Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Community Approaches SCO
An anonymous reader writes "eWeek has an article about the open source community approaching SCO. SCO now says there are over a million lines of offending code in Linux and they still won't show them to anybody."
but they're still bluring out other parts
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5065286.html
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
~4.4 million. They're saying at least 1/4 of the code is Unix System V. Yeah, whatever.
My journal has hot
Google does. According to this site:
Linux 2.5.37 (Sep 2002) is 5100081 lines of code, 152 MB.
So according to SCO, almost 20% of Linux is copied directly from their code. I can't believe they're even seriously trying any more, what with this and their blatant misreading of copyright law claiming that licenses allowing multiple copies to be made are invalid.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
According to here:
Linux 0.01 (Sep 1991) is 10239 lines of code, 0.2 MB.
Linux 0.10 (Dec 1991) is 17750 lines of code, 0.4 MB.
Linux 0.99 (Dec 1992) is 81091 lines of code, 2.2 MB.
Linux 1.0.0 (Mar 1994) is 176250 lines of code, 4.7 MB.
Linux 1.2.0 (Mar 1995) is 310950 lines of code, 8.4 MB.
Linux 2.0.0 (Jun 1996) is 777956 lines of code, 22 MB.
Linux 2.2.0 (Jan 1999) is 1800847 lines of code, 52 MB.
Linux 2.4.0 (Jan 2001) is 3377902 lines of code, 100 MB.
Linux 2.5.37 (Sep 2002) is 5100081 lines of code, 152 MB.
As of 2.4 it looks like there were approximately 3.4 Million lines of code in the kernel See Here.
So roughly 1/3 of linux is directly copied from unix? Gimme a break.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
We've been discussing this on the gentoo forums just now, and we've found that:
1) Their example is from the IA64 port of linux 2.4 (its not in 2.6)
2) Their example can be traced back to 2.11BSD
3) The greek in the sco code is actually english, with the font changed to english (Stupid obfucation attempt) heres what it says:
"As part of the kernel evolution towards modular naming, the functions malloc and mfree are being renamed to rmalloc and rmfree. Compatibility will be maintained by the following assembler code: (also see mfree/rmfree below)"
We're still discussing it on the gentoo forums here
"But the open-source and Linux community also needs to be reasonable, so while we feel the evidence overwhelmingly supports our stance that Linux is not an unauthorized derivative of Unix, we want to be able to look at the offending code without prejudicing our future careers and so that we can remove any offending code, even if that is a million lines," Jeff Gerhardt, an active member of the community told eWEEK on Monday.
Seems to me that it wasn't SCO making the claim of a million lines but Gerhardt making a statement, and he is from the other side of the tracks, with the open source/Linux community. Someone needs to read the article that they are linking to before posting it for us to tear apart!
This is from a heise.de article .
Two slides show some code (1 2)
that may come from Fifth Edition UNIX.
Clickable links
Heise News shows the code:
The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
Does this code come from: Here (V5) or Here (V7)?
"There are approximately 30 million lines of code in the kernel:" *bzzt* wrong. The dwheeler article line count is of RedHat 7.1, not the kernel.
Meanwhile, over at news.com they are reporting more announcements from the conference:
"The SCO Forum crowd applauded when SCO executives announced that an upcoming version of its OpenServer--code-named Legend--will support the latest releases of Java; include new hardware support, such as universal serial bus (USB) printer drivers; contain expanded security features; and provide better compatibility with Microsoft Windows through version 3 of Samba, which is developed by an open-source group. The OpenServer update is scheduled to debut in the fourth quarter of next year."
So we can safely assume that none of the infringing lines of code come from the (working for years now) USB, Samba or Java support. My goodness I'd forgotten just how monumentally useless SCO Unix is.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I wonder, isn't there some requirement for a plaintiff to try to resolve a dispute *before* going to the courts? By refusing to let the kernel developers fix the kernel, they're insisting on the infringement rather than trying to fix it.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
no they seem to think that they can agree to the GPL but not be bound to it because it is 'invalid' and is overruled by federal law which prohibits making copies of software.
SCO is double plus ungood!
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
Well, if you look at the freely available and downloadable code for Unix System III, which I nabbed a while back, you can see this code for malloc:
malloc(mp, size)
struct map *mp;
{
register unsigned int a;
register struct map *bp;
for (bp=mp; bp->m_size; bp++) {
if (bp->m_size >= size) {
a = bp->m_addr;
bp->m_addr += size;
if ((bp->m_size -= size) == 0) {
do {
bp++;
(bp-1)->m_addr = bp->m_addr;
} while ((bp-1)->m_size = bp->m_size);
}
return(a);
}
}
return(0);
}
I'm sure this code is included in every Unix internals textbook ever made. I bet you if you grab one of the BSD's malloc.c file, it will look at lot like this too. How many ways can you implement malloc?!
-- Jason
A quick check in my 2nd ed of k & R show something very similiar in there too.
This isn't surprising. We're discussing a simple allocator after all - a pretty fundemental algorithm in all of comp sci.
Indeed you might even /copy/ this code if you had a version (license allowing) lying around as that one is already debugged, and even if you don't your debugged version is going to turn out within the level of differences discussed here.
hell this code prolly appears in many compsci students lecture notes as well
Master of Peng Shui.Ancient oriental art of Penguin Arranging)
The license of the Unix archive (issued by Caldera) is BSD'ish. (See here to see to which files this license applies.)
So they claim Linux violates an open-source license, which by their claims is invalid (by the same argument that renders the GPL invalid)? Now that's a great strategy.
I also doubt that this malloc code is copyrightable, given that it's supposedly in any book which contains the UNIX source.
I am not saying the above strategy is correct.
I do not think invalidating the GPL would make the owners lose copyright. I think this is a very dumb strategy, and don't see how it could work.
This was one of IBM's points in their countersuit; by failing to provide clear notification of the infringement, SCO has made it impossible to correct, and thus shares the blame for its ongoing use. This is a well-established principle in copyright law.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-0
The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:a tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v2.4/p
Does this code come from:l loc.c.html l loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ken/ma
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/ma
Plus...
For version referencing, look here
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
It would seem that Mark Heise is talking out of his backside again. This article, a fascinating read, quotes Eben Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia University as saying:Read the article, it's quite an eye opener.
Macka
Bruce Perens pointed out over at lwn.net that Caldera put this particular code under a BSD license in 2000.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Please write to whoever owns BSDI now and encourage them to sue SCO for violation of licensing terms. This code was stolen long before the advertising clause was removed, and it seems likely that this violates the terms of the USL/BSDI settlement....
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.