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FSF, GCC, and SCO Compiler Support
Ancipital was one of several who noted that a
special patch is going into GCC. The file is README.SCO, and it is a short writeup about the SCO situation written by the FSF. It stops short of demanding that GCC developers strip SCO support from the compiler, and says more will be announced before the next compiler release.
They should have just removed the support. I don't see how it would harm normal people, as they can keep on using older compilers.
Anyway, this is the right direction. I just hope projects can strip out SCO support without breaking much good code.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Of course, the output of this compiler is not executable code. It produces lawsuits instead.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
SCO don't care about GCC support of their OS, they do not are a software company anymore but a litigation company.
Stripping SCO support from GCC will only harm SCO's old customers who don't have anything to do with SCO evil.
it threatens to remove support for SCO Unix, then says it won't.
what's the point?
shameless karma plug for the coward:
The FSF has asked me to check in this file on both the branch and the
mainline.
Please direct any questions or comments to the FSF.
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark@codesourcery.com
2003-08-03 Mark Mitchell
* README.SCO: New file.
===
As all users of GCC will know, SCO has recently made claims concerning
alleged copyright infringement by recent versions of the operating
system kernel called Linux. SCO has made irresponsible public
statements about this supposed copyright infringement without
releasing any evidence of the infringement, and has demanded that
users of Linux, the kernel most often used with the GNU system, pay
for a license. This license is incompatible with the GPL, and in the
opinion of the Free Software Foundation such a demand unquestionably
violates the GNU General Public License under which the kernel is
distributed.
We have been urged to drop support for SCO Unix from this release of
GCC, as a protest against this irresponsible aggression against free
software and GNU/Linux. However, the direct effect of this action
would fall on users of GCC rather than on SCO. For the moment, we
have decided not to take that action. The Free Software Foundation's
overriding goal is to protect the freedom of the free software
community, including developers and users, but we also want to serve
users. Protecting the community from an attack sometimes requires
steps that will inconvenience some in the community. Such a step is
not yet necessary, in our view, but we cannot indefinitely continue to
ignore the aggression against our community taken by a party that has
long profited from the commercial distribution of our programs. We
urge users of SCO Unix to make clear to SCO their disapproval of the
company's aggression against the free software community. We will
have a further announcement concerning continuing support of SCO Unix
by GCC before our next release.
...all programs compiled with the -sco flag will now start with a nag screen urging you to pay $699 to legalize your software?
The only thing better than stripping out the support would be generating code that would execute slightly wrongly when run on an SCO OS. Adjusting small decimal numbers just a bit, corrupting a database here and there... every 3 years.
;-).
Talk about Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
I do not believe this is the right way to approach the issue. Let them work this ugly legalese - in courts. How are we any different from Microsoft, if we happen to "exclude" some support from projects because we do not like the receipient? I do not say "let's all develop code for SCO support", but please do not remove any *existing* code.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
The README suggests that removing support for SCO unix from GCC would hurt SCO's users, but not SCO. I disagree: If SCO's users can't develop software for their chosen platform anymore, then they will likely choose another platform, and SCO will be the one hurting in the end (which is the desired effect). Of course, there are other compilers out there, but the best ones are limited by platform (icc comes to mind) or can't very well just be a drop in replacement for gcc (everything else).
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Exactly that attitude is what the FSF had to have had when they decided to write this "patch" Let the Stone throwing begin. Everyone knows SCO is full of shit why cripple GCC's support for SCO's Unix just because it can be done? Is this going to become a standard practice you done did us wrong now its your turn?
There is no reason to continue to support SCO. In fact, I think this action is immediately necessary to let potential licensees of SCO know that they will NOT have a free compiler if they buy SCO/Unix.
There is no reason not to defend the free software community against the illegal actions of SCO. This aggression will not stand.
SCO has profiteered off of the goodwill and charity of millions of programmers across the world. How are they repaying you? By suing you into oblivion and STEALING your code!
This is not the time to be benevolent and charitable. This is the time to be assertive and not let them bully you around.
I strongly urge the likes of the FSF and RedHat, who has already established a legal "defense" fund to also establish a legal "offense" fund and start fighing SCO for violating the GPL and the Copyrights of every developer that had their code distributed by SCO in violation of the GPL.
Everyone is so worried that the GPL won't hold water in court. If you're so worried, than it won't. The time to test the GPL is NOW, so that any weaknesses can be found and corrected.
