SCO: Code Proof Analyzed, Linus Interviewed

Arker writes "Bruce Perens has now obtained a copy of the entire slide show from which the recently scrutinized SCO-related Linux code excerpts came, and has analyzed the remainder of the 'evidence' they presented there. Their other code exhibit turns out to have been the venerable Berkeley Packet Filter(!), and their revised line-counts are consistent with simply adding together all the lines of code that have been contributed by Unix licensees." Also, Iphtashu Fitz writes "A new interview with Linus Torvalds has been posted on eWeek.com. In it he slams SCO over the recently leaked source code. Among other things, he points out in the interview that some of the code in question has been removed from the 2.6 kernel ['because developers complained about how "ugly" it was'] before SCO even started complaining."

Comments

Mirror

[inertia187]

Man, the site's already slow even though it's "slashdot effect ready" (har). Here's a couple mirrors:

• Link 2
  
• Link 3
  

Re:Mirror

[Saint Aardvark]

And another:

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/perens/SCOSlid eShow.html

Slashdotted already

[bloatboy]

I copied/pasted.

Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show
Bruce Perens, Perens LLC
With help from Linus Torvalds and the Open Source community.

You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.

An SCO presentation shown in Las Vegas on August 18th alleged infringement by the Linux developers. The presentation, in Microsoft PowerPoint format is here, and an conversion of the presentation that can be viewed using a web browser is here .

SCO released the presentation to Bob McMillan, a reporter for IDG News Service, without any non-disclosure terms. Bob asked me to comment upon it. here's his story.
I will start with SCO's demonstrations regarding "copied" software. It is likely that SCO would present the very best examples that they have of "copied" code in their slide show. But I was easily able to determine that of the two examples, one isn't SCO's property at all, and the other is used in Linux under a valid license. If this is the best SCO has to offer, they will lose.

Slide 15 shows purports to show "Obfuscated Copying" from Unix System V into Linux. SCO further obfuscated the code on this slide by switching it to a Greek font, but that was easily undone. It's entertaining that the SCO folks had no clue that the font-change could be so easily reversed. I'm glad they don't work on my computer security :-)

The code shown in this slide implements the Berkeley Packet Filter, internet firewall software often abbreviated as "BPF". SCO doesn't own BPF. It was created at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory with funding from the U.S. Government, and is itself derived from an older version called "enet", developed by Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon Universities. BPF was first deployed on the 4.3 BSD system produced by the University of California at Berkeley. SCO later copied the software into Unix System V.

The BPF source code is here on the Lab's web site. A paper on its design, published in 1993, is here

BPF is under the BSD license. That license allowed SCO to legally copy the code into Unix System V in 1996, but since SCO doesn't own the code, they have no right to prevent others from using it.

So, in this case the SCO "pattern-recognition" team correctly deduced that the Linux and SCO implementations of BPF were similar. But I was able to determine the origin of BPF after a few minutes of web searches on google.com . Why couldn't a "pattern-recognition team" do the same? It's difficult to believe they simply didn't bother to check. It's also likely that SCO dropped attribution of the Lab's copyright from the System V copy of the BPF source code, or the team would have known.

The Linux version of BPF is not an obfuscation of the BPF code. It is a clean-room re-implementation of BPF by Jay Schulist of the Linux developers, sharing none of the original source code, but carefully following the documentation of the Lab's product. The System V and Linux BPF versions shown in slide 15 implement the same virtual machine instruction set, which is used to filter (allow, reject, change, or reroute) internet packets. And the documentation for that VM even specifies field names. Thus Schulist's and the Lab's implementations appear similar. Had Schulist chosen to directly use the Lab's code, it still would have been legal. But the version in Linux is entirely original to the Linux developers. There is no legal theory that would give SCO any claim upon it.

Slides 10 through 14 show memory allocation functions from Unix System V, and their correspondence to very similar material in Linux. Some of this material was deliberately obfuscated by SCO, by the use of a Greek font. I've switched that text back to a normal font.

These slides have several C syntax errors and would never compile. So, they don't quite represent any source code in Linux. But we've found the code they refer to

Re:Ummm, isn't Bruce setting himself up?

[gmajor]

I'm sorry, I missed the third paragraph, where Bruce says he got it from a reporter who did not sign the NDA!

