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VikingBrad writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on Dr Warwick Toomey of The Unix Heritage Society claiming that SCO may not know the origin of code in System V, including claims that there is a lot of BSD software in Sys V."
Alex writes "I wondered where the 100k+ lines of copied code
in the linux kernel would come from in comparison
to the SCO Unixware stuff. Then a thought popped
up in my head: what if they just compared linewise?
All those empty lines in the code would have the
same content. But how many empty lines are in the
Linux Kernel Code? This small shell script counts them for you:
emptylines=0; function parse_dir () { for file in $1/*; do if [ -d "$file" ]; then parse_dir $file; else while read line; do if [ "$line" = "" ]; then emptylines=$[$emptylines+1]; echo $emptylines; fi; done
Kernel 2.4.22, yet cleaned of the code which SCO
claimed was stolen, has still 733140 empty lines, probably copied and pasted by the bad, bad kernel developers from the good, good SCO guys..."
You can copy them, but not steal them. Unless you delete the lines that were there, but I doubt that happened. How illogical.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
They wouldn't even need to include things like empty lines to get a large number of matches, in a line-by-line comparison...
How many of the following do you suppose exist in any large code base?
int i;
int j;
for(i=0;i<size;i++)
if(flag)
if(!flag)
while(!done)
while(count)
memset(data, 0, sizeof(data));
I could go on, but don't really need to. At least in most code I've seen, almost every single function would contain at least one of just what I presented above (taking into consideration a few other common variable names for similar purposes, of course).
Not an impressive way to measure plaguerism.
This is more than about the Linux kernel's good reputation, though; this entire SCO debacle goes to the heart of the Linux development model. SCO is essentially saying "you guys are a bunch of irresponsible, un-accountable code thieves". Simply abandoning the Linux kernel not only affirms SCO's bullshit, but it hamstrings the entire process by which it was developed and makes the whole open source community look bad.
It's not about the kernel, it's about the process.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I agree on the facts bit, but that hasn't stopped SCO from doing press releases. I'd honestly like to see ESR follow up on the "slanderous" bits from the response statement and take SCO to court though -- except that he'd have to foot the bill himself while McBride can use the corporate lawyers of SCO. Not a good case.
As for doing a press release -- it may not cost much, but unless you're a publicly listed company or some other well known entity (research/consulting group, non-profit group, etc. -- with the emphasis on "well known") it won't do you any good. There's a ton of cranks out there putting out press releases daily on everything from UFOs to perpetual motion machines.
The reality is that Redhat, SuSE, IBM, Novell, or some other large company would have to put out the press release to do any good. Redhat and IBM are currently engaged in legal actions and aren't likely to do so, since it could be used as evidence at that point. SuSE could, but being a foreign company it would largely be ignored by the US press and financial media (that whole "well known" bit). Novell seems to have backed out of the case after dropping a bombshell (and a dud -- which was rather embarassing for them I'm sure).
I'm sure there's other outlets available -- research groups and major trade or mainstream papers seem the most obvious -- but they're still fairly inaccessible.
The bulk number of identical lines is, as others have pointed out, meaningless.
What would be interesting would be a count of the number of consecutive identical lines.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that number would be vanishingly small. Where non-zero, it's probably because both codebases contain code licensed under the UC Regents.
.@.
ESR and Perens can be considered, for the purposes of this particular statement, well-known, since they're referred to by name in SCO's press release.
I'd personally like to see ESR and Perens sue McBride personally, since the slanderous letter seems to be from him, rather than officially from SCO. Furthermore, McBride, unlike SCO, will probably not be bankrupt before a slander lawsuit could complete.
One of the biggest problems with this response to the SCO FUD campaign is that while SCO enjoys excellent access to the mainstream press, both IT press and popular press, the Open Source community responses do not. So, no one out there really hears the Open Source side. This is one good reason that McBride et al keep releasing all this patently absurd hogwash; they know the press will bite, and ignore the other side.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Generally accurate. However, taking something does at least strongly imply that the previous person no longer has it. If I make an exact replica of your car, I don't think you would claim I'd taken your car. If that included replicating your copyrighted paintwork I don't think you could reasonably claim that I'd 'taken' your copyright. You'd still have copyright.
Certainly as a matter of law, copying something is not the same as theft. Copyright infringement is covered by different laws to theft and carries different penalties.
Of course, if someone wants to use the word for emotional impact then when challenged they can always say they were speaking figuratively. Like saying prices are "extortionate" or "daylight robbery" or that someone is "getting away with murder" doesn't mean those offences are literally involved. It only get amusing when someone is challenged and tries to insist that copying something really is theft.
We should all take a look at how this letter was written, and why, and try to apply it to our own comments in this forum. Thanks for the great example, guys!
TrollTech needs to find someone who'll buy them out of Canopy completely.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What is with the presumptive use of 'us' in your posts? Speak for yourself, and do not hide in (or speak for) a nonexistant crowd.
=========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. Mention how you feel that they are attempting to extort money from you. The FTC DOES take these matters seriously. If they receive many complaints about a particular company, they will be very inclined to launch an investigation. The mere mention of an FTC investigation is not good news for a company, nor its stock.
File a complaint online
Take a more active role in this. Don't just vent your frustrations on /. where no one outside our community will hear.
-- Slash
I don't the the poster was making any connection to the LDS church, that just happened to be in the quote that he put in. I have to agree with you though, religion has nothing to do with this whole thing and I find it unfortuate that the Mormon church (or any church for that matter) could get associated with this kind of nonscence. Let's keep religion out of it. Yes, the company is in Utah, a lot of them are probably Mormon, but if they were in Mexico, they would probably all be catholic. So what? It doen't have anything to do with the phyco Mc'bribe' or the actions of SCO.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Annual B.S. Award... like the vaporware award.
If anyone wants to start it up, I nominate Bush for first place, Blair for second place and MS for third (credit goes for teaching Bush how to control the media and claim everyone supports him, by telling everyone that.....)
Of course I nominate SCO for fourth place. For certainly trhey make the top 5 list.
Since when were all the Kernel developers making Linux for businesses? In the open letter, Daryl was all about saying that we're damaging our hopes and dreams for Linux in businesses.
I don't know about you, but I could give a rats ass about weather or not the business world finds Linux acceptable or not. I highly doubt the developers and all the other OSS folks or me will stop developing and working on Linux regardless of what anyone says or thinks.
It's nice to have drivers from businesses that make hardware and all that, but we didn't have them before and we surely shouldn't become reliant on them.
Therefore all the crap that Daryl is trying to use to scare us with, shouldn't work.
Personally, I think that this stupid obsession with getting everyone and their mom to use Linux as their desktop OS at home and in business is going to hurt Linux more than anything because of the comprimises that will need to be implemented to get them aboard.
At least McBride doesn't have to worry about interview infringement over "stealing lines" from the Bruce Perens interview. Taking them that far out of context oughta qualify them as being his own and not Perens's thoughts.
You
Get on that stock board, post a message with the subject "SCOX ==> $0, read this", and link it to the latest slashdot article on the topic.
If it is a genuine pump and dump there are a handful of paid cheerleaders out there who are trying to bury any sensible discussion so the 'marks' don't see it by filling that board with SCOX rah rah rah nonsense. Amp the signal to noise ratio to the point where the cluelesss day traders know this thing is a pig in a poke and you'll do way more damage than ranting on slashdot about the subject.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo