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."

Comments

Over 1,000

[Marx_Mrvelous]

Over 1 mil? Does anyone know how many lines of code there are in the linux kernel?

Re:Over 1,000

[Kewjoe]

it has 1,000,001

that 1 line that isn't offending is

# Made by Linus Torvald

Re:Over 1,000

[Surak]

~4.4 million. They're saying at least 1/4 of the code is Unix System V. Yeah, whatever.

Re:Over 1,000

[iapetus]

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.

Re:Over 1,000

[mopslik]

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.

Re:Over 1,000

[mordicus]

2.4.20 is roughly 3.5 million lines, although about 2.5 million lines of it is drivers. The SMP code (all platforms) seems to be ~15000 lines of which ~800000 lines is copied verbatim from sysV.

Re:Over 1,000

[R.Caley]

So according to SCO, almost 20% of Linux is copied directly from their code.

You have to remember that they reformatted it one character per line. They are claiming the whitespace.

Re:Over 1,000

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Well,

We at SCO have atomized our search further, and continue to be more suprised as we further this process.

I beleive these two fragments will be readily apparent to anyone, even slightly familiar with the "Linux" code:

strcpy

fprint

ifdef

I think you'l agree that there are a

• Million

of these things!

Re:Over 1,000

[Lord_Slepnir]

Here are the offending lines:

*/
/*
{
}
while(1)
else {
else
#include <stdio>
#include <iostream>
do
do {
return;

If you look at the source code, clearly almost 1/5th of the lines are comprised of these lines of their propriatary code. We must seriously take the effort to remove these lines and respect their hard work and contributions to linux.

Re:Over 1,000

[iainl]

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.

Re:Over 1,000

[FJ]

Perhaps a more informative estimate would be to take the difference in the number of lines in the 2.2 kernel vs the 2.4 kernel, since SCO claims 2.2 is fine but 2.4 has copied code.

3,377,902 (2.4) - 1,800,847 (2.2) = 1,577,055

In other words, SCO claims that 2/3 of the improvements in the 2.4 series kernel belong to them. That is a rather unrealistic statement since a lot of those enhancements didn't come from IBM.

Re:Over 1,000

[cshark]

Yes, but the funny part about what the said at the conference was how removing the lines of code won't solve the problem. I would like to see how they get that one past a judge. Chalk up another media fiasco point for our evil friends at Evil Inc, I mean SCO.

Re:Over 1,000

[the_pooh_experience]

Well according to this page, in Debian 2.2:

Linux kernel (2.2.19): 1,780,000 SLOC(Source Lines Of Code) (1,780,000). C amounts for 1,700,000 SLOC, Assembler for 65,000. The Linux 2.x kernels were the stable series at the time of the Debian 2.2 release.

This kernel was 2.2 and was in 2001. I also found that as of 2.4.0, there were about 3 million lines of code. A full 1/3 of the code is ripped from SCO? hmm.. I bet.

Re:Over 1,000

[GigsVT]

There are no where near 1 million lines of code in the kernel itself. I'm counting 680,000 in the 2.4.18 copy I have, excluding the drivers directory.

Re:Over 1,000

[wahgnube]

$CO: "Aha! Look at that jump in number of lines of code from 2.0.0 to 2.2.0"

Normal person: "Ok, so?"

$CO: "Approximately 800 thousand lines becoming 1 million 800 thousand?"

$CO Lawers:"This proves it, evidently. That's a millions of lines of code copied.. from us."

Normal person:"Huh?"

$CO: "Muahahah.. (I have won, will wait for my checks to roll in.) "Muahaha. Muahahahaha. Muahahahahahaha!"

Re:Over 1,000

[iainl]

Since 2.2.0 is before all this alleged infringement started happening, according to SCO, and the number of lines of code between 2.2.0 and 2.4.0 went up by 1577055, then, ignoring removal of old lines nearly 2/3 of the changes from 2.2 to 2.4 were stolen from SCO! Surely /someone/ other than IBM contributed something to the 2.4 kernel development?

Re:Over 1,000

[iwaku]

You're forgetting that Linux kernel is written in C, not C++. So there's no "#include " for sure. And I doubt about "#include .h>" also (no C library).

Re:Over 1,000

[CastrTroy]

Well, if we remove the generic lines from the Linux code, that is, the lines that no sane person can claim ownership of, how many lines are left. I'm sure if we'd remove these, we'd end up with something like 3 million, from the number of 5 million posted above. This would mean that SCO would own over 1/3 of the linux kernel code. Yeah.... I beleive that one.

Re:Over 1,000

[Viol8]

Since when did the original System V code contain SMP code?? Any SMP unix code will have come from enhancements made over and above the code
from the original SysV release by a specific vendor , eg IBM , Sun etc (SCO SMP , don't make me laugh!)
so go back under your bridge you ignorant troll.

Re:Over 1,000

[cybermace5]

Wow!

The size of Linux doubles every year or two. Is that perhaps an average of 18 months? At this rate Linux 3.0 will have 20 million lines. And I thought it was just me that Linux seemed slower and slower.

Re:Over 1,000

[eddie can read]

that 1 line that isn't offending is

# Made by Linus Torvald

So Linux is a shell script?

Re:Over 1,000

[Lonath]

But they also said that 2.2 is ok, and 2.4 is where things go bad. Since 2.2 had 1.8 million lines, my guess is they're saying anything beyond 2.2 is all SCO.

Re:Over 1,000

[NoUse]

I think they are going for claims so crazy that when they are on trial for fraud and extortion they can point back and plead insanity.

Re:Over 1,000

[corporate zombie]

Over 1 mil? Does anyone know how many lines of code there are in the linux kernel?

<pinkie>One BILLION lines of code!!</pinkie>

-CZ

Re:Over 1,000

[NoUse]

The funny thing is when all this started there was supposedly no code in the kernel.

Then two weeks later the same guy claims that UnixWare source "is all over the place"

While these quotes probably wouldn't be too useful as evidence in court. It does well to show that these guys are throwing darts to choose how to go forth with this legal campaign.

Re:Over 1,000

[Anonymous Coward (0)]

I'm sure if we'd remove these, we'd end up with something like 3 million, from the number of 5 million posted above. This would mean that SCO would own over 1/3 of the linux kernel code. Yeah.... I beleive that one.

The same ratio of code would be disqualified from whatever SCO is claiming is theirs, as well, so the ratio of SCO to Pure Linux would remain about the same.

Re:Over 1,000

[Entropius]

I hold the patent on the programming technique used as "whitespace". That'll be $10 per space and $100 per line-feed, please.

Re:Over 1,000

[Ewan]

They don't claim that each line is copied, they claim the whole of the Linux read-copy update which was given by IBM is infringing, but they accept it's not a line for line copy, just a derivative work - I read somewhere that alone is 150 files worth according to SCO, I don't know the reality though.

Ewan

Re:Over 1,000

[Mouth of Sauron]

(sauron) snarfblat >ssh2 -l sauron node64
Host key not found from database.
Key fingerprint:
xuwak-neqan-xivig-haswh-msdeb-tgoid- huraf-beeus-mu ket-vimwe-muyhx
You can get a public key's fingerprint by running
% ssh-keygen -F publickey.pub
on the keyfile.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Host key saved to /home/sauron/.ssh2/hostkeys/key_22_node64.pub
hos t key for node64, accepted by sauron Tue Aug 19 2003 14:48:00
sauron's password:
Authentication successful.
No mail.
You are printing to hp19 .
Your DISPLAY is set to node64:10.1.

(sauron) node64 >cd /usr/src /usr/src
(src) node64 >ls
(src) node64 >find linux-2.4.16-sauron2 -exec cat {} \; 2>/dev/null|wc -l
4304960

There you have it, 4.3 million lines of code.

Accodring to SCO, one out of every 4 lines of code belongs to them. Preposterous!

Here's an article that estimates Linux's size that I found on the web. It goes into a lot greater detail than I do here.

http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/redhat62-v1/redhat6 2s loc.html

Re:Over 1,000

[EvilAlien]

Of course they are claiming the whitespace, thats the only useful part of the SysV code.

I wonder when they'll sue RMS and GNU?

Darl deserves Troll of the Year, he's got us all hook line and sinker. This has to be a joke, or maybe some brilliant marketing campaign, because its just to ludicrous to be legit.

Yes, that is what I repeat to myself as I rock in my chair. It lets me sleep at night.

Re:Over 1,000

[drinkypoo]

"The SCO Forum crowd applauded when SCO executives announced that an upcoming version of its OpenServer--code-named Legend

I thought they didn't even have engineers any more, that all those people went to tarantella. Regardless even if that isn't true, what with the current legal entanglements in which they have involved themselves, they might as well call it SCO Unix Forever.

Re:Over 1,000

[DASHSL0T]

You can learn the difference between source code and compiled code and then come back when you learn how to troll better.

Of course you have valuable high-availability enterprise features compiled into your NT kernel that you are using on your single CPU P4 that you play doom on, that you can't do anything about, but don't let that stop you.

Re:Over 1,000

[TWX]

Bear in mind that multiple architecture support, freaky-weird features like the kernel HTTP server, and the like will increase the size of the source without necessarily being used in your compiled kernel. My monolithic kernel on my Slackware box is something like 980K compiled...

Re:Over 1,000

[reynolds_john]

Yes, appropriately they have named it, "LEGEND".
No joke.

Re:Over 1,000

[BrokenHalo]

I thought they were claiming 80 lines not so long ago. Seems some people just can't make up their minds...

Anyway, be that as it may, 10^6 lines of code to prove in court is a tall order (pushing the monkey/typewriter/Shakespeare theory just a bit); assuming, of course, that they actually have the gall to say that in court.

That should put paid to their bluster. Bring 'em on, I say.

Re:Over 1,000

[bongoras]

by my count:

cd /usr/src/linux
find . -name '*.c' | xargs wc -l > /tmp/c
awk ' BEGIN { sum=0 } { sum=sum+$0 } END { print sum } ' /tmp/c

total is:7162300

Re:Over 1,000

[march]

So Linux is a shell script?

How else do you think it can run on so many different platforms?

And then, what if Microsoft knew about Cygwin... :-)

Re:Over 1,000

[CoreDump01]

Long live the bash:

$ find /usr/src/linux-2.5.70 -type f -exec cat \{\} \; >>/tmp/kernel_2.5.70.txt
$ wc -l /tmp/kernel_2.5.70.txt
5723169 /tmp/kernel_2.5.70.txt

So there are almost 5.8 million lines of code (including comments and empty lines) in linux

$ cat /tmp/kernel_2.5.70.txt |grep -v ^#|grep -v ^$|wc -l
4441427

Ugh, 1281742 lines of comments and empy lines...wow

(There may be better ways to do this but hey, it gets the work done)

Re:Over 1,000

[csbruce]

Linux 2.5.37 (Sep 2002) is 5100081 lines of code, 152 MB.

First it was 80 lines, then a thousand, then hundreds of thousands, now a million. I'm going to grow suspicious when they start claiming ten million.

Their stock price is down today. Perhaps they need to re-think how non-credible thier claims should be. Next thing you know, North Korea will be claiming to have a million nukes.

Re:Over 1,000

[Nahor]

Wrong calculation. Some code from 2.2 was removed making the number of 2.2 code in 2.4 less that your 1.8 million.
Some other code has been replaced/changed reducing even more your 1.8 million.

If you want a more accurate count, you should do a diff and count the lines of code starting with '>' sign (or '+' sign for unified diff).

Re:Over 1,000

[tntguy]

I think Guido beat you to it.

Re:Over 1,000

[dup_account]

Just because someone will pick up on this and think "Yeah, that makes sense.... Linux is bloated, let's just stay with Win XP"

You don't use all of the code that is in the Linux codebase. If nothing else there are lots of drivers you'll never user (and therefore never load because they are modules (which only get loaded when used)), there are different hardware ports in there, SMP may/may not be used by you, etc, etc.

It may be 5 million lines, but you could still have a really small compiled kernel from all of that....

But, speaking of performance... Maybe we need a movement for all of the major Open Source projects to dedicate a major/minor release JUST to do optimization and performance improvements.

Re:Over 1,000

[murdocj]

I suspect what SCO is arguing is not that all of the changes were stolen, but rather something like "function f() was illegally released by IBM. Function g() calls function f(), so all the code in g() is derivative. Functions h1(), h2(), and h3() all call, g(), so they are all derivative. etc etc etc."

Which, if they could get it accepted, would put a big hole in the "we'll just rewrite whatever SCO code is out there in a couple of days" argument.

Re:Over 1,000

[poot_rootbeer]

Linux 0.01 (Sep 1991) is 10239 lines of code, 0.2 MB. ...
Linux 2.5.37 (Sep 2002) is 5100081 lines of code, 152 MB.

Let's keep this in mind the next time we complain about software bloat, huh?

Re:Over 1,000

[Whyzzi]

Who said it had to be in the Kernel? The article just says Linux. For example, perhaps 1/2 of the code in the linux version of the shell program. Not a likely possibility, but used to illistrate there are other programs distributed with linux might have SysV code.

Really though, it makes one wonder how much "standard pratice" when programming in "C" (or any other language for that matter) or even "prior art" they are attempting to claim copyright.

Re:Over 1,000

[iainl]

"Function g() calls function f(), so all the code in g() is derivative. Functions h1(), h2(), and h3() all call, g(), so they are all derivative. etc etc etc."

Arrgh! Its like a viral copyright or something!

err. hang on a moment...

Re:Over 1,000

[cybermace5]

Are you trying to give me advice from one experienced troll to another? 'Cuz I don't swing that way. I've used Linux since 2.0 and currently run it on four different computers from a 486 to an Athlon. I've also compiled kernels since I learned how to type 'make', and have worked with RTLinux and fixed kernel and driver source to get my hardware to work.

Maybe I'm not an expert C++ programmer and I don't have a CS degree, but I'm not as ignorant as you seem to believe.

On top of that, my user ID number is 200,000 less than yours! And that's only because I changed my nickname from the version that was 200,000 less than my current one.

Linux IS getting bigger, and runs slower because it expects better hardware.

Re:Over 1,000

[Cramer]

[root:pts/5{9}]gir:/usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test3/[1:1 3pm]: find . -type f -name \*.\[chS\] | \
xargs wc -l | grep total | awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}'
5525443

That doesn't count any scripts or other "non-code" type things that are there.

Re:Over 1,000

[sg_oneill]

Heh. Nice comeback (the 200,000 id no comment, I'm 300k in front of you however;).

Anyway. Most of that new code is actually device drivers and stuff and support for whacky infrastructures (SMP, ARM etc).

You will find its not the kernel thats so needy for hardware, its KDE , GNOME and all the fruit stuck on top.

But GNU/Linux, the *system* is indeed getting slower.

Re:Over 1,000

[CmdrPinkTaco]

I noticed on a site that the kernel 2.4.20 is indeed ~4.4 mil lines of code. However, what is to say that the lines SCO finds offensive doesn't extend past just the kernel. There are some that consider Linux just an operating system (kernel, drivers, file system, tools, etc) and others that consider it the whole shebang (the aforementioned plus applications designed to run on top of the operating system layer). I admittedly haven't been following the SCO drama with the greatest of detail, but my question is - what does SCO consider "Linux" - is it just the OS or is it an entire distribution (OS and apps)?

Re:Over 1,000

[leonbrooks]

Here's the evidence to support you:

"We have no problems with Sun and HP with regards to infringement as both have honored the conditions of their Unix license contracts and operated within these," [D'Ohl] said.

Solaris probably has // Made by Scott McNealy in it somewhere but since Sun bled enough licencing money, TSG is prepared to overlook that.

As for hp, since they're pulling out of the SCOFork'em conferences, this is probably brown-nosing. Any, er, port in a storm. TSG must be starting to feel a bit lonely by now.

Re:Over 1,000

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Don't forget the "mis-spellings"!

Yeah! And I miscounted, too!

Re:Over 1,000

[EvilSporkMan]

The OS is GNU/Linux, you insensitive clod!

Re:Over 1,000

[sir99]

You missed the fact that wc also prints a total when invoked with more than one file, so you're counting most lines twice.

