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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."
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Come on Linus, stop dancing around the issue. Tell us what you really think about their claims.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
SCO has committed the most vile of sin. They not only created FUD, not only stole our source code, not only tried to steal our limelight, but they revealed that we used ANCIENT BSD CODE!
The evil ones must die!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Filter the packet... drop drop drop...
let the major media outlets catch on to this.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
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
eWeek: For its part though, SCO has said that there are so many lines of code, and a variety of applications and devices that use that code, that simply removing the offending code would not be technically feasible or possible and would not solve the problem. Do you agree?
Torvalds: "They are smoking crack"
---
You gotta love Linus. It's not just that he speaks his mind, it's that he's just cavalier about what he says.
On a serious note, I'd like to see some the guys involved with SMP or JFS or NUMA get together and *sue SCO.* Tell them they want a cut of any license they collect on unless they can PROVE they aren't claiming ownership of parts of their GPL/BSD contributed code.
I actually mentioned this in my submission, but it got cut out.
The 'SCO' slide of their 'own' code shows the Berkley Packet Filter. The Linux code they showed, they claim is an 'obfuscated copy' but it is in fact a well documented clean implementation written from the published spec. The interesting issue is that SCO seems to be under the misapprehension that the BFP is their own code to begin with - that seems to imply that they illegally stripped a copyright notice somewhere along the way.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Will a criminal prosecution of McBride and co-conspirators happen if this lawsuit turns out unjustified?
It seems frivolous and an abuse of the justice system.
Here. Nuff Said.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
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
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!
'because developers complained about how "ugly" it was'
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I really respect the guy. I hope that he is around when Linux finally overtakes the OS world once and for all.
First SCO said they weren't going to show the code because they had to "protect their secrets" -- those secrets being the copyrighted code itself.
.c file written by anyone at Sun, SGI, H-P, IBM, Sequent, Cray or any other licensee belongs to them.
Then they went on extortion trips to Japan and around the U.S. Neither panned out, with major companies like Oracle, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi and H-P calling their bluff. Accusations without proof are meaningless.
They showed code snippets under super-tight NDAs, mostly to non-geeks, who promptly said "yep, they look the same". Of COURSE they looked the same! Would SCO show code that doesn't match? The fact that it was all out of context didn't seem to matter.
When THAT didn't convince anyone, they started showing bits of code without an NDA -- and the rest of the world found out why IBM, Oracle, Fujitsu, et. al. isn't afraid and why SCO was so reluctant to show the code in the first place.
SCO is clueless. They have no idea what they own and what they don't. They don't know what they, as Caldera and SCO, gave away and what they "borrowed" from others for their own. They simply assume that any
Somebody just did a "diff" between the SCO source and a Linux kernel and went off from there.
Just watching them escalate the claims day after day gives a clue. First it is dozens of lines, then hundreds, then thousands, and now MILLIONS!
The truth is SCO probably had NO intention of this getting to the discovery phase -- they were hoping for a settlement or buyout before all this came to light.
They are quite desparate now.
Damn! I wish I bought SCOX back in November.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
SCO Sues Linus Torvalds for Libelous Crack-Smoking Comment
JoAnn
And dammit, why does Linus Torvalds have to have 'S' at the end of his first and last name? I can't figure out where the apostrophy goes. ;)
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...
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The Caldera license Parens cites as allowing the use of code in Linux does no such thing, according the FSF. It is similar to the original BSD license, which is NOT GPL-compatible, according to FSF, because of the advertising clause.
I agree with the guy. There are three SCO stories on the front page right now. Do we really need to debate SCO's every (rather predictable) move? This is worse than the days when every other story was a dupe.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Whatever for?
If it's to help develop a competing approach to solving a problem, I'm all for it: whichever one winds up proving to be best at solving the problem should be the one adopted, even if it's the other camp's solution.
But dumping the BSD code just to be "unique" is silly.
With respect to this SCO nonsense, the only thing I care about is whether or not the origins of the contributed code can be traced. If a piece of code winds up in, say, FreeBSD, I expect they have checked its source as thoroughly as the Linux maintainers would for any code contributed directly to Linux. In short, I see little reason to discriminate between the two.