I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has

[thammoud]

misinformation. For example,

"SCO's legal theory fails, because they ignore the fact that if a work doesn't contain some portion of SCO's copyrighted code, it is not a derived work. This is especially glaring on slide 20, in which SCO claims ownership of JFS, IBM's Journaling File System. The version of JFS used in Linux was originally developed for the OS/2 operating system"

JFS actually came from AIX to OS/2 and not the other way around. Do a google search on "JFS OS/2 AIX" and you can confirm this. e.g

http://freshmeat.net/projects/jfs/?topic_id=142

Tarek

Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has

[Arker]

IIRC, it was originally developed for AIX, yes, but the OS/2 version was not a port, it was a clean room implementation from the spec sheet instead. And it was the OS/2 code that was the basis for the Linux port. So, in fact, the article is correct.

Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has

[sjbcfh]

JFS actually came from AIX to OS/2 and not the other way around. Do a google search on "JFS OS/2 AIX" and you can confirm this.

Or you can go straight to the source (no pun intended).

The relevant portion:

Historically, the JFS1 file system is very closely tied to the memory
manager of AIX. This design is typical of a closed-source operating
system, or a file system supporting only one operating system.

The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was
first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness in April, 1999, after
several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped with
OS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000. In parallel to this effort, some
of the JFS development team returned to the AIX Operating System
Development Group in 1997 and started to move this new JFS source base
to the AIX operating system. In May, 2001, a second journaled file
system, Enhanced Journaled File System (JFS2), was made available for
AIX 5L. In December of 1999, a snapshot of the original OS/2 JFS
source was taken and work was begun to port JFS to Linux.

Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has

[Arker]

Subject: Re: XFS vs. JFS
Subject: Re[2]: XFS vs. JFS
See also Q1 on the JFS FAQ from IBM.

Basically the original implementation was too tightly tied to specific AIX features. So a spec was written and given to the OS/2 team, who were completely separate from the AIX team, and they wrote a clean implementation avoiding such problems. This OS/2 implementation, then, was ported to both AIX and Linux. The original AIX implementation is dead, and has been for some time. All implementations in current use are based on the clean room work by the OS/2 team.

Re:I hate to say it, but the rebuttal article has

[Arker]

It doesn't use those words, but they've been used several times elsewhere. It made perfect sense. Remember, they didn't want the old implementation used, they were fed up with it, and the OS/2 team is 'chinese walled' from the AIX team, so even if it wasn't literally intended as a clean room that's what happened.

Call the FTC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeating this from the last SCO story, needs more exposure...

I just got off the phone with the FTC. If everyone calls and complains then the chances they will investigate SCO goes up. They look for patterns. In other words, if the majority of their calls are about SCO then they will investigate. It is time to take the Slashdot effect to the phones.

These are the key points to make:

-You did not purchase software from SCO
-The company that "produced" your software did not purchase it from SCO
-It was not marketed or packaged by SCO
-Despite this SCO is asking for $199 from home users (You) and $699 from business for 1 CPU

They will ask for your name, phone number, address etc. That is mostly to verify your identity and citizenship I think.

Here is the number:

1-877-382-4357 option 4

They are nice and listen well. The lady I talked to even took the time to get a better understanding of what Linux is. The best quote from her "You didn't purchase it from them and they want you to pay them? That sounds crazy."
--
Call FTC 1-877-382-4357 opt 4
-You didn't buy from SCO
-Vendor didn't either
-They want $199 ...

Here's some information that may help. They actually asked for this info:

The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042

801-765-4999 phone

The guy I spoke with was actually somewhat familiar with what Linux is. One of his first questions was how this company got involved with me, which my answer was "Well, that's the problem. They didn't."

He eventually asked if SCO has contacted me personally with regard to this situation, which they have not. Don't lie to them. Be completely truthful. At the end of the call I got a reference number, and he said that if SCO does contact me personally, I should call back and let them know.

It was very easy to do, and took about 5 minutes of my time. The recording while I wated for the counselor to pick up the phone did say that the FTC does track trends in complaints. If we get enough people to complain, something will happen. Please, take a few minutes and call!

Re:Call the FTC!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can file a complaint online.

Re:Call the FTC!

[BJH]

Probably not. One of the members of the SCO legal team is Brent O. Hatch.

Don't know who he is? He's the son of Orrin Hatch, i.e. the Senator from Disney, I mean Utah.

The moment the Utah A-G's office starts getting "frisky", you can be sure there'll be a call made from the Senator's office to the A-G. Forget about Utah - it's a lost cause.

Re:Call the FTC!