Re:Over 1,000

[mkldev]

Well, they're clearly lying. I just found a copy of that code under a BSD license, and it was written by the University of California, Berkeley in 1982. From MkLinux's Mach Kernel, we see:

/*
* Copyright (c) 1982, 1986 Regents of the University of California.
* All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
* specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
*
* @(#)subr_rmap.c 7.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/86
*/

(more code snipped)

/*
* Allocate 'size' units from the given
* map. Return the base of the allocated space.
* In a map, the addresses are increasing and the
* list is terminated by a 0 size.
*
* Algorithm is first-fit.
*/
long
rmalloc(mp, size)
register struct map *mp;
long size;
{
register struct mapent *ep = (struct mapent *)(mp+1);
register int addr;
register struct mapent *bp;

The function also encapsulates the other code sample as well, and dates back a decade before the USL/BSD suit. In other words, the IP holder from whom SCO purchased the UNIX rights, in fact, clearly and without question, stole this code from the open source community, not the other way around.

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....

Re:Over 1,000

[Lectrik]

I suspect what SCO is arguing is not that all of the changes were stolen, but rather something like "function f() was illegally released by IBM. Function g() calls function f(), so all the code in g() is derivative. Functions h1(), h2(), and h3() all call, g(), so they are all derivative. etc etc etc."

Which, if they could get it accepted, would put a big hole in the "we'll just rewrite whatever SCO code is out there in a couple of days" argument.

So the my car is a derivative work of Shell Oil?
It has to be because the transmition() calls engine(), which calls gasoline() which calls crude_oil().

I don't realy think a function can be called a derivitive of something just because it calls a certain function, then again IANA(ip)L.
If the offending f() gets changed to produce the correct data manipulation is it still dirivative. If f() is no longer a dirivative, are g() h1() h2() and h3() still a dirivative?

I'm actually curious how that would be handled, no experience with it since I don't program anything for other people to use.

Re:Over 1,000

[murdocj]

I'm not saying they are right, I certainly don't agree with them. But I can't see any other way they could come up with a count of millions of lines of Linux being "derivative". All I'm saying is that if they can get a court to buy it, then all the "this is no big deal" talk is wrong. And courts have bought some pretty strange arguments in the past.

Re:Over 1,000

[ralphclark]

Yeah well it IS slower these days (BTW my ID is lower than either of yours. Neener neener.)

Though this is probably mostly due to application bloat, putting strain on the VM.

For instance, I frequently get problems with mozilla crashing after it's been up for a few hours of heavy use. There seems to be some memory leak which eventually causes serious swapping. Soon after it runs out of memory altogether and mozilla just crashes completely.

This usually happens right when I'm in the middle of composing a long comment to some thread on Slashd

Re:Over 1,000

[Ciggy]

This do as a guess?

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease
2.2.23
$ cd /usr/src/kernel
$ wc -l `find /usr/src/linux -name \*.c` | tail -1
1756539 total
$ wc -l `find /usr/src/linux -name \*.h` | tail -1
444061 total
$ echo 1756539 444061 + p | dc
2200600
$

So the 2.2.23 kernel (excluding /arch/[non-i386]) comes to 2,200,600 lines (including all comments, blank lines and kernel header files).

Any offers to repeat this on a newer kernel (yes I know that SCO only complains about 2.4+ kernels; and I need to upgrade this kernel...), but it would give an indication of the extra lines that 2.4+ kernels have over 2.2.23 and so the size of the supposed SCO code inclusion into the kernel.

[Also: .../arch/[non-i386]: *.c = 231,840; *.h = 9,051; .../arch/i386: *.c = 29,559; *.h = 1,068]

ummm..that many?

[puff-d-dwaggie]

Heck, I didnt realize there were that many lines of code in Linux, much less in SCO Unix..sheesh...

"Get Moose and Squirrel!"

Re:ummm..that many?

[morleron]

"Forget Moose...get SCO!"

A million lines of offending code?

[Zog The Undeniable]

Wasn't it 70 lines yesterday?

Re:A million lines of offending code?

[blahlemon]

Ok, seriously, mod this shit down. This isn't funny, it's getting fucking old.

Re:A million lines of offending code?

[d60b9y]

The number of 'offending' lines does appear to be going up. It was only 168,276 lines according to this slashdot article posted only a week ago.

Re:A million lines of offending code?

[Geek of Tech]

Me thinks they're counting the same 8 lines from every distribution and user.

SCO Engineer 1: Hmmmmm...... RedHat has these 8 lines of offending code!

SCO Engineer 2: Hmmmmm...... Mandrake has another 8 lines of offending code!

SCO Engineer 3: Hmmmmm...... Look Caldera Linux has these 8 lines of code!.... Oh, wait... That's us....

SCO Engineer 2: That's 24 lines of infringing code.

Whoa,

[archeopterix]

One million lines!

Soon we'll hear zillion infinities lines plus their dads being bigger than our dads.

Heise News shows a code:

[Anonymous Coward]

Heise News shows the code:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.0 8.03-00 0/imh1.jpg

The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v 2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html

Does this code come from:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ ken/mal loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr /sys/sys/mal loc.c.html

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[Trigun]

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)?

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[hotair]

Am I missing something or are there syntax errors in the code in the jpeg image pointed to by the parent?
if (size==0)
return) ((ulong_t NULL);
...

In which language does this compile?

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[mark_lybarger]

good stuff. just gotta fix the links
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh1.jpg
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ken/mal loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/ken/mal loc.c.html

gotta love the slash code.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[zonix]

Does this code come from: ...

I don't know, they don't look identical _exactly_?

If this is a sneak photo taken from one of the NDA sessions, I would have expected SCO to show the code with a fixed width font, it being "line by line" copied as stated on the photo. You can't see the original indents otherwise.

Also, the variable names look generic to me. (m_size, m_addr, bp - I could have used these short forms in my own code anytime)

SCO still says comments are stolen - let's see an example of those instead.

z

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[Christian Schladetsc]

Does that "Linux" code come from that V5 and V7 code?

Yes. Sorry.

The linux code is definately derivative.

All the FUD the penguins are spreading about SCO's case is just noise.

I dont know about the details of the case. But I know code. And that code is stolen.

You cant run about with the GPL unless you also follow the rules.

How can you hope to enforce the GPL? Good luck.

--Christian

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[Coward the Anonymous]

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?!

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[JAgostoni]

It's good to know that Unix/Linux programmers are following good code practice with comments, meaningful variable names, and maintainable code.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[msgmonkey]

You can download the source tar file from http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/ancient-unix/an cient/sysIII/sys3.tar.gz

The file you want is usr/src/uts/pdp11/os/malloc.c

first few lines are:

#include "sys/param.h"
#include "sys/systm.h"
#include "sys/map.h"

/*
* Allocate 'size' units from the given map.
* Return the base of the allocated space.
* In a map, the addresses are increasing and the
* list is terminated by a 0 size.
* The core map unit is 64 bytes; the swap map unit
* is 512 bytes.
* Algorithm is first-fit.
*/
malloc(mp, size)
struct map *mp;
{
register unsigned int a;
register struct map *bp;

The rest is identical.. the only question is what is the legal status of this code? Is it in the public domain?

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[SpatialJ]

and the "blackend" code of imh0.jpg shows (if set to a generic font:

actualy it's just put into a greek font.
It reads:

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 folloging assembler code:
(also see mfree/rmfree below)"

(I left out the *s)

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[LordKaT]

Heh, you're kidding ... right?

This allocation code has been used in compiler and OS design classes in college textbooks for _years_.

They've gotta have something else ... I mean, if this is the best they have ... they're dumber than I thought.

--LordKaT

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[rkww]

This match was pointed out in a SlashDot article on Jun 19

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[jedidiah]

You're only forgetting one important detail CUJO. The Unix code in question was released as BSD by none other than SCO/Caldera. Even if it wasn't originally copied in the clear, it's free to all now.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[mikeee]

Um, yeah, but if it's really that old, AT&T *already* lost this lawsuit to the BSD guys, so it might be cleared by that process. This isn't a no-brainer, even if you think that code is non-trivial, which it really isn't.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[tmroyster]

Funny, in 2.4.22-rc2
I could only find "mutex_spinlock" in ./arch/ia64/sn/io/sn2/pcibr/pcibr_intr.c ./arch/ia64/sn/io/sn2/xbow.c ./arch/ia64/sn/io/io.c ./include/asm-ia64/sn/sgi.h ./include/asm-ia64/sn/router.h

"mutex_spinlock(maplock"
appears NOWHERE!

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[Trigun]

In this picture, they show that the comments are almost identical. Of course, the comments do sound very generic, almost text-book, and at the bottom of the SCO comments, they obfusticated the remainder of the comments for this line of code.

If someone wants to search the kernel for the phrase "Algorithm is first-fit" and let us know where it came from, we can back-check who put it in, if it's in BSD, and if SCO is talking out their ass.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[WWWWolf]

If this is a sneak photo taken from one of the NDA sessions, I would have expected SCO to show the code with a fixed width font, it being "line by line" copied as stated on the photo. You can't see the original indents otherwise.

Nitpicking about original indents? What are you? *shiver* a Python programmer? =)

Anyway, I don't think this is sneaked from the NDA sessions. The photo clearly has SCO Forum 2003 logo on the top, and I guess the NDA session code probably wasn't titled "Line by Line Copying - One Example of Many". I guess they showed this in the Forum event in weekend.

I'm just curious why they're suing IBM over some code donated by SGI...

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[japhmi]

I like the babelfish translation of the article, especially the phrase 'McBride still one drauf.'

I'm not sure what a drauf is, but whatever it is, it doesn't sound nice.

Re:Heise News shows a code:

[jpetts]

Am I missing something or are there syntax errors in the code in the jpeg image pointed to by the parent?
if (size==0)
return) ((ulong_t NULL);

This is clearly written by a Brit:

ulong_t == Oolong Tea

they're showing some....

[jeffy124]

but they're still bluring out other parts

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5065286.html

Re:they're showing some....

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean something like on this screenshot from the SCO Forum: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh0.jpg

On the left they show "their" System-V-Code, but the comments are made "unreadable" (Greek):
* As part of the kernel evolution toward modularn aming, 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)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/go.sh tml?read =1&msg_id=4021490&forum_id=46245

Ok, but you can find the code and the comments also here:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr /src/sy s/sys/malloc.c.html
More info about the code:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/
" 32V was a port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the new VAX platform, which
had been released by DEC in 1979. "

What`s come next ?

Re:they're showing some....

[aldoman]

Yes, due too the fact that linux is mainly SCOs code, linux uses the GPL, the GPL is illegal and therefore all GPL code is now SCO's.

Re:they're showing some....

[LordKaT]

The sad part is that your ass backwards theory might be what SCO is thinking.

--LordKaT

Re:they're showing some....

[Alan]

"We're fighting for the right in the industry to be able to make a living selling software," McBride told the audience. He compared this right to the ability "to send your children to college" and "to buy a second home."

(emphasis mine)
Well, I don't have my first home yet, so I guess extortion won't help me will it?

Re:they're showing some....

[drinkypoo]

McBride said that pattern-recognition experts SCO hired have ferreted out a slew of infringing code in Linux. "They have found already a mountain of code," he said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."

In other words, both Linux and Unix are written using C syntax. Who'd have thought it!?

Re:they're showing some....

[jedidiah]

I was amused by this bit as well. Whining about the ability to buy more than one house is not the sort of thing that endears you to the public at large, or even the professional community.

I know PHYSICIANS that WISH they were affluent enough to buy a second house, nevermind programmers

Re:they're showing some....

[jeffy124]

reading that reminded me of somehting Ken Lay's (Enron CEO or something) wife said. She said they've had to sell two or three of their (multi-million dollar) houses as a result of Enron's scandal, in hopes of sympathies or something. Business2 magazine (in their 2001's 101 worst moments) picked up on the fact the Lay's still had several other expensive homes at their disposal.

Re:they're showing some....

[Kythe]

"The GPL is illegal", huh? Funny how virtually every legal expert to weigh in on the topic disagrees. In fact, they say that bringing such an argument to court would result in sanctions -- for the idiot who made it.

Believe what you want, of course (assuming you're not just being facetious). No one ever said beliefs had to have any relation to reality...

Re:they're showing some....

[japhmi]

She said they've had to sell two or three of their (multi-million dollar) houses as a result of Enron's scandal

They had to sell 2 out of 3 (or was it 3 out of 4) of their homes in Aspen, CO.

Note that they had many other homes elsewhere, it was just a few of their homes in the same town!

Hmmmmph

[HiQ]

...in which Raymond said that if there was infringing code in the Linux kernel, "our community wants no part of it and will remove it.

I don't think that SCO wants those lines removed, because their whole business plan now seems based on those lines being in there.

Re:Hmmmmph

[tsa]

Then let them pay the Linux community for keeping those lines in there ;-) I think 1 billion dollars would do nicely.

Re:Hmmmmph

[Snags]

Exactly.

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.

Re:Hmmmmph

[jez_f]

if SCO is willing to take the honest, cooperative path forward, so are we.

This is the point of the whole press release. From here on in, the OSS community can point out that they are willing to work with SCO to remove the offending code. Refusing to do this will make SCOs 'licence fees' much more like extortion.
This move could be very important later on.

Re:Hmmmmph

[4of12]

I don't think that SCO wants those lines removed, because their whole business plan now seems based on those lines being in there.

Exactly.

Even if 2.6.0-test9 were to be free of supposedly offending code, I'm positive the rabid dog they call SCO would go after everyone (well, everyone with deep pockets) that's run old versions of Linux for some period of time and theoretically gained substantial financial benefit as a direct consequence of using those versions of Linux.

The only good thing that would come out of those preposterous claims is when SCO says some company gained US$ X million advantage by using this "pirate code".

For cost-conscious IT shops, I'd take that as a signal to look more into this "Linux thing".

It's like hearing about folks gathering down at the river for free drinks where Jack Daniels has been pouring into the water.

Re:Hmmmmph

[horza]

I don't think that SCO wants those lines removed, because their whole business plan now seems based on those lines being in there.

Their business plan is based on pretending those lines are in there. If they really were in there then they wouldn't be afraid to show them. Removing them now is mute if they want to claim damages, as they have millions of Red Hat/Mandrake/etc CDs floating around the world as evidence to prove that the code has been in there.

Phillip.

Re:Hmmmmph

[Whyzzi]

I left wondering if they really have a claim to it. Isn't it possible, for two different people, come up with the same exact solution to a problem?

It has already proven to happen in our world's history: as seen in the invention of the jet " ... As it did for two men, Frank Whittle and the young German physicist Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain, who, with out knowing about each others work, came up with the same design at around the same time ..."

Not much new there

[cspenn]

Not much new there, except to say that SCO must be using the RIAA's supply of calculators to determine how many lines of code are infringing. There are approximately 30 million lines of code in the kernel:

http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc/

And SCO is claiming that 3.3% of the Linux kernel is theirs? From a company that did nothing with Linux until it acquired a GPL distribution? Right.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Chris
Ever wonder how APR works? Stop on by!

Re:Not much new there

[juhaz]

That estimation seems to be for GNU/Linux.

Linux kernel has only about five million lines of code, so SCO isn't going for mere 3.3%, the nutcases think they own 1/5 of Linux!

Re:Not much new there

[mordicus]

"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.

Re:Not much new there

[cspenn]

Nice! 20%? I wonder if there's some way I can Copyright 1/5th of the English Language regarding credit cards, since I run a credit card site. (prior art doesn't seem to be stopping SCO...) Then I can charge SCO to license business financial language for every crappy annual report they've ever released.

1. Copyright 1/5 of language.
2. File lawsuit.
3. Profit!

Chris
Future Copyright Holder of Everything Credit Card Related, Pay Up Now at StudentPlatinum.com

Re:Not much new there

[CastrTroy]

No, if anybody was ever successful of pattenting the english language, we'd just make our own language, which is exactly the same as English, only with a silent 'z' at the end of every word

Re:Not much new there

[MrResistor]

From a company that did nothing with Linux until it acquired a GPL distribution?

You have it backwards: They didn't acquire a GPL distribution, the GPL distribution acquired them.

Gee, that ancestral Unix source sure is valuable...

playground warfare

[tssiap_wmuc]

so is the open source community gonna beat up SCO or what?

Re:playground warfare

[Pandora's Vox]

yeah. i'm sure that there are enough slashdotters who know martial arts. we'll but out a paypal hat to get money for a bus to go down there and dispense the beatings. who's with me?

Re:playground warfare

[BlackBolt]

If by "open source", you mean IBM, then YES. :-)

Re:playground warfare

[tssiap_wmuc]

SHUT UP! let the beatings begin!

If you don't pay SCO their licensing fees...

[Junta]

They'll remove one MILLION lines of code...

Re:If you don't pay SCO their licensing fees...

[Famatra]

"They'll remove one MILLION lines of code..."