Finally, if a piece of code winds up in either distribution that shouldn't, then it's a moderately simple matter of pulling the code and rewriting it if necessary if it's found that the contributer who donated the code did so without proper authorization. One would hope that a court would find the action of such removal and rewriting in the face of accidental infringement to be sufficient remedial action once the infringing code is revealed. But this is the U.S. legal system we're talking about here, and it seems to be so screwed up that I can't dismiss the possibility that it would rule heavily against an accidental infringer. In fact, things seem bad enough that I have to consider such a situation to be likely.
Sigh...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Generally, no. I work with NDA material that's subsequently leaked (by other parties) all the time, and usually it's the leak-er that's considered at fault, not the person who republishes the leak. Presumably SCO could go after whoever sent the powerpoint pitch or took digital photos of the slides if they could find them.
Most of the companies I know that find sensitive material that is still marked "confidential" re-published by the press simply request that it be removed, but it appears that the reporting on the material itself is fairly well protected; I would imagine Bruce's commentary would fall under the reporting but things like slide photos or the slides themselves (if the "confidential" remained on the slide during the presentation) might be iffy.
As an aside, a lot of companies knowingly let "confidential" documents leak as a way of unofficially distributing the information. SCO could be hoping that this would result in very damaging reports without ever having to provide the code snippets publically -- it leaves an out of deniability "that was an internal document never meant for the outside world and it wasn't reviewed by our lawyers for accuracy, yada yada"
But this is SCO, so the fact that Bruce used the same alphabet as SCO in his report is probably grounds enough for them.
Obviously it doesn't matter in that sense. But it's a great vindication of all of us that have been skeptical of SCOs claims, because it's exactly the kind of thing we predicted. It's, at worst, a piece of BSD licensed code that should have had a copyright notice preserved that got lost along the way. This isn't the sort of thing you can justify a $3billion lawsuit on, regardless. They should have sent an email and asked for the copyright notice to be replaced, that's what anyone else would have done.
On top of that, it's code contributed by SGI, so they're on the hook for actual damages (not bloody much) but even if SCOs novel ideas about suing users were correct, they couldn't sure more than about 5 people over this anyway. It's a file that's used only to support one of SGIs old machines, it's totally irrelevant to the vast majority of users.
Wrong.
First off there's no such thing as 'IP rights' per se, that's just a rubric used to cover four different sorts of rights; patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets.
SCO has no related patents, so that's not an issue. SCO doesn't own the Unix trademark (the Open Group does) and even if they did that's not an issue here. Copyright doesn't prohibit learning from someone elses code, only copying it outright, so it doesn't back up your claim.
A trade secret would come closest - if someone saw the code under NDA and then copied it into Linux, then that person would definately be liable. But only that person, and the trade secret status of the code would be ended.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
IBM is COUNTERsuing SCO. I'm talking about straight up suits that aren't in response to SCO stirring up the shit. Out of the blue ones that says "Hey assholes, *I* wrote some of that code you're claiming ownship of, so let me see some of that cash."
Oh, no! It's an insidious plot to kill Linux by implanting BSD code, because as well all know, BSD is dying, and has been for over a decade now.
This came up in the recent Samba discussion, but I think it's worth reiterating.
If you have hold the copyright on any GPL code that SCO is distributing, sue SCO. They have stated that they do not intend to be bound by the GPL; their actions show that they do not plan to adhere to the terms of the GPL. It is reasonable to believe that they intend to violate the license (indeed, I think they have already). I think it would be reasonable to seek an injunction against SCO to prevent them from redistributing your code unless they agree that the GPL is valid and they are bound by it.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of lawsuits, hackers in jurisdictions all around the USA (or around the world) filing suit against SCO. Their stock price will plummet - that's a language they'll understand. They will be forced to respond.
What are the possible outcomes? These come to mind off the top of my head:
- They capitulate and agree publicly that the GPL is valid and they intend to adhere to it in redistributing GPL software. Major PR victory for free software.
- They agree to stop redistributing GPL software because they agree that the GPL is valid. Major PR victory for free software; major loss for SCO because they then have no viable product. This seems unlikely. Without product, SCO's sole source of income is lawsuits. Furthermore, in acknowledging the validity of the GPL, they open themselves up to further lawsuits seeking damage for their violating the GPL (which I think it is clear they have, in DEMANDING fees for GPL software). Their stock price plummets.
- They refuse to acknowledge the validity of the GPL. A judge (or judges) grant injunctive relief and force them to stop redistributing GPL software, affirming the validity of the GPL. Minor PR victory for free software. SCO no longer has products to distribute. This seems unlikely simply because I don't think SCO would go this far; again, without product to sell, their stock price plummets.