[demachina]

> It might be a good idea to write to the Utah attorney general office as well.

I did this last week as well as the AG in NY, Eliot Spitzer and my home state AG. I received a reply from Utah yesterday. The gist of the response was they viewed it as a Federal copyright law issue and not in their domain, it was up to the courts to decide or congress to change the copyright laws. They suggested I contact a congressman.

I haven't given up yet since they overlooked the main issue in my inquiry, that SCO is demanding money from consumers under threat of legal action, which borders on extortion, and that they today have shown their infringement claims are, at least so far, false. I also pointed out the possibility Microsoft is using SCO as a proxy in an effort to exterminate one of the few remaining threats to their monopoly.

Re:Call the FTC!

[SeanTobin]

Success!
Complaint Accepted. Thank you for your input.

First Name: Sean
Last Name: Tobin
Age Range: 20 - 29
Street Address: **********
City: Las Vegas
State or Canadian Province: Nevada
Country: UNITED STATES
Zip Code or Postal Code: *****
E-Mail Address: *****
Home Phone: (702)*******
Work Phone: (702)*******Ext.
Subject of Your Complaint: Computers/Internet Services
Name of Company You Are Complaining About: The SCO Group
Street Address: 355 South 520 West
Suite 100
City: Lindon
State or Canadian Province: Utah
Country: UNITED STATES
Zip Code or Postal Code: 84042
Company Web Site: www.sco.com
Company E-Mail Address: kmartens@sco.com
Phone Number: (801)7654999Ext.
How Did the Company Initially Contact You?: Internet (Other)
How Much Did the Company Ask You to Pay?: 898
How Much Did You Actually Pay the Company?: 0
How Did You Pay the Company?: Unknown
Date Company Contacted You: 08/05/2003 (MM/DD/YYYY)
Explain Your Problem: (Please limit your complaint to 2000 characters.): SCO has claimed that I owe them money because thier IP is in the linux kernel, which I use both at home and work. They will not state what exactly I owe them money for, citing pending lawsuits.
They demanded that I license thier property from them (which they will not tell me exactly what I'm licensing) for 699 per CPU for business use (1) and 199 per CPU for home use (1) bringing my total bill to 898 to avoid a lawsuit from them.
I have never purchased any products from SCO, nor do I have any business relationship with them.

This is a link from thier own website regarding the licensing:
http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?Re leaseID=1155 27

Re:Call the FTC!

[Mr.Ned]

I just called them, too, and they were really friendly. The guy got my info, heard 'SCO', and immediately transferred me to someone who seemed specailly assigned to handle SCO complaints. And he was a Linux user, too!!! Apparently they've gotten quite a few complaints.

Re:A couple of things left out

[eddy]

I like it how the SCO lawyer is trying to plug the worst leaks:

Michael Heise, a partner with Boies, Schiller & Flexner who's representing SCO, downplayed concerns that the contested code may be covered by an open-source license. In an interview with CNET News.com at the SCO show, Heise said even if, hypothetically, some older Caldera code were open-source, it wouldn't make a difference to the case.

"Let's say you have a hundred files, and you put one of your hundred files under the GPL (GNU General Public License). That doesn't mean you've lost the rights to your other 99 files," Heise said. "So I don't think it's going to have an impact."

Hilarious. Such a brave little hero.

You missed one link, there....

[Anthony Boyd]

In Bruce's commentary, there was a link to an Infoworld article/interview with Bruce. It's pretty good. Bruce disputes SCO's claims, and the reporter didn't minimize/trivialize it. Coupled with the eWeek interview, I think we might stand a fighting chance in the court of public opinion.

Re:Torvalds's's Comment's

[Nexus Seven]

It goes after the "s"; you don't need to provide an extra "s". There shouldn't be an apostrophe in "comments", either.

Like this: Torvalds' comments

"treated .. as"

[whoever57]

Such right to use includes the right to modify such SOFTWARE PRODUCT and to prepare derivative works based on such SOFTWARE PRODUCT, provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

Personally, I find this very subject to multiple interpretations. Nothing in the contract explicitly grants ownership of derivatives to ATT, so IBM could argue that even without the amendment that grants ownership of derivatives to IBM, nothing gives ownership of the derivatives to SCO. This might be important for code developed at Sequent.

Re:"treated .. as"

[rking]

I don't think there's any way that you could interpret that paragraph as granting ownership of derivatives to AT&T (or to SCO) and I don't think that even SCO are trying to claim that it does, at least not in their court claims (their PR contains all manner of gibberish).