SCO will next say that the amount of infringing lines of code is: ONE HUNDRED BILLION

Re:If you don't pay SCO their licensing fees...

[Famatra]

Slashdot didnt put the 'puts pinky to lip' comment at the end grrrr.

Re:If you don't pay SCO their licensing fees...

[cj171]

They'll remove one MILLION lines of code...

hah, they wont remove anything once they're taken care of ;)

So, how do SCO expect...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the offending code to be removed if they're not showing anyone what they claim are the problem lines?

Re:So, how do SCO expect...

[curtisk]

... the offending code to be removed if they're not showing anyone what they claim are the problem lines?

Remove????? Nawwwwwwwww, they expect the offending code to be paid for! That is the key here, PAID for! Leave it in, just pay SCO their due. *cough*

Note they said "offending code"...

[tbase]

...maybe they mean lines of code that offends Microsoft - all of them. Or maybe each line counts as one, but the ones that really tack them off count as 3 or 4 lines. Or maybe they're running at 640x480 with Word Wrap on... Ok, I'll stop now.

Re:Note they said "offending code"...

[sporty]

Well, you know how offensive coders and code can be.
Try looking at the comments. Also, a lot of coders have that attitude, "everyone else's code sucks."

No wonder thyey find it offensive. They are immature AND sensitive.

Re:Note they said "offending code"...

[rosie_bhjp]

Hmmm.. maybe they are calculating it the way that the RIAA was calculating the 'number of confiscated burners' a few months back. Fast burners counted as 2 or 3 seperate units.

With SCO, efficient lines of code count as double or triple the infringement because their coders couldn't write the code as cleanly.

1/3 of Linux code stolen?

[angst7]

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.

Heise News shows code

[Anonymous Coward]

Heise News shows code:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.0 8.03-00 0/imh1.jpg

The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v 2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html

Does this code come from:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ ken/mal loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr /sys/sys/mal loc.c.html

Re:Heise News shows code

[mocm]

And did you read the "encrypted" text below the commentary (greek letters) on the Unix side:
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 asembler code: (also see mfree/rmfree below)

There is not even C code following. So SCO copied the commentary and than put something else in the file.

Re:Heise News shows code

[I Have No Moose]

Mmmm...404

The offending code image was removed due to copyrights.

Re:Heise News shows code

[pjrc]

The offending code image was removed due to copyrights.

Or due to the space characters slashdot added to the text-only URL.

Re:Heise News shows code

[Ami Ganguli]

Bruce Perens pointed out over at lwn.net that Caldera put this particular code under a BSD license in 2000.

A million lines?

[Tpenta]

Devestating if it can be proven. Somehow I think that SCO is on another fishing expedition, just like the one about 'the GPL is invalid because it violates copyright law".

It's going to be interesting to see them try to prove a million lines. I would be surprised if Linus was careless enough to allow that amount of Intelectial Property in without proper release.

Tp.

Re:A million lines?

[cshark]

They're not claiming actual code. They're claiming derivative code. That could be anything.

Especially with the dubious origin or SystemV.

Honestly, I would like to see them prove direct infringement. They're more likely to be able to prove their case that way.

They're claiming a lot of code that they think sort of kind of looks like their stuff, and therefore (in their minds) require a license agreement. Mcbride is starting to sounds like a man in a paper hat.

But the thing that gets me is the non specific ness of it all. Any judge would tell them to point out the infringing code, and allow it to be removed. Isn't that what happened in the BSD case a few years ago? Simply not pointing the code out is not an option. At some point Linux developers are going to need to see the code and remove it. S(C)O's idea of showing code to non programmers under NDA is just silly.

Who?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Who exactly is this story talking about? The "Open Source Community" is being represented in the article by someone called Jeff Gerhardt. Familiar name? Not to me... seems to be the host of a radio show about Linux.

The fact that he has an email from Eric Raymond hardly qualifies him as a representative of the entire Open Source community. If you read the quotes from the email it is not an approach to SCO either.

If this article said that OSI, FSF, OSDL, Linus, etc. had approached SCO it might have been worth posting. In its current form it would be better titled "Some guy with radio show hands out copies of email from Eric Raymond".

John.

Re:Who?

[47PHA60]

I agree. For what little it's worth, I sent ESR a note quoting the eWeek article, and asking that he continue to support open and voluntary sharing of source code and not NDAs; if Linux developers have unknowingly released SCO code, SCO has an obligation to give the community a chance to mitigate the damage by removing the code in question. SCO does have a legal obligation to take reasonable steps to mitigate their damages before suing.

I am offended that this fellow is using ESR's name and statements to tell Linux developers that they should sign a 'looser' NDA with SCO. It would be extremely unwise to sign any contract with SCO.

No matter what the Linux developers do or say, SCO will not stop spinning it against them until SCO gets lots of money. There is no legal or ethical reason to sign a contract with SCO. SCO can prove its claims, and the Linux developers will remove offending code. Until then, SCO is owed nothing.

Re:Who?

[DickBreath]

SCO will not stop spinning it against them until SCO gets lots of money.

Or runs out of money. Or IBM leaves a smoking hole where SCO used to be.


There is no legal or ethical reason to sign a contract with SCO. SCO can prove its claims, and the Linux developers will remove offending code. Until then, SCO is owed nothing.

I agree with your sentiment. The apparent purpose of approaching SCO is that either...

1. SCO will show the lines of code under an acceptable arrangement, or...
2. SCO won't show the lines under any circumstances -- most likely

This indicates to the court a good faith effort on the part of the Open Source crowd to try to fix the problem. This seriously undercuts any damage claims SCO can make. You can't claim damages that you help to create.

I also think it funny that SCO is such a blabbermouth in public about this case. They can't seriously have ever planned to see the inside of a courtroom. How many times have you heard the line "No Comment -- we don't comment on pending litigation." Seems opposite of what SCO is doing.

Re:Who?

[47PHA60]

This indicates to the court a good faith effort on the part of the Open Source crowd to try to fix the problem.

I agree with this. It is helpful in a civil suit to tell the judge 'we tried to reach an agreement and couldn't.' I just think it is a mistake to offer to sign anything that SCO would find agreeable, especially since the Linux kernel developers are not being sued at this time.

I wonder, if I am a developer and I think that SCO streches contracts beyond the breaking point to sue people, and that this makes me nervous about signing and NDA, what would my lawyer advise?

... "No Comment -- we don't comment on pending litigation." Seems opposite of what SCO is doing.

I completely agreee; I question their seriousness. I come from a family of lawyers, and they spend lots of expensive time telling clients to keep their mouths closed. "Anything you say can and will be used against you..." is true in any US court case. I find it hard to believe that their attorneys are OK with this.

I think that IBM also sees this as an artless shakedown, which is why they are rolling ahead to court; they'd rather take a chance to humiliate their opponent than settle and open themselves to future harrassment.

part 2 filled

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Claim that there are IP violations in linux
2. Prevent any linux developer from removing the violations from the source
3. Profit with license fees

the nda agreement is intentionally made so strict, open source community wants to remove the million lines of infrigting code, but if they do that, sco can't charge license fees from it, so naturally they won't let anyone see what they have

just wondering

[cockroach2]

why does anyone care? they can't sue anyone without showing the "proof", so just relax and don't care. and stop writing stories about it.

Re:just wondering

[phritz]

they can't sue anyone without showing the "proof"

Ahhhh, you must be new to this country.

Re:just wondering

[krb]

well, actually, they can sue anyone they want without showing anything. it's winning that they can't do without proof.

semantic issues out of the way, the reason I care, and i imagine many other folks here do, is that linux is being damaged right now. SCO winning has nothing to do with it. As this very moment lots of businesses are putting on hold or cancelling linux initiatives, which is bad for linux. This shit won't get to court until April 2005, by which time a great deal of damage will have already been done.
additionally, this whole situation is offensive on a philosophical level in a few different ways - absurd legal arguments, shady stock dealings, lying... These are all offensive in and of themselves. These jerks are going to turn SCO into Enron and in the meantime all the non-executive employees and shareholders are going to get completely fucked.
people are infurated because SCO is making them out to be criminals, all the while getting away with some pretty heinous actions.

Re:just wondering

[Whyzzi]

is that linux is being damaged right now.

Exactly what Microsoft wants.

Gates to McBride: "Here boy, here! Sit, Mcbride. Good boy. See that big, meaty bone over there?" Points to Linux. "Yeah? You do, don't you? Go get it boy, go get it! Rrrrip it apart!!

If only it were like this.

Re:just wondering

[SmallFurryCreature]

Social animals like say monkeys while start an alarm call when they spot a snake in the grass. This alarm is then taken up by the whole group as they keep track of the snake. This not only help to assure that the whole group is alert, and any animals that monkeys tend to live with, but also that the snake knows it has been found out and can just give up.

Since this snake doesn't seem to take the message we should continue the alarm to make sure everyone knows and doesn't dose off.

Re:Oh Good

[tssiap_wmuc]

but how can you note care!!!! its the most important thing your life right now!

Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Starborn]

A german website has released images of some code SCO claims linux copied. You can read the article (in german) here. (the code is in the two images)

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

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Starborn]

Oops, the fond was changed to a greek font, not english. Should have read what i typed a bit more carefully.

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[222]

(copy paste from gentoo boards) ephros Guru Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 376 Location: Austria (Europe; no kangaroos.) Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2003 7:21 am Post subject: beejay wrote: AlterEgo wrote: It's Greek Yes, I know. It was more in the sense of "How can say 'Look - this is the same' if you ghost one side" Actually it's not. It is English, written in Greek letters (so they simply changed the font for that text). For example, the last line reads: (also see mfree/rmfree below) Look at the word "below" and it will become obvious: beta epsilon lambda o omega. The character "omega" is substituted for "w", because it looks like a Latin w, and there is no w in Greek; also AFAIK there is no letter o. All in all it is some really stupid obfuscation. [EDIT:] fixed some letters I got wrong. [EDIT2:] ok, nikai was faster..

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Lussarn]

The smoke is starting to settle.. SCOs bigest problem is that they think that they own any code written by any programmer released under any licence belong to them. Double the SCO ownage if it somehow have found it's way into their Unix sources. Tripple if it's in Linux too.

I wonder who steals code from who...

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[ozbird]

Their example can be traced back to 2.11BSD

It appears to be even older than that! Have a look at /usr/sys/malloc.c from Sixth Edition Unix ported to the Interdata 7/32 at the University of Wollongong, Australia during 1976-77. The datestamp on the file is 3 June 1979 - at worst the same year that SCO was formed, but more likely before that date.

SCO's intellectual property? I think not...

(Apologies if this is a repeat - I'm getting timeouts connecting to Slashdot.org)

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[SpatialJ]

actualy it's just put into a greek font. It reads: "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 folloging assembler code: (also see mfree/rmfree below)" snippet above with tag font-face=symbol:
"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 folloging assembler code: (also see mfree/rmfree below)" ... ah well /. is not allowing me th font tag... have to cut & paste yourself

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[msgmonkey]

For the lazy the URL. http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/Interdata_v6/usr/s ys/malloc.c.html Identical code, interesting stuff.

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[vrt3]

The character "omega" is substituted for "w", because it looks like a Latin w, and there is no w in Greek; also AFAIK there is no letter o.

Actually the Greek have two letters for 'o': omicron (written as 'o') and omega. The first is short, the latter is long, as you could have guessed from the names.

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[RickHunter]

What I find really interesting is that the only thing in common on that slide is the comment. (Which, as others have pointed out, seems to come from really, really early Unix) The SCO side not only has no code at all, but has a comment that is absent from the Linux side and seems to imply that the SCO code was changed.

Just more evidence that SCO is blowing smoke.

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, hang on a minute, back up. Lets just check I have this right.

SCO claims that code has been copied, verbatim, from SyS V into Linux.

SCO produce a slide, comparing their SyS V code one the left hand side to what appears to be the same Linux code on the right hand side.

The SyS V code is obsfucated with a Greek font, in order to "protect" "SCO's" "IP"...

But the Linux code is not. The non-obsfucated Linux code which is supposed to be a direct copy of the SyS V code. Which is the same.

Why did they obsfucate the SyS V code? If its the same as the Linux code we can see your code right there! On the right hand side! McFly!

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Haeleth]

And there's a letter 'w' in Greek, too - digamma (looks a bit like F). It just fell out of use, except as a number, several thousand years ago.

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Milalwi]

3) The greek in the sco code is actually english, with the font changed to english (Stupid obfucation attempt) heres what it says:

Oh, no! Now you've violated the DMCA!

Just kidding... Sorta. :-(

Milalwi

Re:Wont show them to anyone... except germans?

[Ciggy]

Why did they found it necessary to [try to] obfucate the comment about function name changes by using a greek font? Are they scared that someone may recognise it as their comments and point out that they actually wrote the code, not SCO?

The version of malloc() given for Linux is very representative of an implementation of the algorithm given in "The Design of the Unix(R) Operating System" by Maurice J. Bach:

{
for (every map entry)
{
if (current map entry can fit requested units)
{
if (requested units == number of units in entry)
delete entry from map;
else
adjust start address of entry;
return (original address of entry);
}
}
return (0);
}

Besides, what proof have we got that they actually wrote the SCO version and not took the Linux version, "hastily embroidering it with a few footnotes in order to avoid prosecution under the...copyright laws..." ["Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams]. The continuation of the above quote suggests what is happening?:

"...It is interesting to note that a later and wilier editor sent the book backwards in time through a temporal warp and then successfully sued the breakfast ceral company for infringement of the same laws."

Next week's news:

[Phekko]

SCO spokesman reveals the actual number of lines stolen to be "a bit over 174,5 billion" and that SCO still refuses to show any of them.

In related news SCO now demands $5999 for a license

(Signature removed for security reasons)

Re:Oh Good

[jvollmer]

Another SCO story. I love how these never contain any real information and yet we're subjected to about 6 a day.

Shhh, Dear. Don't cause a fuss.
I'll 'ave your SCO story. I love it!
I'm having SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO, Baked beans,
SCO, SCO, and SCO!

If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!

Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[puff-d-dwaggie]

"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!

Slides from SCO Forum2003 show some code

[OMG]

This is from a heise.de article .

Two slides show some code (1 2)
that may come from Fifth Edition UNIX.

Re:Slides from SCO Forum2003 show some code

[greed]

In my copy of 2.4.20, the first slide is arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c; and the start of the file, after the GPL, is "Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All righs reserved." The second slide appears to be Later That Same Function.

And if SCO is a Utah-based company, why are they programming in Greek?

So I suppose we'll see SGI getting sued next.

Also, someone else said that code is from BSD. Could it not also be from a "Getting Started with your New Itanium" kit from Intel?

Wait... Itanium... SCO... IBM... that was Montery, right? Wasn't that the project to make SCO, AIX, and Linux all more compatible, and to run on the Itanium?

Get rid of SCO. They're just wasting electricity.

Re:Slides from SCO Forum2003 show some code

[BetterThanCaesar]

I wonder why they've written comments in English using the Greek alphabet. Check it yourself; the "Greek" text says:

As part of the kernel evolution toward 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)

(I hope I got it right...)

Re:Slides from SCO Forum2003 show some code

[Exatron]

SCO isn't programming in greek. That was a weak attempt at obfuscating their code by using a font with Greek characters substituted for english ones.

Re:Slides from SCO Forum2003 show some code

[southpolesammy]

The slide shown here
is transliterated english with Greek characters. Retransliterating it, it reads:

* 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 assembly code:
* (also see mfree/rmfree below)
*/

Wasted Effort

[manvantaradude]

Although something like this had to be done, it will result in nothing but the SCO folks posturing, making unreasonable demands, and spreading more FUD just like they intend to do with or without any further responses. They will not stop these "business" practices until they are taken down.

I can guess which million

[tgv]

I think I know what million lines they're referring to: they're the lines containing open and close braces.

Re:I can guess which million

[iapetus]

And this is why K&R code indenting is a Bad Thing (TM).

my two cents

[Benni]

If everybody of you guys in here would spend 2 cents for the FSF for every one of these statements from SCO...then the FSF could buy SCO *g* ;)

"Offending" code?

[Tsar]

"SCO now says there are over a million lines of offending code in Linux..."

They might be referring to the commented code. You know, RMS can get pretty ribald with his comment blocks when he's got a few cans of Jolt in him...

Re:"Offending" code?

[ratfynk]

I can get pretty puffed out when using the emac gui to do anything! Try looking at emac source comments whoooooa how the hell, it works just shut up and compile. No I just made a syntax error not a friggin' novel!

