"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.

Comments

Translation of "symbol" section:

[*igor*]

* 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)
*/

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Yohahn]

Others agree, they've been chatting about this on Linux weekly news:

see here

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[JanneM]

Um, no, that is a very premature conclusion.

First, they will have to show that this code is their property; as others have mentioned, both Linux and SCO Unix contain BSD code - which is perfectly legal to copy.

Second, if the code is stuff from IBM/Sequent, they will need to show that IBM did not in fact have the right to give the code away to Linux. This will not be determined until the lawsuit is settled (and looks unlikely to go in SCO:s favour considering the side agreements that explicitly give IBM permission to do whatever they want with their code).

And don't forget that in the case that IBM loses that suit, it becomes a matter between SCO and IBM only. That code IP is owned by IBM, not SCO, no matter what, and Linux users are free to continue using it. The only one damaged by that would be IBM, as they would be found for breach of contract.

Oh, and the 110/2000/890000/dozens/whatever number sco is flinging around at the moment is pretty much immaterial. They haven't exactly been paragons of accuracy in this affair so far.

Again, to reiterate, the whole "illegaly copied code" is, so far, just smoke and mirrors. There is no lawsuit alleging any copyright infringement. There is only a lawsuit alleging that IBM violated an agreement not to share some of their IP with third parties.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[buffer-overflowed]

Since you probably didn't read some of the comments, as others have pointed out, these exact comments (and even some source) are in the public domained Unix 7 code, as well as old BSD code (BSD being absolutely in the clear from the settlement). So, this is in no way an example of infringment. Hell code I've wrote w/o ever seeing any of these is similarly constructed and commented.

BSD Comments (malloc), 1986:
/*
* 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.
*/

SGI Comments, 1992 - Present:
/*
* 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.
*/

Unix 7 (Public Domain) 1979:
/*
* Allocate 'size' units from the given
* map. Return the base of the allocated
* space.
* In a map, the addresses are increasing and the
* list is terminated by a 0 size.
* The core map unit is 64 bytes; the swap map unit
* is 512 bytes.
* Algorithm is first-fit.
*/

Wow, stunning proof, absolutely stunning that public domain source and comments would get used and modified.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Atzanteol]

I am facing the fact that the exmple they showed didn't prove anything. Have you accepted that yet?

Face it: SCO has not *proved* a damned thing yet. 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. Theif.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[frankie]

SCO has made their point very well with the identical comments.

Except that the symbol-font comments being discussed in this thread (about rmfree) are not in Linux. The part that is identical comes from a textbook. And where in your ass did this 890,000 LoC number come from? URL please?

Face it. There is stolen code in Linux

Unless both Linux and SCO legally copied the code from a BSD-licensed version of UNIX(tm). Or unless SCO stole the code from Linux. Until each party shows verifiable changelogs for the relevant sections, it's very much an open question.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[EzInKy]

Face it. They showed an example that didn't give away any IP rights. The ability to maintain their IP is why you can't see stolen code with value unless you sign an NDA protecting their IP rights.

Face it, they are lying. As many others have pointed out the code they showed has not only been released for free use by them, but also has been publicly available before they even existed.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Anonymous Coward]

> 7th Edition UNIX is NOT Public Domain.

Actually, it is:
http://linux.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/1595/

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's not.

The article says Caldera released V7 under the BSD license. That makes it free software but not public domain.

At any rate, it *does* mean that SCO's claims are groubdless.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[wkitchen]

Be careful. Given the dirtiness of SCO's claims and tactics so far, I can't help wondering if SCO may have put the greeked comments on the slide to bait a trap aimed at giving them some ammo against their detractors.

It's already pretty well demonstrated that the non-greeked comments are free of copyright infringement, but what if the greeked comments are in fact unique to their code? So, though there wasn't any copyright infringement before, by ungreeking and posting those comments, there is now. Thus tainting Slashdot and other geekish news sources, numerous individuals, and of course, the minds of many developers. And they may even be able to claim a DMCA violation in having their copy protection scheme "cracked". Sure, as copy protection it approaches the ultimate in lameness, but remember that didn't prevent the misery inflicted on Dmitri Skylarov.

Deliberate entrapment? Certainly. But they have a much bigger legal budget than I, and quite likely you, could ever hope to afford.