SCO needs to be taken seriously no matter how irrational or stupid their claims become. Remember that the people they pack juries with are usually just as stupid and irrational.
Might cause SCO's clients to put some pressure on them in regards to the current action SCO is taking...
- 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
- 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
Does this mean the FSF is no longer open source compatible? For the knee-jerkers out there, this is not a troll, it is a serious question. The issue is that Free software should be free, warts and all. Unintended consequences aside, you can't just remove the right to use GCC of any organisation that uses SCO software, it's not right....The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Instead of striving for the best possible compiler and tools for the open source community, it's better to engage in a pissing match with SCO? Wouldn't it, perhaps, be better just to keep things moving forward?
We must take the higher ground and turn the other cheek, lest we threaten the very trust upon which Open Source is built.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Why is it an achievement to "cripple... ...the BSDs"? Not that they have been. And when was windows crippled? Is this a magical post sent back from the future to save mankind?
Do like for your neighbor's dog to come over and crap in your yard? If you let it go every day for a week and they try make it stop, you will have a tough job. If the first dog feels free to come over and poop away, then other dogs will start to feel that they also have the right to use your yard as their own personal pooping grounds. How long before you can't freely use your own yard because it is like a mine field?
You wait just as long as you like to speak up about what SCO is pulling, but shut the fuck up about people that know they need to speak up now to protect their rights.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
But GCC shouldn't remove SCO support for reasons of pique or spite. As other posters have said, it won't hurt SCO one bit, but to do so would make GCC, FSF, and the entire free/open software community look petty, and perhaps untrustworthy. GNU software has a long history of running on unsupportive or openly hostile platforms (i.e. windows) and its continuing to do so gives users of those platforms an incremental upgrade-path to freedom. Any action like this, however justified it might feel, would do much more to harm innocent SCO customers and the entire free software community's reputation.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
this README dosnt say to strip support at all.. it just says its been urged.. and as such the README states this will only effect the end users not SCO..
moo
Yeah, but I'm not so sure that SCO actually want customers anymore. They know that their market share is falling, acting the bully isn't going to change that. I reckon all this lawsuit stuff is just their dying throes, in which case hurting SCO users won't really have any impact on SCO.
gcc is still Open Source. They would not be placing any additional restrictions on the use of gcc, so anybody could create a patch for gcc to make it work again. They would simply be choosing to remove support for SCO Unix from the mainline gcc source, so it would no longer work "out of the box". Besides, they havent actually removed support yet, though they have hinted they may do in the future if SCO continues its behaviour.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Your problem is with the officials, not the inhabitants. All you would achieve is to turn sympathetic users of GCC into your sworn enemy. At what gain?
Many companies use proprietary technology. Some misappropriate Free Software, others allow it to mingle with their own. When a misappropriation takes place, our action need to be litigation, not misguided populist sentiment.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
This goes against what I believed was the reason for gcc in the first place: choice. This is a standard Micro$oft strategy, keeping developers locked by limiting choice. Even despite SCO's evilness, why punish developers/users who are innocent?
It also kinda plays into SCO's hands, i.e. if they were smart enough they could market their own compiler with plenty of "useful", platform specfic features... But I suppose they'd have to prove their OS worth first.
What's next no support for Windoze, because MS believe Open Source is un-American?
"Ceilean Súil an ní ná feiceann..."
Saying that we are going to waste time removing support that already exists because we do not like what SCO has done would look childish to many observers. The message seems like 'you cannot play with us any more'. It would not disturb SCO in the slightest, as any customer crazy enough to buy a SCO license (or SCO maintenance contract) now would not be deterred by the fact that they cannot use leading edge features of the GCC compiler. All it would do is make FSF look unprofessional.
SCOs customers are a miniscule source of profit anyway. Their customer base is tiny and shrinking. No one with half a brain has bought it in years, there install base is mostly very old installations that are only there because no one wants to break a working system.
Trying to coerce people like that usually backfires. The people still using SCO, all 10 of them, are already working on installing Linux or *BSD instead. No need to antagonise them. They didn't file the lawsuits, and they didn't buy from the company calling itself SCO in the first place anyway - they bought from what is now Tarantella and while you might not like old SCO either, they're certainly on a different plane from Darl & Co.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Suck it up and remember we are Ghandi here, not Hitler.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Well that depends on whether or not SCO's operating systems are a part of their business plan any more. A lot of people would argue that they are just a lawsuit company now.