More

[Captain_Chaos]

Apparently, he said "millions", so that would be at least 40% of the code. I can't believe how farcical this whole circus is getting. It's like SCO is actively trying to make sure they'll lose big by coming up with more and more ridiculous arguments. I feel like I'm watching a bad movie or something...

Re:More

[CastrTroy]

Actually, the plural form of a word is used only when there is not exactly 1. For instance. If there is 0.00001 million lines of infringing code, then he be right to say millions, as there are 0.00001 millions

Re:More

[joostje]

Actually, the plural form of a word is used only when there is not exactly 1. For instance. If there is 0.00001 million lines of infringing code

Or maybe 0.0000000 million lines of infringing code?

Re:More

[Daengbo]

Was this a joke, or did you unintentionally, totally screw the grammar in your grammmar lecture?

Re:More

[ckaminski]

Damn Atkins and those crazy fools for ruining carb's good name...

You'll notice we don't have any "smart bars" around in the US... ;-) Whoops, you saw it here first, smart bars, the next cure-all pill for American sloth and laziness!!

Caio!

the new geek order

[Biomechanoid]

the new geek order

geeks: (sitting on arse..) This page was generated by a Group of Albino Elephants. (..nose picking)
SCO: OK you win, you win!!

Re:the new geek order

[sockit2me9000]

I think we are rapidly reaching a point where the heat and pressure of all geeks in the (relative) cole proximity of earth are reaching critical mass and will soon spawn a second big bang. This will be seen through the new CBS (Cosmic Background Stickyness) which will leave all objects slightly tacky to the touch.

Open Source Community Approaches SCO

[Alien Being]

Picture the villagers approaching Dr. Frankenstein's castle.

the open source community approaching SCO...

[Dark Lord Seth]

... slowly and calmly.

The Paladin self-propelled artillery units aren't the fastest beatiest around you know, it takes time to set them up and align their cannons properly before reigning down holy fire upon SCO!

Chewbacca

[b1t r0t]

Does Chewbacca not have fur on his arms? Does Chewbacca not have fur on his legs? Does Chewbacca not have fur on his face? Does Chewbacca not have over a million hairs in his fur?

If Chewbacca is furry, you must convict!

Linux is Dead

[nt2UNIX]

You know, at first I that it was kinda funny that SCO was doing this. Having read a lot of stuff about ATT and BSD. It seemed almost a right of passage for Linux into the real world.

Now I tempted to install Linux on a box in protest. Hold on a minute, what I'm I saying.

Long Live FreeBSD!!!!!!

Re:Linux is Dead

[mark_lybarger]

i didn't read much about ATT and BSD, and am only vaguely familiar with the BSD suits from years back. did BSD have the massive corporate backing that linux enjoys?

Re:Moderators! Re:Oh Good

[Greyfox]

They could make an SCO category so people could filter on it. They're even more obnoxious than Jon Katz was, and I signed up for my /. account for the sole reason of being able to filter his stories. As a graphic, I'd suggest that character in south park who had an ass where his face should be...

A fish story:

[sockit2me9000]

Darl's siting on a chaise lounge, drinking a forty and gazing around at his spitting chicken Camaro on cinderblocks in his front yard, he's talking to his sons, Darl, his brother Darl and his other brother Darl. "So, this one time ah wuz writing some proprietary code fer my operating system when along came this big ol fish and took mah bait. That damn thing had to be taken a good 80 lines of code. Real purty code it wuz, too." "paw, I thought you said it wuz 200." "That's what ah meant" The other brother Darl looks confused, "Ah thought you said it was ah couple thousand" "Boy, you questioning me? Ah said it wuz a millions line of code. I mean it wuz HUGE!" Old Maw Redmond calls from the cabin, "What wuz fish doing in that lake anyway? That's our watering hole, not theres. We'll just have to start washing yer britches in that there lake, that'll clear em out. Now git up her and get yer vittles." And in the darkness of the lake a giant blue beast stirs.

Re:A fish story:

[keester]

should have modded this informative ... :)

And SCO has my code

[chia_monkey]

How funny. SCO has 1 million and three lines of my code. I'm not going to show you though.

Stay tuned. I'll let you know tomorrow (or whenever SCO changes their tune) how many lines of my code they have.

One Million, that's incredible, but is it?

[donscarletti]

How IBM could submit 1000000 lines of code, in the space in time that it would require to copy them without Linus Torvalds noticing is beyond me. After some rough calculations I worked out that that would mean that Linux-2.4 has more in common with sys V than linux-2.2

But no, there is a logical answer to this. Evident if one RTFAs, as the the quote from which the number was taken from is by Jeff Gerhardt, not an SCO spokesman nor anything like it:

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

That is not a reference that SCO has claimed there are 1000000 lines stolen, that is a comment saying that even if they did, LINUX could be repaired. But I must consede that while SCO has not claimed this in this article I wouldn't be suprised if they did somewhere else.

Re:One Million, that's incredible, but is it?

[drxenos]

From the article: At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

Re:One Million, that's incredible, but is it?

[lennart78]

I'm really curious as to what will come out of these court cases. We've all heard the stories about insane cases with insane rulings, so I'm not so sure of the outcome.

As far as I know the law here in Holland, when a case like this takes place, the IP-holder must prove to the court that his IP is being used without his permission. Once that is proved, there are 2 possible outcomes.
1 - The IP-holder and the person/instance using the IP strike a deal.
2 - The person/instance using the IP is restricted from using it any further.

The IP-holder does NOT have the right to extort money from the user of the IP, of anybody the IP-user has sold his product to. The only way to make money of it is through a settlement.

But my guess is that things work differently in the States.

Re:One Million, that's incredible, but is it?

[beowulfcluster]

If one RTFA's, one will also see:

Gerhardt also made the suggestion of a less restrictive NDA at a media question-and-answer session with SCO CEO Darl McBride and other SCO executives, with whom he will meet on Tuesday to discuss the proposal further. At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

So (allegedly) an SCO spokesman has claimed it. Millions even.

Ladies and gentlemen...

[Suhas]

..of the Jury, we own over 1 million line of code in the Linux kernel and many worms written over the years..err...

When is D-Day ?

[secs]

When is the court date to settle this issue? Is their one ?

Re:When is D-Day ?

[dacarr]

I believe it's in 2005. Conjecture has it that SCOX will dump before that, and SCO will subsequently collapse.

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[drxenos]

Maybe you should take your own advise. From the article: At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

I'm Suing Microsoft

[isa-kuruption]

Microsoft is using millions upon millions of line of code owned by me in many of their products, including Windows, Office, IIS, and MediaPlayer. I have proof and many high-priced lawyers that will confuse the issue even if I am wrong, and I will successfully destroy Microsoft from the market unless all Microsoft customers pay me a licensing fee of $300 per copy of Microsoft software on their desktop (even if the software is pirated!)

Please ignore the financial status of my organization while I collect multi-million dollar annual bonuses, as well as my unsuccessful attempts to sell slightly modified Microsoft products in the past at higher than market rates than Microsoft sells them for itself. Microsoft is violating my IP rights and must be stopped!

However, unlike SCO, I will release these lines of code. Examples of just a few such lines are below:

1. $i++;
2. void main() {
3. while (true) {
4. return 0;
5. main();

Thank you for your support!

Re:I'm Suing Microsoft

[FreshMeat-BWG]

Actually, I think they copied my code... // Generic Error Checking Algorithm if ( TRUE ) { KeBugCheck( rand( ) ); }

The Open Source Community approaches SCO...

[S.I.O.]

with torches and hammers in their hands...

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[puff-d-dwaggie]

good catch..hehe

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[iapetus]

Dewd! Learn to read THE WHOLE ARTICLE!

At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

By my count, that means SCO actually wrote about half of the Linux kernel...

Wait..

[borgdows]

if they charged 699$ for ~80000 lines of code, how much will they charge for 1 MILLION lines ??

let's do the math:

699$ * (1000000 / 80000) = 8737.5$ !!

and it will be more than 18000$ (EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS) after the discount period!!

better run to your nearest SCO distributor NOW!! ;)

Re:Wait..

[Error27]

Wasn't it $699 for 83 lines of code.

That's how much code they showed people under the nda.

Re:Wait..

[borgdows]

oh my goodness!

so SCO will soon announce a price change to 8,735,500 $ !!

I am ruined!

Re:Wait..

[Fammy2000]

Well, they are suing IBM for 3 Billion Dollars!! (Evil Dr. Evil laugh)

For a million lines of code, that's $3000 per line of code.

Hey IBM, I can code for way less than $3000 per line of code.

SCO showing portions of code at "SCO Forum"

[Markos]

According to heise SCO is showing portions of offending source code. Here is an image of the offending code, and here is another image. From the Gentoo Forums:

There seems to be nothing of value here. As pointed out by Starborn this comment goes at least as far back as BSD 2.11, which, according to the file, is from subr_rmap.c 1.2 (2.11BSD GTE) 12/24/92

...

The linux version is slightly modified with some differing variable names, but the algorithim seems to be nearly identical.

Basicly, the code they've showed goes as far back as 1992 from BSD 2.11, perhaps even further?

Re:SCO showing portions of code at "SCO Forum"

[tjwhaynes]

Basicly, the code they've showed goes as far back as 1992 from BSD 2.11, perhaps even further?

Looking through the UnixTree sources on Minnie, it goes back to 1973 from the Fifth edition Unix sources. It's in the malloc code.

So for SCO to claim this is interesting. Especially as it is out in the open for everyone to look at. And thanks to Bell labs - their copyright notice is dated 1973.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Re:Over 1,000,000

[linuxtelephony]

Every time there's a press release the number grows. Just last week didn't they say something like 168,000 lines of code?

Now it's millionS -- not just 1, but plural, aka many. My guess, based on their claim of derivative work, is that they are saying that 5,100,081 (2.5.37, per previous post) lines are infringing. This doesn't mean they are direct copies, just infringing.

At first, SCO's action surprised and stunned me. Then it became funny to watch them "foaming at the mouth" in the various press releases. Now things are just getting annoying. I'll be glad when they're squashed and this is all over. I'll be even more glad if the SEC finally gets involved and wins a guilty verdict. Perhaps we should change the SCO logo to a crooked SCO, kind of like that crooked E from Enron?

Let me guess...

[aaaurgh]

that's about 200,000 each of...

/*
*/

{
}

Shit, looks like a load of my code at work is in breach of their copyright too. Damnit I'm gonna sue college for teaching me how to steal IP!

I think they've got us this time....

[stemcell]

In other news SCO claim to have patents for the letter 'e' and the use of both normal and curly brackets, and any derivatives thereof, in software code.

Re:1/3 of Linux code stolen?

[hotair]

And remember, they are saying that kernel 2.2 is clean. So they are talking about a million lines that changed between 2.2 and 2.4.

SCO Conspiracy revealed

[fruey]

Linux is going to go underground. Here's the take, get them tin foil hats ready.

1. GNU/Linux gains sufficient critical mass to be a valid alternative OS to a significant portion of business and personal computing.
2. People in the developed world, where most commercial OSes make their money, start to realise that significant portions of the IT economy are going to become less viable (notably Microsoft's, who just happen to plan to secretly finance via an agent, a recent electoral campaign for Arnold)
3. IT mafia bosses pick SCO as an ideal campaign leader as their former glory (what glory?) is tired, but they have significant intellectual property to start making mad claims about said IP
4. Somewhere along the line the judicial system picks up and makes Linux illegal because SCO have more money, and their tenuous argument gets backed up by Arnold (now governor of California) who represents a new technophobic movement against those free software hippies who are ruining the economy with beards and freedom philosophies which are ruinous to the economy
5. Linux is driven underground because the source code just can't be stamped out, and the zealots continue
6. The war begins, between Open Sourcers and the commercial OS unions...
7. ???

   Something like that. There is no way that this can work out for SCO, even a win will create a wave which will wash back over them having picked up a load of trash on the way.

Re:I know this is a flame...but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our old joke overlords, and remind them that as a Slashdot poster I would be useful in rounding people up to toil in their underground custard-pie caves.

Re:Oh Good

[sockit2me9000]

I personally like lobster termadora in a Hollandaise sauce and SCO.

hmmm, only HP and sun...

[capsteve]

are safe from SCO, as far as unix variants go. do i see an attack of SGI for releasing NUMA and XFS to the community? how about attacking lucent for allowing ken thompson to develop tarpipe? all of a sudden it's a million lines of (kernel?) code that's tainted. this is probably a copyright tactic, as the 2.4/2.5 kernel(s) has over 4 million line of code, perhaps they're going for a non-fair use tactic...

watching/reading the legal misadventures of SCO is like watching a drunk walking the edge of a cliff. your schadenfreude kicks in, you know he's gonna fall but you can't help but watch...

Huh?

[carldot67]

First it was 186,000 then 892,000 now "over a million". Hmm, conflicts. There are other conflicts. For example, SCO wont show the code for fear that the OSS community will write round it, then we hear that it is so intertwined that rewriting would not be practical. Then there's the claim that "rocket scientists using advanced [data mining] tools" are credited with finding the in-doubt code.
Hmm. Students of data mining will be aware that given the right circumstances, "advanced [data mining] tools" will find evidence of Space Invaders code in MySQL and carrot DNA in the human genome - buts thats another story; after all there are only so many ways to implement an insertion sort or a tyrosine kinase.
It all backs up my suspicion that this SCO thing is all pretty dubious stuff.
As an aside: I have a simple technique to see if my kids have been naughty. I ask them what happened a couple of times and if the stories change or differ then I know theyve been up to no good. It never fails.
Messrs McBride and Sontag will therefore go to bed early tonight without a story.

Re:Huh?

[jpmorgan]

Does that mean the carrot-people are going to sue us all for copyright infringement?!

I for one welcome our new vegetable overlords.

Re:I know this is a flame...but...

[TheViffer]

Considering SCO repeats the same FUD and BS over and over again, why can't Slashdotters repeat the same jokes over and over?

Awww, poor baby

[Snags]

SCO CEO Darl McBride was going on a family vacation to Hawaii when the RedHat suit and IBM countersuit came up. Gee, it's too bad the nice man's free time was ruined by corporate litigation.

Oh, wait, many people develop Linux in their free time...

Size

[schnarff]

You know, if the amount of code SCO claims is infringing continues to grow at this rate, eventually it'll be as big as Darl McBride's head.

I can see it now -- when IBM finally bursts their bubble in court, McBride's head explodes right along with it. ;-)

OI THATS MINE!!!

[PrImED73]

They won't show a thing, can you imagine what it'll be like if they call everyones bluff and expose these "lines"? there will be loads of replies saying...err...that bits mine actually.

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[nightgeometry]

Quote from article "At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code" So it (appears), that it was SCO making the claim. Kust thought I'd say.

SCO GPL

[broeman]

This is how SCO wants us to see the GPL.

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[linuxtelephony]

From the article:

At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

Millions of lines of offending code involved. From their VP.

curly braces

[whirlycott]

I bet someday really soon, we're going to find out that SCO is claiming that the use of the closing curly brace } is a violation of copyright. That's the only way that these numbers add up.

if (whatever) {
//do stuff
} // <------- copyright violation!!!!

while (whatever) {
//looping...
} // <!------ copyright violation!!!!

The use of the curly brace in this post is a form of satire and is therefore protected under US law.

Re:1/3 of Linux code stolen?

[Transient0]

And remember also that they said MILLIONS which implies two million at least, yet there are only 1.7 million new lines of code in 2.4

New definition of RCU

[Captain_Chaos]

According to the last page of this article, RCU means "Read Copyright Update."

Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[abulafia]

The SMP code (all platforms) seems to be ~15000 lines of which ~800000 lines is copied verbatim from sysV.

So, am I to assume that the Linux kernel is 5333% infringing code?

Man, I wish I could code that efficiently.

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[oolon]

The way the logic probably goes is... smp.h has their code in it, smp.h is included in file fred.c so it can use things like spin locks etc. So basically Sco is counting the lines from every file than might just #include something and you just wait for header files that also #include ;-)

Please Not I do not believe SCOs claims just showing how they could up the figures without an outright lie.

James

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[Glyndwr]

Clearly, this is the Linux kernel programmer's chief sin: being 53 times more efficient than the original Unix guys.

Or maybe the s00per s33kr1t method for making Linux 2.4 was:
$code =~ s/\n//;
$code =~ s/Unix/Linux/;

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[FurryFeet]

I think you mean "infringe that efficiently".
An boy, don't we all...

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[csbruce]

Please Not I do not believe SCOs claims just showing how they could up the figures without an outright lie.