- Other companies avoid dealing in or distributing GPL software, fearing a Beowulf cluster of lawsuits. This seems quite possible; care must be taken in pointing out that suits are filed ONLY because SCO has violated and has stated their intention to violate the terms of the license.
So head down to your local library and check out a couple of legal texts. Find out how to file a copyright infringement suit in federal court in your jurisdictin. Learn to use "Whereas" in a sentence. Pay the filing fee, and pay a process server to Fed-Ex a letter to SCO to let them know they're being sued. Specify damages if you wish, but the goal (IMHO) is their acknowledgement of the validity of the GPL.
Most importantly, publicize what you've done; email every Linux news site out there, as well as major tech news sites. Get the information out there where the mainstream tech and stock analysts can find it and be disturbed at the liability that SCO has incurred in declaring that they do not intend to abide by the GPL.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Poor SCO pointy-haired-bosses... I can see it now (names omitted to protect the guilty):
-------------------
PHB1: "Hey PHB2, I'm putting together this PowerPoint. I suppose I should slap some code in there to make this suit look more legit."
PHB2: "Yeah, good idea." (PHB2 goes to Etrade to dump a bit more stock)
PHB1: "I've got this copied code the IPI [Intellectual Property Investigative --ed] Team passed on to me, but Legal says we can't release it."
PHB2: "Yeah, $600 an hour to tell us we can't disclose it to the press and claim it's top-secret priceless intellectual property at the same time."
PHB1: "No kidding." (pause) "You ever seen code like this?"
PHB2: "Linux hippies. I dunno, it's all greek to me."
PHB1: "Genius! What a brilliant idea, I'll show those hackers the code in Greek!"
PHB2: "Hey, you're good..."
(peck, peck, peck)
--LP
No no, it's *spelled* S C O, but it's pronouned "ass hats"
Vote for global prefs bug
I pronounce them dead. Time of death, the moment Darl opened is fat trap and talked up this scam.
I have personally ran SCO OpenServer in the past and I was really not impressed at all. Their kernel sucks and blows (kind of like a suck-blow if you know what that is). This was in, oh 2000 I believe, and SCO OpenServer reminded me of the ancient UNIX system I used to toy with at Penn State in the 80's except it wasn't as good. My former employer paid out some tremendous sum to run this crap.
They had installed a UniBasic system which ran the company database, written for the TeleVidio terminal family which was being emulated by Wyse-30's. Naturally I found this intolerable so I modified the UniBasic code and inserted VT100 escape sequences to fix the most important screens so that we could telnet to the SCO box instead of using the Wyse-30's which were blowing up and not being replaced.
That was until I dumped the entire UniBasic system. I wrote a terminal macro to repeat a sequence of keypresses and logged the session to a text file. Then I wrote an awk script to parse the text file into a bunch of smaller files. Then I prepended and html-ized these little files, and finally I indexed them with Glimpse.
Man it rocked. You could do a glimpse search and get exactly the same info that you would have gotten by using the Unibasic from the Wyse-30 right from your web browser.
Right after I did this ( I was a temp ), the parent company completely shut down our company and moved it to Massachussets, firing everybody at my factory. Unfortunately, they still haven't figured out how to connect the SCO box back up and make it work again. Eh? Fixed IP what the hell is that!?! Hahahahah you dumb asses!
SCO is so ass-backwards I can see how this whole thing came about. They must have fired anybody with brains decades ago, and they are just milking their cash cow until it dies.
Clickety Click
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wouldn't be surprised if the asswipes at SCO intentionally allowed distribution of this document, for the sole purpose that someone important would change the font and read their code. Then they could accuse them of circumventing their copyright protection under the DCMA.
It seems to be consistant with their level of legal ineptitude.
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).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The reason it was ugly was that it duplicates the function of some other code in the kernel.
It is hard to believe that the code was ugly. After all, it was written by ken/dmr and withstood 30 years of scrutiny.
They were doing some BSD! And they've been asking people to "sign our MDA".
To paraphrase Inspector Clouseau, they are asking us to buy "a leesenzzz for their minkee". But it is not their minkee!
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
Remember, IBM as a company has made their money by keeping their "i"s dotted and their "t"s crossed. Several world governments contract IBM to handle very important and sensitive data. I doubt that IBM does anything of the scale that this is on without reasearching very carefully what they're doing.