There's a big problem with this proposed action though. What message does it send to people who happen to be using SCO, and decided upon Free Software (GCC) for their compiler? Essentially, they are getting the message "you are using an operating system we don't like, so we'll leave you high and dry". It's Free Software, so it's not as bad as when a proprietary vendor drops support, but it's still a big business risk.
We don't want to give the impression that you can't depend on Free Software unless you buy into the whole philosophy and only use FSF-approved operating systems. I think they have done the right thing by making a public issue out of this before actually doing anything, it lets people plan ahead in case this goes ahead, and it gives end-users a chance to talk to SCO about it (if they aren't already).
Depends on what you mean by use. Anyone can use it 'binary only run only' like SCO is claiming to license. However, modifying and distributing are different situations. Since SCO is openly in breach of the GPL, they have long since lost all legal right to do that. As I understand their products contain substantial cut and pastes from GPL sources particularly in the Linux compatibility sections, they can and should be sued for that.
They can still 'look at' GPL code, but if they copy it they're violating copyright.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So, should they remove support for Windows as well? I don't think so. Let's behave like adults here, not like SCO!
did the submitter even read the README?? it says no such thing, and i quote:
If you are really intent on developing code for the SCO platform, you probably have already shelled out the money for a true developers license. This includes cc making gcc unnecessary.
You raised a valid point, which can be very easily refutted: The GPL is what guarantees non-discrimination; that means, any recipient of the SW can do anything they want with it (as long as they comply with the distribution terms), including adding SCO support. The fact that the developpers and maintainers of GCC remove SCO support does not in any way limit the freedom of any group. If SCO zealots want GCC to support it, they can keep a branch for that purpose. That will not be the official GCC version, but they can do it nevertheless. They will have to publish the changes if they want to distribute the version, though. This is the same problem arising when your SW is used for purposes which you do not desire (terrorism comes to my mind). Although you are not allowed - under the terms of the the GPL - to forbid the use of your SW for a specific purpose, this does of course not imply that you have to actively provide support for terrorists. If they want your SW to do specific things, they will have to fork. To avoid trolling: and then justice comes to put those in persons in prision.
Any chance we can stop giving this corporate protection racket so much free publicity?
You know you can NOT click on the article? If it bothers you so much, why not disable the Caldera/SCO topic from your preferences? Heck, how was your thinking process? "Lets click in this story that disgustes me so much, scroll dow, hit reply, write a troll comment about how sick are we with this SCO news thing".
Speak for yourself, I for one am grateful with the following Slashdot is doing to this case. Some of us (and our families) LIVE out of linux, and you can always NOT click the link and go read another story.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
You should look at this bug which was filed, PR11842.
People calm down, this is not really big news as FSF has done this before with Apple and other people so this should have not come as a big surprise.
If you have nothing left to lose, and are considering suicide or something similar, why not do the world a favour: kill Darl McBride, while you're at it. Come on, most of us on Slashdot are pathetic human beings, there has to be someone ready to die. Why not bring an evil fucker with you?
The removal of support for SCO Unix in GCC may indeed hurt its end users and developers to a greater extent than SCO itself, but, isn't it already common practise to remove deprecated/obsolete systems (I noticed they just removed a pile of old CPU architectures in the previous release). I don't think anybody will argue that the future prospects of the SCO Unix operating system are looking rosey at the moment. Indeed, in a few months, it maybe along side those old CPU's in the annals of computing history.
Furthermore, the process of eliminating support in future versions of gcc, does not detract from the fact that current versions *do* support SCO Unix. As such, couldn't current SCO Unix users simply use the older versions in any case?
I'm all for the impartiallity in the development of software as important and necessary as the open source compiler, however, there is a point where we, as a community, must take the stand. There is an acute difference between impartiallity in our work, and allowing those whom wish to assimilate it, walking all over us.
The availability of GCC and other free software on OpenServer and UnixWare may make it easier to eventually migrate off of those platforms. If a user has a compiler, he can build Apache, MySQL, and PHP, in preparation to migrate from SCAMP to LAMP.
As tempting as it is to excommunicate a platform for political reasons, it's a bad idea. OpenServer and UnixWare support may eventually die due to bit rot, but don't remove it out of spite.