It seems more to me like they are simply counting every line of code ever contributed by any organization that ever had anything to do with SysV Unix.

Of course, with basic malloc()-type functions, it's also possible that multiple copies spring from some third-party original source, such as a text book entitled "how to write malloc() functions".

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[oolon]

I agree I am sure they are doing that as well! After all the Heise example from malloc is in BSD, interestingly that bit of code has already had its day in court and BSD won. So this is clear proof that SCO is claiming ownership of things that do not belong to them.

James

Re:Did the Moderator miss the joke, or did I?

[Herkum01]

The use lots of while loops in their code.

Hypothetical Scenario

[Anonymous Coward]

to quote this piece from the article:

"The current NDA is completely unreasonable and will prejudice the ability of any of us to do our job going forward if we sign it. We feel that SCO needs to be reasonable about granting access to the offending code."

Now imagine SCO actually makes few people sign NDA and view the code, but the viewed code in question is safe. One of these renegades decides to take a bullet for the team and makes the information public. Days later, OSS coders rewrite the "offending" parts in the linux kernel to rid it from alleged IP. They release the code, all hell breaks loose... you get the point.

Is this something that's a possibility? SCO isn't playing fair. You come to expect the most evil acts from these guys.

I really want to know how they calculated this

[OfficerNoGun]

Even though SCO is a bunch of loonies, I don't they are trying to say that one million lines of code are copied and pasted from UNIX. I'm pretty sure whatever calculations they used it was a little bit of fuzzy math. They also said that pre 2.4 was ok, so by looking at the chart above almost 2/3's of the code added between 2.2 and 2.4 is theres (I know were not just dealing with added code, but also optimizations and such, but its still crazy). If they were claiming that the code was copied way back a 1.0 or so and that from that code 1 million lines were added they may be believeable (but it wouldnt make it their million lines). It really is a moot point though. We've all pretty much dismissed SCO as desperate, and even if it makes it to court, by the time the whole thing is settled, the code will likely no longer resemeble anything that was ever SCO's.

an angry mob

[jmb-d]

Open Source Community Approaches SCO

[insert video clip of villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the castle here]

And the actuall 1 000 000 lines....

[botzi]

I've signed the NDA and I've seen the code.... There's a misunderstanding here, the comment about the 1 000 000 lines is made by a non-programmer. I know that they'll sue me now, but I can't stop myself from revealing the actual snippet which is...

/*Property of SCO: We own your ass. Ha.Ha.Ha.*/
int i =0;
while( i < 1 000 000){
i++;
}

...a delay loop. So they seem about right. The only why to replace this is to handcode it(they've patented the for loops and reccursion versions as well). Too bad for linux. We're totally screwed.

PS: Yeeaaah, I'm one of the few who actually RTFA and the whole 1000000 lines is totally manipulated text, but who cares????I mean, we're having fun, right???

Trade press needs a controversy

[sphealey]

I am not as down on Z-D publications as some others in the infotech industry - I have always managed to get good use from Z-D pubs by keeping their approach, history, and biases firmly in mind as I read them.

Still, the IT trade rags need controversy almost as much as the New York tabloids. No churn, no controversy, no "excitement" = no real need for the IT rags to exist. So if they find something controversial that can be spun out over many weeks or months they will do so.

Nothing really new is going to come out of the SCO situation until either (i) discovery is well underway, and one side or the other realizes they have to settle (ii) the case actually goes to the courtroom.

Both of those process will take 6-12 months. So as of this week the trade rags are just chewing the fat.

sPh

Why cant we find out what code is infringing?

[koa]

Why can't we look at it the other way around? Wasnt there any type of accountability in the code as to who wrote what? Why can't we just see what code IS legitamatly free and see what is left? Doesnt Linux keep a roster of the major developers who contributed code to the Linux kernel? I know that if I contributed code to it, I'd want at least my name on the code fragment to say "look what I did".

DON'T DO IT

[Robawesome]

This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of. This could hurt us, they will never approve a fair or no NDA, and this could hurt us and IBM enormously. The issue here is not whether or not there is unix code in linux. The issue is what that means.

SCO says it means "we own everyone else's work, too. So pay up."what it really means is that the code needs to be removed, no matter how preposterosly large SCO says it is. I have read IBM's counterclaim a few times and IBM, as I recall, does not deny that there is unix code in linux. It just says it didn't put any there.

Remember, SCO showed code to a few dozen people under that NDA. They believed that there was, indeed, unix code in linux. HOWEVER, that does not mean what SCO says it means. Just because some code happens to be there does not mean that we are subject to SCOs' illegal whim. They are still screwed for dozens of reasons, whether there is any unix code in there or not.

It does not matter how big the alleged copying is, the only legal thing for SCO to do was to send a message to linus, stating line for line what the code was, ask for it to be removed, and then possibly sue whoever put it there for damages. had they done that, their actions would have been unpopular, but not illegal.

Relax, everything SCO says is going into a file at IBM, to be used as evidence against them in court.

RTWFA!

[Captain_Chaos]

A few lines on it says:

"At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code."

In breaking news.....

[Kref1]

Mr. McBride has confirmed that he actually wrote the entire linux kernel himself. That damn Linus kid broke into his house, kicked his dog, and stole it.
Everyone should promptly remove Linux from their computers, send McBride his royality check and a handwritten appology and get well card for his dog, and then goto your local computer store and purchase a new copy of Windows XP Home

please!!

[borgdows]

please stop SCO bashing!! Give SCO a chance!! ... er wait... they're doomed

A million lines of code...

[MP3Chuck]

And the best they can do is show a few lines of comments side by side while turning their own code to Greek?

If their code is already out there in Linux, and they're showing the Linux half, they've got NOTHING to hide and therefore no reason to "blur" out their code...

Re:I know this is a flame...but...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

The editors do it so what's the problem?

what?

[JBv]

Is this claim true? It just sounds too ridiculous to be true.

With about 1/3 - 1/5th of the code being SCO's any code you pick from linux will probably be SCO owned.

Isn't samba GPL

[nuggz]

How can they distribute samba?
It is GPL, and they are arguing it is an invalid license.

Unless the agree to the GPL, they can't distribute samba. Isn't this a stupid strategy?

Here is the linke to the story, look at the bottom of it.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5065286.html? tag=f d_lede1_hed

Re:Isn't samba GPL

[rosie_bhjp]

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!

Re:Isn't samba GPL

[Stackster]

They probably plan just to sell one copy of "Legend", and they sell it just to keep a backup of their original.

Re:Isn't samba GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it seems SCO believes anything licensed currently under the GPL is basically up for grabs. Someone needs to step on them. Hard.

Re:Isn't samba GPL

[Alien Being]

"Isn't this a stupid strategy?"

Not really. Consider that Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk...

100,000,000,000

[Sebby]

Soon we'll see McBride putting his pinky to his mouth and say "100 billion lines of code!"

BSD?

[hughk]

If this code was in BSD, wasn't it explicitly covered by the settlement with AT&T?

Note that the AT&T version of this code is also probably old enough to appear in the Lyons book. Whilst that doesn't do anything for copyright, it sure nukes the idea of a "Trade Secret".

Re:BSD?

[sandman_eh]

Note that the AT&T version of this code is also probably old enough to appear in the Lyons book.

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

Suppose

[inerte]

I don't support SCO neither I am justifying their actions, but suppose they are right about IBM copying some code. Now, users are protected, since they didn't know they were using other company IP.

Let's just focus on a remote possibility, still, it might be true. SCO proves that IBM (and only IBM) did something wrong. They sue and 'win'. What message does this gives to other companies?

"Support Linux and you might get screwed"

Because there's no really good formal control of what code goes in the kernel (and of course, IMHO, shouldn't be, it's the coder responsability to do this). But we're talking about IBM, a company which has invested one billion on its Linux business.

Imagine other development companies watching this mess with a giant company.

The SCO strike might be unsucessful on our side. But I worry about the psycological net effect of these things. What if company X doesn't let their programmers touch GPL software afraid that they will slip their code on it?

SCO doesn't even have to prove that IBM did something wrong. Just showing that this is possible, makes some companies back off GPL'ed code.

Ps: Of course this is all speculation, but it's fun to imagine different scenarios and prepare yourself. *SPECIALLY* on a business meeting with clients. I've had clients disputing with me my right to use Mysql because they thought my program *had* to be GPL too.

It's all FUD, loud and clear, but affects hundreds of business decisions worldwide.

The Loch Ness Code . . .

[Badgerman]

From this link on the SCO Forum, on a slide show regarding the copied code

Much of the Unix code in the slides was obscured, because the company wants to keep its intellectual property under wraps, but SCO is allowing people who want to see a more extensive side-by-side comparison during the conference to do so if they sign a nondisclosure agreement.

So, here's a vaguely blurry picture of the code that proves we're right . . .

This is the equivalent of blurry pictures of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, except I give them MUCH more credibility.

Life Is Tough

[tds67]

"I decided to take my family to Hawaii for a couple of weeks break after all the madness of the last few months. What could happen in early August, I thought. Someone must have tipped IBM and Red Hat off, because no sooner had I left on vacation than they filed suit," he (McBride) quipped.

See what you're doing to this poor man, /.ers? All your criticism is driving this guy to Hawaii. Repent and tell him you're sorry!

SCO Forum

[iwaku]

SCO: You must pay us $699 for
[big sound effect]
70 lines of code!
[people laughing cruelly]
Sorry. One million lines of code!!
[dramatic music]

You think SCO has dads?

[A nonymous Coward]

Even if they do have dads, it's odds-on they don't know who.

Re:You think SCO has dads?

[LittleBigLui]

Even if they do have dads

Be assured, they do. 70. No, hundreds. No, wait. MILLIONS of them.

they don't know who

They know who, they just won't tell anyone else.

Apart from that, laws of physics dictate that you can't create energy or mass, and hence this whole procreating-parent-child-father-mother-thingie is ILLEGAL anyhow.

(Just when we thought that 3.-???-4.-Profit!!!-Soviet-Russia was bad enough...)

Re:You think SCO has dads?

[BigBadBri]

Q. What's the definition of confusion?

A. Father's Day in Utah.

Re:You think SCO has dads?

[Thing 1]

(Just when we thought that 3.-???-4.-Profit!!!-Soviet-Russia was bad enough...)

Okay, I'll bite with a combination (inspired by you) which I haven't yet seen:

In Soviet Russia, profit makes YOU!

Now would be a fantastic time to...

[DavidTurner]

...sell SCO stock short. Anybody over there in the States want to be my broker?

suppose,

[umeboshi]

that a deal is struck between the entity claiming infringement and developers of a gpl'ed project.

Supose developers remove claimed infringing code and release x+1.

There is nothing binding between the end-user of release x to discontinue use, because there is not any infringing code. There is only infringing code (over a jurisdiction) when it is judged to be so in a court of law. A settlement doesn't create (or remove) infringing code, because it doesn't exist. It is just a mere claim until it is substantiated.

It will take (at minimum) a judge (in my jurisdiction, like fedgovt) to keep me from typing bf24, for i would never feel bound by decisions that have no teeth in my location.

C'mon, SCO, Show SOME lines

[Esion Modnar]

I mean if you have a million lines of your code in there, what's a mere hundred lines? Or ten?

That way, even if everybody ran off and fixed those lines, you still have well over 900,000 lines of evidence (according to you) in your back pocket.

And you would gain (maybe) some credibility. Not to mention what it'd do to your stock price.

Re:C'mon, SCO, Show SOME lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but if SCO started making sense, the Chewbacca defense would become null and void.

Re:Dewd! Learn to read and COMPREHEND!

[Error27]

No.

In other places SCO is claiming that it is "millions" of lines of code.

These guys are lunatics.

Brilliant!

[Geek of Tech]

So if they do remove the millions of lines of offending code, then that would leave us with at least -300,000 lines of code than we started with. Maybe this could be used to create an infinite storage capacity for a hard drive. Start making code take up negative amounts of space.
The more you have, the more you've got.

SCO owns GPL

[kmahan]

You're forgetting that SCO owns the GPL notice at the front of every file.

RTFA

[nnnneedles]

If you read the article, it is obvious the linux guys are saying "even if it is 1 million lines", not SCO.

Seems nobody reads the article anymore. Sheesh.

Re:RTFA

[frankm_slashdot]

RFDTFA... read further down the fscking article...

SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

Only in america

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

America allows a stock market scam to disturb the lives and productivity of millions of people...

This is NOT news.

Approaching...

[BiggerIsBetter]

...the open source community approaching SCO...

Sure, approaching in a mob with pitchforks kind of way.

Contract issue lines , not copyright lines

[LightSail]

Darl is using a smoke screen: the million lines are not SCOX copyrighted, They were Sequent and IBM copyright. SCOX has a small chance of proving contract violation, but cannot prove copyright claim to Sequent/IBM code. Even winning the lawsuit does not give SCOX the copyright status to the donated code. The SCOX copyrighted code that may be in the Linux kernel is most likely either BSD, previously published algorisms, an open standard or hardware vendor release. These are not exclusive to SCOX. If SCOX had actual hard evidence, they would be using it to prove the point with a small public display. Any public display of code would easily be connected to the actual source outside of SCOX, so no show without nda. My feeling is that none of Linux is an actual copyright violation of SCOX copyright. This entire situation is a Hail Mary to increase market cap of SCOX, then use that value to buy profitable companies. Once SCOX has converted the inflated stock into additional sources of income, they will settle and rename the company to reflect its new identity. They may even end up by donating UNIX to open source to make amends, once they have milked the lawsuit and publicity for every dollar possible.

Re:Contract issue lines , not copyright lines

[aug24]

SCOX

Is it just me that is amused by pronouncing this 'S-Cocks'?

J.

Against stupidity...

[Anonymous Coward]

the gods themselves struggle in vain!

SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

Bullcrap! The present version of Linux has capabilties that SCO Unix never ever did! It's been discussed to death here (and everywhere else!) and the only doubt that exists is in the minds of SCO executives and the gullible PHB's that they have managed to snow. There cannot be millions of lines of code stolen from SCO in Linux.

There must be a way to legally force an end to this foolishness! and to do it long before the 2005 court date that has been set for the contract violation suit brought against IBM. Damnit, they have expanded the claims far beyond any contract violation; why the hell can't they be forced legally to "put up or shut up!"?

McBride == McCarthy

[CryBaby]

Press responding to SCO allegations: "Mr. McBride, exactly how many lines of linux kernel code did you say belong to SCO Unix?"

Reporters questioning Sen. John Iselin in "The Manchurian Candidate" (Iselin is a thinly veiled McCarthy for those who haven't seen the movie): "Senator Iselin, exactly how many U.S. Senators did you say belong to the communist party?"

It's laughable, but apparently this old PR trick still works. Let's please keep the focus on the existence / nonexistence of IP infringements in linux rather than backing up SCO's baseless claims by discussing the quantity of IP infringements.

Re:McBride == McCarthy

[Trekologer]

This does seem more and more like McCarthyism each day.

Senator McCarthy: "In my hand, I have a list of members of the Communist party."

SCO: "In this press release, we announce lines of offending code."

In both cases, each respective list never was made public and the number of entires on each one changed as much as the weather.

Re:McBride == McCarthy

[japhmi]

Senator McCarthy: "In my hand, I have a list of members of the Communist party."
SCO: "In this press release, we announce lines of offending code."
In both cases, each respective list never was made public and the number of entires on each one changed as much as the weather.

Except that there actually were (and are) communists in the US, unlike SCO code in Linux.

Re:When did Samba/Java become 'Linux'?

[tomhudson]

NO, but USB is in the kernel, so it's relevant (Unlike SCO, which is so irrelevant at this point ...)

Rez:Notz muchz newz therez

[azzy]

Thatsz az goodz ideaz!

Re:Over 1,000 - no, wait

[beachr]

There are exactly 1,372 offending lines of code..........I can prove that there are 25,647 known bad lines of code............I have definite proof that there are 1,000,000 known communists in the Linux kernel - ahh....I mean, lines of stolen code.....

Perhaps they got the *AA to count?

[andrewbaldwin]

Deja vu - remember the fast CD/DVD writers counting 3 or 4 fold?

After all, with the better efficiency / less bloat effect (when compared with a certain other company's products) each line of Linux must count as 10, 100, 1000... take your pick

Copyright violation

[nuggz]

So their logic is.

Distribute GPL software.
Prove the GPL is invalid because copyright law does not allow you to let others make copies.
Continue to distribute GPL software since copyright law no longer applies when a license is ruled invalid.

This does not seem like a strong strategy.
I think a good strategy to fight this would be for the Samba team to get an injunction on their new products pending SCOs acceptance of the GPL.

They then have 2 choices, ditch Samba, agree to the GPL, or fight against willfull copyright violation.

Re:Copyright violation

[drakaan]

I think I found something...

1. Distribute GPL Software
2. Declare GPL invalid
3. Profit

Possible reason for code similarity?

[p_trekkie]

IANACSM (I am not a computer science major) but the algorithm seems to be a standard one taught in CS courses. A google search on the "first fit" algorithm (mentioned in the comments of the code) yields many results such as this one:


* size(block) = n + size(header)
Scan free list for first block with nWords >= size(block)
If block not found
Failure (time for garbage collection!)
Else if free block nWords >= size(block) + threshold*
Split into a free block and an in-use block
Free block nWords = Free block nWords - size(block)
In-use block nWords = size(block)
Return pointer to in-use block
Else
Unlink block from free list
Return pointer to block
*Threshold must be at least size(header) + 1 to leave room for header and link
Threshold can be set higher to combat fragmentation


It's be pretty hard to claim as intellectual property something that's common knowledge....

RMS

[kkirk007]

to quote the FSF's head legal counsel:

the GPL is an industrial-strength legal contract. For more so, he suspects, than Richard Stallman could have expected it to be when it was drafted in 1985.

His design is more elegant and robust than he could have foreseen.

I think that pretty much sums up what's going to happen with a million lines of SCO-distributed GPLed code.

License

[Bananenrepublik]

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.

Re:I know this is a flame...but...

[DAldredge]

OOG SMASH underground custard-pie caves!

Re:Come and get me, SCO dogs!

[frankm_slashdot]

not to be argumentative... but, who are you? its clear that youve contributed a lot to kernel but its hard to thank (or in sco's case, should they take you up on it --- go after) an AC.

Its getting boring

[Tuqui]

All this fiaSCO stories are getting weird and boring . The fiaSCO CEO and his co-conspirator are playing how to use the media to push the price of the stock up.

Corporate Death Penalty

[Ron Harwood]

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.

The problem is this: there is no downside for SCO... they can say and do anything without fear - and there's the very remote chance that they might win something. It's like buying lottery tickets.

There needs to be a downside for crap like this - once it's proven to be a complete fabrication. Imprision the CEO for his company's wilfull purjury... seize their assets... stop all business functions. Basically - a lethal injection for the company.

You can bet shareholders will have something to say about overly litigious companies then!

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[JessLeah]

It'll never happen. All the laws of the US are bought and paid for by corporations anyhow. You and I both know that they'd NEVER let something like the corporate death penalty through. It'd force them to, y'know, act responsibly, and not pull giant Enron/SCO/Microsoft/Verizon/RIAA/MPAA-style schemes out of their rear ends whenever they think they can make money off of blatant lies and illegal business practices.

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[Zocalo]

In the US maybe, but not here in the UK where we really do have a corporate death penalty. It's actually called a "Compulsory Winding Up Order" and can be issued by a court when a company if found to have sufficiently dubious trading/financial practices to make it a liabilty to do business with them.

Besides, who do you think can buy the most law makers - IBM or SCO?

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[intermodal]

hear, hear!

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[Lord_Dweomer]

"The problem is this: there is no downside for SCO... they can say and do anything without fear - and there's the very remote chance that they might win something. It's like buying lottery tickets."

No, there IS a downside. Its called the SEC. Trust me, once they get involved, you will see one of the most frantic backpeddlings in history. Unless of course Darl and his crew think they can pay some big fines and walk away with several million.

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[dcavanaugh]

One way or another, the shareholders are going to end up with a share price of $0. No punishment is going to make it any worse than that. As for Daryl, his life should be made interesting in a Martha Stewart sort of way. Any legal recourse against SCO is pretty much meaningless unless the individual officers are targeted. Otherwise, it's like threatening to confiscate the Titanic after it hits the iceberg and is sinking anyway.

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[Haeleth]

Unfortunately there's nothing to stop the executives from immediately forming another company with the same staff, products, and business practices. See the recurrent timeshare scandals - rotten businesses are hydras.

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[Chakde Phate!]

Unfortunately there's nothing to stop the executives from immediately forming another company with the same staff, products, and business practices.

But...but...they can be debarred from ever running a company again. Haven't you seen the new Only Fools and Horses episode?

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[trashme]

Actually, there is a possibly downside.

The SCO execs have pumped up the stock price drastically with this lawsuit and their FUD. They also seem to selling off some stock, though so far it doesn't seem like that much. If the SEC can prove that the SCO execs knew that this lawsuit was bullshit and profited by selling the inflated stock, then they can be in a bit of trouble. It's insider trading. They knew that the lawsuit had no merit, but used it to temporarily increase the value of the stock, knowing that it would eventually crash once the truth is known.

Re:Corporate Death Penalty

[andrewski]

You're fucking KIDDING me. The same SEC that basically validates the kind of scams that go on all the time? In a recent arbitration against a major company that defrauded it's investors, 2 of the 3 arbitrators sitting on the panel were at that time also employed as consultants for the same company being charged with funds mismanagement! The SEC is a fucking joke when it comes to protecting the investor. They are there to protect the investment corporations. Since the 70's you haven't been able to sue your broker for mismanagement, you have to go to a SEC arbitration. One which was probably rigged from the start.

Slides code won't even compile...

[Spam.B.gone]

But the ')' after the return statement (2nd example, 2nd line) will prevent compilation of this code...

Lines of code System V?

[iwaku]

Are there one million lines of code in System V?

not finished yet...

[advocate_one]

over a million lines of offending code in Linux and they still won't show them to anybody.

that's cos they're still feverishly trying to paste them into the source... :)

Re:Doesn't M$ own SCO for some part ?

[gregarican]

I know that Micro$loth purchased SCO IP licenses not too long ago, but other than the Xenix abortion of days long ago I think they are separate entities. Although equally deplorable...

Learn to read, COMPREHEND, and spell.

[FlukeMeister]

Reading a little further down the page, if your attention span so allows, will reveal the following:

"At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code."

Somebody needs to read the article they are commenting on before deciding to criticise.

1,000,000 Offending lines

[A55M0NKEY]

It's like every time someone asks SCO how many lines of code in Linux are 'offending', the number goes up by an order of magnitude

Clarification

[nuggz]

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.

maybe its just drivers. :)

[jeoin]

given the rate that the code is growing maybe it is just drivers.

soon we will have the offending code

[GweeDo]

At this rate soon SCO will just say that all of Linux is their's and we will finally have the offending code to view. In gentoo simply type "emerge sys-kernel/vanilla-sources" to view what SCO is refusing to show :P

How long before..

[Glyndwr]

...they're claiming the Linux kernel contains more infinging lines than it actually has? What do we do then? Cat together the X, Mozilla, and kernel source trees and start over?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dr. Evil redux

[Valdrax]

I keep flashing back to Austin Powers 2...

Dr. Evil: ...We demand payment for our ONE TRILLION lines of UNIX code. [puts pinky finger to edge of mouth]
[IBM board bursts into laughter.]
IBM CEO: One trillion lines of code? [laughs] There isn't that many lines in the entire GNU system! I mean, you might as well demand payment for a billion-jillion-bazillion lines of code!

SCO sues Disney!!!

[rice_burners_suck]

For immediate release:

SCO files a lawsuit against the Walt Disney Company for violating SCO's patents. SCO alleges that Linux, a proprietary middleware application developed jointly by HP and IBM, contains technologies owned by SCO.

Although Disney has nothing to do with Linux, SCO CEO Darl McBride says, "They have done nothing to help us enforce our rights in connection to our innovative technologies. The purpose of this lawsuit is to make it clear to all businesses that either they are with us or they are against us."

If SCO wins the lawsuit, Disney will pay 100 billion in damages for failure to allocate all its corporate resources to back SCO in its fight against HP and IBM. SCO alleges over 100 million lines of source code--essentially business rules developed by SCO--have been illegally placed into a program called Linux Colonel, by HP and IBM.

"By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions," said a spokesperson for SCO. SCO stocks climbed 12% after the initial announcement.

No, *you* RTFA :-)

[CaptainBaz]

At that Q&A session, SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag said there are millions of lines of offending code involved and that it's highly unlikely the matter could be resolved by removing that code.

Surely 'millions', plural, must mean at least two million. Quite a difference from 70 lines, or 80 lines, whatever it was originally alleged to have been... It really is silly season.

Re:No, *you* RTFA :-)

[djmurdoch]

Surely 'millions', plural, must mean at least two million.

That's a common mistake. In English, singular forms are used for "one", and all other numbers (e.g. zero) are plural.

For example, we would say "there are zero lines of SCO code in Linux".

It's unusual to use this construction without the number in front, but SCO is being grammatically correct.

SCO has won me over. I realize now that . . .

[LazloToth]

. . . . Linux is, in its entirety, now and forever, SCO Unix. All of it. Why did we ever believe the "Open Source/independent developers working in concert" lie? Didn't we all suspect it was too good to be true? Darl, it will be seen, is the reluctant messiah bringing us the painful, but timeless and inescapable truth: Any attempt to write non-SCO code fails.

Prepare to repartition your discs. Long live SCO.

SCO code shown = BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO did a big dog and pony show yesterday at their conference. They also raised their claims, and according to them, there are "millions of lines" of offending code which they have identified by "rocket scientists" using "spectral recognition" and "pattern analysis".

To convince SCOforum attendees of their case, SCO showed obscured slides which supposedly proved copying.

Research reveals that the code fragment SCO showed in one of their slides, doesn't even belong to SCO - it's from BSD. See for yourself, the code originated from, and is Copyright 1986 Regents of the University of California! And, while they might have more up their sleeve, it's is revealing that the most compelling example they can show at their forum, doesn't even belong to them!

Bluff

[Tirephus]

This has GOT to be a bluff - they just keep upping the ante.

yes

[mikeee]

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.

Stop being so picky

[Calibax]

One of the (many) comments from SCO management was that they didn't notice that SCO source code was included in Linux when they released their Linux version under the GPL, even though they do admit that Caldera employees had worked on the Linux source and added code to the source themselves.

"Your honor, we didn't notice the code. After all, it was only a million lines, and we can't be expected to look at every line, now can we..."

Clickable versions!

[aug24]

Heise News shows code:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh1.jpg

The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html

Does this code come from:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ken/mal loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/mal loc.c.html

Plus...

For version referencing, look here

Justin.

License change

[coyote-san]

I'm not sure how many contributers there are to the Samba project, but it's almost certainly far fewer than to the Linux kernel, GNU tool chain, etc.

The bottom line is that they may be able to take direct action: change the license to "GPL-SCO." That's a stock GPL license with an extra clause superceding all others and explicitly prohibiting the use of the software on SCO systems, on any system owned by SCO regardless of the OS used, or distribution in any form by SCO or its successors. Finally, since SCO is claiming that none of these licenses are valid anyway there would be a final clause inserted by the lawyers that basically say that if the rest of the license is invalidated then SCO owes a licensing fee of US$1,000,000,000 per CPU, payable immediately. A billion dollars/CPU to the people who actually wrote the code is no less unreasonable than SCO trying to collect a kilobuck/CPU from Linux users who never invited SCO to the table.

In short, if they want to support MS products but refuse to accept the standard license, they can damn well write the code themselves. The same applies to any other application they use.

This is a bit more direct that what the GCC group is supposedly considering - dropping SCO hardware from the list of supported hardware - but it's clear that SCO isn't going to stop until the feds get off their ass and start prosecuting these clowns.

Re:License change

[Arker]

This is a very bad idea. First because it's unecessary, and second because the result would be a license which is NOT compatible with the GPL and not even a Free Software license. Such discriminatory licensing would be cutting off your foot to spite your face, or some such homily.

Under the existing terms of the GPL it seems that SCO has very likely already disallowed itself from using any GPL code by its actions anyway. It's just a matter of someone providing enough support that the SAMBA team and others feel confident they can move against them without incurring legal fees they can't afford to pay.

Re:License change

[GoRK]

Even if they did change the license to something like this to prevent SCO from using it, they'd still have the problem of having released the old code under a license that DOES allow SCO to use it and will continue to allow SCO to develop on it and enhance it (providing that the software remains under the GPL of course)

SCO has become "those guys"

[raw-sewage]

What baffles me is that there seems to be some folks who are taking SCO seriously (not the open source community, of course). Why can't the general public see SCO for the ridiculous group they are?

If they really wanted to be compensated for this "stolen code" or "contract infringement" or whatever complaint-of-the-week they may have, wouldn't they be pushing this harder through the official channels? Anyone who is wronged wants a quick resolution. SCO seems content to just sit around and release a lot of anti-open source press.

The overwhelming majority of their claims has been debunked, except that which can't be seen (the "offending code" and the contract with IBM). I doubt an entire million lines of code is stolen. No way! Sometimes I think that SCO may actually believe that there is stolen code in Linux. Somewhere, someone made some assumptions, and used these assumptions to demonstrate that Linux uses stolen code. And now they seem to have people working off of these assumptions, finding even more illicit code! I can see where there might be a few shady or questionable areas of the kernel, but a million lines? Pshaw!

Every week or so, SCO seems to come out with a more outrageous claim. Sometimes I think that maybe they are playing the open source community against itself: there's so much talk about the legality of the GPL, SCO's claims, intellectual property, etc. SCO at least knows how passionate the Linux community is about its operating system; they are using this fact to keep their smear/FUD campaign alive. SCO is just a school yard bully. This whole affair has become the reality TV of the open source world.

I don't see it happening (as I myself am just as guilty of wanting to know "what's next" with this ordeal), but we need to just ignore SCO. And by we I mean everybody who is not SCO. Until they are willing to actually work with anyone (outside of an NDA or the courts), there's nothing we can do except keep making better software.

Of course, the other side is that there's always an argument for "any publicity is good publicity". If a few more people know about Linux/open source than who are turned off by the propaganda, it works to our benefit.

ban all SCO partners

[negacao]

http://wdb1.sco.com/sdir_web/owa/ptrlocator.result s has a list of partners/users of SCO; below is a list I've created of thier contact e-mail addresses.

Why not drop 'em all a line and let 'em know you're not happy w/ thier status as "partners" of SCO?

begin email addresses:
comptron@comptron.com; shirley.jochim@irdinc.com; info@samco.com; bill.sch@ge-interlogix.com; robertjb@rjbsys.com; tmaine@bond-us.com; tcalabro@cdi-hq.com; tony@icscontrolplus.com; coins@shakercom.com; sco@wcs.ab.ca; info@comer-tech.com; sales@eid.net; hector@vigilant.com; sales@cpasoftware.com; pboles@vantagemed.com; support@petroleumdata.com; infor@transystem.com; info@cbscorp.com; info@avotus.com; speedres@accovia.com; info@mdmgr.com; info@ecs-inc.com; sales@gosoftware.com; postmaster@ogcinc.ca; sales@retailvista.com; bblankenship@envirosys.com; datacomm@datacomminc.com

Re:ban all SCO partners

[negacao]

FWIW, here's the email i sent them:
---- cut ----
Gentlemen:

Because of your status as partners of SCO [1], your companies will not be considered by me and mine.

Regards,
Kristopher Matthews / lkmlq, inc.
krism@mailsnare.net

[1] http://wdb1.sco.com/sdir_web/owa/ptrlocator.result s

-- end ---

Re:ban all SCO partners

[dentar]

Just because someone's still listed there doesn't mean that SCO hasn't pissed them off. A lot of them probably don't deal with SCO anymore, but didn't bother to get off the list.

I'm on the list, and I assure you, I won't let my clients upgrade to anything SCO unless they're forced at gunpoint.

Re:ban all SCO partners

[negacao]

then why not make SCO remove you? i mean, do you want your company/name associated with SCO?

Re:ban all SCO partners

[dentar]

Hmm.. lessee here:

Reseller: Hey SCO, I ain't selling your products anymore.. please remove me from your list.

SCO: Ok.. oh yeah, see you in court, we're suing you. ..better to just stay off radar altogether. we've got hostiles you know...

SCO and programming

[lcde]

Why doesn't SCO just say they invented the C language. That should cover everything they ever wanted.

Hmm. Marketing campaign for Linux?

[MImeKillEr]

Like McDonald's "Over One Billion Served" ?

Linux: Over a million lines of code stolen from SCO and counting..

Nah, it'd probably just force people to the WIntel platform. I mean, who'd want to knowingly use code that was lifted from such a carnival-like company?

