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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."
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
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.
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 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
Shouldn't someone make a claim that SCO could never have been able to make their linux compatibility mode without including Linux IP?
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.
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.
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
From SCO's S-3 filing (whatever that is). I find it quite funny.
Unintended consequences of our assertion of intellectual property may adversely affect our business.
On March 6, 2003, we filed a complaint against IBM alleging breach of contract, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, and unfair competition. The complaint alleges that IBM improperly used and disclosed UNIX source code and methods in connection with its efforts to promote the free Linux operating system. The complaint seeks damages in excess of $1 billion dollars.
As a result of such activity, we provided IBM notice that its UNIX System V Release 3.2 source code agreement and license were terminated, and that it no longer had the legal right to use the UNIX System V source code. The UNIX System V source code is the underlying code base for IBM's AIX software product.
In addition, we have publicly, and in individual letters to 1,500 large corporations, cautioned users of Linux that there are unresolved intellectual property issues surrounding Linux that may expose them to unanticipated liability. As a result of these concerns, we suspended our sales of Linux products and have terminated IBM's license.
Pursuit of the litigation against IBM and, potentially, others will be costly, and we expect our costs for legal fees could be substantial. In addition, we may experience a decrease in revenue as a result of the loss of sales of Linux products and initiatives previously undertaken jointly with IBM and others affiliated with IBM. We anticipate that participants in the Linux industry will seek to influence participants in the markets in which we sell our products to reduce or eliminate the amount of our products and services that they purchase. There is also a risk that the assertion of our intellectual property rights will be negatively viewed by participants in our marketplace and we may lose support from such participants. Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our position in the marketplace and our results of operations.
>"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!
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.
Also in your case what was the product? In this case the product is a UNIX like system or UNIX. Linux is a UNIX like system. So is BSD. So does this mean that BSD and Linux would have never existed without the existance of UNIX? Possibly. However UNIX is based on some open standards, POSIX is one. So if someone creates and OS that use / and compiles with POSIX standards and has a C compiler is it UNIX?
Basically what this boils down to is what is UNIX? Is reverse enginerring a product a dervived work of that product?
Linux is a UNIX Like OS that complies with many standards that make up UNIX. The issue with Linux is which way did the copying occur? Linux -> SCO or SCO -> Linux or BOTH.
I think that while SCO was Caldera the copying went BOTH ways. So what Linux needs to do is find the code that Caldera contributed to Linux and start there to see if that could be the possible area of contention.
Also something to note, is that in the BSD case the header files and interfaces seemed to be okay that they were the same. Could this be the case in Linux?
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