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More on SCO Code Snippets
anoopsinha writes "A story in linuxworld reports that SCO itself has no idea what the history of a particular snippet of code might be - even a high profile snippet like the one SCO highlighted at SCO Forum. Having no idea if its claims have merit has not stopped SCO so far, so we can expect more from SCO along the lines of big claims with no merit."
Seems to me like they can get away with showing greek code anyway.
Mr. Nauvek isn't kidding,
SCO's press releases are just echoing back what Perens, or what that Groklaw guys say in
twisted words.
Let's just not talk about SCO anymore. We're just giving them ideas for press releases that pump up their stock price.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Now might be a good time to short that SCO stock
So now they admit that they had no idea about the validity of their own claims. Why is this not surpising?
"So, you see... we're associated with a Unix, and, you're associated with a Unix... well, you're financial obligations here should be obvious."
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
- SCO shows code snippets to stockholders and says "here are infringing code snippets"
- People actually look at code snippets, point out they are non-infringing
- SCO says "Well, THAT was not an example of an INFRINGING code snippet. It was just an example of a code snippet. We haven't shown you the REAL infringing code snippets yet, but they're doozies."
- There are no ill effects to SCO whatsoever from the fact they showed non-infringing code snippets to their investors and to the press and presented them as infringing code snippets whatsoever, SCOs investors remain unaware of this, and little to no-one in the "mainstream" (non-geek) press covers this.
WTF????A lord has a complaint against a serf, who's to question the lord?
We've a stock market symbol, a cadre of lawyers, who are these people to question the motives taken on behalf of the shareholders?
Off with their fucking heads!
SCO claims Gibraltar.
Why not use systematic biologist or linguists?
The world is full of systematic biologists which uncover relationships (natural history) between organisms every day. The may use DNA, anatomy or even ethology. Why not have a group of them analysing the raw data. Their methods have now been adopted by several linguists.
But, the linguists problems differ from that of most biologists, there is much infiltration of words from various languages into one language, therewith obscuring the true relationship between languages.
Maybe these guys can use an "objective method" to deduce the origins of various code snippets.
It's clear that SCO has filed its suit against IBM with absolutely no chance of winning (much like the fox news vs al franken "fair and balanced" suit). Not only has SCO filed a frivilous suit (a civil cause of action to do so) but has made baseless threats causing undue emotional distress to many users of Linux. Once SCO's suit is dismissed, look for some really nice lawsuits right back at 'em from many different parties. Should make for good popcorn munching entertainment. If it were me, I would sue Darly McB individually, in his personal capacity, as well as SCO.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I don't think there is one person out there who believes that SCO is entirely telling the truth. In fact, I'm sure SCO would be hardpressed to admit that they're telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth -- but on some level that's just how corporate America works. Yet, my point isn't about how SCO is the worst scum to hit the news since Bush was elected -- I'm trying to point out that the open source community is largely responsible for the snowball affect that this overhyped SCO story has receieved.
I've been quietly reviewing the various components of this story as they arise (especially since Slashdot is following it so closely), and I remember vividly reading Torvalds resposne to SCO's open letter, which seems so very odd. SCO is giving the open source community a look at the problems in the code, and if SCO is telling the truth, they have every right to expect some level of damages. It's hard for the people that leech off the hard work of others to understand that it does cost money to make things (music, linux, etc.) I believe that Torvalds, Lessig, and others are just out there trying to fight to make GNU-moral-efficacy more of a real thing, but frankly, the time has come to actually step up and figure out what's going on.
We're hypocrites to believe that SCO is the only reason this question continues to be in the news. SCO is garbage now, but why do we have to taint the good will of our open source community by making them look like they want to prolong this idiotic fight.
I'm just searching for an end to this BORING battle.
Mod this garbage down.
I can't believe this shit got a +1 Insightful. Revenge? SCO may be the armpit of the asshole, but a +1 insightful for saying "let's go out and kill someone as blah blah blah..."
So, for all purposes, it's safe to say SCO and its crack legal team just can't do the deeper historical analysis needed here. Would a junior programmer be able to produce the findings that the open source community can? No way. Such an individual simply would not have the depth of historical knowledge to know where to look.
This is a rather daft assumption. The junior programmer doesn't need to know the history of the code. Simply that the code is the same. Then all he needs to do is compare it with BSD and any other publically available kernels to eliminate any that may have had a common ancestry. The rest of the work could be left to someone who's good at researching in books,
And there's no reason that SCO couldn't hire someone with "depth of historical knowledge to know where to look". Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond aren't the only people with this knowledge. We don't know what SCO are doing, or what they're planning. Their public statements may be misleading simply because they don't want to show their hand. The code they did show may have been a gamble that didn't pay off. There may still be many lines of code that were stolen from SCO Unix.
Do we really know how likely SCO's claims are to be true? Personally, I think that the Linux community is pretty proud of having "done it themselves" and doesn't want to use SCO's code at all. In fact, it's a very bad thing for the GPL if people put code under the GPL illegally.
The only way people will trust open source is to trust the open source developers. As more and more people are warming up to the idea that "free software isn't junk" the last thing needed is for consumers and companies to think that it was all done using someone else's code.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
A story in linuxworld reports that SCO itself has no idea what the history of a particular snippet of code might be
You have GOT to be shitting me.
First off, you fail to explain or indicate why you think Linus Tourvalds is being hypocritical.
SCO is giving the open source community a look at the problems in the code
This is a flat-out lie.
the time has come to actually step up and figure out what's going on.
"The open source community" has TRIED, time and time again, to figure out what is going on. SCO will not *tell* anyone. The Linux developers community WANTS to have the copyright issues resolved. However, they cannot read SCO's mind! There is a clear and documented method of dealing with copyright infringements in the linux kernel; the time and source of all contributions is logged, and if at any point someone identifies infringing code it can be noted as such and removed. HOWEVER: The linux community cannot remove SCO's code unless they know what it is!!! SCO ardently refuses to give any indication what this mystery code is.