Comment lines could be damning

[pcause]

A number of articles on this issue point out that many copied lines are comments and that the comments have the identical spelling errors that lines of *nix code do. If this is true, and if the lines of code are truly owned by SCO this is very damning.

Someone might make the case that given a task to do the code to accomplish the task could look very similar or nearly identical. Bit comments? And spelling errors? Not a chance. Comments can be rare enough and programmers idiosyncratic enough that it stretches credulity to think that multiple programmers would write the same comment with the same spelling error.

The issue is whether or not these lines came into UNIX from another source, such as from BSD. If the code came from BSD, perhaps TCP stack or utilities, than SCO really has no claim. The other possibility is that it is in driver code. This gets murkier.

I don't think AT&T ever made the APIs for drivers public. You had to have a non-disclosure agreement with them or a license. But it is possible that you could replace the AT&T interfaces with Linux interfaces and had the code look identical in 90% of its content and not be a copy, since the device parts would be identical, but they would be owned by the driver writer. One exception is if the driver writer started with an AT&T driver and modified it. In this case, SCO wins.

There was a 386 reference port of UNIX done for AT&T by Intel and Interactive Systems. As part of that port there were a number of driver provided to AT&T. They are all owned by AT&T and drivers that were built starting with those drivers would be a violation of the license. One itneresting fact is that Interactive went into the packaged UNIX business and their x86 UNIX was eventually bought by Sun and was the base of Solaris for the x86.

Again, it all comes down to the details: which parts of the code are we talkign about.

Re:Comment lines could be damning

[yeremein]

Look here to find the same comment used in SCO's slideshow in a 1984 Usenet posting: http://tinyurl.com/khnj

Re:Comment lines could be damning

[pcause]

Very interesting. As I remember, all the UNIX and BSD code had headers that included copyright messages. If this is the case, then the person who posted this left the copyright out (note the ...) and we can only assume that they did it intentionally.

One defense against a copyright infringement suit is that the infringer didn't know that the code in question was copyrighted. Of course, given the content of this post, it is pretty clear that this is likely copyrighted and someone should have done diligence before using. Laziness isn't always an excuse.

But, even assuming the use was inadvertent, once notified that copyrighted material has been used, if the owner so dspecifies, I believe that the law is that the people using the system with the purloined materials must stop using it until the code is replaced. The thing is, the replacement must be made without reference to the original code or derivative works of the code.

We are still faced wit the issue that even if IBM and Linux folks did not intentionally violate the copyright, the community may still need to stop using Linux until the code can be replaced and possibly by people who haven't had access to it, working from an iterface spec, in a clean room.

The other interesting thing is that the person who posted this appears to have been at JPL. If JPL had the code under license then they are potentially liable for the damages to the copyright holder for the discolsure and perhaps to users who have systems that includes that code.

The only thing that is certain, as this unfolds, is that the there may be a lot of lawyers about to make $$ on this mess.

Slashdot claims...

[Cyno]

SCO stole 1,000,000 lines of code from the Linux kernel.

The Best Case Scenario for Linux is ...

[let_freedom_ring]

(Bear w/me here)
1. A court finds that IBM blatantly copied and violated SCO's copyright.
2. A court finds that IBM is liable but all the recipients of the tainted Linux kernel must install an updated kernel without the stolen SCO code (or install an older linux kernel).
3. A court finds that the recipients of the tainted kernel are in no way financially liable to SCO.

Look guys, w/open source development it is only a matter of time before SOMEONE puts stolen copy protected code into the kernel. Once it is established that the remedy is simply to remove the code without any other liability then MS will no longer be able to spread FUD about the dangers of Open Source to businesses.

I'v seen it!

[Galapas]

If it really is 1,000,000 lines of code, then I had to have seen at least some of it. I'v perused(sp?) the kernel source a bit for fun. If it is already out in the Kernel how is having an NDA keping it from anyone?

Or am I missing something?

-G

how many monkeys did it take ?

[tmroyster]

I wonder just how lone it took how many
monkeys to detirmine that there is millions
of lines of infringing code.

I just flatly DO NOT believe its possible!

Seriously, what is there algorithm for detecting
infringing lines of code? Maybe they are going
by file names? ie there is a file name called
printk.c in the linux kernel and one in sys V....
It must be a copy!!!!

They ARE dumber than you thought...

[OmniGeek]

Clearly, they are very, very dumb. GPL invalid 'cause copyright law forbids multiple copies? (et bloody cetera, ad freaking infinitum) They're either barking mad or immensely, fiendishly, deviously clever, and the evidence leans heavily toward barking mad... The fortunate part in all this is that, as SCO's claims get ever wilder, soon even the PHBs will recognize that they're a rebel without a case.

Re:They ARE dumber than you thought...

[iainl]

"GPL invalid 'cause copyright law forbids multiple copies? "

Yep. And the fact that SCO Unix allows itself to be backed up to tape (or, come to think of it, even installed from the CDs) means that the SCO Unix license is just as invalid.

I hereby claim that, because SCO let me copy it once, I am the rightful owner of all System V IP.

Which I now place in the public domain. End of argument.

Poster should RTFA

[JediTrainer]

The only place I saw "a million lines" was 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.

SCO didn't say that.

How to blow off a stupid claim

[spikenerd]

So how about somebody write a little script to do a line-by-line comparison of two other OS'es. Compare Linux with FreeBSD or BSD with OSX or some pirated copy of Windows source, and see how many lines of #include and { and else you can find in common. Then when SCO tells some judge there are N lines of code in common between Linux and SCOnix, IBM can tell the judge there are M lines of code in common between these other two random operating systems. Make sure the script finds every remotely similar line of code and ignores whitespace. I'm guessing you'll come up with about, oh let's pick a number at random here, a million lines of code.

SCO ROCKET SCIENTISTS (no shit)

[jbottero]

I submitted this story yesterday, but my karma is still in the shithole from submitting a pro-windoz story. 30 submitted, all rejected. Whatever. BUT.... An eWeek article has the SCO veep telling us they have ROCKET SCIENTISTS working for them. No shit. From the story: "We have rocket scientists who have applied their spectral recognition and pattern analysis to software, which has yielded amazing results. We have found needles in the Mount Everest-sized haystack"

False confidence on Federal Copyright law

[Macka]

Mark Heise, a partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, the primary law firm representing SCO, said that he found it interesting that with all its patents, IBM was arguing for open source. "We believe that any GPL claim by IBM is pre-empted by Federal Copyright law and are very comfortable with our position on that," he said.

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:

You don't need permission to use copyrighted work - there is no exclusive right to use, unlike in Patent law which involves the rights to 'make, use or sell'.

Read the article, it's quite an eye opener.

Macka

Anyone else get the feeling...

[Rogerborg]

That this is starting to read like a The Onion article? You know, one of the recent ones that starts with a moderately amusing title - "SCO claims 'All your code base are belong to us'" - but then just dribbles on and on until you get tired of reading it.

SCO are trolling for dollars. We should stop helping them out by disseminating their bullshit. We shouldn't even bother to refute it, because by doing so, we make it looks as though there's something there that needs refuting. Nuh huh. Until they back up their claims by listing the source, there is no story here. They're simply begging for publicity to sell shares to pointy haired morons. Let's not be a party to that any more.

So linux-2.6 is OK?

[joostje]

OK, I'm apparently not a rocket scientist, so I'm not that good at grepping, but I cannot find anything resembling the code from the .jpg image in linux-2.6.0-test3.

In 2.4.20, yes, I see it's in linux-2.4.20/arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c.

But when grepping all files of the 2.6.0-test3 kernel, I cannot find anything resembling the cited code.

Have been trying:
find . -type f | xargs grep -5 ' for *(.*bp'
find . -type f | xargs grep -5 ' mapstart'
find . -type f | xargs grep -5 'while(.*bp-1'
and a few others.

Also, can anyone explain why the `copyrighted' code comes from the ia64 arch code in linux 2.4.20? Apparently SCO isn't yet able to run on 64 bit processors, so how come we illegally coppied it from SCO of all places?

(and, yes, in 2.2.25 I couldn't find the code eighter)

Ex-Suse guy - now a SCO VP

[Krafty Koder]

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030819/latu060_1.html "LINDON, Utah, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX - News), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system, today announced the appointment of Gregory Blepp as vice president of SCOsource. Blepp will report to Chris Sontag, the senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource, the division of SCO tasked with protecting and licensing the company's UNIX intellectual property."

I am wondering though...

[MKalus]

Could it be that they make all this fuzz in the hope to get all the "freebies" that are now in Linux (e.g. USB support) and use it for their own products?

Let's assume for a moment that they win this lawsuit, at least enough to impress the big guys, what are they going to do? Switch to FreeBSD? Hardly they will be afraid enough that this might happen again, so they might turn to SCO who pretty much could / will offer Linux now (of course then it won't be called Linux, after all Linus has the (C) on that one).

Interresting times ahead I'd say.

M.

It's obvious

[xyote]

SCO seems to be referring to the RCU, NUMA and other SMP code. They claim that they own it as being a derivative work. The compare must of been those files to themselves which is kind of silly and probably why they are blurring stuff so as to not look more stupid than they really are.

Since they can't actually sue anybody until they identify the specific code they claim is in infringement, and since it will take about the same amount of time to remove said code no matter when you start to do it, then ignoring SCO until they do identify the code would be a good idea.

sco wants to collect royalties

[The_Rook]

sco wants to collect royalties or at least successfully sue users for infringement (imagined or real). to that effect, sco doesn't want the linux community to remove offending code from linux since that would invalidate their case.

in other words, sco doesn't want the linux community to remove the infringing code. sco wants money and will block attempts to remove infringing code to insure that they get the cash.

SCO reminds me of Senator Joe McCarthy:

[Futurepower(R)]

From the Slashdot story: "SCO now says there are over a million lines of offending code in Linux and they still won't show them to anybody."

This reminds me of Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1950 Communists in the State Department speech. See the end of the article for a quote from Senator McCarthy:

"I have in my hand fifty-seven cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy."

Senator Joseph McCarthy said he would show Dean Acheson, then U.S. Secretary of State, the list, but only under special conditions that often changed. McCarthy said: "It would be a waste of effort to give Acheson the names, then have him deny they are Communists and we can not get the records."

The number of Communists McCarthy said were in the U.S. State Department also often changed, too. Soon it was "81 subversives":

The article cited above says, "Senator Lucas of Illinois, Democratic leader, repeatedly tangled with McCarthy, who also said he has case histories of 81 subversives--including what he called a 'big three'--who are working in and with the State Department. Lucas challenged McCarthy to name names. McCarthy refused, saying Lucas or any other interested authorities could get the names at McCarthy's office."

"The Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarthy" (See the end of the article.) "Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy died soon after the censure, at the age of 48, of hepatitis and liver disease related to alcoholism."

Senator McCarthy gave many people a big Red scare. However, in the end, everyone realized that he was a liar.

Re:Over 1,000,000

[molarmass192]

I'm sure we haven't seen nothing yet, I fully expect that by next week they'll be claiming that Linux is actually a leaked copy of UnixWare.

SCO's Got Copyright Backwards

[reallocate]

I'm pretty sure SCO is blowing smoke, but keeping their code under wraps until they're in court seems to be a reasonable strategy to me. Their success depends on convincing the court, not the open source community.

That said, I'm also pretty sure that SCO is dead wrong to argue that copyright law prevents others from making copies of your work. Copyright law protects an author's rights, which include establishing the conditions under which others can acquire copies of that author's works. Commercial software sells you a copy; free software gives you a copy.In both cases, rights to own a copy are transferred by the author to someone else. Whether or not payment was received is of secondary importance. In either case, copyright law protects the author.

A license is a different animal entirely, and it will be interesting to see ow the GPL fares in court.

Re:SCO's Got Copyright Backwards

[Croaker]

...keeping their code under wraps until they're in court seems to be a reasonable strategy to me. Their success depends on convincing the court, not the open source community.

I don't follow this reasoning. There's no reason to hold back identifying the infringing code, aside from hiding the fact they have nothing, or that the code that was "duplicated" actually made its way into the kernel through legal channels (i.e. SCO employees contributing the code).

SCO's management has in the past claimed that "telling you what is infringing will mean that people will take the code out of the kernel." This lays bare SCO's purpose... money. They hope to perpetually reap the benefits of claiming infringement, rather than letting the community clean up any leakage of propretary IP into Linux. Furthermore they are bullshitting that it would affect their case. All they would have to do is bring in a Red Hat CD with the source code for the infringing kernel, and show the offending code. The fact that the current kernel wouldn't have the infringing code is irrelevant to SCO's suit. They can still claim that the past infringement damaged their IP and hurt their business.

Re:SCO's Got Copyright Backwards

[reallocate]

Three points:

1. SCO, presumably, has no interest in the opinion of the open source community. If SCO's claims are bogus, showing the code to community members would be the last thing they would want to do. They'd be weakening their own case in court. If SCO's claims are legitimate, they still have no reason to show the code to open source advocates. That "community" isn't a legal entity, can't be sued, and has nothing SCO wants. (They're after serious money from the corporate sector. not nickels and dimes from individual Linux users.)

2. SCO has, in fact, offered to show the code contingent upon acceptance of their NDA. SCO can simply argue that they are not attempting to impose onerous conditions, but simply following standard industry procedure. I believe SCO would weaken their legal position if they allowed the code to be viewed without the NDA.

3. I can accept that SCO's purpose in bringing suit is money. SCO's purpose, period, is money. So is Sun's, IBM's, RedHat's, Microsoft's, and any other profit-making organization. (Some community members need to realize that not everyone agrees that open source holds the ethical high ground, i.e., many normal people believe that selling proprietary closed code is just as ethical as releasing open code.) Permitting the Linux community to clean up any offending code won't bring them any money. Besdies, that's a cared they might need to play during court proceedings.

Re:SCO's Got Copyright Backwards

[shotfeel]

IANAL, but a basic premise of real-world trials is that there is no such thing as "surprise" evidence. What that means is that SCO is required to turn over all info they have on the supposed infringing code to whoever they are suing well in advance of the trial, giving the opposition plenty of time to evaluate and refute the "evidence".

AFAIK (not very far) the terms under which the code or "evidence" is released will be up to the court, not SCO. In other words, the details may still not be made publicly available, but its not up to SCO to decide. They'll have to convince a judge that there is a valid reason to keep the info away from the general public.

All the above is just the long way to say that SCO can't keep it under wraps until they're in court. They will have to, at minimum, reveal their evidence to the defendant in time for a reasonable defense to be made.

Re:SCO's Got Copyright Backwards

[reallocate]

Agree that SCO will be required to present their evidence as part of the legal proceedings coming out of their suit.

But, until that time, I don't think SCO has any reason to release the code for public scrutiny. In fact, I don't think SCO has any reason to release the code for public scrutiny, ever. Even when released during the proceedings, I'd expect SCO to seek to prevent access to the code outside the proceedings. They just have nothing to gain by doing otherwise.

(It seems to me that, in part, SCO's case rests on the private and proprietary nature of the code they allege has been infringed. That's the reason they require someone who accesses the code to sign an NDA. Allowing members of the public who are not parties to the suit to view the code without signing an NDA would weaken their ability, in the future, to claim that code as private and proprietary.)

heh. malloc? free?

[vt0asta]

All I see is memory management, memory management, and more memory management. If SCO is claiming these are "stolen", then fine. Everyone and there mother comes up with their own implementation of the same damn routines for their own little pet project or module in the kernel.

You'll find more than one occurance of some variation of the following (probably just with some prefix or suffix): strcmp, strcpy, bcopy, malloc, free, strstr, etc. (ad nauseum). Each one can probably be proven to be derivative works of public domain tech.

It's bad that some developer(s) were so lazy as to not change or use the standard kernel routines, and worse that they may have copied and pasted, but this is hardly revolutionary or secret code, or even critical code that couldn't be replaced by the most junior of slashdot's anonymous cowards.

Arena memory management is covered in great detail by a number of sources, in fact the ANSI C standard describes exactly what these type of routines must do, not to mention the wealth of books out there that have half a dozen ways to skin the same cat.

Kernel programming is not as simple as calling #include <stdio> and getting a whole bunch of standard stuff. If you want a special (or even not so special) routine you have to bring it with you (i.e. code it yourself without dependencies), can't just link to the good ole' C library and compile up a kernel.

That's why it does not suprise me that there are similiar variations of MM routines out to ying yang in the Linux kernel. It also does not suprise me (now) that SCO would make an attempt to point to it as their IP. If SCO is not careful they may end up proving all by themselves they don't have any trade secrets or protection.

