I can't write cross-platform embedding code that would pass the XHTML 1.1 validator. I could provide a link to your page, but that would mean you'd have to have definitive hosting of the anim. The only possible solution is that you export the flash to pngs (because gif is evil), give me access to them and abandon your rights (LZ is an open sauce comic)
He's probably talking about Cfront. Never expect a suit to know the difference between a standard and an implementation :)
Cfront was the first C++ implementation. It worked by translating C++ code to C (in fact, it started out as a simple preprocessor), and as a result it has all kinds of problems with fancier C++ constructs, such as exceptions, STL, and inline functions. According to Mozilla's portability guidelines, the SCO and HP C++ compilers are still based on it.
everything else is a rehash of old trolls, old comments, one guy searching caldera stories and cutting and pasting +5 comments, sprinkle with insight, set at 350 degrees, and bake until done. Serves 10,000.
Welcome to Slashdot. Enjoy your stay.
I once complained to a buddy of mine that Slashdot was nothing but interesting articles trailing thousands of gibberish comments behind them like comet tails. "It's... chaos!" I said, waving my hand at the monitor in frustration.
He grinned and said, "The chaos is the best part!"
Know what? He was right.
I love you, Slashdot. Don't ever change, baby.
I think, maybe SCO don't care what happened with BSD.
Perhaps I am totally misunderstanding their comments but I get the impression SCO seems to think they own C++ programming languages anyway.
As to this case, SCO now allege that IBM's support for Linux is killing Unix, but not too long ago, SCO discussed Unix's feature in their SEC filings.
Meanwhile, definitely worth checking out, there's a new S-3 filing by SCO
On USL's preliminary motion to stop distribution of BSDI on the basis of copyright infringement:
Consequently, I find that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a likelihood that it can successfully defend its copyright in 32V. Plaintiff's claims of copyright violations are not a basis for injunctive relief.
The judge ruled that since many copies of 32V source code (books, manuals, etc) existed before USL applied for copyright on that code, it cannot bar BSDI from distributing Net2 because USL failed to protect its copyright. This kind of parallels SCO claims in that some of the code that has been revealed are trivial school book type code that most of the programming world alreay knows about.
On USL's preliminary motion to bar BSDI distribution based on trade secret misappropriation:
Since Plaintiff has failed to provide enough evidence to establish a "reasonable probability" that Net2 or BSD/386 contain trade secrets, I find that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim for misappropriation of trade secrets. No preliminary injunction will issue.
The judge ruled that USL's previous work with BSDI and third parties negates trade secret since all work done is in the public domain. Since UNIX development occured in an open manner with research papers, books, and technical manuals publishing methodology, source code, and programming techniques of UNIX (some of which was published by USL and its predecessors), USL cannot claim trade secrets misappropriation and cannot have Net2 barred from distribution.
SCO's release of Linux mirrors this. If SCO released the source code of Linux with their distributions, they cannot claim copyright infringement because they have essentially made the code open source. Some attorneys may claim that since SCO didn't know that the code was stolen from them, this doesn't negate their copyright. However, it is the responsibility of the publisher (SCO) to review any code before releasing it. Even if it was stolen, they still released it.
After the ruling, it was basically over for USL. I don't know when SCO will drag it out. Hopefully IBM will countersue them into oblivion.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I think you read the parent wrong.
He states that the comments don't get compiled into the binary, thus SCO can add comments from and still produce binaries with the same md5 signature as their offical release.
If they added code rather then comments, the md5 signature would be different.
You made an honest mistake. To properly understand this message you must make sure to wear your tin foil hat.
He is levitated by his own sense of arrogance.
There is so much of this rubbish going on these days that I can't help but wonder whether any company has sued its lawyers after being driven in a particularly unfortunate direction by their legal advice.
Sure, lawyers will always claim the defense that they merely offer advice and that the company directors bear the full responsibility for having accepted it. But that's fundamentally dishonest for a professional. It's like saying that an engineer or architect can design a bridge or a building and that it's the responsibility of the builders to ensure that it was a safe design. No, people rarely have expertise in multiple professions, and that is why they hire professionals to do what they would do only poorly by themselves. And with the authority and control that this gives the professional must come also some consequent responsibility. You cannot expect the hirer to bear that responsibility, he doesn't have the competence in the domain for which he has hired the professional, by definition.
