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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.
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
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?
Both snippets relate to the first function in that file - malloc(). It's a simple malloc implementation.
The second Heise picture is the body of the function, pretty much. There is now an SMP spinlock in there, and what appears to be some assertion on the size of the memory area (some kind of bigmem check?). Also, the for loop is initialised with a function, which is probably also something memory related, again possibly bigmem related.
So, it relates to the areas SCO said it did. I doubt very much they can claim the code was copied from SysV wholesale. I would be surprised they could even claim that the three changed lines from the ancient Unix are not obvious - e.g., for it to work in SMP you basically need a lock. Although, it would be surprising for the locking mechanism to be identical - so they perhaps have some point here. But, the majority of the function cannot be claimed as copied, surely....
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Here or Here
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!
Oh, wait. IHBT haven't I? Blast!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
* 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!
The problem with your reasoning is that the comments weren't stolen from SCO and put into Linux. The comments existed way before SCO and Caldera and "new SCO" -- you'll find the same comments in BSD source from the early 80's, and published on the net. So if anyone stole the code, it wasn't any Linux developers, cause Linux didn't even exist back then.
Now will the REAL copyright holder please stand up?
Regards,
--
*Art
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 ?
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
Of course stealing comments is IP infringement.
Not according to the judge in the BSD case. He ruled that comments were not part of the source code.
The damages would likely be less if the value of the IP is less but it is out and out theft nonetheless.
Actually, as SCO refuses to disclose the alleged infringing code, the damages will be zero, as SCO is demonstrating that any infringing code is worthless. (If it wasn't worthless, SCO would do everything possible to get it removed from the kernel.)
SCO has made their point very well with the identical comments.
Considering that SCO hasn't made any alleged infringing code (with or without comments) publically available, there has been _NO_ point made at all.
Only the most blind advocate would suspect that somebody wrote new code in a black box and then stole comments that coincidentally happened to match correctly.
The fact that independant people who have signed NDAs, and are given two snippets of code, the origin of which they have no knowledge of, say "the comments are the same" really proves nothing...
There is stolen code in Linux.
Please provide proof of that statement. So far, there has been NO PROOF . At all. Until there is, it's a really large leap to say that SCO is 100% right.
A reasonable advocate would be working on a method to right now to find coders who have NEVER seen either the SCO code, the licensed IBM code or the stolen Linux code and begin a process of writing true black-box replacements.
No, a reasonable advocate would ask SCO for a detailed listing of all of the alleged infringing code. That's been done. SCO has refused.
It's impossible to 'write true black-box replacements' when nobody knows what to replace.
when the courts inevitably rule that the offending code cannot be used in ANY release
Why would a court rule that? SCO has not provided any proof, they continue to distribute any alleged infringing code themselves under the GPL.
Please take your troll somewhere else.