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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."
Over 1 mil? Does anyone know how many lines of code there are in the linux kernel?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Heck, I didnt realize there were that many lines of code in Linux, much less in SCO Unix..sheesh...
"Get Moose and Squirrel!"
Wasn't it 70 lines yesterday?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Soon we'll hear zillion infinities lines plus their dads being bigger than our dads.
Heise News shows the code:0 8.03-00 0/imh1.jpg
v 2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html
/ ken/mal loc.c.htmlr /sys/sys/mal loc.c.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.
The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/
Does this code come from:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/us
but they're still bluring out other parts
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5065286.html
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
...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.
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!
Subscribe for free to my show!
so is the open source community gonna beat up SCO or what?
They'll remove one MILLION lines of code...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
...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.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
As of 2.4 it looks like there were approximately 3.4 Million lines of code in the kernel See Here.
So roughly 1/3 of linux is directly copied from unix? Gimme a break.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Heise News shows code:0 8.03-00 0/imh1.jpg
v 2.4/pa tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html
/ ken/mal loc.c.htmlr /sys/sys/mal loc.c.html
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.
The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/
Does this code come from:
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/us
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.
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
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.
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
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)
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
This is from a heise.de article .
Two slides show some code (1 2)
that may come from Fifth Edition UNIX.
I think I know what million lines they're referring to: they're the lines containing open and close braces.
"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...
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...
If Chewbacca is furry, you must convict!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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!!!!!!
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.
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.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
..of the Jury, we own over 1 million line of code in the Linux kernel and many worms written over the years..err...
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!!
Basicly, the code they've showed goes as far back as 1992 from BSD 2.11, perhaps even further?
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?
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
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.
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.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
Considering SCO repeats the same FUD and BS over and over again, why can't Slashdotters repeat the same jokes over and over?
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Oh, wait, many people develop Linux in their free time...
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
This is how SCO wants us to see the GPL.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
So, am I to assume that the Linux kernel is 5333% infringing code?
Man, I wish I could code that efficiently.
I forget what 8 was for.
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.
Open Source Community Approaches SCO
[insert video clip of villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the castle here]
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
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".
....move along....nothing to see here....
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.
I did NOT learn everything I need to know in kindergarten.
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
How can they distribute samba?
? tag=f d_lede1_hed
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
AC comments get piped to
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".
See my journal, I write things there
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]
Even if they do have dads, it's odds-on they don't know who.
Infuriate left and right
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.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
You're forgetting that SCO owns the GPL notice at the front of every file.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
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.
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!"?
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.
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.
The license of the Unix archive (issued by Caldera) is BSD'ish. (See here to see to which files this license applies.)
So they claim Linux violates an open-source license, which by their claims is invalid (by the same argument that renders the GPL invalid)? Now that's a great strategy.
I also doubt that this malloc code is copyrightable, given that it's supposedly in any book which contains the UNIX source.
I 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!
BlackNova Traders
But the ')' after the return statement (2nd example, 2nd line) will prevent compilation of this code...
Are there one million lines of code in System V?
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.
I keep flashing back to Austin Powers 2...
...We demand payment for our ONE TRILLION lines of UNIX code. [puts pinky finger to edge of mouth]
Dr. Evil:
[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!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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!
This was one of IBM's points in their countersuit; by failing to provide clear notification of the infringement, SCO has made it impossible to correct, and thus shares the blame for its ongoing use. This is a well-established principle in copyright law.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-0
The code seems to come from arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c, copyright by SGI:a tch-html/patch-2.4.19/linux-2.4.19_arch_ia64_sn_io _ate_utils.c.html
http://www.funet.fi/pub/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v2.4/p
Does this code come from:l loc.c.html l loc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ken/ma
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/ma
Plus...
For version referencing, look here
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
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.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
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.
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.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
It would seem that Mark Heise is talking out of his backside again. This article, a fascinating read, quotes Eben Moglen, Professor of Law at Columbia University as saying:Read the article, it's quite an eye opener.
Macka
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.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
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.
Just change it to a photo of the Iraqi minister for infomation.
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.
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