Once they claim past a certain number of lines of code stolen, it wouldn't be hard to function by function find similiar code within in the linux kernel group those together, and then find unique parts, that historically aren't derivatives. At that point all that has to be done is prove the grouped lines of code are public domain.

If the offending code is Open Source...

[gatkinso]

...people can already SEE it - so why won't they just tell us WHICH lines???

But I guess this is the crux of the matter - and since they are full of it anyway I guess they never will tell.

SCO Unix...

[Chordonblue]

Attendees applauded when SCO announced support for *new* hardware like: USB, AGP, PCI, and PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard ports.

And coming soon! Full compliance with ELS...

Extended

Lawyer

Support ;)

An injunction forcing SCO to disclose filenames

[Marrow]

and line numbers. Just make them take a current source distribution and document exactly what line numbers they say are theirs and why they think its theirs. They cannot claim that by releasing the filenames and line numbers of code that is already public they are in any way weakening their rights over code or ideas. Then the industry can look at their claim and put it to rest.

If they are unwilling to even release the filenames/line numbers of the code they claim is theirs, then how can anyone possible take them seriously?

Has this already been proposed? What was their response?

Why no individuals will sue SCO...

[rongage]

To me, the answer to why nobody within the developer community (including myself) is bothering to sue SCO for copyright infringement and GPL licensing violations is quite obvious.

As developers, we have barely enough time in our busy lives to deal with things like writting our next "killer app", let alone things like family and living. On top of this, to sue such a company requires fronting a fairly large amount of cash to a lawyer. Nevermind the level of trust and respect our profession seems to harbor towards lawyers in general.

We all would love to see "someone else" sue (and obviously win) a suit against SCO. The problem is that "we" don't have the time nor the money to defend what is effectively ours. Hence, we will loose our creation(s) because of our lack of willingness to go after the bully.

Like everyone else, if I had the time and the money, I would be all over SCO for violating my copyright and the GPL license. I just can't afford the risk financially right now...

Won't work

[roystgnr]

The bottom line is that they may be able to take direct action: change the license to "GPL-SCO." That's a stock GPL license with an extra clause superceding all others and explicitly prohibiting the use of the software on SCO systems, on any system owned by SCO regardless of the OS used, or distribution in any form by SCO or its successors.

That extra clause would make the "GPL-SCO" license incompatible with the GPL. So, to change it in the first place, they'd have to round up every copyright holder on (which probably means every author of) GPLed code and get them all to volunteer to change their license.

And even if they did, it probably wouldn't matter: SCO could just take the last GPL'ed version of Samba and work from there. That's kind of the point of the GPL: to ensure that you still have your free software even if the authors go crazy, get bought out, or get all 'political' on you.

Another poster did have a point, though: SCO's arguments about the GPL being "invalid" could be interpreted as a public statement that they do not agree to the GPL, in which case their redistribution of any GPLed code is just copyright violation. However, I personally wouldn't want to try to sue them unless they were actually breaking the terms of the GPL on my software (which so far they're only doing to the Linux kernel authors) not just babbling about their perceived right to do so.

1/4 Is Stolen? Ya.. Suuuuure

[nurb432]

Thats a *bit* overstated.. I agree that logically there is SOME code that isnt supposed to be in there, with the nearly 4.5million lines there has to be a slip up or two..

But 1/4? Come on now guys.. Pass the bong over here it MUST have something good in it...

They don't have to!

[Chordonblue]

They don't have to apparently. They seen to have the press in their back pocket.

The stupid mainstream press have headlines like, "SCO Shows Offending Code To Crowds Of Awed Onlookers". But the simple truth is, they still haven't really shown shit.

Thirty years old, originally by Dennis Ritchie

[rkww]

The 1973 nsys version of malloc.c is virtually identical.

The file is in a directory called 'dmr'. There's a parallel directory named 'ken'.

Ritchie has written (re. the nsys kernel) that So far as I can determine, this is the earliest version of the Unix kernel that currently exists in machine-readable form.

Code is from 1979!

[nagora]

See orginal poster Boston_mike at Gentoo (third post down).

SCO are just a pack of lying shits.

TWW

So which reporters do we send this to?

[roystgnr]

Granted this is nice vindication for Slashdot rants, but wouldn't it be even nicer to have the mainstream press laughing at SCOX for not knowing the pedigree of their own code?

chutzpah

[blunte]

Chutzpah...

That's the word that comes to mind when I read SCO's statements.

Bill Gates may be the devil to many people, but at least he's not a total fucking moron like these guys. Unbelievable.

Re:Why I hope that SCO wins...

[Chordonblue]

Oh that'll be fun, why not just reinvent every driver for every sound/video/motherboard/RAID/north and south bridge, etc. ever made. Sure.

It's hard enough getting the mainstream graphics people to do Linux drivers; how convinced do you think they'll be to do one for some off-brand version of Dumb-OS(tm)?

Here's a new open source license for you

[coljac]

Great, they screw us then profit from open source products like SAMBA. What an outrage.

I suggest all open source/free software authors add an extra restriction to their product, a license that prevents anyone at SCO using it. Something like this.

http://coljac.net/sco_license.html

(blah)
3. This software may not be modified or distributed by SCO for any purpose, including for commercial or non-commercial uses. SCO may not make this software available to third parties in either source or binary form either for sale or free download or by any other means, including bundling this software with another product.
(etc)

This code won't fly

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

return)((ulong_t NULL);

Syntax error.

} while ((((bp-1)->m_size) = (bp->m_size)));

A very wrong assignment (= instead of ==). This makes the do loop end after just one iteration, because bp->m_size == 0 when this loop runs.

Does SCO really want us to believe this is in a working kernel (theirs or ours)? It won't even compile, let alone do what it should do. Even if these typos where introduced when making the sheets, it doesn't make them look like credible evidence.

Re:This code won't fly

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

Oops, made a mistake. The do loop is correct. The syntax error still stands.

Re:This code won't fly

[LeBleu]

I can tell you're not an (old school, at least) C programmer. :) This type of construct is quite common in C. The result of an assignment statement is the value that was assigned. (i.e. the value on the right side of the statement.)

What they're doing is looping through the list of free blocks, shifting everything up the list because they just used up a free block, until they find the record where the value of m_size is zero, which is being used as a marker for the end of the list.

Re:This code won't fly

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

I know it is common practice, and I know the result of the assignment is evaluated as a conditional; I just somehow missed the bp++ in the do loop. I already figured out I was wrong, see the reply I wrote to my own post.

(I've been programming C for about 12 years; I started programming about 20 years ago.)

Re:Oh Good

[gazbo]

Where did I say I didn't care about them? Could you be putting words into my mouth, hm?

As it happens, I don't care about the contents, but do care about the actual story very much. The stories are an advertisement of exactly how pathetic the slashdot populace is, how they like to take up the cause du jour and post exactly the same banal crap over and over and over.

Yes, it annoys me.

so the typos...

[gotem]

are also part of SCO's IP? God! I'll never feel confortable again in IRC All yoru typos rae belong t ous

Re:Over 1,000,000

[shippo]

Just change it to a photo of the Iraqi minister for infomation.

HP and Sun are safe

[zjbs14]

From the article:

But SCO's McBride said that there are two companies he has no intention of going after: Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. "We have no problems with Sun and HP with regards to infringement as both have honored the conditions of their Unix license contracts and operated within these," he said.

Read: We think IBM is the most likely to buy us out.

Re:HP and Sun are safe

[rebel]

Why would SCO consider HP and Sun be "safe"? Don't they both support and distribute Linux? IANAL but would that not constitute contributary infringement?

In what ways do HP and Sun differ from other vendors who support Linux?

2.2 or 2.4.13???

[justsomebody]

Wait a minute, haven't they said 2.4.13 was the last kernel that didn't infringe any IP????

Re:Over 1,000,000

[crmartin]

I think you may actually be onto something: consider that their claim against IBM is not one of copyright infringement, but rather one of violation of a contract that gives SCO (via USL by transitivity) the right to control the dissemenation of code IBM wrote for AIX. So the underlying legal theory may come down to a claim that since IBM code is in Linux, they therefore have a claim to ALL of Linux.

This would also fit with something else that they've seemed to suggest, ie, that the fact that the various shells and command-line programs simulate UNIX means that SCO owns them too: that is, that the use of 'ls -l' to list a directory in long format itself infringes SCO's intellectual property.

I think what they're up to may still be an attempt to get bought out, or to get some deep-pockets Linux contributor like IBM to buy out their supposed claim. If so, it might be that what's going on is an attempt to keep blowing up those claims in the hope that they will eventually look so big that IBM (or someone similar) will decide to buy them out.

"The moutains have labored, and brought forth a ridiculous mouse."-- Virgil

No game.

[whittrash]

...of the Jury, we own over 1 million line of code in the Linux kernel and many worms written over the years..err...

This post has already been made 10 times in this forum in various guises. The Star Wars version, the Star Trek version, the Austin Powers version, the Chewbacca version. In addition to being based on trademarked/copyrighted characters and materials, all of these posts are in turn derivitive of past SCO/Linux posts made over the past few months, and thus violate copyright of those posts, and are thus illegal and I will sue you all for copyright infringement because I invented the the original SCO flame. "SCO sucks". I will thus add to the mayhem by adding my useless /. quote.

Darl McBride...Squeel like a pig BOY, squeel like a PIG.

Lines of code ... elections...

[brechmos]

The number of lines of code continues to creep up as the weeks go by...

It reminds me of the story in the Guiness book of world records which talks about the greatest election fraud. Something like 1000% of the voters turned out and therefore the leader was voted in unanimously. Not sure where he got the other voters... This leader did not seem to be able to count...

SCO does not seem to be able to count...

Offset

[telstar]

Ya see they're claiming that any code that appears AFTER the SCO code is offset by the number of lines taken up by the SCO code. Because of the offset, this code is benefiting from the infringing code by being repositioned. Any code that is offset by SCO code now infringes on their IP.

Lists of Communists

[Latent Heat]

Yes, there were communists in the US, and for all I know there were so many communists in the State Department that you could shoot into a staff meeting and hit a Communist.

It seems, however, that when McCarthy held up his "list of Communists", he was "blowing it out his but" (i.e. bluffing) with the hope that a real list of Communists would be revealed to him.

Suppose you are a prosecutor and are to charge someone with a crime. There are tradeoffs to be made in terms of how much investigating do you do before you arrest someone, and once that person is arrested, that starts a clock that your case had better fall in place or you need to let that person go. On the other hand, if you let a murderer stay at large, more people will die, but if you bring the murderer in without a solid case, you may end up blowing the case. The idea is that you sometimes start out with hunches and suspicions and hope a murder weapon turns up from a search warrant.

The Nixon-Alger Hiss matter was investigated by Congress, although it resulted in an eventual perjury conviction for Alger Hiss on account of grand jury testimony he was compelled to give. Nixon admits that his investigation of Alger Hiss was one of the crisis-turning points in his career -- that he, Nixon went out on a limb and the Whittaker Chambers testimony and the "Pumpkin Papers" microfilm and the tracing of the documents to Hiss's type writer came in the course of the thing to save Nixon's butt and put Hiss's in a sling. I guess prosecutors are given more leeway, but in these public arenas a person like Nixon was taking chances -- there is libel law, political fallout, and so on.

I think in McCarthy's case, he started with a bluff based either on a prosecutorial hunch or perhaps a venal desire for fame and political gain, and once he got the ball rolling he couldn't back out only there was no Whittaker Chambers to come forward and make the charges stick. If you ever watch Cops (sort of real life) or Law and Order (fiction, but ripped-off from notorious current crime stories), cops and prosecutors lie all the time in order to induce confessions, admissions, or guilty pleas. If you confess, you don't get to take it back saying, "the police lied that I would get off easy." The difference is that we give police and prosecutors more lattitude, and their lying is done privately or in conference with attorneys. There is more risk with such tactics when someone is tried by Congressional investigation.

1st April

[mandreiana]

My thanks to people who keep the calendar on McBride office on 1st April. He finds more april fools every day and he's getting better at it!

Hewlett Packard?

[hjhornbeck]

From the article:

But SCO's McBride said that there are two companies he has no intention of going after: Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. "We have no problems with Sun and HP with regards to infringement as both have honored the conditions of their Unix license contracts and operated within these," he said.

I don't remember SCO mentioning anything about HP before this. Perhaps they are the Fortune 500 company that paid for licenses?

HJ Hornbeck

A good review of the legal basis for all this

[james_Smyth]

This is a good review of the legal basis behind all this http://www.directedition.com/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=34&mode=&order=0&thold=0 It seems that SCO is just reaching for anything. I really don't know what to make of them anymore.

Growth rate

[HermanAB]

Well, at this rate, there will soon be: "A hundred billion lines of SCO code!" in the kernel...

What a bunch of sad idiots.

SCO won't show the code

[erroneus]

It's easy to understand why they won't show the code. If enough experts see it and reports it to the defense, SCO stands less chance of winning. If eough experts see it and reports it to shareholders, they will sell and their value will go back down.

As the truth comes to light, their whole plan will collapse like a house of cards in a tornado. It's simple.

I just hope the tornado passes quickly. All of this stuff is becomming a bit bothersome. Regardless of how "right" we feel about Linux, damage is being done. This can be true just as our "wrongness" we feel about Microsoft never seems to hit home with the user public.

To the "world" it's either Microsoft or maybe an expensive apple... those apples are expensive you know... and they don't have the good games PCs have.

Re:Gerhardt and Raymond Need to Wake Up

[mec]

I agree with you. The SCO Group is not a real company. They are an operating tentacle of The Canopy Group.

More news of interest:

Computer Associates Agrees to a $40 million settlement

Level 7, another Canopy Group tentacle, sued CA and settled for $40 million. Check this line out: Level 7 didn't write its own software, it bought software, entered a contract with Computer Associates, and then turned around and sued them.

Wake the hell up, everyone, and take a close look at exactly who and what we are dealing with.

Like I said, I agree with you. These aren't the death spasms of a dying company. It's actually the ordinary life cycle of a Canopy tentacle. The very name "The SCO Group" masks this, because it's associated with 20 years of Unix history.

Re:Gerhardt and Raymond Need to Wake Up

[Peristaltic]

Reminds me of the aliens in "Independence Day".

infringing code

[Blair16]

If SCO really wants to prove that the Linux kernel copied their code, why don't they release it?

It's not like their going to be releasing private code, since it is already in the linux kernel...

Hell, I could go around saying that the kernel has copied all of my work, but I would never have to prove it either...

I'm going to file a lawsuit tomorow

This Is Getting Old Fast

[Master of Transhuman]

Every time SCO is quoted in the press, IBM and Linux advocates must immediately issue statements that whatever SCO said is bullshit and will be proven so in court.

This will keep the media game even.

As for the rest, wait for the court case and don't even bother arguing every little SCO disinformation release.

Comical Ali is now working for SCO. Fuck 'em.

Added advantage: diminishes value of SCO

[johannesg]

This is a good idea, and it has the added advantage (since it is aimed not just at SCO, but also any possible successors) to make SCO less valuable as a takeover target. In other words, go for it.

SCO Minister of Communications

[Mithrandur]

There are millions of lines of offending code! There are thousands of Open Source infidels screaming for mercy! Buy our stock!

Re:I know this is a flame...but...

[vonFinkelstien]

Well, this reporter was...possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to...reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president.

May not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have. For now.

[notices "HAIL OLD JOKES" sign taped up, tears it down]

Oh, yes, by the way, the spacecraft still in extreme danger, may not make it back, attempting risky reentry, bla bla bla bla bla bla. We'll see you after the movie.

Re:Over 1,000 -- Don't worget whitespace

[markcic]

Don't forget blank lines. That make it well over half.

Re:Over 1,000,000

[screenrc]

I disagree. SCO's press releases are funny.

Clearly, we are at the stage were they claim
1 million lines of code, any yet, they have
not provided proof even for one single line.
Even of a comment line!

Today SCO wanted to show everyone that IBM turned Linux from
a bicycle to an enterprise os . I don't think
that the one comment, and the one declaration of
an unsigned int is sufficient proof to silence
the sceptics, their method of proof is best
suited for entertainment.

He's not dead!

[Yarn]

Though history books claim that McCarthy passed away in 1957, McCarthy is still obviously alive and kicking today. He claims he was actually cryogenically frozen by the C.I.A. and is thawed out occasionally to battle manifestations of international Communism.

Source

Open Source Community Approaches SCO

[adyus]

This movement was called a 'posse' earlier in the history of man.