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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
IANAL, but is USL SOL if SCO says BFD about IBM's IP?
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 ...
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
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.
Not the same SCO, but it's pretty much the same SCO UNIX. (Meaning OpenServer/XENIX, not the UnixWare that the lawsuit revolves around.)
BTW, Linux also has a "SCO binary emulation mode" called iBCS or (confusingly) LinuxABI.
C. IBM buys Sun Micro with Java and it's "unlimited" UNIX licence. Problem solved.
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.
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He grinned and said, "The chaos is the best part!"
Know what? He was right.
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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.
>"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!
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.