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"Stolen" SCO Linux Code Snippets Leaked
stere0 writes "An article (in German) published on the German IT news site Heise includes two pictures (1, 2) of the "stolen" source code SCO claims to be theirs. Part of the first screenshot has been scrambled, the font has probably just been changed to Symbol; can anybody decipher it? I searched for the code snippets on Google. The code does indeed come from the kernel; the photographs show what seems to be lines 88-102 and 109-123 of /arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c from the 2.4 kernel tree. " Update: 08/19 16:39 GMT by M : LWN has a nice piece tracing the origins of the disputed code, and showing that SCO is simply lying.
Quick, bust out vi and change all the variable names!
I can decipher it using my magical deciphering powers known as "being able to read Greek."
(Please note that I can not, in fact, read Greek. It was more just to point out that it's not, you know, Symbol font.)
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
* 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 assembly code:
* (also see mfree/rmfree below)
*/
/*As part of the kernel evolution
*toward modular naming, the
*funxtions malloc and mfree are being
renamed to rmalloc and rmfree.
*Compatibility will be maintained by
the following assembler code:
*(also see mfree/rmfree below)
*/
See Sys 7 1979 location
The Gentoo People and an AC the previous SCO thread beat me to it. There's a very interesting discussion over at LWN, in which Bruce Perens points out that Caldera has put that code under a free licence.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Strange how they still have to hide their little snip of code IF its exactly the same as the Linux one :X Right now that only proves the comment is almost the same.
Am I incorrect in understanding that this is for 64-bit implementations of linux?
If so, how can SCO demand that we give them money for code that's distributed but that 99% of linux users ARE NOT USING?
"Sometimes the truth is stupid." - Lawrence, creator of Prime Intellect
I Am Not A Coder
:)(not that all of you were not going to explain it...)
that means all levels of nothing to me..
someone please explain it
Still doesn't prove shit for SCO's claim other than digital cameras are getting smaller and easier to hide.
If I read correctly, the "symbol" is just Cyrillic script, but English words:
"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)"
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Since the only thing common here (that we can see) is comments, wouldn't object code not be in violation, and hence, legal?
-twb
There is nothing wrong with having the same comments.
http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf
January 23, 2002 Dear UNIX? enthusiasts, Caldera International, Inc. hereby grants a fee free license that includes the rights use, modify and distribute this named source code, including creating derived binary products created from the source code. The source code for which Caldera International, Inc. grants rights are limited to the following UNIX Operating Systems that operate on the 16-Bit PDP-11 CPU and early versions of the 32-Bit UNIX Operating System, with specific exclusion of UNIX System III and UNIX System V and successor operating systems: 32-bit 32V UNIX 16 bit UNIX Versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
-Tupshin
Does the usage matter, or is the presence alone enough to infinge SCO's patents? Seems frivolous, I agree.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
Heck, I'll wager that code is also in BSD. In fact, I'll bet that's where both SCO/AT&T/Whoever got it from. Linux probably got it from BSD, too. Of course, this is all conjecture, and I'm not a lawyer, though I lived with one for two years.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
I don't know how accurate these pictures are, but they only show identical comments (except for 1 line), not actual code. They're going to have to do better than that. And yes, they converted the text to the symbol font. These guys astound me with their stupidity.
is a bit condencending towards those who believe SCO doesn't have a case. A sort of, "we told you so" and it reproduces a lot of McBride's rhetoric about the evils of open source.
Heise is not a very open-source friendly news outlet. So take this with a grain of salt.
But, having seen duplicated comments alread makes me worrysome. What is in the sc/*.c files anyway?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
if (size == 0)
return) ((ulong_t NULL);
What is this, amateur night?
Here's a semi-readable, slightly-cleaned babelfish translation... it'd be great if somebody who can actually speak German could post a better one...
The fight for the legal standard of Linux develops more and more to the show piece: Still two weeks ago ago on the Linuxworld had itself boss Mathew Szulik as the rescuer of the free world explained and all Linux trailers to the fight against the chains of the commercial software industry called. Now geriert itself its opponent Darl McBride of SCO still more martialischer: a James bond in the struggle with dark power -- the open SOURCE movement.
SCO executive committee Darl McBride used two full hours for the prelude of the SCO forum, in order to represent the legal position of its company. With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property. The SCO Group leads a law case with IBM because of alleged copyright infringements and abuse of SCOs protected Unix program code in Linux. Star lawyer David Boies, which attained celebrity as a complaint representative of the US government against Microsoft, represents SCO IBM over 1500 Linux Grossanwender printing reminder approximately from SCO kept and was requested to pay royalties.
Supported of its vice-president Chris Sontag showed McBride of examples from the code of the Linux Kernelversionen 2,5 and 2,6, which are to prove that program sections were transferred invariably from Unix -- an example shown by SCO to code comments in the picture left ( version increased ). Identical typing errors in the comments as well as unusual ways of writing would have left traitorous traces, to stated Sontag. Around this to prove McBride a team for pattern recognition had angeheuert, around ten thousands from program lines to through forests. The few code sequences shown apart from the comments were made to a large extent illegible, alleged, in order to protect SCOs author-genuine. They would stand however representing for thousands of program lines, for stressed Sontag. From several persons or groups at different times parts were transferred illegaly to Linux and distributed sourceopen at users and developers. At the contentious software it goes besides not around simple or trivial functions, but important operating system characteristics for the fitness with fastidious tasks and in extremely safe operating conditions into enterprises. In addition belong the multi-processor mechanisms NUMA and SMP, which were to be had under Unix Lizenzbedingungen only with expensive hardware in the value of ten thousands from US dollar to.
Approximately 700 crucial code lines of the SMP technology are to have moved from Unix into the Linux releases 2,4 and 2,5. Altogether SCOs testers over 800.000 lines would have found duplicated program text -- an example of SCO shows the picture right ( version increased ). Attorney Mark Heise from the Boies boies-Kanzlei came along for the support of the SCO managers on the podium in read Vegas. It made clear that a GPL license did not protect against the requirement for authority of SCO. The Unix license, which bought SCO 1994 of the original Unix inventor RK & T, guarantees SCO property at Unix system v copyrights and all RKS & t-software and Sublizenzrechten. Originally the license agreement defined by RK & t-lawyers, which changed over by purchase to SCO, is clear in addition regarding the range and consequence of the license, stressed the lawyer. Afterwards the license grants the "right the software products to the licensee (for example IBM) to own business purposes to use internally", quoted Marks of Heise from the contract text. "modifications and derivatives of results are to be treated like the original software products", continue to be called it there. And they "cannot become used for others or by others".
"Now we know ourselves finally, like Linux in completely short time of a hobby operating system to the platform for ente
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Speaking as someone that used to mark compsci programming assignments I would fail both people if they had the code in the second example. It's a little too tricky to have the exact same thing come up unless worked on.
Having said that I doubt this will affect the future of linux. IBM has too much to lose they'll just crush SCO if they have to.
If the code between the two is exact, then why obfuscate the SCO portion?
That's not that many lines of code. I think you have to ask yourself if they could've just stumbled onto the same routine. Arguably, having the comments the same is a much more precarious scenario. However, I would argue that perhaps at the time SCO didn't really care, because I can't imagine a case where a programmer would be involved on a highly proprietary project, and would let source leak out without seeking some monetary compensation. If that is what happened, then clearly there is some fraud here. Otherwise, "oops, shouldn't have let people see the source."
stuff |
It's all Greek To me!!!
I know that this is probably just the first of many leaks, etc - but stolen source code related to 64bit code wouldn't really affect many people's home linux distros.
The System V comments have been stolen!!!
Obviously no actual code has been used. But the comments, the key component of the intellectual property that makes up SCO, has been lifted near verbatim and ruthlessly incorporated into Linux. Oh, the injustice.
When will it end?!?
Both slides seem to be implementations of standard pseudo-code in textbook implementations. If SCO is claiming this is "proprietary" then we're gonna have to change the variables names? Ridiculous. I don't see anything in here that even closely resembles Intellectual Property. At a certain granularity, *X follows the same paradigm for some implementations anyway. I mean, any function implementing a heap manager is now suspect?
It actually says:
# Comment by Linus:
# This is not code written by SCO. I swear to god, I wrote it myself.
# It just looks a lot like SCO's code. It just happened that way. There's
# only so many ways to do certain things... I mean, hey, I have to make
# a living too! Where are my lawyers? Well? I don't have any! I have to
# scrap by on a measly salary trying my best to make a difference in the
# world, all the while, companies like IBM and Microsoft release shitty
# software all the time, and nobody seems to care! They're all getting
# butt-raped, and they don't even know it! Well, not anymore! I'm going to
# make the best operating system in the world, and name it after myself!
# M$ and IBM sux0rs!
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5065422.html
Neil Abraham, with SCO reseller Kerridge Computer, said SCO made the right decision to pursue IBM. "I think they've got a very firm case," he said, after looking at the code. "It's not just one line. It's huge chunks."
If so, how can SCO demand that we give them money for code that's distributed but that 99% of linux users ARE NOT USING?
This is exactly why they want you to sign your life away by signing a NDA before they will show you the code. They want to use this to bludgeon people into settling BEFORE IT GETS TO COURT . They are not interested in legitmately rectifying the situation.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
/*
* The following code is verbatim from Linux 2.4, and
* should guarantee binary compatibility for applications.
*/
I don't have a sig...Do you??
To sum up, this code is in 2.4.x but not 2.5.x, was also present in BSD which means its open source based on the case the BSD creators went through in the early 1990s. Have SCO really so poorly researched these examples that this is the best they can show us?
Is Lunis guilty of CO infringements?
But I cannot find code resembling the mentioned offending code in linux-2.6.0-test3.
OK, I'm not a rocket scientist, so maybe I'm not very good at grepping. Any rocket scientists around here?
they list as duplicated is freely available in the SysV-7 releases, which anyone has access to.
It's from an implementation of malloc, and the codes is pretty simple (no reason to deviate).
If this is a shining example, it is a very poor one. It only looks the same because everyone had access to it and no one thought to change it, renaming variables or otherwise.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
SCO (NASDAQ: SCUM) today filed a lawsuit against Joe's Tire Shop for violating SCO's trademarks. SCO alleges that Linux, a proprietary CRM middleware product developed by IBM, contains technologies owned by SCO.
"Joe's Tire Shop uses Microsoft Windows," commented SCO CEO Darl McBride. "We have already established that Microsoft has violated our trademarks by using Linux. The liability for these actions, therefore, falls on Joe's Tire Shop. It is the responsibility of Joe's Tire Shop and all businesses worldwide to side with SCO and allocate all of their resources to the exclusive end of helping us. Either you're with us or you're against us."
If SCO wins the lawsuit, Joe, the owner of Joe's Tire Shop, will pay 10 billion in damages. SCO alleges over four billion lines of source code--essentially the middleware business rules developed by SCO--have been illegally copied in the Linux Colonel, the main component of IBM's CRM product.
"By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions," said a spokesperson for SCO. SCO stocks climbed 11% after the initial announcement.
It was Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick!!!!
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
SCO found equal code in all sorts of Open Source software and starts an invasion of lawsuits against poor programmers. Here is a 1:1 copied codesnipplet that SCO claims ownage for.
int main (*argc, **argv)
{
printf ("Hello Workd!");
return 0;
}
This code appears to have been contributed by Silicon Graphics.
Just to summarize some of the other comments, this code was published in a programming book way back in 1974. The fact that SCO claims it was copied from them has got to be either slander or libel - please tell me this is enough to get a STFU injunction immediately!
Here's the earliest implementation people have found so far, from 1979 (before SCO was "born"):
l loc.c.html
1 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/ma
And here's where it was part of BSD 2.11 circa 1992:
http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.1
Oh, how I hope the mainstream tech press "gets" this.
I think that it looks like SCO's snippet, doesn't even belong to them, compare following which is: Copyright 1986 Regents of the University of California
That's BSD
Here's some more example code SCO claims to be copied:
{
later in the file...
}
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
that comments are of them. Great then! my *compiled* kernel has not any SCO comments!
------- The last Sig. got fired.
Here or Here
If you look at the first shot, it seems they've used red for the 'common' lines of code, black for ones that are different. Note that the actual code is black.
:)
Even if it's just comments that were stolen, it is wrong. But for those of us who just run binary apps and don't build from source... I don't have those comments.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Has anyone checked the linux CVS repository to see who added the code? If so, could you post your findings?
SCO desperate FUD/crap - Some examples of many
SCO Attorney Declares GPL Invalid
SCO Announces Final Termination of IBM's Licence
SCO: Fortune 500 Company Buys License, IBM Retort
SCO Calls IBM Countersuit "Unsubstantiated Allegations"
and so on...
this is code that was contributed by Caldera employees and thus released under full SCO Group knowledge to Linux..
So where is the magical proof that McBride keeps claiming that he has?
I smell a fraud lawsuit against McBride on the basis of both Federal and State BlueSky Laws on the basis on making false factual public statements that investors relied upon to buy SCO Group stock..
and Boise should know better than to perpuate false information about the laws and regs on software copyrights!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Um...isn't it entirely possible that this was sample code provided by Intel so that developers would have Itanium code ready?
My reaction is "so what." I wouldn't be surprised if you saw those same lines in NT. They probably originated in BSD as so many others have stated and will continue to state. If it is true Caldera sent an employee or two to IBM to help *beef up* Linux, then that would be a valid explanation as to why the code is the same. SCO is Caldera and they cannot deny that no matter how many times they change their corporate name. They put the lines in there and they distributed the offending versions of Linux under the GPL. Just because they are no where as successful as RedHat or SuSE gives them no rights to try to weasel out of it now... When will SuSE, Xandros, and Lindows join the RedHat lawsuit against *Caldera*???
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
A quick search will show that the code presented as SCO code appears in the BSD kernel as mfree(). In fact, the Linux copy is much closer to the BSD code than the SCO code (especially in the comments), which would seem to imply the submitter to Linux copied the code from old BSD source and SCO copied and then obfuscated the same code.
At least in this example, it's pretty clear that the code presented is non-infringing.
/* $Id: ate_utils.c,v 1.1 2002/02/28 17:31:25 marcelo Exp $ * * This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public * License. See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive * for more details. * * Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. */ Copyright SGI.... hrrmm, I wonder what their contract says about derrivitive(i cant spell) works.
Later,
Phil
It would be interesting to find out if this were the 80 lines of code all those analysts saw under NDA. It would say a lot not only about SCO's case but about the research abilities of technical analysts these days....
And I thought SCO doesn't run on any 64 but arch? Can anyone explain how we copied code for 64 bit arch processors from SCO sources, of all places?
OK, they are saying they own the copyright of it because it's in SYSV code which they didn't write, but by some contract own anyway. Is that it?
Of course isn't descrabling the greek phrase a direct violation of the DMCA?
CRAP! Now SCO can sue all the people that have printed, spoken, or otherwise communicated the obscured text!
This whole thing is really getting ridiculous. I wonder how long it will be before the laws that support this kind of nonsense are seriously reworked and/or simply gotten rid of.
RFC2119
IANAL, but I watch Law and Order.
I better stop using my Linux kernel know that I know the truth. We should all write a declaration of Independence from SCO now that they are taxes us without representation.
From http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/marc elo/linux-2.4/arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c
/*
* Free the previously allocated space a of size units into the specified map.
* Sort ``a'' into map and combine on one or both ends if possible.
* Returns 0 on success, 1 on failure.
*/
void
atefree(struct map *mp, size_t size, ulong_t a)
{
Do we really need *this* code ?
getSexySig();
The Symbol fontset code reads:
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 assembled code:
(also see mfree/rmfree below)
I knew it would be leaked very soon, after the SCOforum or whatever it was called. I remember reading last night that when they were showing the code during the conference, a bunch of reporters took pictures. So that means pictures were not like restricted or anything.
The interesting thing to me is that the code isn't that complicated. It is a pretty straightforward procedure. There is no mystery here. It isn't an innovative idea like some kind of new encryption algorithm. This is simply the way to do this memory manipulation related to mapping.
I have a hard time understanding how anyone could even lay claim to PATENTING this code. The only thing you could really do is change the variable names and add some more parentheses. Copyright law related to source code really needs to be examined so we can better deal with these circumstances.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property.
Sorry, but Darl is no 007. If I had to cast him in a James Bond movie he would be something like "henchman #7 who gets shot by his own soldiers and falls off a banister to hang by his neck in front of James Bond." If he were even able to be given a name such as "Odd Job" or "Goldfinger", Darl's name would be "Ass Hat" or something like that.
--Chag
Here what one of the searches comes up with.
ÕÕ
If thats the basis of their arguments 1. How many ways can you say 'to maintain Compatability' 2. How many ways can you say I'm changing some names 3. and so on all without sounding like an idiot, and remember geeks unlike lawyers prefer their words to be comprehensible, relativly unambiguous and above all to make sense! or to sum up ; calling a 'fish' a 'fish' does NOT mean I'm calling 'your fish' 'my fish'
...to quote the Barenaked Ladies...
The "just change the variable names" comments remind me of a little story...
There was a case a way back when, where a disgruntled employee from Cadence stole some code and ran off to a competitor (Gerry Hsu's Avant!). Naturally, Cadence was mad, and spent a lot of time and effort making sure that Gerry didn't get any money from the code.
However, Gerry is/was a weaselly guy, and did manage to make a bundle. He even managed to run the code through a "clean room", and try and convince a judge that any versions of the code AFTER they had gone through the room were legit, all the while maintaining his innocence in the matter. But the judge didn't buy it. Stolen code is stolen code.
Take a look at the comment of the "alledge" dodgy code: /* $Id: ate_utils.c,v 1.1 2002/02/28 17:31:25 marcelo Exp $
*
* This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public
* License. See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive
* for more details.
*
* Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
*/
Hmm... So maybe they ain't going after the right company after all?
They haven't hidden any snippet of code. They obfuscated a comment in their own code using a greek font because they probably want to keep all of their codebase secret. I don't understand why they didn't just snip it out, it couldn't possibly be that they feel a moral obligation to "quote in full".
Again, the obfuscated part is their own "code". it certainly isn't in the linux kernel.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
That's not true. Taco's not much of a coder, either!
Is actually just a bunch of comments.
*
* 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/emfree below)
*/
It was just the Greek alphabet.
Bite my shiny metal ass!
Start of Thread
Conclusion
Check this out
patch@hp.com according to bitkeeper.
Also, this has been removed in 2.6, mainly because it was a stupid implementation.
/* $Id: ate_utils.c,v 1.1 2002/02/28 17:31:25 marcelo Exp $
*
* This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public
* License. See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive
* for more details.
*
* Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
*/
Heise is not a very open-source friendly news outlet. So take this with a grain of salt.
I don't have the slightest idea what you base that on.
Heise (who publishes c't magazine and iX magazine) is a very open-source friendly news outlet. Just have a look at a couple of months' worth of magazine covers and you will see that immediately. And if you still don't feel quite convinced, you might want to read the 'heise online' news ticker - even the worst babelfish translations will still make it blatantly obvious that they are very open source friendly.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Most know that... one must also remember to make sure the spelling is correct, teachers often get wise when two students make the same spelling mistake
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
From a quick look I'd guess the symbol section is irrelevent, and was put in symbol to keep people from accidentally reading it. (Or just to help them ignore it.) The important parts are in regular english.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
From this thread
This goes at least as far back as 1982 and is under a BSD license. Nothing to worry about here.
subr_rmap.c [pdp11.org.ru] 1.2 (2.11BSD GTE) 12/24/92
If SCO believes that the GPL isn't a valid license, then the Linux sources remain implicitly copyrighted by the authors. Wouldn't the posting the Linux source by SCO here be a violation of the DMCA and/or copyright infringement?
I'd love to see SCO get nailed for that!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
From a cursory look at the actual kernel code... Did anyone note the tag:
So why is IBM to blame for generic code that was put in the kernel by another company?
If SCO is claiming that the sources are stollen, why the need to scramble, the scrambled source should be the same on in the source code in the linux side. Or maybe they are claiming that the "code" stollen is actually the comentary.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Surely if Linux copied it from SCO why would they remove the line of comment "The swap map unit is 512 bytes", surely someone copying would add a line of comment when understanding what the stollen code had done?
(Mod the parent up, please)
Since Sys 7 *was* released to the public by Caldera, while System V wasn't, if this code was inherited to System V from Sys 7, it does indeed mean that the code was free, and used by BOTH SCO and Linux.
Even if copied from System V code (by SGI, it seems) into Linux, there's no copyright infringement if the System V code was the same as the earlier and public Sys 7 code.
You can't take something that's public, slap a copyright on it, and then claim ownership. Unless the cat belongs to Schroedinger, it's already out of the box.
If this is the quality of the "proof" that SCO has, they sure are going down.
Regards,
--
*Art
Ok, the press has had a field day with headlines like, "SCO Shows Code To Millions Of Awed Onlookers". Well, now it's time to step up and have some truth in reporting.
Let's try and get some of the mainstream press to look into this and put SCO's feet to the fire. I'm so tired of this bullshit.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It's transliteration, you insensitive clod!
I was basing that on past accusations of Heise being very pro-microsoft and linux critical (not OS in general). Since I don't speak German I can only go by what others say.
The Register, it ain't. And that's probably a good thing.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
From the comments at the top of the file
/* $Id: ate_utils.c,v 1.1 2002/02/28 17:31:25 marcelo Exp $
*
* This file is subject to the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public
* License. See the file "COPYING" in the main directory of this archive
* for more details.
*
* Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
*/
So, this is code that originally came to Linux from Silocon Graphics via IBM. This is the derivative code that SCO claims infringes the UNIX license.
This is just SCO staking claim to other peoples work - The Bastards
Maybe it's just me, but perhaps SCO copied this code from linux and claimed it was in their OS all along. Since it's closed source, nobody can look at any kind of code history.
so far nothing they have claimed is in any way substantial. who is to say that this code is even _in_ SCO Unix? they are only showing prepared docs, not compilable source code that matches crc checks of existing SCO kernels. that's what it would take to begin to convince me.
That code is everywhere
alk.
No, and it is said to be gone in 2.5
There is nothing wrong with having the same comments.
.hehe - but Slashdot picks up that with it's lameness filter:
--- I was going to try and be witty (gasp!) and post the same comment..
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
So oh well. Oh, and I don't think the parent is exactly flamebait - I mean, do we really consider the code comments to be an integral part of the *code*?
I guess it does hold some merit though - as they are a part of the work as a whole... We may never know...
You're dangerously close to starting an editor flamewar.
gonna have to sue them on this one. I have been using return 0 in my programs for years.
Ohh this is just too perfect. To quote Manfred from the above linked messages:
:>
"P.S.: I'd propose that the GPL rule that a change must be tagged with the name of the \
person who changes (or adds) a file is enforced - atealloc.c is only tagged with \
"SGI", thus I don't know who should be shot for writing that."
Looks like SCO is the one he should be shooting!
By clicking this link, you give huge support for all the Linux users.
;))
http://www.nwps.ws/pub/sco.jpg
(OK, seriously, if you're using IE, dont clink it.
I'd say SCO "rocket scientists" are probably the same guys who mixed up miles and kilometers and smashed a Mars probe.
Apparently SCO "rocket scientists" are also too stupid to do basic fact checking and find out this goes back to BSD.
Sir, I know rocket scientists. Rocket scientists are friends of mine. You are no rocket scientist.
Who cares? No-one USES ia64!
Just remove it completely and see how many end users notice...
That was classic intercourse!
Check out the history good overview History
The actual source code in question isn't of primary importance at this point since the main SCO complaint is against IBM, and IBM's source code is in the Linux source tree because they donated it. Its public knowledge that IBM donated code to Linux, and SCO is just showing the code to selected neophytes for shock value. "SCO showed me source code from Linux and System V, and THEY WERE THE SAME! I'm shocked! IBM must be guilty".
SCO may eventually make other claims that all of Linux is their stolen property, but for the time being the focus should be on IBM, and in that case looking at the code does nothing but provide FUD fodder for clueless news outlets. The headlines will read "Industry analyst says lines of code are the same, SCO up 3 points".
The real issue here is this is a licensing dispute between two software companies, and it says nothing of value about the open source development process or Linux. Its in SCO's interest to bring these broader issues into the picture in order to put pressure on IBM to settle, but DON'T TAKE THE BAIT!
The supposed original sourcefile that was referred to in the summary is "Copyright SGI". So why is SCO suing IBM?
The spooks are after your now for violating the DMCA!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
To the contrary! It is clear that SCO has very excellently researched these examples, and these are the best they can come up with.
Already gone from the kernel, too. Oh, boohoo.
-renard
The relevant histories of ate_utils.c for 2.4 and 2.5.
Apparently the code was removed because it was "ugly as hell" (or worse).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
So they copied a 'comment' then? Which is naturally intellectual property since the 'idea' of expressing English has been patented by SCO. :P
I want to see ALL of the code they say is stolen
It is so great that everyone here in the /. community is so on top of this. It's great that so many of you know where to look to find the true origins of the "stolen" code, that by today's evidence, is obviously not stolen.
However, this is not yet the time to celebrate. SCO is claiming 829,000 lines of code was "stolen" from SMP code alone. Of course this is probably ridiculous, but a screen shot of some comments from the late 70's only shows that those particular comments were not stolen.
There is still a lot of work to do. Mr. McBride is creating so much work because for each claim of copyright, the onus is going to be on the linux community to find the origins and prove the allegations wrong. SCO is only going to present SCO code that was supposedly 'written' before the linux code. Their entire offense is going to rest solely upon the fact that they have a plaintext file with an earlier date than the linux kernel's corresponding code file.
The work is going to be on our backs to locate even older code that SCO's predecessors used to write SYS V. I would raise the bar as well and go so far as to attempt to show that SCO's code was itself misappropriated.
We are just now starting to see how much work we have in front of us, and believe me, that mountain of work is only going to get larger. But, as with the development of linux itself, there are millions of developers across the globe that will be able to find evidence to refute each and every one of their fraudulent and baseless claims.
So far, the copyright holder seems to be SGI
As the only thing in common (this far) is the comments, and the comments are simply ignored by the compiler (doesent affect the produced executable), then SCO can't claim to own of the linux kernel (when it is compiled), since their "intellecual property" (or whatever) isnt actually compiled.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
* Copyright (c) 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 1.2 (2.11BSD GTE) 12/24/92
*/
#include "param.h"
#include "systm.h"
#include "map.h"
#include "vm.h"
* Resource map handling routines.
*
* A resource map is an array of structures each of which describes a
* segment of the address space of an available resource. The segments
* are described by their base address and length, and sorted in address
* order. Each resource map has a fixed maximum number of segments
* allowed. Resources are allocated by taking part or all of one of the
* segments of the map.
*
* Returning of resources will require another segment if the returned
* resources are not adjacent in the address space to an existing segment.
* If the return of a segment would require a slot which is not available,
* then one of the resource map segments is discarded after a warning is
* printed.
*
* Returning of resources may also cause the map to collapse by coalescing
* two existing segments and the returned space into a single segment. In
* this case the resource map is made smaller by copying together to fill
* the resultant gap.
*
* N.B.: the current implementation uses a dense array and does not admit
* the value ``0'' as a legal address or size, since that is used as a
* delimiter.
*/
* 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.
*/
memaddr
malloc(mp, size)
struct map *mp;
register size_t size;
{
register struct mapent *bp, *ep;
memaddr addr;
int retry;
if (!size)
panic("malloc: size = 0");
* Search for a piece of the resource map which has enough
* free space to accomodate the request.
*/
retry = 0;
Which means that SCO is using BSD/PDP11 code. This is also part of the code they called "Ancient Unix", because it was old and obsolete, and posted it on the web. Initially they wanted a $100 "license" fee to download the code, but the number of takers were so few that SCO opened it up to free access. We're they hoping someone might copy some of the code into the Linux kernel? Some might suggest that this was their plan all along, but a lot of the Sys V code would require a "glue", as former SCO employee Christoph Hellwig put it, in order for the SCO code to work in Linux. That kludge would not pass lkrnl checking.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Um...
Slander, noun
1: the utterance of false charges or misrepresntations which defame and damage another's resputation
2: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
Libel, noun
1 a: a written statement in which a plaintiff in certain courts sets forth the cause of action or the relief sought
1 b archaic: a handbill especially attacking or defaming someone
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
2 b (1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2) : defamation of a person by written or representational means (3) : the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures (4) : the act, tort, or crime of publishing such a libel
Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary ( http://www.m-w.com )
It would seem to me that SCO is not speaking about an individual. If they swear to these examples under oath, as testimony, and if these examples turn out to be false then it may turn out to be purjury. But not Lible or Slander as those are against individuals (at least, according to the dictionary definition.)
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
Is anyone else doing this? I figure it'll be back down under $1 inside of a year. The shitty part about shorting something is that even if it tanks, you can only make back what you invested!
Imagine for a moment a world without hypothetical situations...
Ok. Since everybody can see that SCO are fraudsters, can *please* someone take them to court? PLEASE!! As raindog2 pointed out its old stuff(-79) and not SCO property. They must have known that. Just take the code and use google. Again, there is no way they didn't know that! Take em to court!
Were they too dumbfounded to realize that the snippets of code were describing a very basic way of implementing malloc(), repeated in text books, by instructors, and appears in possibly millions of different software packages with similar comments and a similar algorithm used? If I were there I would have heckled them and walked out.
The code could have easily come from a text book, and by the other comments here, it appears to have come directly from ancient UNIX. Which is no suprise, because this is one of the few algorithms that's generalized enough that it could be transplanted from ancient UNIX and still be relevant today.
As I hear though:
The code is printed in Lion's Commentary on UNIX, 6th Edition. For much of its life this book used to be illegal, until in the mid-90s it was officially blessed by SCO, the current copyright holders of ancient UNIX, to be freely distributable. If this is the class of the line-by-line copied code, their case is ZERO.
The "offending code" appears in Linux v2.4, but is gone from Linux v2.6. It's not necessarily the best algorithm in all cases (as you might learn in a compsci class), probably it was just temporary and got the job done until something better came along.
The code itself appears in an earlier incarnation of BSD, but is no longer existant today. Probably removed for similar reasons.
I'd say SCO has at best demonstrated massive incompetence, and at worse committed outright fraud.
Boies himself skipped the SCOForum despite being on the Agenda.
Help fight continental drift.
a) The Linux comment was copied from the System V code
b) That the actual code involved was also copied
c) That the actual code was copied from System V to Linux
This in fact proves nothing.
First, the comments are NOT exactly the same. Parts are, but a good section isn't. There is a whole additional component there in the System V part that SCO decided to mask.
Second, we have no way of knowing from this where these comments originated. We don't know who wrote it, under what license, how it got into either code base and whether it went from one to the other or from some place else into both.
Third, We've no proof that the code was copied from anywhere to anywhere. It wasn't shown and I'm not willing to assume anything when it comes to SCO.
Fourth, even if the code itself was copied, we again have no proof as to the path of it's dissemination.
This is a lot of smoke and mirrors. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
Everything you said here was stolen by my closed source novel "The comments on /. to the story '"Stolen" SCO Linux Code Snippets Leaked'".
If you posted to this story or read any of the comments please pay $699 ASAP.
Did SCO really need to use some simple transliteration to make use not be able to read their other comment? What was the point? The transliteration comes out to:
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 assembly code:
(also see mfree/rmfree below)
Again...why?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Say the code had been copied indeed, assuming the worst; it seems it is really the comments that are copied and they have shown no proof of code being copied. Binary kernels do not contain the comments and so are free, still assuming the worst.
Now can anyone go back in the history of the bitkeeper and check who exactly entered that code or comment into the kernel. His interview on slashdot would be precious.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
As I've been maintaining for a while, SCO's assertions of stolen code are baseless, primarily by the observation that SCO is unwilling to point out which parts of the already released and publically available code are theirs. Now we find a couple of snippets that have been leaked and oh-the-humanity they're not possibly infringing.
But, friends, we are the ones missing the point, not them.
Think. Couple their insane assertions, ludicrous threatened lawsuits, and absurd licensing fees with the observation that SCO's stock price has risen quite substantially through this escapade and that many of the primary shareholders are now selling and maybe the real motivation starts to come clear: greed. One sees Enron in miniature form, except that the people who are really screwed here are not shareholders, but adherents to the Open Source movement. I have no idea what we can do to fight back, but we're taking a beating here. Our reputation as a movement has a bad black mark on it now.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Call me paranoid....but this might be a trick by SCO to probe the defences of the Open Source community, by having us do their historical code research for them, gratis.
What do I mean? An example.
I used to be a magician - a classic trick in the magicians arsenal is called the "sucker trick"
In the sucker trick one does a seemingly stupid trick. As people start to think they have figured it out, the bright (and loud) ones start yelling how they think it works. Then, PRESTO, the real trick is revealed!
IF you do it right, people are amazed and impressed, and more importantly, you have identified the hecklers in the audience, who often remain quiet the rest of the show out of embarrassment.
I know this sounds paranoid, and you might think ol' Darl is no magician, but he has conjured ~ 20X increase in SCO "worth", from an essentially worthless company.
Just a thought.
I think, therefore I thought.
The comments are longer on the sco side than they are on the linux side. Think about that.
If I was copying a comment, I wouldn't strip pieces out.
BUT
I may very well add some more info in.
To me, this just suggests that sco copied from linux.
in 'Contact', except the end result wasn't as breathtaking.
Maybe if SCO had invented some sort of transport device...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Now that a code snippet has been shown is it possible to tell by comparing different Linux versions who put it there? If SCO is right, and somebody stole code from their System V Unix, then that person deserves a good kick.
The second one is code is VERY old...
See here, and here.
How many textbook references do you think you can come up with?
right here.
this code is NOT stolen, but rather, donated.
http://lwn.net/Articles/44981/
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Although the screenshot of the comment showed both the UNIX and Linux versions, the code sample only shows the linux version. The title says "Linux Kernel Code".
AFAIK they didn't specifically indicate that every line of code showing on that monitor was copied identically, they just say it is an example of "line by line copying". Perhaps they just meant the for loop.
Note that on the screenshot showing the comment, a few lines of linux code were also showing, which did not appear in the UNIX version (even in the amusingly "greeked" part.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
I hope IBM's lawyers read /. There are a lot of people in here that are making very valid arguments against SCO. Specifically that the code from the article predates the existence of SCO. On that mark alone a Judge would throw out SCO's suit.
This is just sad, SCO is going to take it up the ass so fucking hard with this one. Specifically, with my transparent black tux dildo. Then, I'm going to sue them for having Linux property up their ass and proposing a licensing fee until I take it out. Whose with me?