So, all these hundreds or thousands of lawyer types that are advising (presumably) their company directors to perform legal-type actions despite the bad consequences that outsiders like ourselves can easily see forthcoming, are they ever suffering the consequences of their bad advice?
There is a conflict of interest issue here as well, since any litigation plays into the hands and pockets of the legal profession, but that's a more complex subject and it's not the one I'm referring to above.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
>"USL's current version of UNIX, SVR4, melds the most popular variations of Unix into a single operating system "that meets the needs described by various standards committees and vendor organizations." [snip] As aresult, approximately 50% of USL's current SVR4 is comprised of BSD code."
I love this part (from the "AMICUS BRIEF BY DEFENDANT THE REGENTS")... 50% of it was BSD!
What about Skousen K Freds buy option on 45000 shares? Seems like a self-sacrifical "must do something to show belief in our futute"-move on his part. It is dated several days before the filing you mention though.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Kreskin is far too pre-occupied with the death of *BSD to bother about trivia such as SCO vs IBM. :p
A compiler is split into many phases the first of which is lexical analysis. During this phase all white space (spaces, new lines, tabs, etc) is removed as are any comments.
Comments and spacing in source code have no effect at all on the result of the compilation (the binary (or whatever) produced).
All computer programs contain short explanatory comments annotating the code in which they are embedded.
HA! All programs? Right... Haven't seen any "Must get this done, this weekend!" code, aparently.
> Comments and spacing in source code have no effect at all on the
> result of the compilation (the binary (or whatever) produced).
Unless, of course, they are multi-line comments and the binaries aren't stripped -- in which case, the line numbers would change.
Yeah, I know, it's minor, but comments *can* slightly affect a binary.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Don't buy SCO right now... You're wasting your money. sit back and wait until IBM beats them down a little in court. Their stock value will drop significantly. That's the time to buy!
If you go to the comments bit of the original ZDNet article (from August '02), you get lots of people saying how "sound" Caldera/SCO is.
/ it updatetb.tpt/@thread@8089@forward@1@D-,D@ALL/@arti cle@8089?EXP=ALL&VWM=hr&ROS=1&
/ it updatetb.tpt/@thread@8256@forward@1@D-,D@ALL/@arti cle@8256?EXP=ALL&VWM=hr&ROS=1
Viz:
http://forums.zdnet.com/group/zd.Tech.Update/it
http://forums.zdnet.com/group/zd.Tech.Update/it
You also get Darl McBride saying that United Linux is sometimes the best solution. Ahhh, how times change...
Enjoy,
Robert
--- My dad's political betting
In November, 1994 I was a plaintiff's expert witness in the
.... essentially putting
case of Automated Securities Clearance(ASC) vs. Securities Application
Applications (SAI), Inc. We (ASC) contended that SAI had misappropriated
trade secrets by taking source code of the popular BRASS Nasdaq trading
system and developing a competing product.
By examining the source code of the 2 systems, I was able to find
a very small amount (several hundred lines out of about 500,000) of
identical code, some with identical comments, formatting, etc.
However, in our case, we successfully argued that this small amount wasn't
the extent of the damage, rather it was the dna fingerprint that
proved that the original BRASS code was used as a "reference" for
the competing product -- and that the extent of the misappropriation
was well beyond the actual duplicate lines shown as evidence (especially
since the identical lines were at a low-level infrastructure layer
which we argued was necessary for anything else to work...)
The judge agreed -- imposing an injunction on SAI, and as punitive
damages imposing an additional injunction
SAI out of business. The case isn't 100% relevant given some pretty
bad conduct of the SAI folks (ex-ASC employees) and the judge's finding
that they had been "disingenuous" on the stand, but it does provide some
precendent for small amounts of code being used to 'prove' a larger
infringement.
In particular, the judge found that identical comments do have value --
representing 'trial and error', evolution, or labor that went into the
original and that was used to advantage by the copier. This holds
true even for copied 'dead code' that is never even executed.
IANAL, but those interested should consult the records of the
Superior Court of NJ, Chancery Division, Hudson County, Docket # C-28-94.
In a strange coincidence, the lawyers for the defendant (SAI) were
"Crummy, Del Deo, Dolan...." -- the same firm that was on the other side
for the USL vs. BSDI case (I just noticed from Dennis Ritchie's links...)