What that paragraph does say is that the derivative works are covered by the same terms of that contract as the original software is. The contract requires that the original code is not disclosed to others. Thus, the derivatives also cannot be disclosed to others.

Remember, this case is about trade secrets and breach of contracts not about copyright violations. SCO are not claiming to own the copyright to the derivatives, they are claiming that IBM is contractually prohibited from publishing the code.

Their argument is still wrong because code that is linked to theirs is not derivative of theirs when separated out and containing none of theirs.

Re:If only I had some extra money...

[Anonymous Coward]

You still can't do this, haven't been able to for a long long time, no one will back it, no one will back it, no one will back it it's been brought in every sco article so far and you still can't do this

Re:Linus Pulls no Punches

[ealar dlanvuli]

The full brief is online.

They have an extremely solid case. Even if those patents don't pass, a few thousand other infringment casses are possible.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Re:Removed from the code

[Doomdark]

Even if the code wasn't in there at all, but they examined the original SCO code in order to create their own, that would still be in violation of their IP rights.

This is a common misunderstanding; thinking that there is something fundamentally wrong or illegal with reverse-engineering (be that examining source code or binaries). Like another poster pointed out, the only mechanism that could protect against "monkey see monkey do" would be trade secret registration.

For patents, it does not matter if you saw something and reimplemented it, or even created it yourself from the scratch. Copyright only protects against unauthorized copying, not against reimplementations.

The whole clean-room reimplementation idea was an overkill created by Compaq lawyers, when they were cloning IBM PC. They wanted to be 150% sure everything was legal, since they were dealing with a high-tech behemoth, with ample resources to use on lawyering. Doing clean-room development is plenty good for avoiding potential trouble, but it is not a requirement of any sort (more like a sterilized man using a condom).

Re:FSF disagrees with Parens

[harlows_monkeys]

I don't quite understand, is it possible you could elaborate on this a little more?

There are two BSD licenses. The original BSD license had a clause that said that if you mentioned features of the software in ads, you had to mention that the code came from UCB. The current BSD license does not have this clause.

The FSF says that the original BSD license is not compatible with the GPL, because of this clause. Here is where FSF says this.

The license that Caldera used when they released some of the code Parens is talking about is very similar to the original BSD license. Here is that license.

If the FSF is correct about the advertising clause making such a license incompatible with the GPL, then it means that Linux does have a problem. When you mix code under the GPL and code that is under an incompatible license, you have to get special permission from the copyright owners of the GPL'ed code. You can't just take GPL'ed code and use it in such a mixed environment.

Re:IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Several world governments contract IBM to handle very important and sensitive data.

Yeah, like that guy... umm... Hitler, that's it, yeah. IBM helped him keep track of those other folk, the Jews. Dunno why.

Re:Danger: Stupid, Tech Ignorant Judge.

[RALE007]

Maul Wrote: "While this still seems like a pump and dump for SCO's execs, the biggest danger here is that SCO lands itself in the courtroom with a stupid and/or tech ignorant judge who will agree with their baseless, stupid claim that they own this code.

It may be one heck of a long shot for them, but dumber rulings have been made before. Suddenly SCO not only owns Linux, but that could also qualify them as owning BSD as well as anything that even closely resembles UNIX in one way or another. They might even be able to lay claim to parts of every operating system out there so long as that OS borrowed concepts from UNIX (or BSD, Linux, etc.) Doesn't Windows have code copied from BSD too? Or maybe that is what Microsoft "lisenced" already..."

Thanks for the FUD.

A long shot SCO victory is possible, however, it is extremely unlikely. Considering the massive amounts of money attached to this suit, I highly doubt a random "stupid and/or tech ignorant judge" will be presiding.

In addition to the unlikelihood of a completely tech ignorant judge presiding, even if one did, that isn't much of a factor considering the suit is to be decided by a jury and not a judge. As far as one worrying about a stupid and/or tech ignorant jury, if the jurors are all too stupid to realize the outlandishness of SCO's claims, it will boil down to which companies lawyers can win at a pissing contest of courtroom showmanship. IBM is still highly favored in that respect.

Let's say the planets align, an ice skating rink opens in hell, and you see Miss Piggy fly by your window and SCO actually wins the suit. Well, I guess the world is screwed and belongs to SCO, unless I don't know, IBM decides to appeal the decision instead of handing McBride $3,000,000,000.