The fact they seem intent on preventing the linux developers from gaining the information of what to remove to fix the infringement has led some to believe this code does not exist.
the people that leech off the hard work of others
Who do you refer to here?
Just in case someone doesn't understand this and wants to know more about what "shorting" a stock means:
http://www.fool.com/FoolFAQ/FoolFAQ0033.htm
When I first read this, I thought they wish their code was good enough to copy. Or maybe its exactly what the author meant?
This is a lawyer' dream retirement project...at least until SCO runs out of cash. Since this is a public company the Feds and State can get involved and end this non-sense er I mean string it out for years with no meaningful outcome.
Those that do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
"Well, at SCO Forum, there were some folks that came out and basically sniffed out some of the [disputed System V] code we were showing and [concluded] that it emanated from SGI." That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO.
I'm not trying to be a troll or anything, and I have this feeling that the SCO execs are full of it, but is this statement not a little bit thin to jump to the conclusion that SCO does not know the history of its own code? Could DMcB not intend to say with 'emanated' that that code emanated from SGI into the linux kernel? Then his statement would only involve linux history and SGI history, and not SCO's own.Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Hmm... I wonder if a modification of BLAST would work. It looks for DNA (or protein) sequence homology of a given sample vs. the genome of an organism or many organisms.
It would be interesting to do something like take all the whitespace out from the source tree and tar all the files together and use it as a "genome" to BLAST snippits of (likewise "compressed") code snippits.
Normal (DNA) BLAST results return with a similarity ratio and go on to show where they are/aren't homologous. I'm not sure how it would deal with expanding the relatively small nucleotide "alphabet" to that of source code.
Hmmm..
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
SCO thought that exact code alignment could be used to sway the general public into accepting thier argument. It's backfiring, like so many of their tactics.
But the real crux of their argument is that *every* modern OS violates their "Intellectual Property" (bad phrase) rights stemming from SysV Unix.
That includes the BSD's.
That includes Windows.
Every OS that does basically what you could with SysV Unix is in violation, whether there's code sharing or not. It's a very disturbing concept, and the implications are chilling. It is absolutely imperitive that SCO lose this case.
Wow, nice troll!
The question of code history is one I asked a *long* time ago; probably the first I heard of this SCO bs. I believe they wrote a little C program that crawls the source tree and looks for similar lines of code. Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical. Just like the ad for PC-Lint in the programming magazines.
Darl McBride's silly little company is acting just like the idiot who was sitting in a cafe one day. When the waitress came to take his order, the man asked her to sign and date some official documents certifying that he had been in that cafe at that time and date, with records of what he ordered, how long he stayed, etc. The waitress was confused about this, but the man claimed that he was very paranoid of someday being framed of a crime, and therefore wanted a written alibi for every waking moment of his life. He shows the waitress a calendar book with exact notations of every step he had ever taken. Suddenly, the police storms into the establishment and asks the gentleman if he goes by such and such a name. He answers affirmatively. They asked him if he had been involved in a jewelry store robbery which took place at 1221 East West Street several nights prior, at 12:31 AM. As he had proof of everything he had ever done, he opened his book, flipped to the day and hour in question, and read aloud from his book, "Jewelry store robbery at 1221 East West Street, 12:31 AM." Before he realized what a stupid error he had made, the police snatched him and he was off to jail.
With that in mind, here is an open letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride:
Dear Darl,
I do not believe any of your company's claims. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: I believe that SCO's software is composed 100% of code your company deliberately stole from other companies. Because your company stole code from the Linux kernel, you later found that code and wrongly believe that the theft occured in the other direction. Further, I strongly believe that with your company's shoddy record keeping, you cannot prove the origin of your code, so it is therefore impossible to prove your false claims of its being misappropriated into Linux. I further believe that even if your company could produce such proof, the effects of doing so would be adverse for you, as the records would clearly indicate the thefts that SCO deliberately performed.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: In your poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled "open letter" to the free software community, you deliberately took some quotes out of context. This was silly because the misquoted documents are readily available for all to see your blatent and stupid attempt. To demonstrate the effect of misquoting, I offer the following text, quoted directly from your letter:
How does that feel, Darl?Sincerely,
rice burners suck
Chief Karma Whore
Slashdot
If sco have to resort to an outside team (ex-MIT people), does this mean they have no internal programmers free to look at the code ? or does it mean they don't trust those that they do ?
;-)
Or is their single programmer tied up in trying to fix bugs in their existing products ?
Finally, MIT/Ex-MIT people, were they staff/lecturers, or just people that attended MIT ? What are their qualifications ?
I personally think this is an exercise in pumping the stock, and scaring someone enough that the will take over the company (and hope that they dont notice the cupboard is bare)
... if SCO cared. But they don't. It's a business game, not a technology issue. What they care about is obfuscation, FUD, and legal maneuvering, not technical accuracy. Shouldn't that be fairly obvious by now?
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
The irony is too strong here.
This is the only remaining option if we are to retain some kind of sanity.
/. so that I could exclude these stories for a start. If I wanted to watch insane pseudolegalistic gibberish I'd live in the States and watch TV.
The IDP, a total voluntary boycotting of all and any news surrounding SCO, implemented in as many online journals and newssites as possible, extended to newsgroups, emails, and any other source of discussion.
SCO were kinda amusing when there was no other news this summer, but like a playground bully, they are feeding off all the attention they get, and so I vote for the IDP.
For a start, I'd be mighty grateful if there was a SCO topic for
Gimme an I, gimme a D, gimme a P, whatcha got? Internet Death Penalty, peace and quiet. Yeah...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Torvalds resposne to SCO's open letter, which seems so very odd.
What's odd about asking where the infringing code is and trying to figure out what SCO is talking about? I don't think there is anything odd about saying to your accuser what is it that I have done. If SCO is telling the truth the simple fact is they can still receive damages. So not only will the infringing and stolen code be removed from the kernel but they will also receive damages from the person(s) who put it there.
We aren't hypocrites, it's a really simple thing. It doesn't have to be in the news or even go to court. SCO just has to say "line/number file.c" has infringing code please remove the code asap. Then they take their proof of infringing code and request damages. It'd also be alot quicker than the current way they are doing things.
I don't think you actually understand the situation. Obviously no offense but you should re-read the actual case vs IBM and then what SCO itself has said over the couple of months to entirely grasp the confusing "blather" coming from SCO.
Not just that, IBM can go after SCO for intentional interference, abuse of process, and malicious prosecution.
Fight Spammers!
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Nobody actually getting bored by this?
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. -- Oscar Wilde
"SCO is giving the open source community a look at the problems in the code..."
My kids watch a show on Nick or TV Land or something, and its called "Dexter's Laboratory". Dexter uses a line over and over which seems to suit you very well...
"You are Stuuuuu-pid"
You said you have been "quietly reviewing". Let me suggest you go back to that mode.
I'm not a SCO supporter by any means, but these guys have a history of suing people and winning. I know we all asume that McBride is a moron, but what if he's actually clever. They could be "throwing" everyone off by making themselves look like idiots. Has it dawned on anyone that maybe the code snippets that were leaked were meant to be leaked? Perhaps they knew someone would be there with a camera and stick the pictures out on the Internet.
;-)
So while the community is thinking everything is just fine because SCO doesn't have jack, they are sitting on one or two really excellent examples of IP ownership they haven't released yet. This way when the code is released we will all be caught with our jaws gaping open and our feet stuffed into them. They are just down the street from me, I know some of these guys. They are slippery. The best way to kill a fox is not by chasing it.
Now maybe what they do have is small and can be replaced simply. That doesn't matter because on the phsycological front the open source / free software camp just took a hit. Unfortunatly it's too late to do anything about it.
I think a good approch is the "show us the code" approch. Not the "you must be an idiot smoking crack" approch. Hubris is a good thing when hacking code, but not when dealing with a bunch of lawyers. I urge a level headed course of action rather than a kick SCO's butt becuase there is no way we can be wrong action. Use caution - I promise there is an "Ace" up their sleave. Or at least a "Queen of Hearts".
There's a lot of issues surrounding this case, but let's start with the request for a Bruce Perens or Eric Raymond: These guys repeatedly offered they're assistance in looking at the code to identify any possibly infringing snippets, but they require that the NDA is dropped for them. SCO refuses to let them do this, seemingly afraid that the infringing snippets will 'disappear' from the kernel source, hence losing a case against all those commercial users of Linux they want to sue.
And to have all those people claiming it's pump and dump of SCO stock, think of this: Some execs have call options (right to buy at a certain price) that can't be exercised till somewhere in 2004. That means they have to keep the SCO stock price up till they can exercise the options. With a case like this, I wonder if that's possible: sooner or later the 'regular joe' catches on, and the stock will end up in a free-fall, and if printed on paper, making geek toilet paper (But that might make the demand among us geeks so high the price gets back up). Next to that, they sold quite some stock, but so far it's been in 5000 - 10000 chunks, While they own 10 - 20 times that much each. If they really wanted to get rich, they would dump it as fast as they could, and leave the country.
My guess is they started seriously believing they have a case, but now continue in order not to lose their face. I think McBride and his servants have lost a lot of sleep over this case by now, and will have a lot of sleepless nights in he near future.
Did anyone else notice that the text kept sizing up as the article went down. Sorta puts a funky light on the whole thing...
Sometimes I wonder why the courts don't just put SCO out of its misery...
I mean isn't it pretty apparent to everyone that these are some last rites? These are just theatrics as a last dying attempt in vengeance against their bane. I mean this makes SCO look really really awful as they writhe in agony, striking out as spitefully as they can at the IBM/Linux partnership.
I don't think anyone can take this whole charade seriously. I hope this abuse of the court system doesn't go unpunished. Has anyone ever considered how quickly things move along and get developed in the techological world? Does anyone see how grossly slow and inadequate the traditional court system is at handling things of this nature? With legal battles, appeals, loopholes, etc. by the time anyone wins a case they're looking at technology that older than dirt.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
it's safe to say SCO and its crack legal team
I always knew it wasn't just Darl who was smoking the stone here. I knew the lawyers had to be suffering from paranoia and cocaine psychosis as well.
My theory is that this whole law suit came about following one particularly heavy night hitting the pipe. When McBride, Sontag, Boies etc. began to get that familiar disturbing feeling of having maggots burrowing beneath their skin, one of them proposed that the running the GNU debugger might be the best way to get rid of them.
When that didn't work, in their crack-addled minds, they decided that they were going to make developers of free software pay for their drug-induced distress, and so targeted the GNU/Linux system for this lawsuit.
If you had been shorting SCOX all this time.
They're around $18 right now. In May they were in the $3s.
Feast your eyes on this lovely chart.
SCO is doing what Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and so many other companies have done. They do absolutely anything, legal or not, ethical or not, to pump that stock. And keep in mind that for the stock to trade higher and higher means that people have been standing in line to buy it. Those asses share some of the blame. It's just a bunch of people trading, overall, lots of the world's time, energy, and money, for a little personal gain.
Fuck them.
Fuck McBride. His method of improving SCO's business here brings into serious question the supposed successes he ha d at other companies.
Speaking of the snake, does anyone have personal information on him? It would be a real shame if he personally were to receive indications of the world's negative feelings about him...
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Having "no idea" where their own code came from is just lawyerese for filing a completely frivolous lawsuit.
SCO also owns copyrights for Bible and soon will begin suing all churches around the world.
1. Claim some people stole your code. 2. Show unrelated code. 3. ??? 4. Profit ! There is something fscked up in this economic system.
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
But the SCO stocks are gaining value all the time. I Who is buying all this stock? Can we trace the money somewhere?
I have been watching the SCO stock price for the last couple of months. When the SCO forum code was debunked, I looked expecting to see the stock price fall off a cliff. That's how it works isn't it? company suffers major bad news, stock price falls.
But no. The stock price went up, up and away, on blocks of very small shares.
It's clearly being heavily manipulated. But why? The best theory I've seen is that amateur investors are encouraged to sell this stock short, on the assumption that it's going to zero one way or another. Good assumption, but naive investment strategy. What happens then is that the price is manipulated way up. Eventually the short sellers are forced to buy at the higher market price to stop their losses. Who do they buy from? Why, the insiders and stock manipulators, who then laugh all the way to the bank.
Go and have a look on the Yahoo finance forums. The scam is so obvious, it's unbelievable that the mainstream media aren't picking up on it.
... we would be glad, if you keep'em out of Europe, thanks.
Why not make'em shut up, like Germany has done?
I don't believe that the SCO claims have any real merit. But this article seemed to be making a big deal out of Darl McBride saying in his Q&A that he didn't previously know that the code in question had been contributed by SGI. So far as I can see he didn't say anything of the kind.
"In this Q&A, CEO McBride states, 'Well, at SCO Forum, there were some folks that came out and basically sniffed out some of the [disputed System V] code we were showing and [concluded] that it emanated from SGI.' That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO."
I don't see how you can get from Darl's quote to the conclusion that the source being SGI was news to him. All he says is that people outside of SCO worked out where the code came from, which is why he's commenting on it publicly. Nothing there implies either way whether he knew about it before.
Once you remove this strange interpretation of his quote there doesn't seem to be anything left to base the article on.
There are plenty of legitimate flaws in SCO's case. This doesn't seem to be one of them.
int seed = 0;
int rand (void)
{
seed = 0x015a4e35L * seed + 1;
return ((seed >> 16) & 0x7fff);
}
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Arrg!
No, BLAST won't work. ESR's SHRED won't work. These are, at heart, text matching algorithms, which are easily defeated and of little relevance. Let me explain.
Any simple code obfuscation techniques (changing variable names, adding/removing comments, inserting newlines, changing for loops to while loops, etc.) will totally defeat SHRED and will likely give BLAST a hard time, if not break it entirely.
Why? SHRED searches for lines with identical MD5 sums. If every/most line of purloined code has been changed, even slightly, SHRED fails. BLAST works by finding "seed" regions of identity and then growing those regions out to "near matches." Unfortunately, the idea of a "near match" is a lot more clear cut in DNA/protein than in code, and the initial seeding breaks if the code has been obfuscated at all.
SCO would (wisely) never accept a negative SHRED or BLAST result as proof for just these reasons.
What is necessary is a comparison of the code structure, NOT the simple text of the code. Stanford's, for example (and many other) CS department detects cheating by chewing through source files and turning them into an intermediate representation (think: parse tree) which describe directly the STRUCTURE and FUNCTION of a bit of code in a way that is completely divorced from the text of that code. To find out if people cheated, they compare the parse trees from their code -- not the text of the code.
In this way, they can easily detect (with a surprisingly low false positive rate) when two pieces of textually different code actually stemmed from the same source (but one was then obfuscated to cover up the cheating.)
This is the way to compare code fragments. Not borrowing text-matching (or near-matching) from unrelated disciplines.
It seems that as time goes on, SCO's case gets weaker and weaker, but they keep laying the intensity harder and harder. I really wonder if it is possible that one of the competitive software companies purchased a SCO license with the stipulation that they must make life hell for the Linux/Open Source community. It's gotta make you wonder... It was only very shortly after all the lawsuit stuff popped up that one company particular (we all know who) a license for UNIX code from SCO.
Elph
> would sue Darly McB individually, in his personal capacity, as well
> as SCO.
Darl bashing is even more fun now that we know he actually reads Slashdot! The Linuxworld piece links to a Computer World Interview with McBride. In the last question, Darl admits that he reads our rants on Slashdot and it hurts his feelings:
So Darl, if you are reading this: fuck you! We know your evidence is bogus, we are on to your stock scams (e.g. the Vultus "acquisition"), and we laugh at your suggestions that we cooperate to "monetize Linux". Give it up now, before we finally convince the SEC to launch an official investigation.
-Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the free Nmap Security Scanner
Being sent to swim with the red sprites would be suitable punishment for an errant high-tech company.
"Hell hath no fury like geek legions scorned."
This just shows how thorough SCO really is. The article says: That this code "emanated" from SGI was news to SCO.
:-)
Well, the linux code clearly states
* Copyright (C) 1992 - 1997, 2000-2002 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved.
I hope they know how Silicon Graphics Inc. relates to SGI
We're making the mistake of looking at the technical issues and not the social ones. SCO is playing the social angle and doing very well so long as they can keep this spinning.
It's farmers VS barbarians all over again - the conquering barbarian rulers can't understand things like why farmers would get upset at equal division of land and the farmers can't understand that anyone would be clueless enough to try to make them farm a swamp as efficiently as the best farmland.
That some clueless noob at SCO was tasked with finding way to sploit their copy rights, discovered the OpenLinux SRPMS on their ftp server, decided that must mean that SCO owns all that source, and then declared the same source in the linux kernel as being infringing? 'Cause, you know, some clueless noob at IBM must have put it there, or something.
It sounds crazy, but it makes more sense than starting from the assumption that SCO really aren't disclosing the source simply so that we can't "launder" the kernel before SCO can get it to court.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. If you look at this. You will see a plausable connection between M$ and SCO.
I think these purchases would be chump change for the Gates familly. They wouldn't be investing to make money, they just want the bad press to keep rolling.
Read the article and draw your own conclusions.
They can either learn a process or learn things about specific pieces of code this way. If they learn about pieces of code, they present code at trial that stood up to public scruitiny in their practice runs before the trial. If they learned a process, then they hire people to do the same sorts of reasoning the public used to debunk their practice runs, and by that means find a better chunk of code to demonstrate at trial.
It would seem rational for them to do a few more rehersals before show time.
It would also seem rational for the open source community to refuse to play this game by not giving them further accurate information about the validity of their public claims before the trial. But since the open source community has no central control, there's no way to make that happen.
Agreed! It's considered in bad taste and remarkably stupid to make reference on a network system with *logs* to killing someone. Considering the jarhead that shot Reagan was doing so to impress someone, it's just as likely you'll find some mentaly unbalanced fellow who can claim "he told me to do it". I'm all for privacy, but if I saw something like that on my system, while i'd still request a supena, i'd make sure to archive it for easy retrieval.
However, taking the time to post something, and encouraging others to do so, provided it's not harrassment would be most acceptable. Here is an idea.
Put a couple of nuts in an envelope and post to McBride with a note that reads "Your nuts ---a linux user". It's not even insulting beause they are now his nuts.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
BLAST and all similar methods calculate similarity scores based scoring matrices. BLOSUM62 is the default for BLAST methods. There are no matrices avaialable for comparing code, and it would be rather hard to devise them.
1. Do illegal things against the competition.
2. Bring in extra Revenue.
3. Get caught and/or sued.
4. Pay Fine. (Fine will be much less than extra Revenue.)
5. Profit!!!
Okay. I hate SCO. You hate SCO. They're a bunch of bastards and they won't put up or shut up. That's a given.
This article offers nothing new. This story is just an excuse for everyone to rehash the same old "SCO will go down in flames" lines.
Could we possibly just limit the new stories to ACTUAL BREAKING news items that contain new verifiable evidence and/or facts, or at least something substantial? Can we PLEASE just take it for granted that every publication that has anything to do with Linux is going to come out against SCO?
It's all about pumping the stock price. SCO has nothing and really does not care. This is simply a maneuver to pump the stock price and make the execs rich. Nothing more. The company will collapse, but like so many other execs...who cares. Consider the facts. Mutual fund managers are the ones pumping up their useless stock. Remember how Yahoo was over $300 per share? These same clueless nitwits are still mis-managing our 401k funds. None of them do one ounce of research - it's not their money. They all buy like sheep and sell like sheep. They is a very wise financial move on SCO's part which will make Daryl and his other brother Daryl very rich. Quit getting so spun-up. This is business as usual in America. It's all about the CEO. How much longer do you think HP is going to be around after Carly sucks the life out of the company? It's fundamentally the same thing. It's all about the CEO getting rich now!
From the article...."There is the phantom MIT mathematics department team which MIT itself can't identify and which SCO has since said were people with former MIT mathematics department relationships, not MIT employees."... There's a woman who lives a couple of blocks from me that dated a MIT math grad student in the late 70's... she can only get part-time work as a travel agent now... maybe she was short on cash and...
As stated countless times, SCO (management) has apparently lost its collective mind. As is the case with a complete paranoid schizophrenic (sic), the posturing is irrelevant.
The best thing the Open Source community can do is to drop any relations with SCO, walk away, and continue to code good works.
At this point, we've gone from defending O/S to humiliating SCO... not that SCO hasn't done a good job of that themselves. Still, the point is moot. SCO has no case. As in the words of my lovely wife "You're arguing with a seven year old."
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
That can't be right ...
I remember someone saying basicly SCOs case against IBM is not that IBM took code from SCO and put it in Linux.
But that any code IBM wrote for AIX (under the SCO liccens) is SCOs property as AIX uses SCOs intelectual property as a code base.
In public SCO clames the issue is purely a matter of SCO property in Linux. Then SCO uses this and related FUD to frighten everyone into NOT suing SCO when SCO dose things like sell Linux binarys or bill Linux users for SCOs intelectual property. Things SCO has no legal right to do.
SCO basicly acts like they own Linux when they have no legal clame to it and use public clames and FUD to frighen anyone who might challange SCOs ownership clame into sillence.
The key is that SCO must win this lawsute against IBM.
What SCO is clamming is that any code writen for Unix while under liccens from SCO is automaticly SCOs property. I sereously doupt there is any language in SCOs liccens to back up this clame as IBM would not sign a contract with such an extream clame. IBM knows better. I think SCO is using the case of "implied ownership" and you probably won't find that term or anything like that term in legal text becouse I don't think implied ownership is recognised.
Microsoft attempted to pull something similar to what SCO is pulling way back. The part when SCO clames that SOME of SCO code is in Linux makes ALL of Linux now SCOs property.
Microsoft worked with IBM to improve OS/2. Microsoft then released Microsoft OS/2. The corts rulling is relevent to this in many ways.
First it clames that IBM retains ownership of the name OS/2 and the code IBM wrote for OS/2.
But it also clames that any code Microsoft added to OS/2 Microsoft may use any way Microsoft fits. They however do not have any right to code IBM wrote.
So basicly IBM did not give Microsoft the rights to IBMs code or OS/2 trademark. The Linux community did not give SCO rights to the Linux code or Linux trademark outside of the terms of the GPL liccens.
Microsoft did give IBM code so IBM can use it in OS/2 but Microsoft may also use that same code anyplace else Microsoft wants. IBM did put code in IBMs flavor of Unix and didn't actually give it to SCO so it's not clear if SCO can do ANYTHING with the code. But IBM still retains ownership of that code should IBM use it in Linux, OS/2 or any other IBM product.
Finally IBM clames to have not extracted any code from AIX for Linux to prevent contaminating Linux with someone elses intelectual property.
Becouse the infringment is supposidly between AIX and Linux not Unixware and Linux it's quite likely in my opinion that SCO dosen't actually have the code in question to make any compairisons with and instead SCO is using a compleatly diffrent approch by using behavure as the metric. But as any good programmer will know you can arrive at the same behavure with diffrent code.