This isn't to say that I especially trust IBM over any other vendor, but they have a much greater tendency of putting their money where their mouth is, delivering good business products and supporting them.
Remember that Aptiva that you played around with for a while and hated back in your introductory computer gaming phase? It probably still works, doesn't have capacitors that blew out like ABIT and Gigabyte have had, has drivers for every major OS from Windows 3.1 and OS/2 2.1 to XP, and will run for the next ten years without much trouble. They build computers, not consumer appliances.
I have an IBM PS/2 Model 95 at work that I still have powered on. It's a 50MHz 486 with Microchannel architecture. It's probably the best built computer in my office. IBM doesn't do things half-assed.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
CEO of the company, S-C,S-C-0
With snip, snip here, and some very questionable source code whose origin that cannot be determined and most likely taken out of context while backed up with ludicrious claims that have no bearing on reality and in fact show a complete disregard for sanity in conjuction with alienating their customers and angering those who created it in the first place while simultaneously suing those who use it and impressing on the community the need to imprison the asshats who are pumping and dumping their stock at the expense of the shareholders and in spite of FTC rules there,
Here a line, there a line, everywhere a stolen line!
Old Da-rl McPrisonBride, S - C, S - C - OOOoooo!
Second verse, same as the first! Everyone!
I would think that calling people would have a bigger effect than emailing, don't you? Somebody calling me leaves more of an impression than if they just send a couple of angry emails.
Let them hear the tone of concern in your voice!
Actually, while I find this quite funny, I also find it a bit odd (and perhaps telling). I have read several previous interviews with Linus Torvalds on various topics and he almost never says something like this. (At least that's how I remember it. I'm sure many will correct me if I'm mistaken.) Although he always clearly states his opinion, he usually avoids getting into this sort of direct attack on an organization or person. This quote from him could mean a few different things. It's possible his nerves are getting a little frayed from all the SCO threats and related media blitz. I know I'm starting to get tired of it and I'm just a random, lazy slashdot poster. It must be much more uncomfortable where Linus is at. Also, although MS has frequently tried to marginalize Linux or say it doesn't count for anything, they never actually tried to claim ownership of it. Perhaps Torvalds considers that more of a personal attack.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
If SCO can simply assert that your Linux is infringing, despite the clear refutation of their "evidence", what's preventing the Linux user from just asserting their "Linux" is non-infringing?
Like in response to a SCO letter: "Our 'Linux' is a non-infringing custom build. Goodbye."
The burden of proof lies with them, doesn't it? How would they go about proving otherwise, assuming there's even anything there to prove?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
What baffles me is not how they can peddle this lunacy with a straight face, but why they believe that the fabric of society has broken down so much that this kind of thing is something you can do without shame.
Even twenty years ago, nobody would have had the giant brass clangers it would take to do something like this. Have our values eroded so badly? Has society really become so decadent that literally anything goes? And if it has, how do we go about the process of healing civilization itself?
You can only attack what you can see. Until recently, SCO had put nothing real on the table. What can anyone say about nothing? Now that there's something to talk about, Linus accurately describes it. There is nothing at all odd about that, he simply refused to speculate about what kind of fairy tale SCO was going to make up or their motives.
While it might be obvious that SCO's leadership is deranged, fruadulent and bribed, Linus has been smart enough to keep his mouth shut about things he can't prove. Good for him, he's got better things to do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate
Those are some big punches to pull and the only reason to pull them is to cover your ass in case someone really presents something infringing. If you say it's all BS instead of demanding a look, you hurt your credibility. By continuing to demand an honest answer from SCO, the free software world continues to show that SCO is not being honest. You can only refute SCO's nonsense as they put it before you. You can demolish claims on end users, you can show monitary damages don't exist, you can show revealed code is public, but you can't prove that there's no infringing code at all. If you do that, it makes you look irresponsible and that is something free software coders are not.
The "smoking crack" phrase is just a figure of speech for deranged and fradulent, which the current claims are based on the code presented. It would be very difficult to prove that cocaine is actually part of McBitch's Microsoft compensation package, so I doubt someone level headed like Linus would use the phrase literally. Not yet at least.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't think crackheads would want to be associated with a bunch of scum bag liars like SCO.
Taco:Yes, of course! The Holy Slashdot of OSDL! 'Tis one of the sacred relics Brother Cowboy Neal carries with him. Brother Neal! Bring up the Holy Slashdot!
AC's chanting: Pie Iesu domine, dona eis requiem.
Brother Neal: Armaments, chapter two, verse nine to twenty one.
Brother Neal: And Saint Stallman raised the Slashdot up high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy Holy Slashdot that, with it, Thou mayest slashdot Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy'. And the Lord did grin, and the AC's did feast upon first posts, trolls, GNAA posts, and...
Taco: Skip it a bit, Brother.
Brother Neal: And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou click on the holy link called Slashdot. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, clickest thou holy Slashdot of OSDL towards thy server, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
Taco: Amen
Okay, there are plenty of comments analyzing the code in SCO's slide show. Let's have a look at the legal argument.
Slides 3, 4, and 5 document SCO's contract with Novell to acquire Unix IP. I don't see anything funny there.
The funny part is on slides 6 and 7. Slide 6 contains excerpts of the AT&T License Agreement with IBM. Slide 7 contains more excerpts from the AT&T License Agreement with IBM, except that "AT&T" is changed to SCO in one place.
However, this is just the Licensing Agreement. This just the contract that allows IBM to use AT&T Unix within its organization.
Beyond this contract, IBM also has a Sub-Licensing Agreement. The sub-licensing agreement allows IBM to sell Unix products to its customers. SCO's presentation does not talk about the sub-licensing agreement at all, but this agreement is one of the contracts filed with the Court.
To draw an analogy: the License Agreement is like the agreement that lets you run Windows on your PC. The Sub-License Agreement is like the contract that lets Dell sell Windows to other people. SCO's presentation quotes the License Agreement, and says that license prohibits IBM from distributing code. But SCO's presentation ignores the Sub-License Agreement, which allows IBM to sell UNIX to its customers.
On top of that, IBM has a third agreement with AT&T which grants IBM additional rights on top of the Sub-Licensing Agreement. The third agreement explicitly states:
2. Regarding section 2.01, we agree that modifications and derivative works prepared by or for you are owned by you.
7.06(a) Nothing in this agreement shall prevent LICENSEE from developing or marketing products or services employing ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques related to data processing embodied in SOFTWARE PRODUTCS subject to this Agreement, provided that LICENSEE shall not copy any code from such SOFTWARE PRODUCTS into any such product or in connection with any such service and employees of LICENSEE shall not refer to the physical documents and materials comprising SOFTWARE PRODUCTS subject to this Agreement when they are developing any such products or service or providing any such service.
You can read the contracts for yourself. They are Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C at SCO Lawsuit Documents.
So IBM has an explicit right for their engineers who have worked on the UNIX source code use ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques in other IBM products. IBM paid good money for this right from the lawful copyright holders. (This may explain why SCO is attacking the Sequent contributions, because Sequent doesn't have as much rights in its contract as IBM has in theirs).
This brings us to Slide #22, where an IBM engineer posts information about his experience with scalability in AIX. Under section 7.06(a) above, IBM has the explicit right to disseminate such information about Unix (let alone IBM's rights to talk about property which is purely theirs, such as JFS).
SCO knows this. SCO filed these contracts with the Court (accessible through Pacer) and SCO also published these contracts on their web site.
I would love for reporters to dig into the actual exhibits and ask questions based on the exhibits. Just hit the SCO Lawsuit Documents link above and read the exhibits.
eWEEK: For its part though, SCO has said that there are so many lines of code, and a variety of applications and devices that use that code, that simply removing the offending code would not be technically feasible or possible and would not solve the problem. Do you agree?
Torvalds: They are smoking crack.
...I disable sigs...do you?
From the slides:
Multi-processor capabilities requires extremely high fault tolerances. Multi-processor memories requires "locking" at a fraction of a millisecond. These developments, among others, could not have been accomplished in a compressed time period without direct access to 25 years of UNIX development expertise and use of state-of-the-art Unix development labs.
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?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Next think about the fact that if other people have written this sort of code before then other people can too.
Also do not be blinded by the big words SCO uses. SCO wants to make it sound hard with their 25 years claims but how long did it really take? How long before UNIX ran on those machines anyway? Was the original code written in a state of the art UNIX lab or just a university lab by university students?