See The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate

[polished look 2]

The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate

Re:How legit is this?

[ksheff]

This wasn't supposed to be leaked either. It was a 'rally the troops' presentation for their resellers to show them that their claims were legit. One supposedly had to have signed a NDA to get into one (expect the German photographer to be sued). And from the articles that I've read, it worked on the SCO kool-aid drinkers too. The best that Sontag can reply is "we still own this code"?!? Well, Ok, but guess what buddy...years ago it was released under a license that lets anyone copy it.

Where did these guys come from when Love & the rest moved over to United Linux? Digging through some stuff at work, I found a little white paper by Caldera about 'bringing Linux and Unix together'. Their predecessors must not have filled them in on anything that Caldera did.

alternate download on edonkey network

[jdkane]

An SCO presentation shown in Las Vegas on August 18th alleged infringement by the Linux developers. The presentation, in Microsoft PowerPoint format

I managed to download the Power Point presentation before it was totally Slashdotted. Following are 2 links to the presentation on the edonkey/overnet file sharing network.

ed2k://|file|SCOsource_Briefing_II.2.zip|389072|fa f8f74f7afc98c21284cce152642424|
ed2k://|file|SCOsource_Briefing_II.2.ppt|582144|4c 2c6bfa65cd82f1d88300f8f2dbbeea|

Note: Slashdot doesn't seem to support linking to the ed2k protocol, so just do a search on the bolded text, or else copy and paste the entire link into edonkey/overnet client if you know how (note: remove the space in the hash portion that Slashdot inserted).

I would encourage everyone to share this presentation on other file sharing networks so everybody can have a chance to see the goods.

Viral License anyone?

[Cynic 1.0]

"SCO's legal theory, explained in slide 6, is that the AT&T Unix license compelled all of these companies to assign to AT&T, and later SCO, all derived works that they created incorporating the Unix source code. Here is the key clause on slide 6:

Such right to use includes the right to modify such SOFTWARE PRODUCT and to prepare derivative works based on such SOFTWARE PRODUCT, provided the resulting materials are treated hereunder as part of the original SOFTWARE PRODUCT. Under SCO's theory, if any code created by a Unix licensee ever touches Unix, SCO owns that code from then on, and can deny its creator the right to make use of it for any other purpose."

Wow! And M$ cribs about the GPL being a viral license.

It looks like stupid licenses like this are signed by major corporates all the time. Wonder why they crib about the GPL being a viral license then? At least the GPL keeps things free.

Re:mod parent up

[DrSkwid]

aye, just one thing missing, a link

Re:I think we speak for all of us:

[Daniel Phillips]

They're saying that the jump from 2.2 to 2.6 an "Improbable Linux Development Path". For me, a non-kernel hacker, can someone explain why this particular point isn't true? Or do you have to pull from many examples in order to prove otherwise?

I agree it's improbable, but that doesn't change the fact that it happened, and we did it ourselves. The big lie is that it happened by incorporating SCO's code or ideas. I know that's ridiculous, because I was there for almost the whole period in question, working on my little parts of the kernel, but also watching others work on theirs, talking with them, seeing the ideas develop and patches take shape. In fact, this stuff is all in the public record, it's in the linux kernel mailing list archives, particularly the work on SMP and NUMA.

GPL

[maroberts]

In other comments here, it has been suggested that because GPL'ed code does not have a dollar value tagged with it, it has no value and thuis estimating damages is impossible. This is simply untrue.

In a breach of the GPL, a person/ company/ organisation is selling GPL'ed code for a dollar amount. It is thus charging for software that the user could obtain for free. THIS dollar amount is the figure which could be used as a basis for damages. Also, equivalent software to GPL'ed code has a development cost, a marketing cost and a general overhead cost.

It should be remembered that damages are often based on an ESTIMATE of the value; for example, the RIAA in charging $100,000 per song is simply making an estimate; there is no reason GPL'ed code should be any different.

Re:Linus Pulls no Punches

[Error27]

IBM has four patent claims to cover SCO's four most important products. IBM chose the four patents out of hundreds of possible patents that SCO infringes on. The patents they chose are meant to serve as a warning.

• IBM has patent on a compression technique that SCI uses everywhere and so it will take months and months to remove.
• IBM patented a tiny feature in an email program from an operating system that is distributed with hundreds of programs. All the programs probably infringe on IBM patents.
• IBM has the patent for the start menu... And everything else as well.
• IBM owns the patent for the whole idea behind SCO's clusterring software, and legally they can shut SCO down.

