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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..."
Is anyone or their linux-related company a member of any wire associations? Some anti-FUD articles really need to be filed as a press release, specifically mentioning SCOX.
Right now, if you go to Yahoo, and search for news on SCOX, you only find their press releases. We need to get some of our opinions out there so they'll show as news on SCO!
Can anyone help? Doesn't this seem like an important thing to do??
Mike
I wonder if anyone has an opinion of how long this SCO thing will go on for. It seems only to benefit sco that they drag it on for as long as possible. That way the can continue to try and collect fees, get coverage in the news and inflate their share price. How can they be silenced if they don't want to discuss matters sensibly?
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Or BSD.. or that open Beos..
More diversity in the open source arena would be a good hedge against one company (ie SCO) mucking it up with its FUD.
I like linux and all, but I'm
very very tired of SCO..
I wonder if SCO intends all this publicity and open source community reply to do their work for them. Meaning: They dont know things like the lineage of certain code, so some of what they say is to get people to dig for them. Think of how much it would cost to figure some of these things out if you were paying people to do so.
This must mean that Bruce Perens isn't afraid ESR is going to shoot him anymore.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
SCO should offer, to those who purchase their license, this guarantee of indemnity:
SCO guarantees that all IP associated with the SCO license is the sole, undisputed property of SCO. Should said property be shown to be actual property of a third party, SCO will pay all legal fees, rememdies and any other fees associated with any dispute arising from the third party.
Thus, SCO would show that they are certain they haven't infringed on GPL'd code (or any other party's code).
If SCO is unwilling to make such a guarantee of indemnity, it shows that they don't believe their own case.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
Check out this article on eWeek about an interesting utility that Eric Raymond, the president of the Open Source Initiative, recently developed. It uses a method similar to DNA sequencing to analyze the history of a collection of source code trees. Mr. Raymond is quoted in the article as saying "I am grinning a grin that should frighten the thieves and liars at SCO out of a week's sleep."
Wouldn't it be poetic justice if the courts find that contamination went the other way, i.e., that System V contains Linux code and must be redistributed under GNU as a Linux variant. Just dreaming :)
It is not a comparison between SCO and a Nazi regime (which would come under the thread-pruning of Godwin's Law).
In fact, I think that a propaganda technique that was effective in promoting genocide would be even more effective in helping to perpetuate a lesser crime (all other crimes, arguably, being lesser crimes than genocide).
As others have noted, SCO's propaga^H^H^H^H^Hess releases get significant exposure whereas reasoned responses from the likes of ESR, BP, et. al. get relatively little.
You could've hired me.
but what about this taken all together as a single unit of comparison:
The probability of finding common lines simply because the nature of the two code sets would decreate dramatically the more lines are grouped together. I would love to do a comparison of my own, but alas. SCO isn't interested in being forthcoming, only in market manipulation. SCO's strategy here isn't even to reconcile whatever wrongs they claim have been committed against them. Everything they're doing is simply an exit strategy. They recognized that they are history, so they're going out with a bang and getting as much [money] as they can before it the CFO signs the chapter 11 paperwork.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
First would like to say thanks to Bruce and Eric for this response. What I would like to bitch about is that most of the points that they made in their response were things that any real journalist would have actually checked. The McBride letter got plastered all over "news" sites on the net without any real challenge to the "facts" contained within. The SCO Regime knows that "reporters" for online "magazines" pretty much cut and paste any drivel that is sent out as a corporate press release. Slap on a headline and a few "this person said"s and a couple of "according to"s and blam you have an article. (Witness how MicroSofts latest funded "study" got plastered all over.) Of the online tech "news" portals, only The Register seems to EVER bother to check any of the "facts" that are reported in these press releases. Had any real journalism been going on here, these rags would have bothered to check at least SOME of the outlandish claims that SCO makes, or at least do something like make the headline "SCO makes more outlandish claims" or gosh even remind people that SCO has yet to release anything resembling proof. But because SCO knows they can get any outlandish claims published (and they WILL be published because the companies that publish them know that MicroSoft WANTS them published) and will subsequently drive up their stock price.
Interesting - this shows up under SGI and IBM - but not SCOX!!!!
"What comes of litigation? Poverty and degradation to any community that will encourage it. Will it build cities, open farms, build railroads, erect telegraph lines and improve a country? It will not; but it will bring any community to ruin." -Brigham Young, JD 11:259.
Why else would there be a law against theft, and a law of copyright?
If you could make copyright infringement equivalent to theft, there would not be a need for copyright law.
You're indulging in trollish sophistry.
Get back under your bridge.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Here's an idea for those with some spare cash and the courage of your convictions. Buy a SCO share! You are now a shareholder and have rights as such to ask questions of your board at the next shareholders meeting. In fact why not get together with your friends and others and all buy one share and take turns to ask Darl and the rest of the board difficult questions. Obviously this is cheapest and easiest for people who live near SCO headquarters.
