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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."
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.
damn preview, i meant they did not actually admit anything as far as validity of their ip claims. Just history.
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.
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.
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Not just that, IBM can go after SCO for intentional interference, abuse of process, and malicious prosecution.
Fight Spammers!
If you're intent on using 3rd party code, it's your responsibility to check that it's not infringing anybody else's rights. I would not buy such code for my company unless the 3rd party can provide evidence of their ownership over the code.
Microsoft Corporation sometimes uses code from the BSD operating system in their products. Under the terms of the BSD license, this is legal. However, the BSD operating systems are large-scale open source projects which many people have contributed to. This project does not have itemized, notarized documentation of the exact, definite author of every single line of code. Therefore, Microsoft cannot prove that the code in their operating system is legal to distribute.
Would your company be willing to license code from Microsoft under their shared source program, knowing this?
Ask them them what they would do if a company tried to sue people for making chocolate chip cookies.
Cookies have been around for a long time and some relatively new company trying to claim ownership on them is obviously deceptive.
But this whole mess is _not_ orchestrated by SCO. Look at the people involved, look at the content of IBM's subpoena (the important parts are up on groklaw), a subpoena adressed to Canopy, not SCO.
Canopy has a history of taking a lot of influence in the companies they have a majority stake in, so that in effect, the company is managed from inside Canopy.
I think they wanted to use the threat of a SCO kamikaze against IBM, in order to maximise their returns for a dying company by extorting some money from them and getting some money out of the stock market.
Now that IBM apparently doesn't want to play this game, they are solely taking the stock market route - notice how the number of (absurd) press releases per week went considerably up after it was clear the IBM wouldn't cave in.
On IBM's POV, I think they know quite well what's going on, they know their real "enemies" are part of canopy, as can be seen by the content of their subpoena.
Now we can speculate even more:
Maybe Canopy underestimated something when setting up that plot. This whole IP/Copyright "weakness" of linux they are capitalizing on is of an enormous strategical importance for IBM.
IBM must make sure that no one else will ever get the idea to do what Canopy/SCO are doing now.
And, if I interpret IBM's subpoena correcty, this is what they are doing now. They are beginning to show the world that there is no secure way of playing the game that canopy is playing now. And they (IBM) have to make sure that everyone gets this message.
So I don't expect this mess to resolve quietly, I expect Canopy to come out of this seriously hurt.
"It would be a real shame if he personally were to receive indications of the world's negative feelings about him..."
/. users working together to get him signed up to every spam source on the planet while setting up a fund to dump 100 tonnes of unprocessed bovine excrement on his doorstep just to make sure he gets as much bullshit as he gives out? That sort of thing?
What, you mean like
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.
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
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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 didn't want to say anything either, because the thesis of the story is right: SCO doesn't know the provenance of its code. They simply assume everything in System V and ever developed to work with System V is owned by them.
However, SCO clearly knew that the malloc code snippet "emanated" from SGI, because SGI's copyrights were in it. SCO has been hinting at problems with SGI for months, so this isn't even really news. The story would have been better, and rested on a stronger foundation, had they used the BPF code to underlie their thesis. I think SCO was honestly shocked to find that the B in BPF stood for Berkely.
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.
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...
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?
Darl C Mcbride, (801) 424-2006, 1799 Vintage Oak Ln, Salt Lake City, UT 84121
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?
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.
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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.