It stops short of demanding that GCC developers strip SCO support from the compiler
It does nothing of the kind. It merely states that they have been urged (by whom?) to drop SCO support, but they have decided not to for the time being. And, if you ask me, they never will, because that would be the exact opposite to what the FSF fights for. But they could have been a bit more diplomatic about it in my opinion... Most people should be able to see the obvious.
Cig? No, thank you.
For a long time, Stallman strongly urged everyone not to develop to Apple's platform either, because of the GUI lawsuits against Microsoft. It was a pretty effective campagin IIRC; for a long time it was nigh unto impossible to find emacs for the Mac and I'm sure that discouraged a lot of developers from going to the platform.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The FSF used to boycott Apple in exactly the same way they have now decided not to boycott SCO, namely by removing (or refusing to add) explicit support for Apple configurations from their software.
The Apple boycott was motivated by Apple's "look and feel" lawsuit against HP. If look and feel was copyrightable, the GNU projeect itself was threatened since GNU very much look and feel like Unix.
Evcantually, the FSF dropped the boycott with the reason that it was not effective, the Apple management didn't care if they even knew about it.
I believe the same reason will apply to SCO, their management no longer have any interest in their own products, they are solely a litigation company these days.
I consider boycotts a legitime weapon, despite that it also hits innocents. Nobody have a moral obbligation to buy or support anything. However, such weapons should only be used when they are effective.
don't worry if it's cubs will go hungry.
This is a life and death battle. If you don't fight, there's a slim chance that some moron judge will side the wrong way.
SCO has the audacity to attack linux, and hence, Free Software. How many GCC developers run linux? How many of us do?
I'm completely looking forward to the linux revolution that's creeping in. This is our chance to prove how strong free sofware really is. We can't seem meek, because if we do, and just barely squeak by SCO, microsoft or someone else with a bag of cash is gonna crush us. We gotta give everything we got.
It's sorta like a prison movie. Either kick someone's ass the first day or become someone's bitch.
We need to pull out all the stops. No survivors. lay them of them to the man. cut up their credit cards. Throw the board of directors in the electric chair. If we hold back, there will be dire concequences.
Unfortunately all of my software is pretty simple, and there's no way of removing support for SCO since there's none to begin with.
Yes, This will hurt SCO users, but then again, they can always complain to SCO and notice that SCO doesn't give a damn about them. Perhaps they'll consider moving to another platform.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Every argument here thus far has been either to strip the SCO support, or not to. Mostly as a symbolic gesture, but have all of you forgotten how open source works? Even if you do strip SCO support, they (SCO, people compiling under SCO, etc ...) can readily use their old versions of GCC, and even put SCO support back into newer versions and create a different branch.
Quite honestly, I don't see where the harm comes into play, other than this being a symbolic gesture.
--LordKaT
Hi all,
I work for one of those unfortunate companies that are still using SCO OpenServer. I really hope the GCC team does not do something so petty as dropping support for SCO.
Being able to use GCC to compile such things as bash and GNU tar is the only thing that makes SCO liveable, and we are stuck on SCO for at least another 2 - 5 years.
Due to our legacy code base, it would be prohibitively costly to move off of SCO at this time, though we are working on purchasing new software that will allow us to get off of SCO, and have been since even before SCO went ballistic.
--LeBleu
If you're reading this you're part of the mass hallucination that is Kevin the Blue.
If you look at GCC's MAINTAINERS file you will see that SCO's Kean Johnston is the OS port maintainer for SCO's platforms. If you search through gcc-patches, you will see that he still is actively contributing, using his @sco.com address. So they seem to allow this to happen.
FSF did boycot Apple A/UX back when Apple and Microsoft was fighting in courts about look & feel.
This made life as an A/UX admin much more difficult. Not that GNU software didn't run, they did, but you had to port it yourself.
I think this actually contributed to Apples decision to discontinue A/UX. Other reasons for the decision was that Apple had its focus elsewhere. Just like SCO have changed focus to become a litegation company instead of a software house.
I'd say don't just drop support in gcc. Drop it in the entire product line.(emacs, autoconf,...) After all it is free software and SCO users can port it if they like.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
In the first seconds of reading the readme.sco-file I thought all this would be given up by the FSF for a revenge on sco. To make it clear: I do not like what sco does there with all the PI-issues but would this be a reason to give up main principles of the open source community just for a "REVENGE"?
I'm very glad that it did not happen...
Love, Gery
The answer is yes, me.
.... that users of SCO products shouldn't be deprived the right to use things like GCC. It's not the person at the sharp end (e.g. fellow geeks, techs, developers) that would suffer NOT SCO.
What _may_ be affective (if its possible) is to, for the time being initially, revoke the GCC licence for use of SCO - so SCO cannot package it up on their systems (nor use it inside SCO to copmile products - i.e. stopping development at SCO until a new "GCC" style compiler has been written that _DOESN'T_ use FSF/GCC code), but allow individuals to do this.
Also, if SCO release ANY product, state that they _must_ be using copyrighted code illegally, and report them to the appropraite people and then, possibly, sue them!
Might have an effect.
JaJ
If you get rid of GCC on SCO, then you get rid of a cross platform migration utility.
:).
Oh, and I'm forced to use SCO at work because of a ton of legacy code and proprietary applications that SA refuses to port. We hate it, but what are you going to do? The cogs grind slowly
This will surely piss off all three SCO users.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
GCC is not the licence. GCC doesn't work on my ZX81, but that doesn't make the GPL discriminatory.
I see no reason the community should continue to support the company that is trying to destroy that community. Under the GPL SCO can continue to support a branch of GCC that works on SCO Unix; the difference is that they are doing the porting work instead of the community.
Agreed, this will affect users of SCO Unix. But only for code that is dependent on future releases of GCC, because all current GCC releases with SCO support will still be usable. That means nobody's software that is working today will suddenly stop working today. No planes will fall out of the sky, and the world won't implode. But if the next release of SCO SomethingWare needs GCC 3.(next release, whatever that is), then SCO are going to have to add compiler support in themselves, or make sure it works with GCC 3.(current release, with SCO support).
Quick, how many FSF programs run on pre-OS-10 MacOS? Think about how long it would take to implement a Cygwin-like Unix compatibility layer for the Mac before you answer that question.
Such a compatibility layer has existed for a number of years- you can even run X11 apps. It is called MachTen. With it, one can run almost any FSF program, although I'm sure there are some which need a bit of fixing- be it Makefile tweakage or something a little more.
Other than that, a handful of FSF programs have been ported to Mac OS. Most hadn't been needed, considering the fact that Mac OS classic had a wealth of decent applications for it covering the same functionality, although with a different interface. There is functionality on either side with no equivalent, that goes without saying.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Political Reasons Is the source code an appropriate place to put a short, relevant political statement? My answer to that is YES. We're not talking about a manifesto here. This is a short relevant statement that becomes part of the "history" of GNU. Good place for it.
Discontinuing SCO support--Why do it?
Legal Does including SCO support in gcc undermine the legal position of the gcc developers and users w.r.t. the SCO situation? (My guess is NO). And even if that was true, would acknowledging the fact there MIGHT be a legal issue further undermine that position? (Again, my guess is NO). Legal Reason: No
Logistical Does continuing to include SCO support in gcc cost an unacceptable amount of resources--(developers time)? I know that after SCO has pissed everyone off, some would say that "One second of developer's time is unacceptable." That's a different issue. We'll get to that farther down. My guess here is SCO support does not delay gcc releases a whole lot, but the developers can answer better. Logistical Reason: Probably Not
Design Do developers sit around saying "Dammit, if we didn't have to support SCO, gcc could be twenty percent faster/smaller and we could add all these features people have been wanting." My guess no, but again, ask the developers. Design Reason" Probably Not
Retribution Did SCO offend the community who has worked so hard to develop the GNU they use and (used to) distribute? Yes. Does that community now have the opportunity to abandon SCO (and all the users unfortunate enough to be dependant on SCO)? Yes. Is Retribution against SCO a valid reason for the gcc project to modify their code? Ask the developers. Only the people doing the work can say what they want their role in this community to be.
Social(Don't Tread On Me)--Would discontinuing support for SCO send a message: "If you stand before the community and falsely accuse and harass us, you should not expect the community to continue to support you. You are now outcast." Why would the developers care how they are perceived?
Explicitly Removing SCO support--Why not do it? IF it is a good idea to discontinue SCO support, why not remove it altogether? What's the cost?
Functionality--What does removing SCO support break?
Logistics--How much time and effort do the developers want to commit to excising this code?
Collateral Damage--Who else would be hurt by the gcc project's retribution against SCO?