If they didn't do that, doesn't that mean that they violated the license? That's why we have lawyers, so that people who are not inclined to do anything productive anyway can try to cypher out such expressions of greed as good people have suffered under since the first genius discovered the rock and tried to make it illegal for anyone else to hit back.
The "just change the variable names" comments remind me of a little story...
There was a case a way back when, where a disgruntled employee from Cadence stole some code and ran off to a competitor (Gerry Hsu's Avant!). Naturally, Cadence was mad, and spent a lot of time and effort making sure that Gerry didn't get any money from the code.
However, Gerry is/was a weaselly guy, and did manage to make a bundle. He even managed to run the code through a "clean room", and try and convince a judge that any versions of the code AFTER they had gone through the room were legit, all the while maintaining his innocence in the matter. But the judge didn't buy it. Stolen code is stolen code.
As in this guy:
m l
Former VP of International Business at SuSE Joins SCO As VP of SCOsource in Europe
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030819/latu060_1.ht
Paul B.
So, can this be used to say SCO is tampering with the code they are using to make comparisons with? Technically the code they put up isn't in the kernel.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
what if SCO have always used the Linux code and are trying to get away with claiming the reverse?
source code theft in this instance is unprovable. you cannot prove that something you have that that is secret is identical to something you also have that is public.
I can't read that stuff, it's all Greek to me.
Please note, this is covered by the old BSD licnese (with advertisement clause), so it's not GPL compatible. The code is aruguably IP theft, since it was not supposed to be available before Caldera made it free.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030819/latu060_1.html
reads:
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.
Blepp, a former VP of International Business at SuSE, brings to SCO a wealth of experience in marketing and business management from time at Network Associates and Computer Associates. Blepp's appointment is taking place at SCOForum in Las Vegas this week where he is being introduced to SCO partners and resellers.
"We're pleased to have Gregory Blepp join SCO to assist in our efforts around SCOsource in Europe," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president and GM, SCOsource. "We look forward to using Blepp's talents and expertise in assisting the company to properly license SCO's valuable UNIX intellectual property."
Is this world full of insane people ?
Dennis Ritchie has written So far as I can determine, this is the earliest version of Unix that currently exists in machine-readable form. ... The dates on the transcription are hard to interpret correctly; if my program that interprets the image are correct, the files were last touched on 22 Jan, 1973. ...
Has any one considered the possibility that tha codemay have been in free *nix first before system v, hell they could have copied it there this morning for all we know.
I would love to see what McBride has to say about this?
Gnu For President 2004
As a current undergrad experiencing C, I wouldn't have used a first fit algo anyway. We handed in an assignment for our OS class literally last week, and wow, is best fit ever the shits.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
After reading the article, and seeing what the lines of code are, all I can say is "Where's John Stossel?? He needs to say Give me a break!!" For those who do not know what they are doing (other than commenting what they are doing) is declaring one pointer, an integer, a long integer, all within a function that passes a memory map and a variable of type size_t (something specific to the kernel, I suppose). That is the first chunk of code. Then, what the for loop is doing is allocating enough memory space for whatever the memory map needs. Also, they did a mutex_spinlock, sending that a function call of maplock of the memory map. This concludes the above function. If this is what SCO is basing part, if not the entirity (sp?), of their claims; it just proves that SCO doesn't just not know what they are doing, but they have their head stuck in a very dark and smelly place.
"Stupidity is like neclear energy; it can be used for good or evil, and you don't want any on you."
is the BSD copyright notice intact, as the BSD license requires?
Yes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This code was shown (briefly) at Forum2003 to convince their resellers they had a good case. It would appear that due to the BSD provenance, that case is not entirely sound.
Someone needs to tell the resellers. Is there anyone from the Las Vegas LUG who can (very politely) stand outside the MGM Grand and distribute information showing:
a) The photos from the talk
b) The late 1970s provenance of the source
c) Proof of the Santa Cruz Operation's release of this source under the BSD licence.
SCO can ignore kernel hackers, but if the resellers -- handily gathered in one place -- realise they've been lied to, they can give management a seriously hard time.
Go on, you know it makes sense...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The SCO executives pumped & dumped their stock. Now all they have to do is go through with their legal case and lose so they won't be accused of insider trading.
The copyright clearly says 1986 & University of California Berkeley. If SCO bought that code legitimately, then they would have to have changed that attribution, no? What it looks like to me is that SCO is claiming ownership of code snippets that they took out of the public domain in the first place!
I need to take my coon dawgs out to Utah. Something tells me when they get on the trail, it's going to head in a northwesterly direction toward Redmond...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
I don't know if this is all the code SCO has, but if it is, and the people who have found it in /arch/ia64 are correct, then it would appear to me that none of us running Linux on i386 would be affected at all. SCO claims 'One Example of Many', but I just don't believe anything they say anymore, especially when they appear to be trying to make money off of scare tactics, and refuse to show the proof they claim to be so condeming. It's not poker, if they had a royal flush they would have showed it so they could settle and get their money faster and without going to court. I hope IBM and Redhat fuck them up...
Will the asshats that continue to mod this stuff down as redundant just shut the fuck up!!!? Some folks need karma and others need to see this info because they may have missed it due to Slashdot's poor layout (thank you Michael). Now get on with the fucking work and fix this shit! No more redundant mods! OK?! Just mod up as insightful. Oh yeah... and mod me up too!
Big deal, the code is simple. If this is it, then there's no problem just follow SOP. Kernel developer A: write a spec for what ulong_t atealloc(struct map, size_t); is supposed to do. Kernel developer B (who has never seen ate_utils.c before): follow the spec and write a new replacement from scratch. There, no more SCO code. What I don't get, is how do they really justify this little bit of code (which as far as i can tell isn't even included in the kernels i build for my home machine) entitles them to more money than a full copy of windows?
DONT PANIC
Yep, I should have used the preview button...
After reading the article, and seeing what the lines of code are, all I can say is "Where's John Stossel?? He needs to say Give me a break!!"
For those who do not know what this code is doing (other than commenting what they are doing); it is declaring one pointer, an integer, a long integer, all within a function that passes a memory map and a variable of type size_t (something specific to the kernel, I suppose). That is the first chunk of code.
Then, what the for loop is doing is allocating enough memory space for whatever the memory map needs. Also, they did a mutex_spinlock, sending that a function call of maplock of the memory map. This concludes the above function.
If this is what SCO is basing part, if not the entirity (sp?), of their claims; it just proves that SCO doesn't just not know what they are doing, but they have their head stuck in a very dark and smelly place.
"Stupidity is like neclear energy; it can be used for good or evil, and you don't want any on you."
The question I have is if this code is cut and paste from System V, why mask it out?
Slashdot is an online machinery that is geared towards the benefit of the free software community. Throw some challenges to the free software community at slashdot and watch thousands of brilliant minds load-balanced working like a huge beowulf processing information online (a bit like SETI) to achieve the commonly understood goal; in this case to defend Linux.
If you want millions of man-hours with full motivation and some of the best skill to work for you for free, go to slashdot provided the task is enormously beneficial to the free software community. No corporation can spend any amount of capital or hire any number of people to match the productivity of geeks running on fuel that is pizza and beer to change the world.
Bravo.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
... when I say:
BAHAHAHAHAHA. *COUGH* AHAAHHAAHAHHHAHAA*wheeze* BAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *sputter*
*falls over laughing while convulsing*
It has just occurred to me that it is entirely possible that the SCO execs are making these crazy allegations because they believe them.
The execs don't know anything about code. They are depending on their technical staff to tell them the about these issues. It is entirely possible that SCO's technical staff have told the execs that this is the truth. We may simply have a few techies who aren't very good at their job and wanted to ingratiate themselves to their bosses.
Anyone know who the idiot techs might be who are providing technical advice to the SCO team?
Maybe the code came form here.
it's in v2.11 BSD as seen here:
. 11 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.
http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2
Im wondering how far earlier it goes.
Both. They have stated it verbally (slander) and they have written it as fact (libel).
The old comments need to be stripped out and rewritten in a more informative, non infringing way. So if any of the kernel devs are here, get writing those new comments.
If these functions were implemented in Perl, they would be guaranteed to look different than the System V!
...they're afraid that we'll find previous works and examples of the code that are common knowledge and NOT IP. So, these 800,000 lines of code more than likely is the same thing and just so happens to be included in SysV borrowed from the same public sources that Linux and BSD developers borrow from. When illuminates that SCO is claiming as IP completely open and public code. No wonder they don't want to display it to the world - it's not that we'll remove the code as they publicly claim - but that they'll be exposed as code borrowers too and that the code in question is open and not IP. What a scam... Keep taking those pictures guys. I'd love to have some "insider" leak those 800,000 lines of code for us to pick over and demonstrate publicly the falacy of SCO's position. That's surely drive their stocks back below $1 where they belong. Also, doesn't that one example file have a copyright from Silicon Graphics, INC? Wouldn't that implicate SGI and why isn't SCO crying fowl to them?
Come on now. I took the idea of comparing sources using MD5 hashes that Michael Chaney and Rick Bradley came up with, tweaked it a bit, compared Sys3 with 2.4.21 and posted this match on /. a while back.
When it was posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List they gave me a little shout-out. If when SCO says "a team of code comparison experts" they actually mean some guy on slashdot...well...they could at least give me a mention. Not like I really care about getting a proper "* Thanks LSPD" in the SCO Legal Case Changelog, but give me a break.
Bastards...
This doesn't say or prove a damn thing.
do() || do_not();
Looking at the code. It would seem like something I may have done the variable names seem to make some since. and it is basically a for loop with a nested if with a nested do. Non of the logic seems anything out of the ordinary. It is like someone trying to sue me because if I need a variable to end a function I usually call it retval (RETurn VALue) well after I have been using that variable for years I was browsing threw the linux source and I saw that they used retval for some functions too. Does that mean that they took my code. No it means that we were in the same frame of mind when we made the variable names.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It is amusing that SCO is employing pattern-recognition to "find" code that allegedly originates with SCO. I will bet you that if you run pattern recognition on the Bible, you will find as many hits in Scripture as they will find in the kernel.
You may have to translate the Bible into machine language first, though.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
So let me get this straight.
A patch was submitted by someone from HP, containing a Silicon Graphics, Inc. copyright line, along with at least one chunk of code that is nearly identical to several early BSDs, as part of an SMP implementation, that SCO is claiming IBM donated to the Linux kernel in violation of a contract?
What. The. Fuck. I don't even want to try and figure out the web of licences, contracts, and original sources for this code. Based on other comments, it looks like a basic (crappy) implementation of memory allocation. On top of it all, whoever at SCO prepared the PowerPoint presentation managed to mistype the supposed SysV code.
Several scattered thoughts come to mind, among them "chutzpah", "pump and dump", and "someone's going to jail when this is all over."
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Is it legal to copy code from bsd and
apply the GPL to it?
You see! This is why they didn't show their evidence! You all have gone and poked holes in it. Shame on you, you're going to be responsible for the death of a corporation!
Important note for the sarcasm impared: yes, the above is sarcasm.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
And so they think that everyone else is too. It's the classic syndrome called "projection".
The SystemV code shown is mroe recent than the Linux code, with added comments. No-one, ever, removes comments when copying code.
All their presentation shows is that the two functions have a shared pedigree, and this code is so old that the pedigree can be found in at least two books, and multiple versions of Unix.
SCO are lying, thieving, scurilous rumour mongers and sadly getting much too much attention.
Which makes me think: could the whole thing be simply intended to distract our attention from something else happening...? It is a classic ploy.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
First they sue SCO to shut up... Now this.. I like it :)
The battle for the legality of Linux is becoming increasingly melodramatic: Two weeks ago, RedHat CEO Mathew Szulik declared himself Saviour of the Free World, and called for all Linux-Supporters to join the battle for freedom from the software industry. His opponent darl McBride from SCO strikes an even more martialic pose: a James Bond fighting against the forces of Darkness -- incarnated in the Open Source Movement.
McBride spent no less than two hours at the beginnign of the SCO symposium to clarify his company's legal position. Backed by pictures and music from various Bond flicks, he attempted to rally the supporters of the formerly cult company from Santa Cruz to his fight for the Good Cause. The SCO Group has started a legal battle against IBM for alleged copyright violations and misuse of SCO-owned UNIX code in Linux. Star attorney David Boies, famous for fielding the US anti-trust effort against Microsoft, represents SCO against IBM. More than 1500 major Linux-using companies have received admonitions to pay licensing fees from SCO.
With Vice CEO Chris Sontag as sidekick, McBride offered several examples from Kernel 2.5 and 2.6 that are meant to prove that several program parts were transplanted unmodified from UNIX -- such an example is here. Duplicated typos in the commentary as well as unusual coding style have left traces, says Sontag. To porve this, McBride employed teams for pattern recognition to parse tens of thousands of lines of code. The few sequences of actual code shown besides the commentaries were largely scrambled, supposedly to protect SCO copyright. They were, however, representative for a thousand other just like them, emphasizes Sontag. Multiple developers had illegally transplanted code into Linux and then distributed the source to users and developers. The software in question is nothing trivial, but contains integral operating system functions used for demanding applications and extremely secure environments in companies. Among them are the multiprocessor technologies NUMA and SMP, which under UNIX licensing cost 10,000$ or more.
Rouhgly 700 lines of code for the SMP technology are supposed to have gone into Kernel versions 2.4 and 2.5. All in all, SCO claims to have found no less than 800.000 lines of duplicated code -- one example is shown here. Attorney Mark Heise from Boies' law firm joined the SCO chiefs on the podium in Las Vegas. He emphasized that the GPL did not offer protection against copyright claims from SCO. The Unix license that SCO bought from AT&T in 1994 guarantees SCO ownership of System V copyright and all AT&T software and sublicense rights. The license agreement, originally drawn up by AT&T lawyers, which has since gone over to SCO, is unequivocal concerning scope, Heise affirmed. Accordingly, the license gives the licensee (e.g. IBM) the right to use the software internally for commercial purposes. Modifications and derivatives are subject to the license just like the original. They cannot be used for or by third parties.
"Now we finally know how Linux has matured from hobby OS to IT-company platform," Sontag jibes. "If something sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't," topped McBride. Evolved technology simply cannot be had for free. "Free Software -- not our thing." UNXIX comprises 20 years of development work: Based on it, SCO wants to make money for another 20 years. McBride appealed for support from partners and developers from the UNIX community, otherwise, "the times for good business might soon be over." GPL and Open Source destroy legal business models -- compensations and a legal business model for the future are therefore necessary. Heise seconded: That SCO once distributed its code as Linux distributor, did not mean that Linux users where protected from all demands because of the GPL. Copyright for code can only be obtained by a written contract wit
Divide et impera!
This code, indeed the whole module, is
not even in 2.4.22-rc2.
In today's news, Slashdotters vowed they would not "Take SCO's shit anymore" and decided to pull of some 'Fight Club' like anarchy acts on the offices of SCO. "Hey fuck that dude it's about open source. Maybe I could use this source to get a chick to open her source. I haven't been laid since I was on the wrestling team and my good buddy Chuck and I did the mutual masturbation thing." stated user Jeremy
We at here SBTS (Slashdot Behind The Scenes) have captured the frustrations of some and have sadly attempted to email this luser who sounded a bit suicidal with his " I'm so tired of this bullshit." comment. We wanted to let him know everything will be alllllllllll right there buddy. No need to get your pencil pouch all out of shape.
Afterwards, Slashdot pulled off a first by posting an article about Slashdot, posting an article about SCO. After weeks of daily bombardments of SCO related articles Slashdot simply decided to post an article about them speaking about SCO.
"The problem is, we started running out of stories about SCO to post, I mean we did the SCO said foobar thing the other day, and we've bashed the company spokesperson before. Hell we've even ridiculed the parrot in the SCO offices. These stories are so yesterday, so what better way than to post something entirely new, hip, exciting, and very straight forward. Slashdot posting an article, about posting an article, about SCO. It's so retro and chick." stated Slashdot staff member Hemos
No, no, no. Yes, things look bad (but we already know SCO loves to quote out of context). Yes, there is obviously code that is common between a version of Unix, and Linux, but the real questions become:
Looking at the code snippet that SCO appears to be showing: /arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c and its associated CVS history it would appear that this code first appeared in the Linux kernel courtesy of SGI (or possibly HP), as part of the Itanium kernel port. SCO/Caldera participated in the Monterey project -- what were the contractual obligations on all of the parties, before and after the breakup? IE: Did the code get there legitimately?
Keep in mind that depending upon what court you're in, there are limits to how much of software can actually be protected by copyright. Most of the UNIX header files (and therefore parts of the functions that implement the APIs) can not be protected by copyright, since you have to publish them to use them, and a competing implementation has to implement the same APIs. This is where AT&T lost to BSDI, resulting in the freeing of *BSD. For that matter, comments aren't considered to be part of the code in certain jurisdictions.
Personally, I'm more interested in seeing what non-hardware-dependent code SCO is claiming copyright over. We already know that SCO is claiming some nebulous 'rights' to SMP and RCU code, but how much and where and why?
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Don't forget SCO's Linux licensing program.
The code which SCO showed here does not appear to have been donated by IBM. In the Linux kernel it was marked with an SGI copyright.
The fact that IBM donated code to Linux may (or may not) give SCO a case against IBM. However, since that code was not written by SCO, for SCO to claim that that code gives SCO any IP rights to Linux is very tenuous.
SCO is showing this example of direct copying from Unix to Linux to show that SCO has IP rights to Linux, thus justifying their Linux licensing program.