-- RTFM:Slackware::Beer:Saturday
Can you explain why you think it might be true? It's not very plausible. It's not as if multi processor systems are amazing new technology, they just got cheap in the past few years, so everyone and his dog took a look at the literature to work out how to make the most of them.
That is not, of course, to say there is no skill involved in doing it well but we are not talking about the cutting edge of blue-sky computer science.
BTW `a fraction of a millisecond'? How impressive is that! SCO has the technology to implement a semaphore in less than a million instructions!
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Not only that, but IBM et al have published in excruciating detail their basic methodologies for handling multiprocessor systems in hardware and software. I would not be surprised if a lot of their ideas were taught in certain decent universities for decades. It is not impossible for a good developer to be able to take publicly available ideas and code and start to work up something like multiproc support. Hell, Linus started the Linux kernel based on coursework and x86 docs he had at hand over a couple of months.
Clearly, IBM and others have improved Linux in these areas and they have many many decades of expertise in these fields. No one needed a drop of SCO code to do any of this.
Hmm. Well, I've smoked crack as well, and I don't think Linus is so off beam. Lets look at the facts:
Smoking crack is expensive. You need a fair few dollars if you're going to have a decent binge. For some people at least, they'll do pretty well anything to get that money. Lie, steal, whore.
Smoking crack makes you obsessive/compulsive. After that first hit, all you think about is more crack. You talk and think about it obsessively, and when you aren't making progress towards your goal of getting more crack, you're kinda depressed.
Now look at SCO. No integrity at all. Prepared to do or say anything to get more crack (an increase in stock price.) Talk obsessively about it in the media, even though their tales are demonstrably filled with lies.
I'll accept not everyone reacts in this way, so perhaps Linus should have been a bit more careful in his characterization. SCO isn't just smoking crack. SCO is the Skanky Crack hO, hustling a nasty bony ass that nobody but other crazy crackheads wants to buy.
Now where's that motherfucker who keeps on boasting about his SCO stock? I hope he's been on to his broker in the last few hours.
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.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I would like to remind everybody to not get all caught up in the details of being "right", and thinking that just because you have irrefutable evidence that the SCO claim is a sham, means in any way, they don't have a very realistic chance of screwing the Linux community hard.
In the new United States, being right doesn't mean you're going to win. It's all about money now folks.
Let's take this into account when we rally to protect the rights to our software, and not assume that the "facts" are going to be as relevant as the overwhelming wall of bullshit that seems to surround the amazingly fucked up stuff that the government claims is fair.
Excellent nomination.
However, I must warn readers of Slashdot that the terms "crack", "crack cocaine", "crack head", "crack house" are trademarks of El Mellin Cartel & Co. Any use of these terms in the literal context (as compared to "SCO crack me up") is subject to a $699 licensing fee, payable in small bills.
The good thing is we supply you with stuff you can smoke, SCO just stuff you with smoke.
This aside, I agree with the previous posts, and our records confirm that a Senor D. MCBRIDE is a serious consumer of our prime products.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Because Alan Cox is, frankly, rather brighter than Darl McBride. Yes, I know, as others have posted, IBM and others have contributed to Linux' multi-processing code. But it worked extremely well before they did - I know, I was running a dual processor Pentium Pro with dual RAID5 arrays in late 1996 or early 1997, and that was running on Alan Cox's SMP patch to the 2.2 kernel (might even have been a 2.0 kernel).
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Yes. It got into the kernel from BSD. It is code that has been released under an open source license, and that SCO got from the same place as Linux. The difference being that SCO is still using the ugly code (and claiming rights to it that they don't have) whereas Linux has binned it and replaced it with something more elegant. That's not the reason SCO's claims are invalid, it's just a little bonus.
"Your claims are nonsense because you don't own this code, and here is evidence of where the code was made freely available before your company even existed. Oh, and the code sucks so much that you're the only ones who even want to use it. Shouldn't you be spending more on developers and less on incompetent lawyers?"
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
I is sort of if I was on the olympic athletics team and finishing last in the 100 meter and then claiming the gold medal because is was very improbable that anyone could run 100 meters in less than 13 seconds without cheating or being doped.
_ 84.ht ml#1
It should be easy to convince any non-runners of this. Have you ever run a 100 meter in 10 seconds? Do you know any who have?