Social(...thine Enemies)--Would the gcc developers be perceived as vindictive for removing SCO support? Why would the developers care how they are perceived? How would this affect future collaboration?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Godwin's Law
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
Linux and Stallman are staunch representatives of the freedom to code and share your code and have show this during many years with deeds, not words.
SCO, you know who they are, they are trying to hurt our freedom to code and share that code, with evil deeds, not only words.
Any contribution coming from anybody related to SCO should be seen with extreme paranoid suspicion and skepticism. This guy may be contributing on good faith, but the safety of GCC is owrth alienating one guy if you ask me.
You don't need to have contributed a single line of code to GCC in order to arrive to this conclussion.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is extremely simple. Don't wait, yank the code. SCO must and should be attacked simultaneously from all sides. It should be made extremely clear that their type of behavior will not be tolerated. What's more, the best part of this strategy is that it does in fact hurt what few SCO customers are actually left. Hopefully, they will also become a vocal weapon to berate SCO into submission and to end this rediculous lawsuit. If SCO users are not made to be responsible for the indecent actions of their software provider, there is no incentive to resolve this properly.
The reality is that SCO is now a criminal company by violating the GPL and the copyright of the thousands of developers who have written GPL'd code. Whether or not any SCO intellectual property was infringed remains to be seen, but what is certain, is that SCO is now infringing the intellectual property of the other 99.9% of the IP included in their SCO linux distribution by adding this rediculous SCO license on top. That's prohibited under the GPL. This is really more akin to a software license audit by Debian or OpenBSD. If SCO is not free, it should not be supported anywhere, period. Take it all out.
Having read the "README.SCO", I would take it more as a warning from the gcc folks to SCO that SCO's recent activities regarding licensing their IP supposedly contain in the Linux kernel is inconsistent with the GPL. What the free/open source software community lacks in high priced lawyers they can make up for by choosing to continue support for or not support commercial operating systems that are distributed by companies who violate the GPL.
I would hardly call this approach "against making money." If I violate Microsoft's license for any of their products (e.g., install a single copy of Windows on multiple systems), I should not be surprised if they withold support from me. The gcc folks are simply issuing a similar warning to SCO that the sense of the community is that SCO is violating the GPL and as a consequence, continued support for SCO products may be discontinued if they continue violating the GPL. This is probably more slack than they would get from a commercial software vendor had the violated the terms of the license.
Finally, both Linux and gcc are distributed under the terms of the GPL. If SCO sees fit to violate the GPL with regard to Linux, what is to say that they won't at some point in the future decide to violate the GPL with regard to gcc? As some of the other other posts have pointed out, if FSF decides to no longer support SCO OSes, SCO is free to continue to maintain their own branch of gcc *so long as they observe the GPL* with regard to how they distribute it. If this were to happen, I would be very surprised if SCO wouldn't pull the same stunt with regard to an SCO specific version of gcc (i.e., have a license for undisclosed SCO IP embedded in their binary only version of gcc).
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You would cutoff your nose despite your face... or something like that.
You gotta ask yourself, Who benefits by having free software written for a certain platform. I believe SCO does benefit by having GCC work on their platform, but, I believe when someone uses GCC on SCO free software benefits more.
It doesn't even directly insult SCO. It insults SCO users for deciding to use SCO. Those users may be trying to pick a side and now they have to choose from one side with questionable ethical practices and another side who insults them just for picking SCO in the first place. I'm not so sure I would pick either side (Linus anyone?)
Dave, I appreciate and agree with your opinion. I agree totally. But what I am trying to point is that the opinion of a few slashdotters, as informed as it may be, doesn't count for much when the Open Source Discussion is just about to be held in the Boardroom. Trust me, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. When you are in the Boardroom, these people will have 15 minutes to listen to your argument about why they should do Open Source. You do not want to have to spend 10 minutes explaining why GCC all of the sudden stopped working. They will simply buy an Intel compiler or *gasp* Visual Studio, and be done with all the hassle.
This is all about perception, not about who is right and who is wrong. Do you honestly believe that SCO think they are right? They are not stupid, they know the game and they are playing it well, so far. Now they are in the "we are getting greedy" phase, and it will be their undoing - can you say "Enron"?
In the meantime, these actions and shenanigans are not going to show corporate purchasers and architects, let alone corporate senior management, anything about the stability and availability of open source software. Available as in "Can I use it in my business".