These are some of the tactics that comedian and activist Mark Thomas used, along with others, in the (eventually) sucessful fight to stop the Ilisu Dam project in Turkey - and they were fighting a lot more than little old SCO (see http://www.ilisu.org.uk/ to see the hit list)
The following has been cut and pasted from the InfoWorld article "Torvalds to SCO: Negotiate What?"
--- cut here ---
Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up.
Dear Darl,
Thank you so much for your letter.
We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing.
However, we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand.
Also, we find your references to a negotiating table somewhat confusing, since there doesn't seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about.
All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with.
Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission,
Yours truly,
Linus Torvalds
That comment made me laugh -- not because I disagree with it, but because it made me realize domething:
Mr. McBride wants the OS community to come up with a business model for using open source that he can wrap his greedy little mind around, because he wants to usurp that idea too.It's not like we're expecting him to come up with an inventive idea, are we?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
No, thrse days you just have to pay someone to bug (and, mostly, bribe) the right people for you - I think (could be wrong) SCO is paying Schwartz PR to run their little black propaganda campaign for them.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
blank lines in code are as ...remember John Cage was paid for infringement on :)
silence in music
his 4'33 track of silence.
First, as for theft allow me to quote the US Supreme Court:
"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property...the copyright holder owns only a bundle of intangible rights which can be infringed, but not stolen or converted... It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud."
As for SCO's claims, they are constantly changing and vauge, but as far as I can tell SCO appears to have backed off from actual claims copying. SCO is spreading tons of FUD and confusion, but it seems that their case is based entirely on a contract dispute with IBM and a ludacris interpretation of "derivative work".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Back in the 1980's, I was just one of many people who noticed that AT&T claimed to have a copyright on blank lines. You can see one of these claims at http://web.42.net/true.html. Google for /bin/true and you'll find more.
/bin/true went through many versions, all of which contained only blank lines and a copyright notice.
/bin/true on several newsgroups as responses to discussions, pointing out that I had posted a copyrighted AT&T program in its entirety, and challenging AT&T to prosecute me. For some mysterious reason, I never heard from them.
/bin/false, which contained only the command "exit 255", so if you do that in any script, you are also inviolation of AT&T/SCO's claimed copyright.
/bin/true to be part of the IP that they inherited from AT&T. This is presumably the basis of the majority of their claim that there are a million lines of stolen SCO code in linux. When you add in all the lines that contain only /*, */ and //, you can easily get to a million lines.
This is the good old "true" program, which on Sys/V was an empty shell script. It works; it does nothing, and then since there were no errors, it exist with a zero status. Some drone at AT&T obviosly wrote a script to run through all their scripts and add an AT&T copyright notice. This also added two blank lines (only one in some later versions), leading to the observation that AT&T really was claiming to own the rights to blank lines.
One fun thing is that their copyrighted version of
Another fun thing that I did was to post the code for
There was also an AT&T copyright notice in
Anyway, it does seem that the SCO gang considers
It could be fun if they actually made the mistake of pressing this claim in court.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It's only PR Newswire that keeps spreading SCOs shit around w/o rebuttals
Well.. them and Reuters
The
In SCO's letter they make it sound like it's an "Open Source Community" thing to use copyrighted code. If someone at SGI did this, why does SCO think that they wouldn't put copyright-protected code into closed, proprietary code? What makes them think that other closed-source corporations don't do this? (I suppose to answer my own question, those corporations would be more directly liable for such copyright violations, so they care more about preventing it, obfuscating it, or hiding it).
Open-source development cares a lot about copyright stuff. The GNU license list notes which licenses are compatible with the GPL. It's not like they think that any code can be and becomes GPL licensed, regardless of where it came from, regardless of what previous licenses may have applied.
So, copyright violation occurs in other software development models. What's weird is that SCO is going after individual users. When someone sues MS over something stolen, they sue the company, they don't tell users of MS products that they have to pay additional licensing fees.
Once again, a quip from Linus that is wickedly funny. The perfect combination of politeness and dry sarcasm that never fails to make me chuckle.
I really ought to read his autobiography. I bet I'd find it hysterical, especially if he was a bit pissed off while writing it.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
IANAL, but IIRC, in order for a copyright violation to be actionable (that is, to be able to be brought before the court), the copyright holder must show that they engaged in "due diligence" to prevent the infringement of copyright - that is, they did everything short of suing to ensure that their copyright was protected. Here you have the publishers of the "work in question" making an open commitment to ensure that copyrights are upheld and no infringing code is included into the Linux kernel. Which means that SCO will have to work with ESR and Perens to reveal the "offending lines", or risk losing any claim to copyright infringement, however valid.
This is the worst thing that could happen to SCO. If they comply, they lose any claim over the Linux kernel, as any offending lines will be rewritten. If they fail to respond, they forfeit the current Linux kernel - even if it contains their copyrighted code! Once given an offer of remediation, the copyright holder loses the right to bring a suit before the courts.
If anything, this has shown not the weakness of the Open Source model, but rather its strength. Unlike proprietary code, in which a user could unknowingly be in possession of another's IP, (and hence, liable for royalties to said third party...), the openness of the OS model ensures that any third-party copyright claims are effectively null and void.