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[rossifer]

Yeah, but why bother? Risk analysis includes two factors, the impact if the risk occurs and the chance of occuring.

Given SCO's first and best shot at showing copyright infringement (the subject of this article), the risk of them succeeding against RedHat's request for a judgement is between zero and nil.

Now, it will be interesting to see if IBM's RCU and NUMA contributions are attached by Sequent's AT&T license (this is the 890k lines of code that SCO is squawking about). Personally, I estimate the chances of this happening between 2% and 5%, (largely because 1) the AT&T ownership claim is weak (remember the BSDI case?), 2) the AT&T contract is likely to be seriously weakened by the first ruling on it, 3) IBM already negotiated a much more relaxed contract, and finally 4) IBM claims that they rewrote the RCU and NUMA code for Linux and did not copy it directly from the Sequent mainframe sources).

So given that SCO has a very low probability of succeeding in their claim and that the only things affected by the claims are performance improvements for SMP systems, this risk is a non-starter. Nobody is going to mobilize developers to "fix" this until something actually needs fixing.

Customers are not liable for the sins of the vendor and people currently using Linux have no need of permission from SCO or anyone else to continue using Linux as the OS of their systems. There is no emergency, there is no need for panicked reactions.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Anonymous Coward]

> Of course, Ken might have lifted this from even earlier sources.

Unlikely - since the code was writen in 1973, that places it just about at the dawn of the C language. At that point there probably wasn't anyone outside Bell Labs writing C code.

(Which is why this trivial allocator function was used as an example of C programming technique so widely - to say it's a trade secret is laughable)

Re:Translation of "symbol" section:

[Alsee]

Show me a case where you are allowed to keep stolen goods

Ah. You're apparently one of those people that thinks information is property and has absoutely no understanding of the LEGAL difference between copyright infringment and theft. Copyright infringement does not create any sort of "stolen goods" that need to be returned to the owner. The copyright holder is compensated with damages from the person who committed infringment, end of story.

Of course I expect you to go on a rant about how I'm "wrong", but I suggest you go argue with the US Supreme court:

"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property"

"the copyright holder owns only a bundle of intangible rights which can be infringed, but not stolen or converted"

"It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: 'Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner,' that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, 'is an infringer of the copyright.'"

The US supreme court states that you CANNOT carry over "theft" concepts to a copyright infringement case. The US supreme court specificly specificly rejected the claim that infringing copies "involved stolen goods". See Dowling vs. United States.

-

Location in Sys 7

[Anonymous Coward]

See Sys 7 1979 location

Kernel mailing list comment

[Gaetano]

This from the kernel mailing list

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

Re:Kernel mailing list comment

[chill]

You are missing something obvious.

Caldera granted rights to what WAS 16-bit and 32-bit code plus DERIVATIVES. The license wasn't a restriction as to what processor it could be run on.

Tone of the article...

[Ayanami Rei]

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?

babelfished

[Empiric]

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

Re:I can decipher it!

[terraformer]

It's not actually Greek. It is English using the Greek alphabet.

Re:IANAC

[Anonymous Coward]

The code in question in the Linux kernel is simply a function to allocate a block of space from a pool, looking for the first fit.

If an undergraduate experienced in C were asked to do the same problem the code would look very similar. Hardly a trade secret. Others have commented that this appears in earlier malloc libraries. Perhaps there's the common ancestry, way before SCO existed.

Hardly enterprise class stuff. They had better have much much better examples or their case is toast.

(realization) The code...

[Ayanami Rei]

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.

Re:I can decipher it!

[Fractal Law]

The thing is that it actually is the Windows Symbol font. I can read Greek (Ancient Greek at least) and while the alphabet used is the Greek one all that somebody did was highlight the text in question and change the font to Symbol, which is what Windows calls its Greek font.

In other words it's English written using the Greek alphabet. Why somebody would do something so silly puzzles me, however.

Yes, that's right, they're claiming malloc()

[raindog2]

Here's the earliest implementation people have found so far, from 1979 (before SCO was "born"):

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/mal loc.c.html

And here's where it was part of BSD 2.11 circa 1992:

http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.11 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c

Oh, how I hope the mainstream tech press "gets" this.

Re:Yes, that's right, they're claiming malloc()

[lspd]

BSD 2.11 is not free. You need a Unix license to use it....for the very reason that you've pointed out. Much of BSD prior to 4.4 was taken directly from Unix. For 4.4 they rewrote all this garbage.