Mind you, since this code has already been removed from the Linux kernel, it looks like it's not going to help the Linux licensing program much. Of course, SCO claims to have other examples. They're probably worth about as much as this one.
After all ... there can't be more than one person that actually comments their code, can there?
Even the COMMENTS are the same ... have they no shame?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.11 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c
How do we know that the "stolen" code isn't the version in SCOs unix? Have they the chain of custody and verifable archive copies of this code from before Linux existed?
Also, how do we know that an SCO employee didn't insert the code into Linux under the provisions of the GPL?
For the bit we were shown, who put it into Linux? With the amount of scrutiny the kernel gets, we ought to know this.
Something is very fishy here.
However, even if Linux is destroyed by the SCO suit, I think we can be certain that FreeBSD, GnuHERD, Darwin, etc will be "drop-in" replacements for most applications!
Dog is my co-pilot.
Um, hello? SCO already does this. That's the basis of their licensing scam^H^H^H^Hprogram for Linux. They claim that since, er, 14 trillion lines of code have been copied verbatim into Linux, that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of Unix. Here is an example article detailing their claims.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
OK -- now we know that this code is under the BSD license? Another question we need to sort out is if it can therefore be released under the GPL? The author of the code surely can, but can someone else?
Please note, this is covered by the old BSD licnese (with advertisement clause), so it's not GPL compatible. The code is aruguably IP theft, since it was not supposed to be available before Caldera made it free.
Are you saying SCO stole it from BSD then?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Anyone noticed that SCO execs have been selling their Options this last week or so - and it's costing them to do it. All seems a bit sus to me...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
The main SCO complaint is against IBM, but this has little to do with that claim. This goes to the lawsuits against SCO for claiming in the press to own things they do not and that things which are properly licensed are not. The licensing dispute between two software companies started this mess, but it is no longer the real issue; SCO may not survive to come to the trial on the original claims if the claims on which their stock manipulation is based are found to be fraudulent.
that this may not even be the real code in question?
The Lions' book may be used as a book, but not as code. It says right up front "SCO [this is old SCO, now Tarantella] has granted a license to publish solely for the purpose of creating an educational work. SCO grants no license for any other use of this material."
Incidentally, very similar code appears in Kernighan and Ritchie. However, the variables names are not precisely the same.
Hmm. Studying the first image, it appears that the supposedly "stolen" code from SysV put into Linux is commented out. The code is uncommented in the Linux source.
I think we're being duped. This is just a card trick. They took the code from Linux, commented it out so it would have no effect, and slapped it in SysV.
You must think they are crazy if they are one of 2 companies providing 54% or so of SCO/Caldera's revenue (#2 is Sun, I think I can guess who #1 is)
Sure...
Though they are definatly more cozy than I would like to be for my public image.
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh1.jpg:l loc.c.html [tuhs.org]1 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c
- 00 0/imh0.jpg:r a.UUCP&oe=UTF-8&output=gplainm alloc.c.html
1979: http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/ma
1986: http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.1
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03
1984: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2551%40alleg
????: minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/sys/sys/
The original comments on the imh0.jpg slide seem to be directly from the Bell labs 32V unix source (that project started before the 80's)
I googled for the comments, and found that several early UNIXes contain this comment. The source code for a number of variants, clones, and whatnot, are available here Unfortunately, some trees are limited to man pages, which are merely of historical interest.
Because it refreshed my appropriate vocabulary for discussing "new SCO"/Caldera. They're dirty little liars aren't they, yes! We hates them and their nasty little sayings my precious . . . yes we hates them.
stupid moderators + karma whores... what has /. come to? *sigh*
A quick google of that code found this. Under a heading of 32VKern. Which states "32V was a port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the new VAX platform, which had been released by DEC in 1979."
What is it we are looking at here? Anyone know the history of this?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
Perhaps the SCO discovered the situation is the OPPOSITE of what they are claiming - one day one of their programmers noticed that a bunch of GPL'd code had been imported at some point into their products. Too much to economically remove (how much does a commercial software developer have to pay programmers to remove and replace 'millions' of lines of code?).
If so, SCO would know that it was only a matter of time before someone noticed and THEY got in trouble for violation of their license to use GPL'd copyright-protected code.
Perhaps they figured they'd launch a pre-emptive strike by claiming that the code went the OTHER way, to give them time to e.g. cash in their stock and do what damage-control they could, before, in the end, they finally said "Well, okay, we did not know our own fiendish programmers would 'taint' our code like that, and let this be a warning to you all about the Evil, Evil GPL" (which of course would explain Microsoft's interest in assisting this charade).
The executives come out looking like poor victims of unscrupulous programmers and walk away with lots of stock money. SCO gets away with all of their lies (after all, the executives were just going with what THEY know, they 'didn't know' that the code came FROM Linux rather than TO. Ignorance IS bliss, even if it's pretended ignorance.) and SCO and MS get to jump up and down excitedly and say "See? See? I TOLD you the GPL was an evil Cancer that can sneak in and rape your Proprietary Code whenever it wants!" (Never mind that if this conspiracy theory is true, it's the fault of the proprietary developer for not paying attention to their own development process...)
Just a conspiracy theory. I don't have any idea if there's even a shred of truth to it, but it sounded interesting to me.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
No matter what you nerds say, as soon as a lawyer puts these screen shots up in front of a jury it's pretty much an open and closed case. Unless of course the jury is going to be 12 Slashdotters? But what are the odds of that actually happening? Mod me down but you know what I'm saying is true.
Whether or not the code is the same is irrelevant.
The register has a very good article on why.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
image one | image two
And now a humorous anecdote. Back in my senior year of high school, a student decided to turn in a lengthy research paper... in symbol font.
Needless to say, this little plot of his didn't exactly work.
By the way... does anyone else think that font resembled Elvish?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Others have shown that for these specific sections of code the history can be easily traced. However, imagine yourself in a trial, with sophist lawyers explaining to a technically ignorant judge and/or jury that the code is copied, IP rights were violated, and here's the proof.
Without the proper technical knowledge and resources, the outcome becomes completely dependent on which side can dumb the technical discussion down and argue the best. The facts are often secondary.
Now imagine this whole scenario with IBM being the "bad guy" and SCO being the "good guy", as seen from the /. perspective. Most of you would be cheering on SCO in this exact same situation, simply because your preconceived bias was reversed.
Take this as a lesson: try to objectively look at the facts (or be aware that you don't have the facts) before jumping to the conclusion that someone's guilty.
If you read the article, you'd see that that SCO BSD'd all that code just last year. This is something they can't revoke.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Looks like they're getting slashdotted, if anybody can get to it, post it here, sounds interesting!
There is always 1 thing, 1 detail that jumps out at me. Its that fact that they hide a comment. Why? Its not a series propritary comments(Admin Password: B8a8h543) or embarassing comments like 'I love cold pizza'.
If these slides are proven real then my opinion on SCO is finalized. Besides the 2.4 kernal has been out for years. Why has it taken them so long to find this naughty bit of code?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Slander, noun
1: the utterance of false charges or misrepresntations which defame and damage another's resputation
2: a false and defamatory oral statement about a person
SCO is making false utterances and charges not only against linux, but against Linus Torvalds personally and every developer, supporter, and user of the Linux kernel. In so doing, they have damaged the public, professional reputations of Linux distributors (Red Hat, IBM, and others), developers, advocates, and users. If libel law doesn't cover this behavior, then it is really a relatively useless piece of legislation.
What SCO is doing is not only slanderous, it is illegal in so many fashions (SEC violations, protection racket, copyright violation of the linux kernel, etc. etc.) that Darl McBride et. al. really should be doing hard time in a butt-slamming prison if there is anything even remotely resembling justice in this country. Which, I am sad to say, there almost certainly is not.
BTW - Libel fits what SCO is doing as well. To wit:
2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression
SCO's press releases and public statements vis-a-vis Linux, the linux development community, Red Hat, and Linus Torvalds most certainly fall into this category.
Of course, the legal definitions of both slander and libel are more narrow, but certainly the dictionary definitions, for the purpose of discussion, have more than been met.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
All they have to do is show the code to a former business major. The cheating and underhandedness of which the geeks never think is part and parcel of the business curriculum. In fact, I'm quite sure there's a whole section dedicated to the practice on the LSATs - so if not management, IBM's legal department could easily see to it.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
is there a way to prove, the kernel bzImage that I have came from a source containing the comments or the variable names that the SCO code contains? especially if it does not have debugging info?
When a post becomes too insightful, it often becomes funny.
http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2. 11BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c
Deliberately not making links so as to hopefully not slashdot more servers than necessary. If you want to see it, cut and paste.
BSD 2.11, for the PDP-11, had it. This is very very ancient Unix.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
191,000 BCE -- The stick is discovered. Stick-wielding people profit.
87,622 BCE -- The rock on a stick is invented. Rock-on-a-stick-wielding people profit.
1780 BCE -- The lawyer is invented (Hamurabi). Lawyer-wielding people profit.
2003 CE -- This isn't working. How about we go back to rocks?
That would be a copyright violation.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Think about the RedHat suit, They are suing for damages to their business.
Lying at a public forum knowing this will boost your share price at the expense of the credibility of a competitor is Bad News.
Any jury (remember this is in Federal court not in the Mormon hinterland) will award damages.
Help fight continental drift.
In the screenshot, the linux code shown is clearly in C.
Could it be that same (BSD) routine was reimplemented in Linux and in SCO Unix, and in assembly language in the latter?
And could it be that SCO:s clumsy obfuscation attempt was done to conceal the fact that this code was probably not copied "line-for-line" as it was written in a different language??
"My expectation is that if SCO's claim proves to be valid, the offending code will vanish from the tree within four hours, and then someone will reimplement the code from scratch in one or two days. The total value of the code? Perhaps $500."
This adds to the damages that RedHat can claim. Trick or not they are harming Redhat by stating something that is a lie.
Help fight continental drift.
I'm sure both Gates and the SCO guy (I refuse to give him the honour of remembering his name) are breaking out the champagne just about now.
Cost of operation: $20 mio. tops (worth of SCO)
Income through licenses: ca. $5k (there's a few dumb people everywhere)
FUD value: a million or two
Free advertisement value: a couple millions.
wasted manpower of the free software community: hours and hours and hours that could've been spent coding. Total net worth: Millions.
I guess they've reached the break even point about now. Congratulations.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
They're all written in Greek! Greek is a fine language for religious texts and plays about incest, but it's not a programming language. Silly SCO...
Here's what they cleverly hid using a different font:
"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)
"
Does breaking their encryption count as my DMCA violation for today?
I'll bring the pillow cases, you guys bring the doorknobs!!!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Frankly, they'll use this in court as proof that the community is out to get them and do them harm. Their claim that SCO IP is "trade secret" is rubish if they claim we all have it! They really only have to say what lines in Linux need removed, not show their actual source. Although once they tell what lines in Linux "infringe", we can contract third parties with valid access to SCO source to do proper comparison with lawyers and notaries etc. Hopefully judges will see thru the spin that the community knows it's stuff--and is willing and able to correct itself if given the chance.
No.. He's pointing out (as was done on the LKML that any use of code under the Caldera license requires that you include a (c) Caldera in the source. This file doens't do that. More importantly it was release PRIOR to Caldera relicensing the Ancient Unix code.
A lot of people want to think since it's in BSD it must be free. This just shows how dangerous a little knowledge can be. Not all BSD's are free. Originally you needed a Unix license to use the BSD code, and all of the BSD examples people keep quoting are from versions that required a Unix license. The only BSD code you can use and feel confident about comes from version 4.4 BSD-lite and beyond. Anything prior to that in not free. Whether or not Caldera's release of the Ancient Unix code makes these older versions of BSD "free" is questionable (and given Caldera/SCO's sue happy management...it's just stupid to use it anyway.) It's unfortunate that the old BSD's are so readily available. Too many people are geting confused. It all just drills home the fact that if you're accepting patches from someone else you need them to let you know exactly where they took material from if they're reusing code. They might believe the code they're using is free when in fact it isn't.
Not that I think this is a case of someone getting confused. If I had to guess I'd say that someone at SGI was just being lazy and grabbed the first version of malloc() and free() that they could find. There are better versions available (in the Linux kernel even) and they don't flow from the questionably licensed Unix sources.
This entire thing is old news though. The Kernel team were told about this code quite a while back and it was prompty removed. If I remember correctly ate_utils is in Kernel versions 2.4.19 to 2.4.21. It will not be in 2.4.22. It's also available in a seperate ia64 port package for kernel versions prior to 2.4.19 on kernel.org.
Not if you know Greek.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Bruce Perens has written an analysis of the code that SCO claims was wrongfully copied into Linux: http://perens.com/Articles/SCOCopiedCode.html
Judge: The foreman will pass the verdict to the bailiff.
[Lionel Hutz hands him something]
Judge: This verdict is written on a cocktail napkin. And it still says guilty. And guilty is spelled wrong!
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Ok, some common sense here. In the first screenshot the COMMENTS are the same. Ok, that's obvious. But the code in the "original system V code" has been greeked. This is a common practice in the print world when you are doing a layout and don't yet have the text for it. Since they are saying it's a line by line copy the code that they greeked wasn't the same as the code on the right side pane. Otherwise they could've just shown it as well since it's shown on the otherside. That implies that the code itself was, in fact, NOT copied verbatim like they claimed. So why show that slide at all? Are they REALLY complaining because some comments were copied near verbatim? That's crazy talk.
You realize that the DMCA prohibits you from circumventing a copy protection scheme, right? It's obvious that SCO intentionally encoded the text to prevent unauthorized persons from reading it, and you just broke that encoding. I hope they don't send you to pound-you-in-the-ass prison.
paintball
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/Interdata_v6/usr/s ys/malloc.c.html
I don't understand why nobody has grepped the code earlier. I just grepped for a short, memorable line, and found it in about 10 seconds. Nothing would stop me from remembering it at a presentation and grepping for it a few hours later in a hotel room. (Except the NDA, of course.) The genesis and ownership of this code is left as an excercise to the reader, but I still think SCO is full of it.
Litigious bastards
So SCO, allegedly a Microsoft puppet and quietly backed by Sun, is suing IBM because it supposedly contributed Linux kernel code which was actually committed by Hewlett-Packard but does in fact have an SGI copyright tag. Not that it matters, because it all comes from old BSD code anyway. Meanwhile RedHat, the FSF, OSI and EFF all attack SCO.
Have I missed anyone out? It seems as if everyone in the software world is getting involved. It's like software's WW2. Presumably Apple is Switzerland.
How long before SCO sues Greece? Clearly the greeks stole the aplhabet from SCO :)
If you read further down, it talks about the possibility SCO stole the code from Linux. I could be wrong here, but wouldn't the GPL bug infect SCO Unix, making it open source?
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
From tuhs.org we can see it's even in the V5 code, with a 1973 copyright notice:[chop]
This code has been released to the public by Caldera, as well as being proliferated all across dozens of different operating systems.
Anyone found anything older?
Regards,
--
*Art
But they were listed as premier sponsor until that list was pulled (probably due to the fact that HP (and some others) flipped them the bird).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Beuond the statement not making sense, neither snippet uses printf. The poster wants to be moded down as a troll, and should be accomidated.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Microsoft = Germany
SCO = Japan
Sun = Italy
IBM = US
er...
FSF = UK
OSI = France
HP = Russia?
EFF = the Red Cross
RedHat = Australia
etc.
so presumably
Bill Gates = Adolf Hitler
Darl McBride = Emperor Thingy
RMS = Winston Churchill
Eben Moglen = Gen. Montgomery
ESR = De Gaulle (heh)
Bruce Perens = Gen. Eisenhower
etc.
This is amazing! The crowd that loves to flame on microsoft and preach and proclaim you can't trust "the evil corporation" just because of who they are now dives headlong into proving the enemies assertions, that the LINUX system can't be trusted because you can't trust unknown coders.
The code being discussed was photograped and posted in violation of a non-disclosure agreement (one reason I'm NOT discussing its' content). NDAs are one of the foundations of software development and the *.nix community is happily proving it can't be trusted just because it smells blood on the enemy. Any major project is too big to insure 100% review. If we can't be trusted then neither can the code we offer.
I expect and HOPE Heisse is sued for the violation. I HOPE but do not expect the *.nix community will stop shooting itself in the foot and putting flesh on the naysayers FUD.
Get a grip people, you can only lose a trusted reputation once, you never get another chance.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
#include
Short for "invent_a_load_of_horseshit_lawsuit"
I like the theory.... it is very inviting. However, you're assuming that they've got a brilliant master plan, which they don't. I know it is hard to believe, but their claims REALLY ARE as poor as it seems. It is like some sort of street theater performance where they're committing suicide in the most entertaining and dramatic way possible.
What should we make of the fact that the Unix Tree is located on the same site as a plagiarism detector?
As part of the kernel evolution towards modular naming, the functions malloc and mfree are being renamed to rmalloc and rmalloc. Compatibility will be maintained by the following assembler code: (also see mfree/rmfree below)
Shouldn't SCO go after HP next? (I don't mean from a logical perspective, more from a SCO Corporate perspective.)
The people on slashdot are compleat idiots and linux will be the casualty for their folly. if the developer comunity does not act imedieatly with overwhelming force, linux will cease to exist. if you read the article SCO is not really intereted in licensing Linux they want to eradicate it.
Stop complaining and put you money where your mouth is.