IBM could shread AIX and Linux and post the results...
I don't actually exist.
Not until the probablity function collapses. And the odds make it highly unlikely that the function will collapse in the manner they desire.
check out the link in the parent post.
- It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. Stupid Monkey!!
SCO GROUP INC (NasdaqSC:SCOX) Quote data by Reuters
Last Trade: 17.75
Trade Time: Sep 12
Change: Up 0.24 (1.33%)
Posting to Slashdot on SCO's balderdash is preaching to the choir. Try chatting up your local investment firm manager. Bring your same verve for debunking SCO's house of cards to a financial investment manager. Got a 401K? An RRSP? Call your broker/advisor/coin tosser and tell them to drop SCO from YOUR portfolio. And explain to them why they should. Yeah, I know, who's going to listen to one complaint? Slashdot has more than a few readers, and I imagine some of them have investments. SCO stepped on your turf. So take the fight back to theirs.
Bill Gates: Come McBride lemme do it all nite to you.
.Not look good.
McBride: Master I am doing what you told me to do spreading fud on Linux.
Bill Gates: Yes I am spreading fud on Java to make
Is SCO hurting their court case by being big mouths. I mean can the referance all the press release and the code they showed at the fourm as if SCO doesn't know what they are talking about?
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
It's easy, it's fun! As long as you are an insider trading in SCOX stock. Take, for example, Reginald Broughton, Senior Vice President (vice has a whole new connotation when used in reference to SCO execs):
0 00110254203000059/xslF345X02/edgardoc.xml
;)
Look at this page http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=SCOX , add *only* the transactions dated from Aug 19 (note: There are others he has made cashing in on this stock) to the proceeds from stock sale Sept 7 (filed 9th) (another $90K worth) http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1102542/
My prediction: The real reason Open Source and Linux will fail is because it cannot provide income like this...
In the recent news SCO is sueing all wheat producers
SCO is claiming that kernel is a System V unix copy right word if the wheat producers want to use kernel they have to license $1000 each.
SCO is sueing ADM (Archer Daniels Midland company) for 4 billion dollars for IP damages.
We sure need English tons. They have BSE all over it. ;-)
The Q&A with McBride in Computer world contains one of the first clear (re)statements of SCO's (current) intent. In the interview, McBride's tone towards Linux is carefully conciliatory, conveying an attitude of "We accept that Linux will be around for a while, so let's find a way to work things out."
The 'problem' with Linux that needs to be resolved, he says, is the GPL. Or, as McBride puts it:
"If we're going into a new business environment around Linux, well, let's ask the question right upfront: Does the free business model work? Everything we've looked at, whether it's free Internet, free telecom, free music, all of these things tend to, for one reason or another, not work over an extended period of time. Clearly, the free model just about killed our company, and I would argue that it's going to kill a lot of other software companies if the GPL [General Public License] is able to gain a foothold and run rampant throughout the industry."
This statement first trots out the old "free software means free as in beer" misinformation and then proceeds with the explicit mud slinging about how the GPL will "kill" alot of companies if it is permitted to "gain a foothold" and "run rampant." Yikes! Scary stuff, if it were true. This bit of FUD is well formulated to push the fear buttons of your friendly neighborhood PHB.
And it raises many more questions. Like:
(1) Will the mainstream media eventually bite this SCO spin and spread the slander against the GPL?
(2) Will a significant portion of the open source community one day buy into this characterization of the problem, and allow the thin edge of the wedge that McBride has presented to fracture the community?
(3) Is Microsoft behind this FUD campaign against the GPL, which, at minimum, they must find exceptionally agreeable?
(4) Even if Microsoft and SCO aren't coordinating their attacks against the GPL and the open source community, do the similarities in their attacks indicate a fundamental hostility that we can expect capitalists to hold against the free software model?
Please mod parent up, this is the most significant development in the fiaSCO so far.
For those who aren't familiar with the legend of Godwin's Law, cheack out How to post about Nazis and get away with it - the Godwin's Law FAQ. Although Godwin's Law is technically a USENET thing, it is frequently mentioned in regards to long /. threads, topics, and the like.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Darl C Mcbride, (801) 424-2006, 1799 Vintage Oak Ln, Salt Lake City, UT 84121
Since when does questioning the logic in someone's thinking has to be labelled 'troll'? I only see a question which was answered nicely and balanced by MuParadigm and dancing blue? Ah, well, 'tis slashdot...
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
"yada yada yada, so we can expect more from SCO along the lines of big claims with no merit."
Geesh, I could've reached that conclusion even without the yada yada bit.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
I noticed that SCO stock ownership has gone from less than 1 percent ownership by institutions to about 15 percent since this mess started. At first, that really pissed me off. That means that mutual funds, pension funds, etc are buying into SCO's rancid pile of festering crap they call a case.
However, after I thought about it, I think this is great. Eventually, SCO's house of cards will collapse, and they will be a penny stock (or worse) again. At that time, count on a bunch of shareholder lawsuits, and cries for an SEC investigation. Hopefully, this culminates in some prison time for a lot of SCO/Canopy Group scumbag execs. People are in the mood to throw CEOs in jail now, and I couldn't think of a more deserving candidate than our pal Darl.
Ok, that might be a little extreme, but I'm quite sure that SCO's first act when the case starts will be to publish absolutely everything they can extract from their computers, right down to the soothingly infinite ramblings of /dev/random.
It's a little similar to pre-war Iraq - they are threatened, told to provide detailed information of whatever armaments they have, or else. Their tactic is to release so much information that it was actually damaging for the US that they had to spend so much time analysing it, and making very vague press statements when they still weren't sure what was going on. (note: I'd really rather this didn't become a rambling political discussion - I can't remember correctly enough to be sure that the above was perfectly accurate, I was just using it illustratively)
It's fairly important that what gets debunked gets debunked soundly and quickly. Maybe then the stock would finally start to slump. Then again, I don't know if the would-be evidence will even be made public, I'm not familliar with the American court system, nor any other for that matter. Does any one know if the full claims are going to be available to the average geek?