Code from BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Code from BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be the first time

Re:To sum up:

[Vexalith]

It's also in a 1986 Berkley file: http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.11 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c

Re:I'm not the only one who noticed this...

[gotan]

There's also a very informative lkml thread about this and it's already been removed from the source tree, but apparently not because of copyright issues but because it was just "ugly as hell".

Looks like SGIs IP not SCOs

[pstreck]

/* $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.

Re:Code in picture 2 doesn't even compile

[PiGuy]

Here's the actual kernel code:

if (size == 0)
return((ulong_t) NULL);

Now, where'd that misteak come from?

Re:I can decipher it!

[Arker]

I can't read greek very well, but I do know the greek alphabet. Here is what the obfuscated section of the first picture says:

As part of the kernel evolution towards modular naming, the functions malloc and mfree are being renamed to rmalloc and rmfree.
Compatibility will be maintained by the following assembler code:
(also see mfree/rmfree below)

This code was apparently donated by Caldara (SCO)

[m.dillon]

From the linux-kernel list, the code was apparently donated by Caldara under the BSD license in 2002. Here are the references.

Start of Thread

Conclusion

It's HP's fault this stupid code is in there.

[echo]

Check this out

patch@hp.com according to bitkeeper.

Also, this has been removed in 2.6, mainly because it was a stupid implementation.

Heise _is_ an open-source friendly news outlet

[bazongis]

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.

Re:To sum up:

[Vexalith]

Replying to myself with a link:
http://oasis.dit.upm.es/~jantonio/documento s/opens ource/kirkmck.html

Re:So this is what they're pitching a fit about?

[gowen]

I'll wager that code is also in BSD

You are correct. It was in the PDP11 architecture BSD UNIX as long ago as v2.11

Re:To sum up:

[Anonymous Coward]

and 1979 Interdata V6 from the University of Wollongong in Australia - http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/Interdata_v6/usr/s ys/malloc.c.html

LWN Overview

[saspengiun]

Check out the history good overview History

Not slander or libel

[Veldcath]

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.)

Code has been around since at least 1973

[rkww]

The nsys kernel version of malloc has exactly the same implementation, albeit without any comments.

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. ...

Re:oh no!

[Arker]

Anyone ever given serious thought that perhaps the SCO code was lifted from the Linux source? The SCO engineers obviously had the same level of access as everyone else in the public domain -- perhpas the case will come down to who can prove what was released when. .anacron

That may be the case in many of their claimed 'infringing lines' but not in these two.

The first one shows comments (not code) which match. They're also straightforward descriptions of functionality, date back at least to 1979, and occur in a number of old unix versions which have been commonly read and used for teaching purposes for years, as well as the Lions book.

In this case the comment definately predates Linux so couldn't have been copied from Linux, but the fact it occurs in Linux code is not strong evidence of copyright infringement.

http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/ sys/sys/malloc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/Interdata_v6/usr/s ys/malloc.c.html
http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/Ausam/sys/ken/mall oc.c.html

The second section of code is copyright of and contributed by SGI, and concerns functionality that SysV doesn't have. It's only relevant on the assumption that SCOs theory that it owns every technology any Unix licensee ever added to their own version of Unix holds water, which means only if the court winds up throwing the entirety of copyright law and precedent out the window and writing new law just for SCOs benefit.

Re:To sum up:

[lspd]

Actually I looked at this before and malloc() and free() are in BSD-Lite. They've been rewritten though. This version is tainted. It goes back all the way to Bell Labs with a copyright of 1973. There is a version in BSD-Lite that is guaranteed free software, but it looks different.

Translation of the article

[reignbow]

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

Show me the code's heritage

[miniver]

Face it. There is stolen code in Linux. How much and how severe the value of the theft is to be determined but that there was theft is almost certain.

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:

• What is the origin/history/heritage of the code in question?
• Who had the rights to the code in question?
• How much of the code can actually be copyrighted?

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?

Re:is it legal to copy bsd code and then gpl it?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, you can literally do anything with bsd code, including re-release it under a different license (Even proprietory licenses) so long as you keep copyright statements in tact.