I am tired of this SCO crap. When are you people going to stop whining and do something about it. If you have contributed to the Linux kernel, sue SCO for damaging your product and under the terms of their claims they owe you for licensing. If you have been given an invoice from SCO, sue them and report them for extortion. If you have bought a license, sue them for false advertising. Whining about it on slash dot will accomplish absolutely 0, bubkiss, dittly. This is the only way to strike back at a company that uses litigation as a business model. Use litigation to counter them. There is not other way to stop SCO. There were allot of people that said fascism, Stalin and Hitler were bad people, but nobody actually did anything about it (until it was too late) so my fellow slashdotters, before you post one more reply to an SCO article, why don't you put you money where your mouth is file suit against SCO, and then comment about that.
Every day that SCO goes without doing a full "no kidding" revelation of the "infringing" code raises the probability that the whole thing is a "pump & dump" smoke screen.
If the "infringements" were anywhere near as widespread as SCO claims, they would be showing something a little more convincing than what we have seen so far.
In the first example only the comments match. The code in the left half is scrambled, but in the right half is not scrambled. This leads me to believe that the code itself is different since it makes no sense to leave one readable and one not readable if they intend to hide their 'IP' code if it is indeed the same.
In the second example, it is not comparative. Again, assuming they don't want to show the world their 'IP' then I doubt that code is theirs also.
They are full of shit, just keep shoveling more of it, and those that accept that shit aren't worth dealing with.
It's no wonder that HP pulled out of that shitfest. They'd just inherit the stink if they participated.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
::blushing::
I can't read German (without babelfish), and I've heard people badmouth Heise. See my previous retraction.
Gomen!!!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
-if its possible to find out-, who submitted this patch to BK? Linus?
Was it sent public on the lkml list and then linus accepted it and sent it to BK, or was it sent in private to Alan Cox who pushed in under the table to Larry McVoy?
It is important to know.
(the professor with the candlestick)
I find it sad to see how many here call sharing code for stealing. Without sharing code, there can be no further progress on computer science. Instead of having ad-hoc solutions, it can evolve into a fully fledged engineering science. But only if people can collaborate on standards and further its progress instead of being busy putting up tool-booths for inventing the inevitable.
You never drive over a bridge proprietary to BigCorporation(R)(TM)(C). You drive over an assembled construction errected by standardized plans, tools and mass. Instead, we have a mad goldrush that sinks the economy through the floor.
Sad.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
What a great idea... because Parody is protected by the first ammendment (People vs Larry Flint anyone?)
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Now, can we please stop helping their astroturfing? There's no story here. All they want is publicity, any publicity. Shush now. Shush.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Open Source community is great! Any problem, whether it is technical or legal, there are so many people jumping in to help. This is a sign OS will thrive.
Well, if it proves that the "stolen code" is ia64 architeture specific, I gues I won't have to pay at all a thing to SCO to run Linux at my Duron. Sco, any comments?
Your comments actually make sence in a way, why would anyone do that? However by making sence your comments fail to invoke the Chewbacca defence. The only strange part of your statement is that Chewbacca actually uses an x86 - but this statement is not illogical, thus it makes sence. On these grounds (that your statement makes sence) I declare that the jury must not acquit and must find you guilty.
You can't handle the truth.
What if the greek comments are a tracer to find out who leaked it?
The comment in the picture used the letter 'o' which isn't in greek, what if every person who looked at this got a slightly different obfuscation from English to Greek (e.g. using a 'w' instead of omega). This would allow SCO to trace the pictures back to the leak.
Obviously, this is not SCO code, a google check reveals that, what if it's a method for SCO to weed out those 'expert' witnesses whho side with IBM instead of them? If you don't leak this code, you get to see the good stuff...I'ts like porn :)
BB
The bad news is that we have code in Linux that's tracable back to AT&T, and it doesn't seem to be properly attributed.
The good news is that the easy solution to this is to simply properly attribute this code. (it was apparently released by SCO, under a BSD license, which requires attribution). A better solution might be to simply rewrite it from scratch.
Another good news/bad news is that this is very tight and highly functional code. As such it might be rather hard to rewrite without reproducing.. on the other hand, if that is the case, this might be an indication that this code is not properly copyrightable (IANAL, but my understanding is that functional, as opposed to expressive code is not considered copyrightable).
Better yet, can anybody get hold of Thompson and see if he remembers where he got this algorithm from?
That having been said, this is a very small chunck of code, and may have been further purloined from elsewhere. (anybody have a copy of "Knuth" floating around?)
(IANAL, but I sometimes get mistaken for one)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
According to the first picture, there is actually no copied "Code". The left side of the picture, the System V Code, contains a comment header followed by further comments obfuscated in the Symbol font. The right side, the linux code, has the same comments for the most part, followed by the malloc() code.
The problem is that there's no actual functional code copied in this example - only comments. If this is one of their strongest example of IP infringement by IBM, it's a sorry example. Is there any protection for copying comments?
Sounds like its time to short SCOX. I figure CNET and other major publications will probably have stories about this tomorrow, this is sure to have a negative impact on the companies stock price.
This is one of many bomb-shells to hit scox lately. Stock price is holding very steady, even as insiders bail.
Maybe it has something to do with Canopy owning about 50% of SCOX. And Canopy controlled companies owning another 35% of SCOX.
Much like SCO code being in Linux would allow SCO to charge $$$ for binary-only Linux?
So it seems that SCO does not want to show the evidence to the public, because *THEY KNOW* that in a few hours all ther case will destroyed, like in this two slides. I think SCO is going to close their doors real soon.
God no!
Not only would rewriting Linux in Perl make that version SLLLLOOOOWWWW, it would also have a pretty bad name.
Honestly, who would use Penix? (PEarl liNUX).
Linux hackers have a hard time getting dates as it is, Just imagine what would happen if you told your dates,
"For fun, I hack my Penix until 2 in the morning. It's more than fun. It's an obsession."
or
"I'm a Penix enthusiast and I want to share it with everyone I meet....Would you like to see my Penix in action? I have it installed in my lap top."
return)((ulong_t NULL);
The Linux hackers can't even copy the code properly!
It matters NOW because they have gone on record with the claim that GPL is invalid. They have fired a full broadside, showing their intent is to try to kill GPL (wild hail mary long bomb pass that is hopeless). They are cornered because IBM didn't do what they were SURE IBM would do: buy them out to shut them up. Their bluff was called so now they are panicked, stuck in their corner, lashing out in every direction hoping for something to get them out of their corner.
They are all looking at jail terms when all is said and done. They will lose their silly court cases, linux will bounce back from its little speed bump, linux and the GPL will be more legitimized and more inassailable, M$ will chew their nails because their gambit with SCO didn't pan out and they will actually have to face the competition in a fair and open fight, the SEC will roll the whole SCO crew over hot coals...this will be a hoot to look back on. It is getting to the point of being able to look back on it that sucks. Too frickin' slow to get resolution.
I would like to see a more high-speed court filing to force SCO to put up or shut up rather than have to wait YEARS for the Redhat and IBM suits to play out. Let's speed this up people!
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Someone should start a website and an entire organization where people can help contribute information. Organize all of this for the public to see and make it searchable. Let people look this stuff up in a central location instead of letting it all die in Slashdot comments that go off the front page.
It'll also grab nice headlines--"Open Source Community Rallies Together; Creates Information Website." The standard eye-grabbers. What will SCO do when there's some website online detailing where this stuff really came froM?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yes?
Does not matter what any judge states anywhere. Any code deemed to be infringing will be rewritten and life will go on.
RH, SuSE, IBM can die but not Linux as such.
If you have contributed code to Linux kernel file a suit in small claims court. Little ant bites like this multiplied all over the world will bring SCO down faster than any major legal attack.
Help fight continental drift.
When all is said and done if SCO does not prevail they will owe IBM millions for improper revocation of licenses. The loss of the suit and the new liability could depress SCO's stock price to squat. SCO owes big bucks to lots of people. So now IBM can either buy the rights to UNIX from SCO, or swallow SCO. Although, I doubt they'd want the company since it's put itself in so much hot water.
I just hope that if IBM gets the UNIX code, we see more code make it into linux.
Now wouldn't that be a fun scenario!?!?!?
My thoughts exactly! This is just TOO FREAKING easy. They must be angling the community for bits of info they can use against IBM/GPL/Linux/world+dog I smell a rat^H^H^H dead whale.
Dear Open Source Community.
Thank you for tipping your hand. I was wondering what method you would use to refute our bogus^Hs^Hu^Hg^Hu^Hb copyright case, and so I released a false bit of code to a group of people that wouldn't know any better (after all, they resell our code) so you could demonstrate to me how you will research the origin of the code.
Now, I know EXACTLY how to cover my trail.. First, I have to get an injunction against this 'Way back machine' for copyright infringement and you will no longer be able to use it as a source to discover when things were posted to the net. Then, I need to purge all of the places referenced by this 'Way back machine', and therefore I can claim that your proof is invalid long enough to sell my stock^Hk^Hc^Ho^Ht^Hs^H ^Hy^Hm^H ^Hl^Hl^He^Hs win my case.
You fools! (insert meniacle laugh here)
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
This snippet of code, by itself, proves nothing. As many here have pointed out, the code itself came (or could have come) from a third party, and could have been misapropriated by both players here.
However, if they do have thousands of examples of this, it will be hard to say that the code was not lifted from SCO. To a jury, lifted comments are more valuable than the content of the source itself. A jury of twelve grandmas doesn't care/understand to what extent code is exactly the same, or implemented similarly. They only care that it has the exact same text between here and here, 10,000 times. And if the text is something they can understand, all the better.
With that said, SCO probably isn't showing its hand because it would be foolish to do so. Why would they give opposing council the opportunity to prepare their arguemnt? Furthermore, for each example leaked, the open source community as a whole will do the research, and trace the origins of as much code as possible. SCO needs time to 1) prepare their best argument, without giving the other side an advantage, and 2) carefully examine every snippet of their code that they release to ensure that it did not come from incriminating sources. Otherwise, they expose themselves to a number of legal issues outside the scope of this case.
They may claim a million lines of code. In actuality, the number of lines that they assert in this case will probably be much, much smaller. Let's just hope that the examples they can show us aren't too convincing. The snippet above hints that they may not be.
I think there is a more fundamental problem with this. A lot of this code, NUMA, XFS, etc., was dumped into the Linux kernel not because most Linux users need it, but because it served the interests of a few corporate contributors. Furthermore, the nearly monolithic structure of the Linux kernel means that the way this sort of stuff gets contributed is via patches and additions to the source tree.
So, quite apart from the fact that SCO's claims have no merit, I think this does point out a pretty fundamental problem with the Linux kernel: it accretes too much stuff. The kernel should be architected in such a way that IBM and SGI could distribute most of their code separately. Furthermore, the Linux mainstream user base should not have to suffer from the increased maintenance hassles (and, as it turns out, increased legal risk) of having millions of lines of code they don't want or need poured into the kernel.
Technically, none of that is a problem with modern programming language and software engineering technologies. Even though some kernel features may require a lot of cross-cutting concerns, we now know how to implement those efficiently and in a principled way. Of course, this won't happen with the Linux kernel, which seems to be solidly stuck in 1960's software engineering technologies.
Don't get me wrong: the Linux kernel is enormously useful and it has lots of drivers. In practice, it is still the most practical kernel around as far as I'm concerned. But these kinds of legal issues, the Bitkeeper mess, as well as the ever more sluggish pace at which new features get incorporated and new kernels get released, are symptoms of a deep problem, and that problem is not going to go away.
Thanks for the very informative post. Since the code was released as open source by Caldera and SGI who claims copyright is a Unix licensee anyway it wouldn't really seem to be an issue, but still probably best that they removed it anyway.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
http://perens.com/Articles/SCOCopiedCode.html
http://lwn.net/Articles/44981/
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/ sys/sys/malloc.c.html
ftp://ftp.tribug.org/pub/tuhs/Caldera-license.pd f
http://www.lemis.com/grog/UNIX/ etc. etc etc.
The only trick they need to do is to disappear.
when it's documented in a hundred places.
If that's the case, then the code is GPL-compatible after all!
Great. First people didn't bother to read the articles, now they can't even be bothered to grok the kernel code. Lazy bastards!
Okay people, I own one, that is one share of SCOX that I'm willing to part with before this debacle plays itself out.
Now, who would like to say they own a piece of the greatest financial scam since Enron???
No shoving now, cash only...
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I wonder if you couldn't 'invest' in buying one of those SCO Linx licenses, wait until trial is over, then sue them afterwords... I wonder if one could turn out from something like that...
Property is theft.
Simply put, if SCO locks it up in a blind legal battle for a year or two, no corporate entity will risk moving to Linux in any form. Further, with the code hidden from prying eyes, the 'community' can't even begin to re-write the stolen code. The damage to linux's reputation in the IT world would be irreperable should the SCO claim prove true... from what I am seeing, SCO is making a strong case, one that even the biggest players are showing a certain fear of... 1000's of legal experts around the world can't be wrong. Heck, even our in-house lawyer who deals exclusively with code infringement in our software products says that SCO has a better than 50/50 chance of proving their case in court, especially since this 'code leak'.
"Mmmmm.... steak. mgrlahglaglgralgl..." - Homer
Darl stands in the court hallways happy to have initiated the best plan of his life, the destruction of Linux for pure profit. As he steps outside the courthouse, a snotty kid with a napster T-shirt stares at him and says ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
Darl isnt sure the kid is American at all, speaking with that grammer. However in the months and years unfolding, the whole empire of his Bill Gates godfather sees their base slowly 'belong' to them, the evil them.
One million lines of code eh? The corporates came with the intent to enslave the UNIX gurus in the 80s. They stole the UNIX trademark and sold the code expensive, became fat with wealth. It simply bewilders them to see another flag rise with Linux and the geek flocks finding a new sense of purpose start shipbuilding the new vessel than will be bigger and better and will not sink like the Titanic AT&T UNIX. Some of the corporates finally become believers the way Romans did having seen Jesus come back to life in a different form. IBM pays tributes in the order of $1 billion dollars. Novell and others offer their full support. The gospel spreads.
But this only infuriates the great satan who sends SCO down for another showdown. Now the time has arrived. There is jubilation in the crowds. There is something in the air that tells of impending doom to the devils. The opensource developers may be unpaid fans coding all night in their bedrooms but revolutions of such magnitude are manufactured by the hard work of believers by the millions.
The CEO of the worlds biggest corporation can see the iceberg before him but he can do nothing but blow the horns. He will soon be on his knees admiring the resolve of his enemies.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
$ cp -r /usr/src/linux /usr/src/sco ./my_find_coincidences /usr/src/linux /usr/src/sco
$
Now SCO owns it!
Unless you think you can argue that writing in cursive is an "encryption scheme", I doubt they can say this is an "ecryption scheme" either. I have a passing familiarity with the pronounciation rules of the Greek alphabet, and I can pretty much read it out loud like a 5 year old greek kid. :-)
Please remember that the 5 Supreme Court Justices that voted to overturn the FL Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore were forced to write an opinion in that case that completely went against their entire careers of opinions supporting States Rights. Regardless of how you feel about either the issues in Bush v. Gore or States Rights, you have to admit the 5 Supreme Court Justices who supported the Bush position argued from the position of extreme federal interventionists in doing so. If five Supreme Court Justices went to those lengths already, completely new case law isn't that much of a stretch. Remember that the case which created corporate personhood created that concept out of whole cloth. That was completely new case law at the time, too. We have to recognize that it may not matter what the evidence in this case is. Linux and the "Open Source" movement is the greatest treat to the fiefdoms of the world's financial elite since Marx. These elitists have built their power base on owning everything that matters to the functioning of society. Open source cannot be owned by them, so therefore they must eliminate it. Always remember, follow the money and find out who benefits to find out the real answers you seek.
When I try to visualize Mr. McBride in court, all I can think of is a male ballerina with a pink dress on, dancing in circles and humming, while big, bad, IBM is holdin a double barrel shotgun to his head.. Push the right button Mr. McBride, and we'll gladly put you out of your misery.. For good..
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
Don't expect to get your money back. They might have as well put "Ha HA, suckers!" in there.
From this article/interview:
McBride also poured cold water on the notion that Linux customers would receive refunds for licences bought should SCO lose its pending case to prove that its intellectual property (IP) is in Linux.
"We have not built in any refunds in our licensing model. The product is there and it's being used," he said.
------------
Copyright extensions are generally retroactive. As it stands, copyrighted works created in 1923 are still under copyright.
Since I live only a couple miles from SCO headquarters, and since I've got plenty of rocks out in my yard, I'm more than willing to donate my rocks to the cause. Stop by, and I'll hook you up!
Of course, don't forget to pay SCO while you still have a chance.
http://www.tuxrocks.com/
After reading this I can only conclude that CNET is on the SCO payroll..
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5065422.html?tag=nl
Getting a glimpse at SCO's evidence
By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 19, 2003, 6:22 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5065422.html
LAS VEGAS--When SCO Group first filed its lawsuit against IBM in March, critics characterized the move as the last gasp of an ailing company hoping to strike a series of lucrative licensing deals.
Since then the company has come out swinging even harder, bashing its detractors, standing by its allegations, and most recently, posting a profit that SCO said would allow it to continue its aggressive intellectual property fight.
At the SCO Forum here Monday, the company pulled out its latest weapon: lines and lines of disputed code that were allegedly copied from SCO's Unix into IBM's version of Linux. The company claims that IBM illegally copied Unix code into its version of Linux, and it's warning Linux customers that they may be violating copyright by using the operating system without paying SCO. It's also recently announced a new licensing plan that would require Linux customers to pay between $199 and $699 per computer.
In a quiet conference room tucked into the conference center at the MGM Grand, SCO offered customers, partners and the merely curious the chance to view the code for themselves, as long as they signed a nondisclosure agreement.
Companies involved in litigation traditionally keep such information under wraps in order not to tip their legal hand, but SCO said it decided to display the code because its critics were charging that it didn't have a case.
"Given the nature of this case and that there may be a significant period of time before it's resolved and that people were clamoring to see it, we decided to show a few pieces of evidence," said Chris Sontag, senior vice president of the SCOsource unit, which is charged with protecting SCO's Unix-related intellectual property.
As of the end of the day on Monday, more than 150 people had seen the code presentation, which the company said includes a small portion of the infringing code it has found so far. Sontag said the company has uncovered more than a million lines of copied code in Linux, with the help of pattern recognition experts.
A compelling case?
According to those who viewed the code at SCO Forum, company representatives showed off several categories of code that allegedly infringed its copyrights, including some lines that appeared to be directly copied, some that were derivative works and some that were obfuscated, such as code from which legal disclaimers had been removed. (This reporter declined to sign the nondisclosure agreement required to attend the special sessions where the companies showed off a special side-by-side comparison of the code, opting instead to gather reactions from people who saw the presentation.)
After viewing the code, Don Price, general manager of Price Data Systems, said he was surprised at the volume that was allegedly copied. "It's compelling," he said. "Some people were either extremely sloppy, or copied and thought no one would go after them."
Neil Abraham, with SCO reseller Kerridge Computer, said SCO made the right decision to pursue IBM. "I think they've got a very firm case," he said, after looking at the code. "It's not just one line. It's huge chunks."
Bob Ungetti, of Raven Technologies, who was milling about waiting to get into a room where the code was being shown off, said he wanted to see the code because his customers have been asking him about the suit. "I want to see the code myself just to substantiate the claims SCO is making, so when I talk to my customers about the credibility of the lawsuit, I can say I saw it for myself," said Ungetti, whose company is a reseller for SCO. "If they're interested in using Linux, they're conc
value of the theft is to be determined but that there was theft is almost
certain...
One of the more irritating tactics in the war of misinformation about IP
being waged by organizations like SCO, the RIAA, etc., is the intentional
misuse of language. Things like trying to make "filesharing" a dirty word
in itself, when in fact there is of course nothing more immoral about
copying files than there is about using a photocopier -- it depends on
what you're copying and what you're doing with it.
Another example is the rampant incorrect use of the terms "theft,"
"stealing," etc., intended to make the alleged perpetrators sound like
sordid, common criminals. Copying a file, no matter what the IP issues
surrounding it, is simply not "theft." From Webster's
dictionary:
Copying data does not deprive the owner of the original of that data. It
has not been removed, and he still has access to it and use of it. There
might be copyright infringement, and there might not be, but it is
not theft.
I'm just thinking, if there's a million lines of copied code, why don't they release 1,000 lines to show it? They stand nothing to lose and a hell of a lot to gain.
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
I was a little ticked off when I woke up this morning, had a cup of coffee, and found that Slashdot had rejected my news submission -- A page where a SCO boycott was being organized.
Now I realize why.
Since their allegations of "stolen code" have turned out to be completely full of shit, as the LWN article points out, looks like theres clear sailing ahead.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, i'm hoping it'll only be a matter of a few days before the rest of the world wakes up and smells the coffee too.
As far as i'm concerned, you can stick a fork in this one. It's done.
Bowie J. Poag
The font is greek. The text that has been "scrambled" is: *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)
It 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)
Please send links to pages quoting these thousands of legal experts who support SCO's case. I've not seen one yet and I like a good laugh.
Hate to keep adding posts but it has taken some time to trace this thing. Earliest match yet I found isn't perfect, but in context it's obvious that the exact match in V6 is just the result of some small editing of this earlier version.m alloc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V5/usr/sys/ken/
This is 30 year old code people. Is it even still covered by copyright at all?
Anyone found earlier versions to check? I wouldn't be surprised if this bit didn't originate even earlier.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
And me w/o any mod points to spend...
This ovservation puts the code shown out of the kernel already. Move along...no code left to see here...
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Let's not get confused with what is going on in the SCO situation. I had my IP lawyer friend explain to me exactly what is going on. I am not a lawyer, so take everything that I have written down with a grain of salt, and I may even have the issues confused, so don't sue me.
1) SCO is suing IBM for trade secret misappropriation. They are saying that IBM gave away some secrets and it caused them damages. This doesn't really affect Linux.
2) Copyright infringement. They say that Linux contains millions of lines of code that infringes SCO's copyright. This is the reason why they are charging Linux users a license. You can only infringe copyrights if you are given a license by the holder of the copyright. Code comments *are* copyright-able and can be considered trade secrets (but you cannot do both). You cannot patent code comments, but having infringing code copied into the Linux code could be considered copyright infringement. Although if it were only code comments, the claims for damages may be very negligible.
In order for anti-SCO-pro-Linux forces to win, they need to either:
1) prove that SCO doesn't own the copyright to what it says it owns. Right now, there is a presumption that SCO does own the copyright to what it says it owes, it is up to the anti-SCO forces to prove otherwise. I think all the comparisons to UNIX 7 code, if it really was public domain that preceded SCO's claims, could be a good strategy.
2) prove that SCO has waived their claims to copyright infringement. Some people are saying that SCO waived their rights by publishing their own version of Linux, but this is dubious, since they claim someone else infringed their copyrights and placed the code there.
To all Washington DC Slashdotters:
SCO must have disclosed code to the Library of Congress when it registered their copyright to the UNIX code. Presumably they registered infringed code otherwise it would be a pointless on their part. Something must be available there, and it will give a better clue as to what code they say has been infringed. Maybe someone can actually go down there, do some research and publish or point out what that code actually is.
Real professional students aren't there to get a quick degree that will put them on the fast track to a high paying management position. Real professional students don't look at the graduation requirements; they take classes pretty much on whims. Real professional students study hard, but make the mistake of learning the material rather than the teacher, and can occasionally be found studying chapters that will never be covered in class.
Real professional students would come out of school with a B average, if there was even a remote possibility of extricating them from the campus. Real professional students love to learn for learning's sake, often to the detriment of their careers and social lives. In short, real professional students relate to books the way real geeks relate to computers.
I am An Onerous Coward, and I am a professional student!
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
The comment in 1 is English with transposed Greek letters -
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)
sco's argument reminds me of the story in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy where the publishers of the hitchhiker's guide copied some facts off the back of a box of cereal and then sent a copy of the hitchhiker's guide back in time to sue the cereal company for copyright infringement.
it seems that sco copied some open source code into unixware and then, discovering that linux uses the same code, accuses linux of infringing on sco.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
Umm...
Now, I'm more of a Lisp guy than a C guy, but is that snippet even valid C?
I've got "if (size==0) return" which would make sense except that return should be followed by a semicolon. But instead return is followed by a closing parenthesis which is (presumably) opened earlier in an unrevealed section. But what is that parenthesis pair doing? Grouping expressions needlessly?
then there is "((ulong_t NULL);" which looks vaguely like a cast but isn't; instead it's declaring a ulong_t with the name NULL. Why would you do that? The first paren before ulong_t, incidentally, is never closed.
Can someone who knows more C than I do make sense of this?
All's true that is mistrusted
Have a look at:
http://very.net/~nikolai/penix/
In particular, look at the documentation. It's a hoot.
and:
Btw: this stuff is not quite public domain, but it's definitely far from proprietary
Looking at that chunk of malloc code, it is extremely functional. It is a very straightforward and minimal implemetation of first-fit memory allocation from a free pool.
static struct ( size_t m_size, char *m_addr } *chunk;
While(there are more chunks){
- if the current chunk is at least as big as we need,{
}#endif }#endwhile- take what we need out of the chunk
} #endifpoint the pool pointer to the rest of the chunk
adjust the size indicator.
if we're using the entire chunk,{ move this node to the end of the list.
# (so it doesn't block the search) #
return the pointer
# couldn't find a big enough chunk
return(NULL) # error
It would be pretty difficult to produce a tight version of this algorithm without a high degree of duplication. I'd say you might as well cut and paste, because about the only changes that I can see making in a tight implementation would be to change the variable names. You'd be lucky to find 4 meaningful permutations of this algorithim, once you tighten up the code for the kernel.
Try to implement the pseudo code above, and see just how far away you end up.
BTW, this is not part of a block of duplicate code.. This is pretty much the entire thing. If that's the best that they can find, then they're SOL.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Go SCO go!
Good point, but what I'm trying to say is that theyt may be using us (all thousands and thousands of us) to unwittingly vet all of their really stupid claims before they go to court.
Furthermore, with all the extremely knowledgable UNIX types posting detailed, hard to get information here (i.e. "I worked on the UNIX source code back when we had to code on leather using an awl sitting by the fire"), they are getting:
1)FREE expert information,
2)FREE information on the names/i.d.'s of who has/knows that information.
IANAL, but I think this part of the game is called "pre-trial" discovery, or something like that.
They might just be making us save them lots of time and money before the trial kicks in 2 years from now.
Do you really think they didn't suspect someone in a room full of reporters migh "gasp!" take a picture of the code they are showing and leak it out?
Just a thought. I suspect the worst of these guys - they have already shown they are extremely devious.
I think, therefore I thought.
tstoneman is right about the LoC, there is a requirement to have the code available to the LoC for the copyright purpose! By that extension, it should be open to review.
This sig no verb.
Contact:
t m
http://attygen.state.ut.us/
File a complaint
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~code/TITLE13/13_04.h
Utah Code -- Title 13 -- Chapter 05 -- Unfair Practices Act
13-5-2.5. Procedure to prevent unfair competition.
Unless otherwise provided in this chapter:
(1) Unfair methods of competition in commerce or trade are unlawful and shall be enjoined as provided by this section.
(2) The division may prevent persons, except banks, common carriers, and other public utilities subject to regulation, from using unfair methods of competition in commerce or trade.
(3) If the division has reason to believe that any person has been or is using unfair methods of competition in commerce or trade, and it appears to the division that it would be in the interest of the public to stop the unfair methods of competition, the division may begin adjudicative proceedings and may issue an order directing the person to cease and desist from using those methods of competition.
(4) The division may file suit to enjoin and restrain a person from conducting the unfair competition if:
(a) after the adjudicative proceedings, the executive director believes that the method of competition in question is prohibited by this section; or
(b) no hearing is requested; and
(i) the person accused of unfair competition does not cease the unfair competition; or
(ii) the person accused of unfair competition begins the unfair competition again after discontinuing it.
(5) The attorney general, or the county attorneys in their respective counties, shall conduct unfair competition proceedings upon request by the division.
(6) No order of the division or judgment of the court to enforce the order may waive the liability of any person under the antitrust laws or other laws of this state.
(7) (a) Complaints, orders, notices, and the processes of the division may be served by anyone authorized by the division by:
(i) delivering a copy to the person to be served, to a member of the partnership to be served, or to the president, secretary, other executive officer, or a director of the corporation to be served;
(ii) leaving a copy at the principal office or place of business of the person; or
(iii) sending by registered mail a copy addressed to the person at his principal place of business or office.
(b) The verified return by the person serving the complaint, order, notice, or other process setting forth the manner of service or the return post-office receipt for the complaint, order, notice, or other process sent by registered mail is proof of service.
File a complaint and let the government do the work!
Is there even the smallest chance that it's really the other way around? That SCO "stole" code from the 2.4 Linux kernel and that due to employee turn-over, that a previous SCO employee pulled the code from Linux because it worked better that the code SCO had and everyone simply thought it was theirs?
I really have to wonder.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Here's a not unrelated idea. Increase the limit to +6, but make it so that it takes 4 positive moderations to go from +5 to +6 and then only 2 negative moderation to bring it back down. Or some such combination of things.
Can some peeps get down to the forum (assuming it's still running...) and park outside with printouts of the Heise images and the true history of the code in question? It would be a devestating blow to show the unfortunate customers of SCO how hollow the claims are, and how much of a fool SCO is taking them for.
Have you meta-moderated today?
The easy way for IBM to prove this to a judge is to hand the judge a copy of the statement from Caldera releasing the code under the BSD license.
Anyone can show two bits of near identical code and claim that one was copied from the other.
All IBM has to do is show that the code was legitimately included.
SCO has to show that it was not legitimately included.
Therefore: SCO has to show that only SCO has rights to that code.
This will be a huge problem for SCO to do. Take the example of the two bits on those photographs. IBM can show that that code was released already. SCO will have a problem showing that they own rights to that code and that all other examples of it in the wild are illegal.
7 Justices voted to overturn the FSC. Only 5 voted to halt the recount. That point may well be debatable. But the fact that 7 of 9 Justices found the FSC's decisions about election law to be unconstitional is not.
That's just because they didn't show the header file, which has:
If SCO really does have a rabbit in their hat, why are their exectives selling their stock?
Anything "could" be a trick. Heck, you could be posting on a fake version of slashdot right now. Common sense says that's silly.
Life is too short to proofread.
Well look at the type of company that IBM. A massive one that has thousands of developers. They need people that know how to follow instructions otherwise their projects are going to be a mess and way over schedule IF they are ever completed at all. Looks like they made that mistake already with OS/360 and aren't going to repeat it.
I always think of my classes and the instructors as i think of my customers. They provide the requirements(read this and that, expectation of student), I analyse them, design and implement the solution. If that means studying some stupid section of the text book that the prof is going to exam on, then hell that what I do. If a customer ask me to implement some feature, I implement it because if I don't, I don't get paid.
I am a geek and I do tinker but that has nothing to do with the class requirements of me as a student. Nothing stops me from picking up an OS book on my own time and doing what I feel is cool to implement, but if its for the class you have be able to do what the prof expects of you.
... in this case, the scientist could estabilish the roots of chain letters (like the nigerian) using technics from genetics phylogeny (evolutionary history) http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0003D47 6-1852-1EB7-BDC0809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catI D=2
I think this could be used as well as in computer programs.
It's been discovered that the code was submitted in linux by HP on March 9, 2002. The author was patch@hp.com
t Ke eper/deleted/.del-ate_utils.c~f3dbb032c5361f93@1.1 ?nav=hist/BitKeeper/deleted/.del-ate_utils.c~f3dbb 032c5361f93
.. what was that one fortune 500 company which paid up to SCO ?
http://linux.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.5/diffs/Bi
So to sum it up:
SCO sued IBM, because HP comitted a patch copied by SGI from an old BELL LABS (otherwise known as AT&T) Unix, which was released under a BSD license by SCO (previously known as CALDERA) after aquiring the copyrights from NOVELL with the help of funding from MICROSOFT and SUN and in turn got counter-sued by IBM,SUSE and REDHAT.
Anyone else ?
oh
so expect another layer of astounding FUD to come out any minute.
Perhaps they have decided to sue other countries as a whole now.
after all execs can't continue to sell if the price keeps going down.
Stock price is going up and SCO execs are selling stock, so someone out there *wants* SCO stock. WHO IN THE FUCK IS BUYING SCO STOCK?!?!? Is this another one of them tulip bulb/bigger idiot things?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Now they can sue HP for contributing the code. And SGI for releasing in under the GPL (which they by SCOian logic don't have the right to). Any bets on how many billions they'll sue for?
I'm sure that if they showed all "their" code, we could find literally thousands of companies who has been "infringing" on SCOs rights. It's all a global conspiracy to drive them out of business, with every major company on earth in on it. Yeah, that's the explaination.
On the credibility scale, that one scores slightly less than the neonazis' claim that it's all a jewish conspiracy. Then again, some people are stupid enough to believe that too....
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...but this still seems to prove nothing, considering the fact that only comments have been matched, but no actual code (which *might* be matching) has been shown.
SCO: You tresspassed on my property
YOU: Huh? What? Where's your property?
SCO: I can't tell you that, because telling you that would allow you to tresspass on my property again.
YOU: Huh? How the fuck am I supposed to avoid tresspassing on your property if you won't tell me where it is.
SCO: That's your problem.
YOU: Can you show me some evidence that proves I tresspassed on your property?
SCO: No, that would violate our property rights!
YOU: Can you show me how not to tresspass on your property?
SCO: No, that would violate our property rights. Now, we're going to sue you for tresspassing!
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It is when the reasoning used in the opinion directly contradicted decades of opinions the 5 mentioned Justices wrote in previous judicial opinions and case law. On the basis of the Gore v. Bush opinion, one is forced to conclude either the Gore v. Bush decision was invalid and arrived at due to extra-judicial reasons (i.e. illegal biases they should have recused themselves from the making a decision on the case on account of), or decades of opinions and decisions, almost their entire judicial decision history needs to be overturned. The 5 mentioned Justices clearly betrayed things beyond the scope of law lead to the Gore v. Bush decision. Judges have been impeached for far less evidence of bias in decisions far less important. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that that things completely outside laws enacted by our representatives, case law, legal opinion and evidence could lead to a decision on the SCO-IBM case.
This link, while wildly semi-ontopic, http://www.sco.com/2003forum/sponsors.html, should give a fairly decent overview of the support the SCO Forum 2003 currently has. For now it contains the following info:
"Document Not Found
To find the document you're looking for, please see our company sitemap or use the following search: [snip]
If you're having problems with a broken link, send us your e-mail and we'll find the page for you."