SCO has a legal team.
SCO had a semi-public presentation with code snippets.
Why didn't the legal team go over the code snippets like you say?
Instead, other people looked at the leaked code and did the research. SCO wasn't doing what you say they should have be doing with the snippets and legal team they had.
Like the article said, SCO doesn't know the origin of the code and seems incapable of find the origin with their current and claimed resources.
The best part of "our" case is that we're right. We're just. We're honest. Assuming this is Darl McBride's real personal info, isn't it out of line to start fucking with him?
Yes, I think he's as much of a prick as anyone else and that he and his cohorts deserve, to some degree, a horrible and painful fate, but I will NOT resort to lowering the bar and hitting below the belt. And furthermore, I'd urge you to do the same. The guy has a family. Leave them out of it. Let him suffer his due when this ends and he's in jail.
For the rest of my life I'm going to be prejudiced against SCO employees and anyone named McBride. Kind of sad.
I'm doubly suprised we havn't heard more from prior SCO employees. At one point I was kind of impressed by the Open SCO program and their release of old Unix code. I know McBride will make a bundle off this either way. If you see him in person remember to call him a pigfucking thief to his face. Especially if he's in front of his family.
Oh well, my belief that greed is the central human motivator is reinforced. That and 70% of the population is made of of mindless cows. Mooo.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The people gambling on the stock will do so no matter what. It is just a gamble.
But, our public record of the history and derivation of the code can be used to defeat SCO in court. We can do more research than IBM's legal team because we have more people with more experience with the code and the history.
SCO's executives will make money on the pump-n-dump scheme. Until the suit comes to court, there's really nothing that can stop them. After the judgement, we'll see what the SEC does.
The last sentence, while correct, isn't what I intended. It should have been:
You don't let the contents of the story affect your beliefs about reality.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
here
SCO in their home page is displaying the UNIX System Development Timeline with is a very pretty Linux historic tree
Here
What I found is that there is not Line derivated from SCO OS code to Linux 2.4 as they are affirming in their own FAQ. But what is more interesting is that there is a Line from Linux code to Unixware just before the inscription \"Linux 2.4.0 Test 12\". If their own page is showing proofs that they are lying, what McBribe is doing is Fraud. And the stock owner of fiaSCO must put him and accomplices at jail.
Is 32V free? I read that the court ruled that AT&T didn't properly copyright the material, so does that mean that we can use things from it?
I think SCO is probably wrong and is probably going to lose in court. However, the article referenced at Linuxworld in this story is really poorly written. It's a painful read.
All I have to do is buy some.
"They could be "throwing" everyone off by making themselves look like idiots. Has it dawned on anyone that maybe the code snippets that were leaked were meant to be leaked?"
It would be much more effective for them to leak actually infringing code. Sure, then it would immediately be taken out of the kernel, but they wouldn't leak ALL of the infringing code. This would have VALIDATED their claims, even though this would be at the sacrifice of some of their precious "hostage code." This has really hurt their case, though.
No, basically they LIED when they claimed they were showind infringing snippets, and there is no advanage to their case, what so ever. You can't expect to ALWAYS lie about everything and expect it to convince people. They may be smarter than we think, but here they really screwed up.
For instance, later, when the SEC actually gets its butt into gear, they will have a documented instance where SCO said they were showing infringing code (which, no doubt, would cause investors to buy their stock), which was, in fact, not infringing. Not a smoking gun, but stuff like that accumulates and will eventually put you in prison. And though it might be hard to prove fraud, gross negligence can result in just as harsh a sentence .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
"You think pro sports stars have got it bad as they're driving home after the game when they've gone 1 for 10 and missed five three-pointers."
How can this guy even believe he can possibly relate to athletes who devote their lives to a special talent!?What talent does it take to be grossly negligent and then try to make up for it by making fraudalent claims? That is not talent but a mental illness.
What makes him any different from the guy who claims that he is "famous" for going on a road rampage and ramming innocent drivers in a police chase? We are witnessing someone who has totally lost touch with reality and probably won't figure things out until he is well behind bars.
And if I were Mormon, I would be extremely embarassed by his behavior. All Mormons I have met have had extremely well rounded characters, and it is really a shame that Daryl is not just damaging his own public image, but all other groups he "claims" to belong to.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Shame on you, you're going to be responsible for the death of a corporation! I'm no expert, but having dreams about about somebody cutting your balls off and running off with them doesn't sound good to me! Darl: "Bwahahahaha. Mom, mom, it isn't fair! That big bully, GPL is cheating. If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit!
This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.
Which makes me wonder... what the fuck is SCO using for version control if they can't look at the history of their own code?
And if SCO does submit changelogs (or is forced to divulge them during the discovery process), is there any way that IBM will be able to determine whether those changelogs were forged or not?
Given the recent history of SCO making demonstrably false statements in the press, I'm beginning to think that they might well do the same when it gest to the courtroom - except with non-demonstrably false statements.
If they do it, it's called perjury. But if they forge a set of CVS or RCS changelogs, how the hell do you prove it?
There's one thing I doesn't get: If the code in question was indeed written by Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson in 1973, why and how it got copyrighted by SGI?
Sooner or later all the idiots who have money caught associated with SCO are going to loose most if not all of it. Then they will sue the company executives... The proper way of taking advantage of this is having a drink when they go down and laughing at all the investors.
SCO's comments do not indicate that it was news to them that the code emanated from SGI. All they said was that word got out that SGI was the source, and they were fielding a lot of questions about it, so they went public with their position. It was news to the public, not the SCO.