Re:SGI to be dragged in?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

IBM is clearly not to blame. But remember that IBM's disputed contributions to Linux were not written by SCO and are not part of SCO's Unix. The fact that they got into Linux may give SCO a claim against IBM for violating contract, but they don't give SCO any clear IP rights to Linux. SCO wants IP rights to Linux for their Linux licensing program. SCO is showing this similar code to argue that code was copied directly from Unix to Linux, thus giving SCO IP rights to Linux, and thus justifying the Linux licensing program.

Re:Comments ...

[grendelkhan]

Except that in the 1992 BSD case the Judge ruled the comments didn't count towards copyright violations, just the code. So, by the logic, someone could have taken the code, left in the comments as a guide, and wrote a new implementation, AND,/b> still be free and clear as far as the law was concerned.

Collected information and collected links

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03-00 0/imh1.jpg:
1979: http://minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/V7/usr/sys/sys/mal loc.c.html [tuhs.org]
1986: http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.11 BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jk-19.08.03- 00 0/imh0.jpg:
1984: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=2551%40allegr a.UUCP&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain
????: minnie.tuhs.org/UnixTree/32VKern/usr/src/sys/sys/m alloc.c.html

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)

Good source for UNIX sourcecode

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

mirror and a joke

[feidaykin]

So I thought I'd do my part and mirror the images. The site is holding up good so far, but it's good to have a mirror in case they remove the images.

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?

Well

[autopr0n]

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.

Re:Well

[Magic Thread]

It was the original BSD license, though. The one with the GPL-incompatible obnoxious advertising clause. The copyright notice has been changed as well. So there is copyright violation here, though it's doubtful SCO can claim monetary damages from it.

Re:oh no!

[XO]

But it IS possible, without throwing out all copyright law. IF the Unix source licensing agreement included that all source derivatives belong to the primary Unix source owner, then the Unix license becomes just as viral as the GPL.

As the GPL requires that if you distribute a modified binary, you distribute the source ... the Unix license could require that if you modify the source, you give it back to the owner!

Oops missed the best one:

[Arker]

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.

Re:Oops missed the best one:

[Arker]

Are you sure Caldera was the first to release it under BSD? I'm pretty sure it was actually released that way several years earlier, and Caldera essentially just republished it, but I could be wrong.

But either way you're of course quite right, there are plenty of legitimate ways for that comment and many more like them to have wound up in linux code.

Also note that it's already been removed, along with the code below it, as has been planned for some time. It was one of those ugly hacks they had been planning to rewrite for some time anyway.

Re:oh no!

[Royster]

The last link shows the code apparently came from SGI. Isn't SCO claiming that IBM contributed the so-called infringing code?

No.

The accusations made by SCO have been very unclear. The IBM case is about acts by IBM which SCO claims breaches the IBM/AT&T contract. It involves contributing code IBM got by buying Sequent and by participating in Project Monterey. This technology includes RCU, NUMA, SMP and scalability.

Independantly, SCO claims that there are many lines of code copied from Sys V into Linux. They have not yet filed any copyright suit against anyone since they only just got the copyright registrations issued.

Don't confuse the two very different legal issues.

Analysis by Bruce Perens

[kaip]

Bruce Perens has written an analysis of the code that SCO claims was wrongfully copied into Linux: http://perens.com/Articles/SCOCopiedCode.html

Re:*scratches head*

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html

Re:Who added the code to the kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

CVS-repository? Nope. Linus himself was the CVS-repository until last year when he started using BitKeeper.

Re:is it legal to copy bsd code and then gpl it?

[Tokerat]

I believe it is, but the original code is not affected by your use of it, therefore you cannot claim ownership of BSD'd code and claim the fact it is used elsewhere is an infringement of the GPL or whatever other license you use. This might come back and bite SCO in the ass.

Re:oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that the second shot may be moot. It looks like a bitkeeper patch to the 2.5 tree may have removed the file that the code apearred in in it's entirety in early July of this year:

See here

Re:Legal summary of the SCO situation

[frkiii]

Copyright infringement is NOT part of their suit against IBM. The only place where SCO has alledged this, is in their statements to the press, in the form of "IP", etc. To the best of my knowledge, they have not filed a copyright infringement case against ANYONE. I have read SCO's original and amended suits against IBM, it is simply a contractual suit, generally breach of contract, and disclosing "trade secrets". Which is really funny, because they specifically name NUMA, JFS and SMP in their lawsuit, refering to what IBM contributed to Linux. And that is funny, because SCO does not own or "control" that software at all. Most if it is copyrighted by IBM or by company that IBM bought (Sequent) or others, but NOT SCO. SCO's entire case, based on their filed amended complaint, hinges on the court ruling that NUMA, JFS and SMP are "derivative workds" of Unix System V. But that is very highly unlikely, in my opinion. Regards, Fredrick

Re:parentheses... confusing....