In the Linux case, see for yourself: check out the traffic on the kernel mailing list. Is has been summarized on the kernel-traffic page.
http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/archives.html
(KT is "published" every few weeks, so its not something Zack Brown made up after the SCO case)
Try searching for say, SMP. You won't find one post from IBM saying: Hey, just use out UNIX code but don't tell SCO.
Instead you will see some very smart people working very hard on improving the Linux kernel. That is how it happened.
BTW: SCO is mentioned on KT:
http://kt.zork.net/kernel-traffic/kt20000911
RMS even called Linus only an engineer and not an advocate.
While the point RMS was making is valid in a strict sense, the larger effect of their positions is complementary.
RMS holds the ideological line, he gives people a reference implementation for programming ethics. You don't have to think precisely the same way, but he'll tell you if you're not conforming to spec.
On the other hand, Linus, in his public comments and in his approach to linux development and licensing, is more like an optimized implementation with a few out-of-spec hacks included to keep things greased.
Put together, their public personae add up to a goodcop/badcop act that works pretty well. RMS will fume about all sorts of things, while Linus will maintain a more zen attitude about it all. Even if RMS is right about whatever he's talking about at any given moment, people have a way of filtering out the Free Software gospel because it requires them to do things that may not be in their personal interest, even if it's the right thing to do. But when the stars align properly and Linus is as angry as RMS, the full fury of the FSF is unleashed.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I certainly don't agree with this. 'Just a university lab by university students' tends to be the state of the art. Especially if the students are PhD students. I have never done anything in industry even remotely as state of the art as I did as a PhD student.
This article is a great analysis of what SCO has published to date. There are some points we can argue and that I suspect will be argued in court. The problem I see is that SCO has not and will not reveal the full extent of their claims and proof until this gets to Court.
SCO wants to win the suit or collect fees or both and seems not to care about reaction to their suit from the Linux community. This means that they have no incentive to release details and their strongest evidence until they must, in Court. At that point, they will either be found to be the winner or loser by the Court.
Until then, the Linux community analysis of the material SCO presents is interesting and possibly damning, but it also helps SCO. The analysis helps them determine weak spots in their case and which kind of evidence to use or not use. Will the analysis clear up confusion and doubt? Among Linux adherents, probably. These folks never believed SCO anyway. Among corporate clients? Hard to tell. Many will stay way from using Linux on any mission critical system or deeply embedding Linux in their operations until this is settled.
What is needed is for someone who owns a set of UNIX licenses to run the same analysis as SCO says that they are running. Then the team must do the same forensics as Bruce did in his analysis. The results can then be published, but carefully so as not to violate the non-disclosure terms of the base UNIX license. One assumes that IBM is doing this as we speak, so as to defend themselves. It will take time and there will be uncertainty. It is possible that there will be some questionable code and then the issue becomes where did it come from, do folks have to stop sing Linux until it is purged, what damages get paid by who and the like.
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
I'm going to add just about 2 cents worth here.
;-)
I'm a hardware jock that has worked on 4 different commercial unix systems (from the development point of view.) All were multi-processors and I was doing this in 1982.
The first machine two machines I saw the work performed on was BSD! The last machines were Sys V plus Berkeley enhancements. These were in the mid 80's. So we're talking between 15 and 20 years ago. Not one of these companies was SCO by the way
In any case- I've seen several different engineers with the requisite skill set do this, and it worked quite well thank you very much.
At the same time, it took on the average of 1-2 years for a couple of programmers to add the multi-processing features to the OS. Hmmm, and consider that Linux was multiprocessing on a more primitive level by 2.4 kernel (or was it 2.2?) In any case for at LEAST 2 years and actually more like 5 years. They have just been improving it!
Not Rocket science.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
"No, no, I said that a 'Caldera's a smoking crack.'"
Here is the email resposne SCO sent to newsforge ...
As the company that owns the UNIX System V source code, we think we're sufficiently qualified to identify this code.
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
Yes. It's a day-trader's delight: small amount of stock, low priced, and the subject of 2 legal actions, so it's extremely volatile and cheap to play with.
Looking at today's action so far (look at the 1-day view Cdl chart, and remember that dark blue means trading for that period closed lower than it opened), it looks like some large "Sell at market" order or orders got executed right at the opening, which can leave the short-sellers scrambling to buy shares to cover their shorts (in more ways than one) and drives the price up quickly. There was a 60,000 share flurry at a bit after 10AM ... overall they closed higher, but it might be the latest bunch of fools arriving to buy form the last set.