Moderators, moderate the parent post UP!!
This, as well as legal reasons, is why SCO is so
restrictive with its example code, only showing
code which has already been published under an
educational "BSD-style" license.
It is important to note that this license, while
"BSD style" is *not* unrestricted. It is limited
to specific older versions of UNIX running on
specific hardware, for educational purposes only.
The problem with that theory is that the information looks far more usefull for smashing SCO's case. IBM is getting this information too.
If McBride and the rest of SCO are really EvilGeniuses trying to pass themselves off as idiots then they are succeeding brilliantly, lol.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Maybe that's code that isn't essential to their case - just some code they think they can afford to let the Linux community remove.
:) :D
They said that it's not possible to easily remove the code since it consists of millions of lines. Well if it's so damn hard to fix it within a few months/years, why don't they show it? Even if you have an army of coders working day and night, you can't replace millions of lines in a few days. In order to prove that you didn't "copy", you'd have to start from scratch and write new functions, etc.. Not just change variables.
If there are million of lines, they can probably show a few of them to prove their point.
It smells fishy....
-- Leeeter than leet
... and jesus compiled it on his pdp-11, and yay it didn't crash... and there was much rejoicing
if the code is the same, then why did they only obfuscate one side??? if it is not the same, then i can see why they would obfuscate - what is their claim here - copied comments?
Recently watched Chicago again, while on a plane... couldn't help but here that little song while reading all of this...
What next? they're going to show include c file ? string compare? hahahahaha
Sheesh - if those code were publish on some books, someone could thought they are pretty nifty and incorporate those code into their programs.
The whole SCO case is baseless and is a sham to inflate stock prices.
They have not released the alleged infringing code because there are none and the moment they did, it would be quickly proven that they have no case and their stock prices would take a dive. The SEC needs to get involved now and slap some handcuffs on SCO executives.
Just my opinion.
We must be careful here to distinguish between the generic malloc code, and the more recent SMP-specific stuff. The basic malloc code has been around, as many people have pointed out, since the early 70's, and it's fair to assume that that particular piece of code has been cut+pasted to death, since every time any UNIX vendor needed a new pool allocator, there was one sitting there ready for reuse. However, what is more interesting is the more recent additions, ie the mutex stuff needed for SMP etc. If the SCO red highlighting is to be believed, then both sets of code share the mutex_spinlock() bits. Since these are much more modern additions, the real question is where did those additions come from, and who copied/stole it from whom?
The recent relase of alleged infringing code framgement by SCO and the decisive refutation bu the community shows that SCO has misappropriated public domain intellectual property. Businesses damaged by SCO's misappropriation of the community's intellectual property have a case to seek compensation from SCO for harm done to their businesses due to SCO's reckless and baseless claims.
return) ((ulong_t NULL);
^
|
|
Original SCO Code (licence required)
SCO has removed the V7 source from their website but the wayback machine has the original release. SCO's case is well and truly baseless.
Yay! Linux wins. World domination is one step closer today.
SCO must have disclosed code to the Library of Congress when it registered their copyright to the UNIX code
You only need to submit 50 pages of code to file a copyright for source code, so there may not be much information at the LoC to peruse.
What if the code was "copied" (if it was) in ANOTHER country (not USA) who has other laws? Would it makes it different under the law? If the code was copied in a country with permissives copyright law?
Maybe I'm all wrong, maybe the code was written/transfered/copied in USA too... IANAL obviously... But I would like to know!
By the way, if SCO wins their case (I doubt it, but if...) how would it affects Linux in other countries (such as Canada or European countries)?
Thank you for helping!
Montreal - Best city to live in!
You realize, of course, that you have just violated the DMCA by decrypting that digital code without authorization.
I hope you're out of reach of the U.S. Justice Dept!
This refutation of SCO claim is an example of why the community should not submit to SCO's NDA to see the alleged ifringing code.
Under SCO's NDA, the might be able to put a gag order on people who disproved their case.
Read it for yourself:
... wait, what am I saying, everyone download their own copy from sco.com now!
SCO Lawsuit Documents
The license agreements are in the exhibits. The exhibits are in big-ass PDF files. Someone might want to set up a mirror and save SCO some bandwidth
IBM's contract explicitly states that IBM owns the copyright on work that IBM does, and IBM may use methods and ideas from Unix in their own works, as long as they don't actually copy literal code.
Sequent's contract doesn't have that clause and is silent on that matter.
He said he used google to search through the kernel source for some text? Somebody should teach this guy aboug grep!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Well then should the other 4 justices have not recused themselves as well? Clearly, voting the way they did shows a blatent bias.
Furthermore, they did not vote against state rights. They reaffirmed the Florida Legislature's right and mandate to make the law. The same law the Governor of Florida is sworn to uphold. The Florida Supreme Court ruled such that it went above and beyond the court's mandate as enumerated in the state constitution.
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Actually, I think it's more likely that they're just throwing out as much random stuff that they can in hopes of scaring people.
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
This methods quicker, very decisive and would stop all those overpaid, filthy lawyers from getting any richer than they already are:
2 /r oshambo.html
:)
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/964
May I suggest David Beckham as the Linux representative as he's got a good and accurate swing best delivered via a set of German military police "Steifel" boots of the type favoured by motorcycle couriers and motocrossers because of the 1/16" thick steel plate riveted around the front edge of the sole.
Live webcast'd be nice
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Well, armchair lawyer, comment on these legal observations:
(1) In a copyright suit several years ago, Judge Kimball dismissed the case because the plaintiff had declined to inform the defendant of infringing activity. Similarly, SCO has declined to inform Linus Torvalds of any infringing lines of code in any kernel that Torvalds distributes.
You do know who Judge Kimball is and why his opinions are important in this case, don't you?
(2) In the Napster case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an action for contributory infringement requires the plaintiff to provide specific notice to the defendant of the infringing work. Point to the specific notice which SCO has provided Linus Torvalds.
(3) For a preliminary injunction, the movant must claim that the actions of the other party are causing ongoing, irreversible harm to the movant. The court then balances this claim with the irreversible harm to the other party that would be caused by granting the injunction.
Question: identify the ongoing actions which IBM, the defendant, is currently taking which are causing irreversible harm to SCO. Remember what "irreversible" means in this context. On the other side, identify the irreversible harm to Linus Torvalds, Red Hat, and other people who are not even parties to the suit, if a court enjoins them from publishing their own work on their own terms.
(4) Bonus question: discuss the doctrine of mitigation of harm. Reconcile this with Darl McBride's public statement that SCO will not identify the specific code in question "because then Red Hat would just take it out".
No... I've never had much respect for lawyers, and Boies actions here just confirmed that opinion.
It is simply normal English displayed in the Symbol font. In any normal latin font it reads as follows:
As part of the kernel evolupion 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)
Id you want to convince the world that you've got the Linux community by the short & curley's, the last thing you want to do is shoot yourself in the foot with something this stupid.
see also: my own comments on the complexity of this example
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Since it looks like this may be a piece of code covered by a BSD-type licence that does not adhere to the licence restrictions (namely, proper copyright notice and attribution), it may be a good idea to start tracking down who is responsible for submitting this patch in the first place.
The file is in 2.4.21, but got dumped about eight weeks ago.
That particular defunct file in 2.5 was submitted by what looks like a generic HP patch submission address. In 2.4, it came from patch@conectiva, which leads me to believe Marcelo added this as part of a large ia64 patch (he has a conectiva.com address). The code has an SGI copyright notice, so I'd be interested to discover if this piece of code exists in IRIX, and what SGI's Unix contract looks like.
A jbarnes@sgi.com patched the file in question twice before it was deleted in 2.5 by chadt, while a jh@com[helgaas] patched and deleted it in 2.4.
At this point, I would need to know what SGI's Unix contract specifies, and where SGI got this code from in order to rate a copyright notice on the file.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Who will be enjoined? Linus Torvalds? RMS? You? Me? Guess what, Braniac, the only parties to the litigation are SCO and IBM. The District Court does not have jurisdiction over anyone else.
The difference in Sun v. Microsoft was that Microsoft was a party and subject to the court's orders.
Yes, IA_Al. You, very obviously, are not.
Trip, trap . . . Trip, trap . . . .
Perens has done a great job of collating what all of us have dug up here.
Short form is, this comment and the code in the second slide go together (although the actual code on the second slide has obviously been tampered with, and will not compile,) and the original work on which it is all based was written by Dennis Ritchie ca. August 1973. It traces not only in the V6 and V5 code I've posted links to, but to V3, the oldest version of Unix which survives for us to read today, and beyond. Several derivatives have been released under BSD licensing, so it occurence in (old) versions of Linux is completely legal.
As many of us have suspected since the first rumours of Caldera/SCOs new business model surfaced, they've got a lot of pattern matches but not the brains to realise that just because a string of characters occurs in a file they bought from the Santa Cruz Operation it doesn't necessarily follow that they have unencumbered copyright on it wherever it might appear.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Today, however, instead of reaching an unwitting support person, I received the following message:
"Thank you for calling SCO. We are sorry we are unable to take the calls at this moment because we are in a meeting. Please press 1 to leave a message. Thank you."
The whole company is in a meeting??? Hmmm, I wonder what that's about. *grin*
Courts do not do these things. You only imagine they do because you are ignorant and stupid. THE COURT MUST HAVE JURISDICTION. The court cannot order anyone except the parties before it to do anything.
Again, you cite to a case without a clue. The parties to United States v. Microsoft (not DOJ) were, duh, the United States and Microsoft. The court had personal jurisdiction over Microsoft and could enter and enforce orders.
The United States District Court for the District of Utah DOES NOT have personal jurisdiction over anyone but IBM in this case.
The District Court does not have the POWER to enter the order you envision.
Stop and think for just a fucking second and you will see how ridiculous you are being. You don't even have to practice in federal courts to figure this out.
First of all, you can't claim to be a supporter of states rights and then reach into a state and intervene in it's ability to determine an issue like voting process within that state. A state's right's activist cannot claim they are supporting states rights by supporting one of the branches of a state's government (legislative) while undercutting another branch of said state government (judicial). The Florida Supreme Court is designated by the Florida Constituation as the branch of Florida Government that has the power to arbitrate and review Florida law. The Florida Supreme Court never undermined legislative authority. The Florida Legislature undermined it's own authority by passing conflicting statutes about the same subject and the Florida Supreme Court was then well withing the authority granted it by the Florida State Constitution to determine which of the conflicting statutes the legislature passed appied in that situation and make clear what the legislature had muddied so badly. A proponent of state's rights would clearly see the Florida Supreme Court acted correctly a well within it granted authority by making sense of the multiple statutes the Florida legislature had passed applying to the Florida voting process. Only an advocate of extreme judicial activism and federal intervention into a state's right to determine it's own laws would dare to reach into the Florida govenmental process and create new law for the State of Florida. That is what the 5 Justices in question did when they stopped the recount process. The 4 other justices in question could not be considered bias because their history of opinions always leaned more toward judicial activism and federal intervention in states govenmental processes. By ruling on the question, they continued their past pattern of judicial opinions. They acted completely in character with their previous rulings from the bench. The 5 Justices in question states rights past history demanded they refuse to allow the Supreme Court to hear Bush v. Gore, re-affirming the FLA Supremem Court. With the Justices in question acting so against decades of their own personal precident on the issue of states rights, they confirmed their bias.
More importantly it was release PRIOR to Caldera relicensing the Ancient Unix code.
Not quite; the Caldera BSD-style licence arrived on Jan. 23, 2002. The earliest date on the file itself is 2002/02/28 17:31:25, in the initial 2.4 patch that added this file. The patches themselves were added on March 9 and 13, 2002.
2.4 initial patch.
2.5 initial patch.
However, the required copyright notice is not there, so if an SGI employee submitted this file to the Linux IA-64 implementation under the assumption that the UNIX copyright issues had been cleared by the Caldera announcement, that employee blew it by not adding a proper copyright notice. If the file in question, however, comes from SGI's IRIX code, then the issues changes to whether SGI's changes to SysV code become property of the SysV owner under the AT&T licence, or whether SGI managed to get an IBM-like exemption on the derivative works clause.
Either way, it appears to me that the breach of copyright was initially committed by an outside coder, who submitted the code as part of the IA64 implementation to the kernel maintainers without adding proper attribution.
I think some more investigation needs to be done into the origins of the code. It would be very helpful if the individual who initially submitted this code for addition to the kernel spoke up.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
You could say about any SCO action: they are just misdirecting us.
...
And, indeed, I believe there is a lot of weight to that explanation. Some of their telephone press conferences were oriented towards baiting Linux users rather than announcing anything resembling news.
Or in other words, their game plan is: say something outrageous today; then while we all react, say something else outrageous tomorrow. People forget last week's outrageous statements but the PR effects live on.
This will destroy SCO's credibility in a matter of months, but since they are just a tentacle of Canopy Group, it's okay with them to trash out their credibility. The important part is to deliver the $15 million of FUD that Microsoft and Sun have already paid for.
That said
It really pushes the envelope for SCO to sacrifice their big chance at SCO Forum just to bait the Linux community some more. SCO has a big stake in continuing to be seen as a company with real products and services, not just Sock Puppets with Lawyers, Inc. IMO they would have been better off pulling some really daming code SCO Forum, not this cheesy 1970's ancient crap.
I don't think they rope-a-doped this one. Not to say that they won't rope-a-dope plenty of other times.
I seem to remember that under the legal doctrine governing American constitutional cases a person cannot challenge the constitutionality of some piece of legislation in case that same person has previously benefited from that same piece of legislation.
In other words, you can't have it both ways: you cannot acknowledge constitutionality when it suits you but cry unconstitutionality when it doesn't.
Now, SCO is claiming, among other things, that GPL is illegal as federal copyright law only allows one copy.
Has SCO ever made use of code which was created by someone else and covered by GPL? (In other words, is SCO trying to have it both ways?) And would that make a legal difference?
The liver is evil and must be punished.
Unable to afford scalpers' price for a Red Sox ticket, the Tawny Titan heard from an East Coast paralegal while he watched the game from a saloon near Fenway Park. The legal eagle claimed two large Linux customers are eyeing racketeering charges against SCO for asking for money before it proves its case. They would need about four more companies to come forward, claimed the tattler. "Seems like a dream come true for some attorney general," said the Furball. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224399,00.as p
Gnu For President 2004
It's the meeting where the 2 slides were presented.
First of all, you can't claim to be a supporter of states rights and then reach into a state and intervene in it's ability to determine an issue like voting process within that state. A state's right's activist cannot claim they are supporting states rights by supporting one of the branches of a state's government (legislative) while undercutting another branch of said state government (judicial).
They didn't support one branch while undercutting another. They just reaffirmed the constitutional superiority of the legislative branch over the judicial branch. The FSC exceeded its authority with respect to Florida state law, and the USSC slapped them down, and ordered them to follow their own state laws.
Holding state courts to their own laws is a perfectly legitimate function of the USSC, something that not even the strictest of constitutional constructionists would dispute. At the end of the day, if we can't at least pretend to have Rule of Law, what have we got?
On a more practical level, it's a good thing they did, too, because the Florida state legislature was about to step in. The outcome of the election would have been the same, but such a blatantly political (but perfectly legal) act would have had serious and long-lasting repercussions.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Basic copyright law:
Copyright exists as soon as the work is written down ("fixed in a tangible medium").
You don't have to register your copyright. But if you do, more legal protection is available to you.
To register the copyright in the USA, you have to send a copy of the work to the Library of Congress.
The copyright office will not give copies of these works to other people.
Copyright Office FAQ
Specifically:
Q: How can I obtain copies of someone else's work and/or registration certificate?
A: The Copyright Office will not honor a request for a copyo f someone else's protected work without written authorization of the copyright owner or from his or her designated agent, unless the work is involved in litigation. In the latter case, litigation statement is required. A certificate of registration for any registered work can be obtained for a fee of $30.
Your first example produce raw pseudo-machine code like:
The second will produce something like:
Even the 8-bit 6502 and Z-80 CPUs set flags based on the Z/NZ/Sign status of the incremented/decremented register, and had the requisite conditional branch operations.
If you think there is a performance difference between the different conditional branches, you need to check your manuals again.
Slightly newer CPUs such as PDP, VAX, and M68K had instructions which did an increment/decrement and a conditional jump on Z/NZ in a single opcode. The VAX even had a horribly inefficient instruction that would even let you specify a loop increment/decrement other than 1.
Heavily pipelined RISC code looks worse, but should be effectively performance-neutral as well.
(Yes the "sample" code is just a dredging up of old keywords from a decade or two ago. It's not "real" assembly for any CPU.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The text is written with Greek letters representing English ones. The translation is as follows: As part of the kernel evolution toward modular naming, the functions malloc and mfree are being renamed to rmallok and rmfree. Compatibility will be maintained by the following assembly code: (alsosee mfree/rmfree below)
There is a bitkeeper -> CVS gateway.
3 03 .1/0889.html
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0
Please at least check before abusing people for being 'obviously' wrong - 20 seconds on google would've corrected your assumption.
Kiss my Asp, Baby.
Love,
Cleopatra
As others have doubtless seen, the "obfuscated" code is basically transliterated into Greek. It reads: /*
* 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)
*/
Are you related to THE Michael Bolten?
