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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!
* 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)
*/
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
Still doesn't prove shit for SCO's claim other than digital cameras are getting smaller and easier to hide.
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
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.
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!!!
It's not actually Greek. It is English using the Greek alphabet.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
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?!?
It's often what Slashdot is all about, anyway ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
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 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.
/*
* 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?
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"
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.
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.
There is nothing wrong with having the same comments.
Except, of course, that it's plagiarism?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
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 or Here
Has anyone checked the linux CVS repository to see who added the code? If so, could you post your findings?
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
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*
/* $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
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();
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:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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
But that's actually the same thing. It's a little known secret that all foreign languages are really just English spelled/pronounced wrong or encoded in a different character set. It's just one of the things that they don't want you to know.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
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.
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.
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
maybe it's just bad corporate humor - powerpoint slides meant for exec types. the author anticipated:
"what does that C code mean"
"it's all greek to me"
har, har.
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?
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..."
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!
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.
* 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)
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.
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.
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. ...
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)
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
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!
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...
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.
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
Actually, the last word is beloo, as they decided to use an omega for a "w", which is lacking in greek.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
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.
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
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.
NO!? You mean like the stock options worth today about $5,000,000 they gave to the company that paid ~$3,000,000 for the first license?
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
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.
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??
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.
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?
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.
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.
First-fit was analyzed by Knuth before you were born, and proved superior to best-fit. As for the coding style, the fragments in question were likely written by Ken himself. By calling it ``poor coding'' you are only displaying your ignorace.
What should we make of the fact that the Unix Tree is located on the same site as a plagiarism detector?
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
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.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
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/
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Also don't forget the shorts. At some point shorts have to buy the stock back, which can boost the price of the stock. I don't think short covering is a big part of the current holding value of SCOX but it does tend to mitigate the downramp a bit when downramps happen.
In short, SCOX is a highly speculative and volatile stock and any simplistic view of cause and effect in the matter is no more accurate then rolling the dice.
Part of IBM's countersuit is an indictment of SCO's use of press releases, stated exaggerations and falsehoods in interviews, and so forth. By not engaging in these tactics itself IBM is adding weight to its countersuit. Besides, IBM has all of us to beat the drums for it.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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".
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.
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 point of the whole discussion was abstract code theory, not to write tests for specific CPUs and compilers and see what happens.
It's people who can't have an abstract discussion that are killing this business and turning it into an inefficient assembly line. If you don't enjoy thinking and discussing the abstract, programming is the wrong industry for you.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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