[frkiii]

Yeah, the ")" after "return" is invalid C syntax.

Compiler would hack up a hair ball.

And the "((" before "ulong_t NULL)" is also invalid syntax.

I am not familiar with that particular piece of code, but it appears that a cast is being made to case "NULL" as a "ulong_t" datatype, but not sure, it might "more correctly" look like this:

return (ulong_t) NULL; or

return ((ulong) NULL);

Regards,

Fredrick

Re:I'm pissed

[kasperd]

At least they did mention you on the kernel mailing list.

Re:oh no!

[Mr Z]

And to follow up on the other half of your question that Royster didn't answer, the "sysvinit" thing you're thinking of refers to a System V-style initialization sequence, as opposed to a BSD-style.

--Joe

Re:Even Better!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is 30 year old code people. Is it even still covered by copyright at all?

Yes, insofar as it is copyrightable. Under current US copyright law, the earliest something can go out of copyright is 75 years after creation (or, in some cases, putting in "fixed form"). The cap is indeterminate, but a young person living a long life might end up with 150+ years of copyright.

Re:Even Better!

[kalidasa]

Anything under copyright as of 1978 was grandfathered in both times the copyright was extended (under the original Berne Convention extensions and under the later Bono Act ones). And the copyright law before that allowed an original term plus an extension that came out to 75 years. I don't remember what the original term was, but it was around 35 years, so one can be certain that anything published after ~1943 is under copyright, and most things published after 1928 are under copyright.

But I am not a lawyer. So I can't provide an authoritative answer, and the truth might vary from my perceptions. But that's the way, as a layman, I read the law, and I've done some stuff with copyright clearance with publications, so I'd be surprised to be wrong.

Your suggestion #2 looks more an more plausible every minute.

Re:oh no!

[jrockway]

I've graded code many times, and doing that does not disguise anything! You'd be amazed how easy to tell when people change variable names, brackets, indentation, spacing, etc.

BTW, even if you've graded 100 projects, you'll know when you see copied code. It's truly obvious.

From a Washington DC Slashdotter

[saddino]

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.

Re:oh no!

[Doomdark]

...Or perhaps it's new code written by an old fart who knows through long, bitter experience that there's no such thing as an optimizing compiler.

That's however missing the main point, namely, that your "non-optimizing compiler" may still just go ahead and ignore you. And the general agreement outside old fart circles is that that's 99% likely to happen (unless something really radical has happened since my taking of compiler's course in mid-90s....).

So, even if you hate the register allocation your compiler does (with its somewhat incomplete understanding), adding register keyword may be as useful as buying those expensive gold plated stereo connectors, or wearing a tin-foil hat. If you really want to get allocation the way you consider optimal, you better write it in assembler.

The source agreement says ...

[mec]

Read it for yourself:

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 ... wait, what am I saying, everyone download their own copy from sco.com now!

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.

Re:NOT GPL compatible (Re:Kernel mailing list comm

[Platinum Dragon]

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.

Re:oh no!

[SoSueMe]

Read thisfrom YaHoo! finance. It shows where they got the bright idea to change the scope of their suit.

Computer Associates (CA:NYSE - commentary - research) on Tuesday announced it would pay a $40 million settlement to a company that claimed breach of contract over a $15 million partnering agreement it made with the large software firm.

In a press release issued after the bell, Islandia, N.Y.-based Computer Associates said it has reached a settlement with the Canopy Group and Center 7 over a suit filed by the companies in April 2001 in federal court in Utah. Center 7 claimed that Computer Associates reneged on a deal to help sell $15 million in software the small company had bought.

Center 7 was formed by the Canopy Group, which has ties with companies experienced at suing the monsters of software. Canopy has a major stake in SCO Group (SCOX:Nasdaq - commentary - research), which in a suit filed in March charged IBM (IBM:NYSE - commentary - research) with infringing on its Unix copyright in its Linux business.

A comprehensive summary of news links is here.

Re:oh no!

[AstroDrabb]

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.