Didn't anyone read the links? Especially this one? Analysis of Linux Code that SCO Alleges Is In Violation Of Their Copyright and Trade Secrets
Bruce Perens clearly shows how this code was released under the BSD license a while ago and how it was in circulation for almost 30 years! I hope the stock price of SCO goes way down now that we have analyzed thier best example and shown how it is FUD.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The upper crust at SCO don't know the meaning of "intellectual."
1) The code in question is trivial to re-implement.
2) The algorightm? Hell, he probably though that one up. It's trivial at this point in history. It looks the code anybody's who's written their own malloc for an embedded system that didn't have a "C" run time library.
If you look closely, you can see this code in the 7th episode of the 2nd series of "Stargate SG-1", approximately 25 minutes 18 seconds into the episode.
SCO is obviously claiming ownership of code that's not only present in 5000 year old Egyptian pyramid carvings, but that originated in another galaxy and was written by non-humans.
Let's hope *their* IP property laws aren't as stupid as ours, or they might be able to claim ownership of Earth as an appropriate copyright infringement penalty.
The 5 Justices in question (and your argument, swillden) relies on a premise that the Florida Legislature had written a single clear piece of legislation that the FLA Supreme Court somehow overturned. That premise is completely false, swillden. In reality, the Florida Legislature had passed multiple pieces of legislation in the subject in question with conflicting regulation and procedures on the exact same voting process. Therefore, the real situation was that the FLA Supreme Court was forced to act because the FLA legislature had created a mess that required interpertation by the courts in order to figure out what was supposed to be done. The role of interpretation of existing law is clearly delegated to the judicial system in Florida, the Federal Government, as well as every other state in the country. Go look it up swillden. There is not a single court system in America that does not have the role of interprtation of existing law delegated to the court system. The FLA Legislature made a mess of multiple laws which contradicted each other and the FLA Supreme Court acted completely properly in it's role as the interpreter of existing statutes. swillden, you should stop repeating Rush Limbaugh's talking points. Limbaugh accurary record is very poor. The neo-cons would like to revise history and make people believe the FLA Supreme Court intervened and tried to overturn an exist clear piece of legislation, but it is simply false no matter how many times it gets repeated. The FLA Supreme Court acted exactly as specified by the FLA Constitution in attempting to properly interpret the conflicting messes the FLA legislature created.
They don't own the comment and have clamed it the file sould be under BSD all parts taken from it to other files should be under BSD about time SCO gets sued for claiming code they don't own.
I don't see why we still care about this. It's plainly obvious that it's all just an attempt to get the CEO's stocks to fly before they sell them out and bankrupt the company, all just to retire rich to a remote desert island with their own herd of sexy females, and to lay off hundreds of hard working Americans.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This is why losers program in java and perl these days.
So those damn hippies don't like /.? How dare :p
Interesting post to the linux mailing list here
Another thing to note, how come the file is no longer in bit keeper? Am i looking in the wrong place? Got removed?
[alk]
that above thread seems to have meandered to the pedantic. All that discussion and brain cell activity, and not a single performance experiment.
Look before you post..
The code was around before it was put into the main tree. Look at the date on the 2.4.16-ia64 patch, then open the file and you'll see ate_utils.c. I haven't followed it all the way up the patch list, but it's certain that ate_utils.c was around PRIOR to the Caldera relicensing.
SCO won't show the code, but they claim it was copies.
Perhaps they don't want to show it because THEY are the ones that copied it!!
At what point does the FSF decide to protect itself from those hypocritical vultures and add a SCO exclusion clause to the GPL? I mean if it ever came to something like that in order for free software to survive this vicious attack it would be justified wouldn't it? Same goes for M$ if their involvement in this outrage is ever revealed. This would teach like-minded predators a very good lesson - not unlike the one those dicks are trying to teach the FSF. The only difference being this might actually be justified.
I know Ken is a guy who worked on UNIX back in the day (can't remember his last name), but little else.
Please explain for those who don't know even this much who exactly Ken is.
Go read the supreme court's decision. They explain their rationale quite clearly, and cover in great detail exactly how and why the Florida court overstepped its bounds.
You, of course, are free to disagree with the supremes, and you are correct that I oversimplified the situation, but I was merely responding to your own oversimplification. I've read and understood the details, and it is my (informed, but not lawyerly) opinion, that the supremes decided correctly. Have you done the same? Can you rebut their arguments? If so, please do. I'm always interested in hearing a *reasoned* opposing viewpoint. If you don't understand the details, then, may I ask, just who here is spewing partisan talking points?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Everybody knows that Real Programmers(TM) write code and leave the comments for later. Linux is written by Real Programmers, hence has no comments, ergo SCO is lying.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
There are many things they or would like forgotton. In particular, their collaborators would like forgotton, like seccurity, or fines.
Or 6 (million) other reasons:
(links gleaned from Google News) I'd submit these into the story submission but my submissions have 99% rejection rate.
...
...and, hold onto your seat because...
...
SCO's proof bogus, Linux advocate says The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, said he was not surprised by Perens analysis. "It sure as hell looks like its BSD-licensed and has been around forever," Linus said. "This was what we claimed was the likely source of any common code in the first place: BSD code and various vendor stuff."
SCO Preparing Legal Action Against Customer Talking to ComputerWire, McBride added SCO is identifying Linux users for possible litigation. He said SCO had for the last month gathered information on Linux users, and identified about 10% of the total Linux servers sold last year. McBride added that he expected that figure to rise to 40% over the coming weeks before SCO would take action.
What they're not showing is the comments a few lines above that says, "/* Code herein copyright IBM Corp. Originally designed by Michael Anderson, programmer IBM Corp.*/" in the Linux Kernel, and in the System V kernel, "/* Note to self, changed this ripped off code so it looks like SCO's and not IBM's.*/"
I most certainly can rebut the argument the 5 US Supreme Court Justices in question, and have stated it multiple times. Because there was was more than one Florida law passed by the Florida legislature that was in effect in Dec 2000 regarding Florida voting process, because these multiple laws did not include clauses which invalidated previous legislation, and because these laws contradicted each other in many places, an interpratation of the laws by the FLA judicial branch was required. The FLA Supreme Court was forced to act because of the mess the FLA legislature had created by crafting very poor legislation. The 5 justices in question CANNOT claim to support states rights and still intervene in the FLA Supreme Court's right to interpret FLA law. Interpreting existing law is the most basic function of the judicial system.
Taking something without permission is theft.
Agreed.
If I write a piece of code that is original, peculiar to my situation, and you decide to just up and take it without permission, implied or otherwise, then you are guilty of theft.
Not necessarily so. I am guilty of copyright infringement, not theft. Copyright laws are artificial monopolies created by the government to create a market for copyrighted texts. I don't object to copyright per se, it might be useful. It may be a good way to protect authors, but it is being extended unfairly under laws like the DMCA, Sony-Bono act, etc. We should never forget its origins, and that it is not theft to copy without authorization. Nobody is deprived of anything. That's the beautful thing about information and education: Everybody becomes richer by sharing it.
If you don't want me to copy something (into my brain for instance, or on my screen/web-cache), then don't make it accessible to me. Copying is a natural thing, and can't be helped.
Code is not necessarily always speech. It is an expression of ideas, but it can be copyrighted, which gives me ownership. It may not be right, it may not be ethical, but it is legal under the law, and that's all we've got to work with for now.
If it is not ethical, then I will break the law, if that is an ethical thing to do and appropriate to the circumstances. Ghandi didn't free his countrymen by becoming a lawyer. Laws that oppress do not deserve to be obeyed. It's like saying "we were under orders", which stops people to think for themselves. That always result in misery at one point or another. Sometimes following laws is the best way, other times they need to be broken (civil disobedience), in order to have them overthrown.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I was looking at this website. it makes the point that the code in question if from the "SCO Ancient Unix" which has sense been released under the BSD liscence. I found an interesting, post that makes sense:
. com/offers/ancient001/
(Posted Aug 19, 2003 23:58 UTC (Tue) by Arker) (Post reply)
Call me a paranoid, but it has saved my life at least once.
I won't say there's no worry here. Please someone archive this stuff on your personal machine. And don't tell anyone it's there. Just keep it until it's needed, or this mess is over.
I'd just say I've done that myself, as I've done in past cases (I have an untouched copy of 2.4 source from Caldera for instance,) but it's almost 2am in my timezone and I've done enough for the day. I know there are thousands of geeks who haven't, and I know a lot of us have a little hard drive space to spare. Grab this stuff. If only one of us has it, it means nothing, but if a couple hundred have byte-identical copies with the same time and date and the same story on how it was obtained, we have a legal chain of evidence that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. So please, just in case, do it now. Burn it to a CD or something, along with a description of exactly when and how you obtained it. You'll almost certainly be wasting a CD, but they're cheap, and if it does become an issue, you'll be glad you did.
I'm going to bed now, I leave it up to you.
the wayback machine he refurs to is at http://web.archive.org/web/20010124100000/www.sco
Greece was added to the "Axis of Evil" today. "We have irrefutable evidence that Greece hosts a large number of circumvention experts", a White House spokeswoman said, "and that they are funding terrorists". :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I was talking to a mate at SUN, and put it this way, IBM has more lawyers than programmers or consultants. IBM make Microsofts legal team look like a chariety case.
If anything is going to happen, IBM is going to crush SCO with their (IBM's) wallet and legal power. SCO will wish that they had NEVER thought of the idea,
It is unfortunate that SCO has gone down this path. IMHO, atleast the previous CEO (before Ranson Love) was a good old fashioned, home grown Microsoft basher. All there is now is a sycophants willing to bend over and take it from MS.
As for the license deal, is this the future of SCO, keep their two products alive and live off the royalties from licensing intellectual property? if they had an active, high-tech R&D programme in place, it would be a different situation, however, they have done very little to increase the value of the current intellectual property war chess.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
The code appears in the excellent classic UNIX book "Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th edition" on lines 2528-2547 (sheet 25).
For those who may not be aware of the significance of the book, check out this entry on the Lions Book in The Hacker's Dictionary. The book has been around since 1976.
But here goes:
http://perens.com/Articles/SCOCopiedCode.html
Link which explains the code.
I really HAD another userid
I mean, if I was doing some downright dirty personal coding and copied a file, code comments and all, just to get it working and move on, then go back and change the code to my own code but don't change the comments, then submit it to the linux kernel, what then?
Am I infringing code? Or just dumb to have forgotten to take out/change the comments. I mean, comments can not, IMHO, be tried in a court of law for copyright infringement, can it? I mean, comments don't, inherently, cause a particular change in the functioning of a system.
Ok, so now minus comments we are left with how many lines of identical code?
Karem Lore
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
This is all easy to say, and maybe it will go down that way; maybe it won't.
The point is, you guys are completely convinced that you're right (and you probably are). However, what happens when this goes to trial and IBM is "proved" guilty, or ends up settling for some large amount? What if you see the evidence is code that you wrote specifically for Linux that SCO claims to own, but you're effectively powerless to step up and "correct" the blatently wrong verdict?
This isn't just a what-if scenario, because it happens all the time and the majority of /. notice because it's happening to companies like Microsoft and never being questioned. Well, now they're noticing. This SCO charade is giving those folks a small taste of what it's like to be on the receiving end, and I hope it will broaden their perspective and make them more critical of similar baseless lawsuits.
This is an extreme example because all public evidence points to SCO having gone off the deep end, but here's hoping it will wake some people up.
I noticed when I was fixing a sendmail problem that the sysexits.h in AIX is an exact duplicate of the linux one minus the BSD license. I would be curious to see if this was a claimed as SCO source as well.
You're right--my bad for relying on BitKeeper submission dates alone.
So the question becomes one of whether someone at SGI felt they could legally submit that code, whether they didn't realize that code was not public or under a Free licence, or whether some lazy coder decided to toss it in.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
What a great day to short the SCO stock!
Mark my word!
Umm, there were several interlocking arguments in the opinion, and you didn't rebut -- or even address -- any of them. OF COURSE interpretation was required, and OF COURSE that is the role of the Florida courts. The issue at hand is whether the Florida Supreme Court crossed the line and created new public policy rather than just interpreting existing law. The fact that the law was internally inconsistent does not give the court the right to create new public policy. Not even if they really really want to.
Again, if you'd care to refer to the opinion, and actually address the arguments contained therein, I'm interested to see how you arrive at your conclusions.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Take, for example, one geometry problem (any) and 20 students from the same school, put them into separate classrooms, and ask them to solve that problem. Than take their solutions, and compare them, using DIFF. :-)
as aomeone having a great experience in cheking exam work at university, i tell you, that half of the works will be mostly identical, and there will be probably a couple of works with original solution approaches -- not more.
so my question is: how many alternative MALLOC implementations can there be?
Isn't SCO claiming that the 2.4 kernel and anything later than 2.4 infringes their stuff? But Caldera released this ancient code under a BSD license right after they bought it. Could it be that they're claiming the 2.4 and later kernels on the basis of the released code? Is the time frame right?
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Uh, what a load of crap. GPA is as fair of an asessment as anything else. If you want "Resume-building activities" then fine, you have to realize your GPA might suffer and accept it. Its all about trade offs. If you decide to spend your time playing Counterstrike or reading Slashdot instead of studying or "resume-building" activities, then thats your problem. If someone puts the effort into getting a 3.75+ they obviously know something you don't, called learning the material. Just because you have a "passion" for computers doesn't mean you're competent enough to code. Just because you guys didn't get an A doesn't mean the professor is incompetent. And the definition of a full-time student is a professional student, so maybe the rest of you guys should become "professional" students that you're supposed to be, that you're paying tuition for, instead of slacking off.
Drive the share price down down down to 50c for SCOX.
Then MSFT can but them out for under $10m, and suddenly, MSFT owns Unix !!
I am conceited (in the way most geeks are) but I try not to under-value my coworkers who are what you call the achievers. I don't like doing the repetitive tasks so I do think it helps me a lot to have others around to do those tasks. On my own I'm highly creative and a perfectionist (to things geeky at least) so I can solve problems in elegant ways on a frequent basis but left to a long dull project by myself I might tend to just spin my wheels because I keep getting ideas as I go along and each time I do I have to mentally file it away and that is distracting.
:)
I guess my point is that I'm not really conceited so much as confident of what I can and can't do well. Being confident does in general make me somewhat brash but I don't think it's the same thing as looking down my nose at people. I'm generally a pretty good teacher of newbies and I hope that those I teach find me enthusiastic rather than snooty. The only people that I really look down on are those that refuse to even try to learn. I don't believe that there is anybody that can't do it (it being anything imaginable).. there are just people who doubt their own abilities or lacking the desire to try.
I tend to be called gungho.. there is nothing I think I can't do. Give me a task and come heaven or hell I'll do it even if it isn't technically possible. On the flip side of that I rarely admit if something is out of my reach (say if my manager doesn't want to give me 6 months to do it) and tend to make way overly hopeful projections on how long things will take. Of course some of those overly optimistic time projections are because my managers won't let me work around the clock until the job is done. At times I've been ordered to take breaks, go home, etc. Oh well.. lossing track of my point.. just ranting a lil on the difference between confidence and enthusiasm and being conceited.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
they replaced the characters with their greek equivalents. If you want the rest of the comments reads...
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)
This algorithm was originally developed
/*
/* /*
on or about 1969-1972 by Patrick O'Neil
Email: poneil@cs.umb.edu
for Computer Coproration of America as
part of the Model204 DBMS kernel.
The SMP implementation was done in 1975
for the 370 model 168.
Any "IP" for the algorithm belongs to
Computer Corporation of America.
.
.
.
* Copyright (c) 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 1.2 (2.11BSD GTE) 12/24/92
*/
#include "param.h"
#include "systm.h"
#include "map.h"
#include "vm.h"
* Resource map handling routines.
*
* A resource map is an array of structures each of which describes a
* segment of the address space of an available resource. The segments
* are described by their base address and length, and sorted in address
* order. Each resource map has a fixed maximum number of segments
* allowed. Resources are allocated by taking part or all of one of the
* segments of the map.
*
* Returning of resources will require another segment if the returned
* resources are not adjacent in the address space to an existing segment.
* If the return of a segment would require a slot which is not available,
* then one of the resource map segments is discarded after a warning is
* printed.
*
* Returning of resources may also cause the map to collapse by coalescing
* two existing segments and the returned space into a single segment. In
* this case the resource map is made smaller by copying together to fill
* the resultant gap.
*
* N.B.: the current implementation uses a dense array and does not admit
* the value ``0'' as a legal address or size, since that is used as a
* delimiter.
*/
* 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.
*/
"Would you base your IT funding on unproven claims from SCO? If so, I have some code your work is infringing upon. No really, trust me. Would I make outrageous claims? You owe me big time."
I have some IP the Brooklyn Bridge was built on. Are you an end user? If so, I'm charging a toll. You owe me big time. As a company with stock, we are committed to protecting our IP and licensing tolls. Please email this to five other people.
Interesting, since SCO just filed for copyright,
after the 28 years was up, and too late to renew,
it makes for the argument that original 1973 Unix is in the public domain. Hmmm.
there are some greek letters in the first picture which are saying as i can understand , cause the words are not in greek are in english. (someone tried to write english with greek letters) :
*as part of the kernel evolution toward modular naming , the
*functions ? and more are ? renamed to >? and more.
*combatability will be maintained by the following assembler ?
*(also see more/? below)
----------------
if you need any further help email me chrispen@infection.gr
Example 1 is a fucking COMMENT. Who the hell cares? And what's with Example 2? Where's the SYSV code that got ripped? SIDE BY SIDE YOU IDIOT SCO PEOPLE!!!