It also sets a very bad precedent. What if Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds get into a seriously major spat over Linus' continued use of Bitkeeper? Or Richard Stallman and the rest of the world for referring to Linux instead of GNU/Linux. When is the next time he will pick up his toys and leave the playground? After all is said and done, I think this will prove to be detrimental to the overall Free software movement. As soon as people start talking about "a little bit of harm to some members of the community to protect everybody", as it says in README.SCO, my skin starts to crawl, and a very visceral urge to run and keep running comes screaming at me with 200 mph. This is how the wich burnings started, the pogroms, the holocaust. Just about every other bit of evil in the world was preceded by words to that effect.
Bottom line is that victimising unsuspecting, innocent SCO users for a small and essentially meaningless political gain (what is the net effect gain in the scheme of things?) is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It is the SCO users that stand to be hurt by this protest (for that is how this whole thing is labelled), not SCO itself.
And that is a stupid, shortsighted, self-serving, egotistical action.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Re: Deprecate dwarf and mdebug support, delete nlm?
Some facts:
SCO pays at least one employee to maintain gcc and gdb for SCO operating systems.
SCO's supported version of gcc is gcc 2. They are working on upgrading to gcc 3 but are not planning to support gcc until gcc 3.4.
SCO's gcc generates dwarf-1 debugging format (not dwarf-2). I've researched this, and the only dwarf-1 compilers I sighted were proprietary compilers from Diab and Absoft and the SCO version of gcc. All other versions of gcc in the field use other debugging formats now (dwarf-2 and stabs+, mostly).
My opinion: disengaging from SCO would hurt SCO's version of the gnu toolchain materially. Which would be good.
Because SCO has always been our enemy. Just like Iraq has always been our enemy, and Russia has always been our ally.
For those of you who have been reading your Corrected History books, pull your heads out of your ass and look at actual archives. The port maintainer in question has been contributing code for a long, long time. In good faith. With a smile, even. He has the same copyright assignment on file as the rest of the GCC contributors, which means SCO signed a disclaimer that they would not try to claim ownership of the code he contributes, just like every other software-related company whose employees contribute code to GCC.
Fortunately, nobody has to ask you, because you're wrong.
(People bitch and moan about GCC contributors being required to get assignments and disclaimers from their employer. This is one of the reasons why it's done. It's different from other open source projects, but /. has overlooked that fact)
No, but you do need to be completely ignorant of the rules by which GCC operates.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
SCO's opinion of the GPL:
... the FSF holds the copyright to my work.
... will indemnify FSF for all losses if the claim [of adverse ownership] is not spurious ...
From their filing of 2003-03-06:
"80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property."
SCO denies that any GPL software is the copyrighted property of anybody. This means that SCO denies that the Free Software Foundation owns the copyright to gcc.
That's SCO's interpretation of copyright law. You don't agree with it, and I don't agree with it, but in the hands of an expensive lawyer such as David Boies, it could cause a great deal of grief to the Free Software Foundation.
You think so, and I think so. SCO thinks that nobody holds this copyright. Which would leave the status of a copyright assignment in limbo.
Can you cite any recent public statement from a SCO officer that says otherwise?
As far as wanting help goes: my copyright assignment with the FSF says that I indemnify the FSF in case I contribute any code that contains other people's intellectual property.
Developer
I'm curious -- is that clause in your copyright assignment?
Which means, given SCO's litigious behavior, that I won't even be reading any contributions from any SCO employees in the future. I don't want to be the target of an SCO lawsuit.
Actually, I see the free software community handling this in an open, responsible and reasonable manner as being good for the the image of free software. README.SCO strikes a good ballance between those saying "cut 'em off" or "insert bugs" and those saying "do nothing." Doing nothing weakens the GPL. Taking rash action that harms SCO users would do exactly what you are suggesting would happen. Warning that there are consequences to violating the GPL is a reasonable middle ground.
On a different note...
This has already happened; you aparently missed it.They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
This is my enterpretation of the SCO corporate logo
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
You claim that the scope of this lawsuit is a dispute with IBM.
sCO has sent thousands of letters to Linux end users warning them of legal liability. SCO publicly stated that Linux cannot possibly work on enterprise systems without illegal code theft from SCO. And Darl McBride said last week: "What is at issue is more than SCO and Red Hat. What is at issue is intellectual property rights in the age of the Internet." (Conference Call, 2003-08-05).
So don't even try copping that "this is about IBM, why is the community so upset?" line. SCO says that it is about the community and attacks the community repeatedly in their conference calls and legal filings.