They don't flat out state it, but from their comments it seems likely they've been in negotiations with SGI on this matter for quite some time. Given that some of this code was from XFS, they'd have to be complete idiots not to know that it likely came from SGI.
sigs are a waste of space
I heard that the Nazis has a similar FAQ, therefore, I won't read it.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1997/Nov9 7/scopr.asp
REDMOND, Wash.-November 24, 1997 - Microsoft Corporation today applauded the decision of the European Commission to close the file and take no further action on a dispute between Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) involving a 1987 contract. The Commission's decision follows progress by Microsoft and SCO to resolve a number of commercial issues related to the contract, and upholds Microsoft's right to receive royalty payments from SCO if software code developed by Microsoft is used in SCO's UNIX products.
So...McBride reads /. eh? I'm onto you Pavan_Gupta (623567), or should I say Darl McBride! That's right, you can't fool us!
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Microsoft will buy SCO for dirt cheap. Ballmer said they were being smart about things... What implications would it have if MS would have even one of SCO patents? Whether they being against GNU/Linux or UNIX in general? Folks, this is a play that needs to end now.
Couldn't resist.
-dan akroyd
I think Canopy missed the amount of news coverage they would get. That is, news organizations have noticed that they get an awful lot of clicks when they post a SCO story, so they are writing a lot of SCO stories. And the more stories they write, the more ugly stuff comes out.
For comparison: in August 2003, Canopy settled a suit against Computer Associates for $40 million. But that's not generating a lot of news stories, so not a lot of PHB's are getting the message that Canopy are litigious fucks that you really don't want to sign any contract with, ever.
Look what's happened to SCO's plan to invoice Linux users. Whether SCO meant to actually collect money, or just scare people, it's pretty clear now that if SCO mails out mass invoices, copies of those invoices are gonna get printed on the front page of news sites that PHB's with checkbooks actually read. Which is not good for SCO.
-
The third issue is licensing. Linux people don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights. This is the biggest problem in the Linux world. How can one be sure that the code of software that has been contributed by programmers across the world to create this Linux software is unique and is not lifted from somewhere else? This is a big legal concern.
That's a published example of FUD being deliberately spread by an official Microsoft representative. Until now, it's been hard to definitively tie Microsoft into this. But this statement provides clear evidence that Microsoft is behind it all.That is what the latest SCO-Linux lawsuit is all about. Now SCO is suing every single user of Linux because they believe parts of their UNIX code is being used in Linux. As a matter of fact, the Gartner Group came with a recommendation that every customer should stay away from Linux until this problem is sorted out. This is a serious issue. The model is broken basically.
Nothing since SCO do not own any patents.
This has been pointed out quite often. The issue is copyright.
Help fight continental drift.
5. PROFIT!!!
The article claims that SCO didn't know that the code shown was copyrighted by SGI. It then concludes from this that SCO don't know _their_ code's history. This is not a valid conclusion, the valid conclusions are that SCO doesn't know the history of Linux' code, and that they didn't even go as far as looking at the copyrights to find out.
Yes probably.
But even when they are paid they'll run out of money anytime and the company is dead. Even a single person like SCO's boss can't be that stupid.
Ok, they GOT paid the UNIX licenses from Sun and MS.
It won't have that big impact on Linux anyway. We'll see how this all ends. I agree, they won't win as it looks currently.
Back in the 80's there was a baseball player named Darryl Strawberry. Fans became aware that Darryl was sensitive to criticism, so in many stadiums the opposing fans would go on and on with a taunting chant: "DAR-RYL, DAR-RYL..." This tactic reached a creshendo in the 1986 World Series, as the Boston fans relentlessly chanted whenever Darryl was at the plate, in the field, or visible in any way. It was so loud and persistent, the TV commentators could speak of little else. Boston lost the series, but the fans set a new standard for derrogatory chanting. To this day, ANY player named Darryl (in ANY sport) runs the risk of the dreaded "Darryl" chant.
Fast-forward to 2003: Many people are angry. Sooner or later, this case goes to a public building. SCO's case is a joke and their CEO just happens to be named Daryl. I see some opportunites here.
The SCO in that article is what is now Tarantella. The dispute in question was over XENIX, the SCO/Microsoft version of Unix. I'm not sure whether XENIX was involved in the sale of UNIX to Caldera (now SCO) by the former SCO (now Tarentella).
Maybe instead of harassing SCO's execs directly, people could make sure that their own business manager's and clients know about the SCO issues.
Don't flame, don't make false accusations -- just forward the pertinant quotes and links from slashdot articles to the people you know who are in the financial businesses. Your accountant, your own broker, your bank manager, etc. Find out if your 401K is investing in SCO -- and demand your share be invested elsewhere. Put it in writing, too, and threaten them with charges if they continue to invest in a stock you know is being illegally pumped. If they don't listen, follow through and send a letter to the SEC with your concerns.
If we could get the financial institutions taking notice, you can bet SCO will be swatted faster than you can blink -- nobody wants another Enron.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
you *do* remember the proviso that "any attempt to invoke Godwin's Law in any specific attempt to end a given argument are null and void?"
You have not invoked Godwin's until and unless you do so in a way that is *not* intended to terminate the argument.
Yeah, don't hold your breath;
Court date for the showdown with IBM has been set for April 11 2005.
A year and a half to go. I thought waiting for the first LOTR flick was bad.
Still, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they're in no rush to get to court.
run it on the compiled code.
SCO's lawyers "should have known" the history of their poster child code examples.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Democracy is a failed experiment, time to try another one. PS: Before you misquote Churchill and say "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest", at least admit that we haven't really tried all the rest, and maybe it's time to give some of them we have tried a second look.
you *do* remember the proviso that "any attempt to invoke Godwin's Law in any specific attempt to end a given argument are null and void?"
:P)
You have not invoked Godwin's until and unless you do so in a way that is *not* intended to terminate the argument.
I read it as the first person to involuntarily invoke Nazis leads to a situation where you can invoke Godwin's Law. (OTOH, the FAQ the parent had said that the thread may devolve into arguments over what Godwin's Law means...so eh
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!