The idea is it only takes four patent to shut SCO down and IBM can find more if it has to.

Re:Damages for stolen "free" (GPL) code...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly how the law is written, except that it's profits, not "gross proceeds":

17 USC 504(b)
Actual Damages and Profits. -

The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. In establishing the infringer's profits, the copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer's gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than the copyrighted work.

Unix family tree

[orbitalia]

If like me, your are getting a bit fuzzy on your UNIX history (dating back to '69) you could always check out this.
It shows where SCO/Unixware fit into the Unix derivative tree, (and also where Linux got its roots) quite interesting really..
(it claims V7->Minix->Linux).

Re:FSF disagrees with Parens

[valisk]

Of course the actual code itself could be clean room reimplemented using documented variables and algorythms, possible those from The C Programming Language
Or maybe taken from the V5/6/7/32v code which was found to be no longer protected by copyright and effectively public domain.
Given that the code shown seems to have come from an adaptation designed to allow certain SGI boxen to run linux, and Irix is BSD based.
It's quite likely the code originated with them at some point, and it's entirely possible that SGI have some form of exemption from the Advertising clause negotiated in the dark ages of the early 1990s

Slide 25: What's stopping them from an injunction?

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

On slide #25 they show this, from the US copyright law:

502 Remedies for infringement: Injunctions
(a) Any court having jurisdiction of a civil action arising under this title may, subject to the provisions of section 1498 of title 28, grant temporary and final injunctions on such terms as it may deem reasonable to prevent or restrain infringement of a copyright.
(b) Any such injunction may be served anywhere in the United States on the person enjoined; it shall be operative throughout the United States and shall be enforceable, by proceedings in contempt or otherwise, by any United States court having jurisdiction of that person. The clerk of the court granting the injunction shall, when requested by any other court in which enforcement of the injunction is sought, transmit promptly to the other court a certied copy of all the papers in the case on file in such clerk's office.

So why haven't they done it? It would put IBM, HP, RedHat and a host of others out of the Linux business quickly and effectively. What is in Title 28, section 498? Just the 3-year time limit and a bunch of reasons when government employees can sue. And that you can't sue anyone for anything developed for the US Government after 1918 (there goes a lot of code developed under government contracts).

Could it be that they have to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the filing is true? Could it be that this entire slide show was just another marketing dog and pony show to prop up the stock price?

We should all sue SCO...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without warranty or representation as to particular merit, I would like to offer the following suggestion and form:

Every linux end user should sue SCO asking for a declaratory judgment regarding their ability to use linux under the GPL vs. SCO's claims. Please review the form with an attorney of your choice to make sure that it is appropriate in your jurisdiction, of course.

SCO is likely to drop the ball somewhere, and one, just one, default judgment would ruin their day. Plus, being sued in thousands of jurisdictions would be just wonderful. Spend your "license" fee on filing and service costs instead:


ACTION FOR DECLARATORY JUDGMENT
COMPLAINT

AND NOW, TO WIT, this ____ day of August, 2003, comes the Plaintiff, ______________ ("Plaintiff"), who files this Complaint as follows:
1. The Plaintiff is an individual with a residence located at ______.
2. Defendant, The SCO Group, Inc. ("SCO") is a Delaware Corporation, with a primary place of business located at 355 South 520 West, Suite 100, Lindon, Utah 84042.
3. SCO is a major corporation, listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol "SCOX", which sells operating systems and web services.
4. It is believed, and therefore averred, that Defendant has engaged in, and continues to engage in, a continuous and substantial course of business within _______(state and county).
5. SCO has threatened to sue individual users of software which SCO claims ownership or control over. The software in question is allegedly contained in Linux kernel 2.4.
6. Plaintiff uses personal computers that are capable of running Linux.
7. Linux is a UNIX-like computer operating system that enables computer users to run applications to perform standard computing tasks, such as word processing, accessing the internet, playing games, etc.
8. The centerpiece of Linux is the "kernel" which handles basic operating system functions, such as memory allocation, access to hardware resources, and other similar functions.
9. The current Linux kernel is version number 2.4 with a new version, number 2.6, in development.
10. Linux is commonly represented to the public as being a product that contains software code which is either entirely original or which is in the public domain or which is appropriately licensed.
11. Linux is developed by a group of volunteers.
12. Linux is distributed subject to the terms of the GNU Public License ("GPL") (See Exhibit A).
13. All distributors of Linux are required to distribute the source code that they are selling subject to the terms of the GPL.
14. The GPL terms require that any computer source code released under its terms be distributed freely and for free.
15. SCO has raised a number of allegations in a variety of judicial forums stating that it claims to own or otherwise control intellectual property which SCO alleges has been wrongfully incorporated into the Linux kernel since at least version 2.4 of Linux was distributed.
16. To wit, SCO has sued IBM in federal court over IBM's alleged participation in incorporating proprietary software into Linux kernel 2.4.
17. SCO has distributed Linux for years for free, including kernel 2.4.
18. Plaintiff believes, and therefore avers, that SCO was bound by the terms of the GNU Public License, which would therefore prevent SCO from claiming ownership or control of any software which SCO released under the GPL.
19. SCO knew, or should have known, what source code was in the software it distributed, especially since it distributed the source code as part of its a Linux product it sold and continues to distribute.
20. SCO refuses to publicly identify which elements of the source code of Linux kernel 2.4 it claims ownership and/or control of, thereby preventing parties from excising any "tainted" code from the Linux kernel 2.4.
21. Any intellectual property SCO may believe was improperly included in Linux kernel 2.4 was distributed by SCO in its own Linux 2.4 kernel and distribution.
22. SCO has distrib

SCO responds to Linus; Phil Hughes dares SCO ...

[Vedanti]

In this (http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/08/21/132219.sh tml?tid=23) story in Newsforge, response of SCO is given. Also Linux Journal publisher Phil Hughes "in an open letter to SCO, Hughes identified his firm as a Linux user and invited SCO to sue them."

Here is the email resposne SCO sent to newsforge ...

• To clarify, the code we showed in Vegas was Unix System V code that was copied line for line from UNIX into Linux. It was contributed by a UNIX licensee, which was not IBM. It was shown not to build our case against IBM, but it was shown to identify that there are issues with Linux. Linus can have his opinion of Darl McBride and what was shown, but ultimately, we will have to show our proof in a court setting and convince a jury that we have been wronged by IBM, not this other UNIX licensee that we showed the code from. That will be a separate issue.

• As the company that owns the UNIX System V source code, we think we're sufficiently qualified to identify this code.

Re:It's Perens

[Arker]

To me it seems that, yes, anything that has a BSD license with the advertising clause will need to be removed...but that yields no damages to SCO.

Umm actually it yields *actual damages* to SCO. Trouble for them is it's going to be real hard to show *any* actual damages at all, let alone enough to offset the legal fees involved.

Going after copyright violations is usually only wourthwhile when you have cases where you can ask for *treble* damages and *punitive* damages, and IANAL but it seems to me that this is clearly not one of those cases.

And, either way, the people they can sue for this are the people that contributed the code improperly. Everyone else that used it in good faith is immune to action, as long as it gets removed in a timely fashion once they reveal what code they're whining about.

That just means that if anyone who contributed GPL code to the system objects, one of the pieces of code will need to be removed before distribution can proceed.

Ummm huh? It's the people that hold the copyright to the BSD code that need to object, not those who have copyright on the properly GPLd code. In the cases revealed so far that doesn't appear to be SCO, although it's certainly possible that they can find a few cases where they do have standing. Am I misunderstanding you? This, and the last paragraph of your post as well, seem to indicate you have this all backwards.

Now SCO does have some GPL code in there, but AFAIK (which isn't far, I admit) most of it is to allow GNU code to work with SCO systems.

GPL code in where? In Linux? As Caldera, they contributed quite a bit, ironically much of it in areas they are now suing IBM for contributing to. See this note for example.

Or if you mean in their Unix, there's every reason to believe their LKP, and possibly other modules they claim as proprietary, contain extensive copying of GPL code contrary to license, but the source code will have to be subpoenad to determine the full extent of this.

gcc may be a special case, and might need to be moved to a "non-free" section, or even have new distributions halted until a revised version could be issued. (So hold onto your old CDs. You may need to pull gcc off them.)

Umm wtf are you talking about? You've completely lost me here. AFAIK there is no issue whatsoever concerning GCC.

Re:I think we speak for all of us:

[alext]

They have been around for a very long time. The Sequent Symmetry used 386s running at something like 20MHz in the late 1980s.

That old? :-)

Try the Burroughs B5000 (1961)