~
Comments and spacing in source code have no effect at all on the result of the compilation (the binary (or whatever) produced).
That was pretty much my point.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my explanation, because you're the second person to say this.
SCO has publically available binaries for each release ("publically" meaning that it's been released to their customers.)
Theoretically, you can check to see if the code has been modified by compiling it (with the same options, etc.) If the resulting binary matches the one that's publically available, then the code hasn't been modified, which provides a method of dating the code - if the binary was released in (say) 1990, then the code that produced that binary would have to have been written before then.
The exception to this is the comments, which get thrown away during a compile - so (for example), SCO could take comments from Linux, insert them into their 1990 codebase, and then run the above test, and be able to "prove" that the code was copied from Linux (and 'why would someone copy just the comments into Linux, but not the actual code?')
Assuming SCO is making this all up, this would explain why SCO is focusing so much effort on the comments - they're a "smoking gun".. it would also explain them requiring NDAs to view the code - if it was publically available, then anyone who was actually a kernel developer would be able to see through the ruse immediately.
Comments and spacing in source code have no effect at all on the result of the compilation (the binary (or whatever) produced).
THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT!!!!!
They could take comments from Linux and put them in their source code and it wouldn't affect the binary at all, but it would result in compelling evidence of code copying.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
As an aside, read the book "The New New Thing" all about Jim Clarke, founder of SGI, Netscape, etc, and how he got the whole Netscape trial rolling.
And then THEY ruined EVERYTHING. I'd seen them before... releasing the code to cscope... contributing the occasional header file... SCO... the scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal, if only you could stop tounging it. If I had a tumor I'd name it SCO. One day, between browsing Slashdot and coding some bit of C++ cleverness, I was going to just grab that bitch SCO and say "SCO you tourist! I NEED this! Now get the hell out!"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
50% of SVR4 was BSD! That's great news for SCO.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Dollar has been down the past couple of months.
"MozillaQuest Magazine: Does the C++ that currently is included
in most if not all Linux distributions contain SCO IP?"
What is this convulted nonsense: "the C++"?
Read the interview.
The interviewer has either intentionally or out of astounding ignorance introduced in the first question the terms, "a C++" and "the C++" to refer to C++ compilers.
If I thought this level of intentional deception possible in a publication, I would say that the interviewer is using this convulted terminology to try to make it appear as though SCO is claiming to own the C++ language.
The SCO representative did not introduce the terms, "a C++" and "the C++". The SCO representative is simply following along with the terminology introduced by the interviewer. The SCO representative is kind enough not to inform the interviewer of the mistake, as he can easily enough understand what seems to be meant: a C++ compiler.
Do you honestly think that SCO is claiming that they frequently have customers license the C++ language from them? Of course not, that's positively ludicrous.
What is being referred to is a C++ compiler.
Doesn't matter...SCO released the SysV code themselves. IIRC, it was being distributed on their website as a 'historical chronicle' of the Unix codebase.
I've been reading the posts and releases,
and laughed a lot of good laughs at SCOs expense,
but I haven't seen a single peep out of the GNU
people (yes, there was that EFF note), but where
is Mr. Richard Stallman in all this?
I dunno about the rest of you, but I personally would love to see him weigh in on this,
He'd eat SCO for breakfast...
It amuses me that some of the lawers in the case had names like Crummy and Roach.
heh. How appropriate.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Doesn't that sound like a judge's opinion on limits to the definition of "derivative works"? This comes from the 930303.ruling page in the 3rd to last paragraph Too bad that document isn't the final ruling.
Anthony
sco == the sound a gay man makes when he is choking on a large cock
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sco-statement.html
With software patents and international copyright law as it stands, would it even matter if SCO managed to win a suit agianst IBM for IBM's own code ( and then claim ownership of all modern operating systems including *BSDs )?
I don't think anyone outside the US would follow along, since it would be sucide.
The US legal system is quickly tying everyone's hands in the US, only after several companies are ruined will they think about changes in law.
Oddly all our software will be written in India and the like anyhow even if you push Microsoft products, so how long until someone from outside the US takes the new tech crown and a few coders from outside control all the desktop code in the US? At least with Linux you get the source.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sco-statement.html
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.