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SGI's Letter to the Linux Community

Posted by michael on from the hard-news dept.

_Upsilon_ writes "SGI has released a letter to the Linux community in response to SCO's recent threat to revoke the UNIX licence for Irix. The letter mentions that they inadvertently did submit some System V code into the Linux kernel, that has since been removed (and some more in the process of being removed). The article points out that the code fragments in question had already been released into the public domain as well."

10 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. SCO Reply by briggsb · · Score: 5, Funny

    SCO is quick with their reply to SGI.

  2. Tommorows news today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    SCO CEO Darl McBride remained true to form when he responded to the SGI letter, "IRIX infringes upon our IP, this means that motion pictures featuring graphics rendered on SGI is a derivative work of our UNIX SysV code. We are not just talking a couple in frames, we are talking entire movies here".

    The film at 11 is now the intellectual property of the SCO group.

  3. Re:Moderators: Karma Whore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hate karma whoring ACs...

  4. Re:Don't /. these guys by motte_fra · · Score: 5, Funny

    serving text/plain is quite strenuous on those small servers

  5. Re:Uh-oh... by bladernr · · Score: 4, Funny
    Even if it had merit, the fact that McBride ranted about it renders that merit void.

    Oh dear, if ranting makes a point void, the /. community is voiding an awful lot of points :)

    --
    Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
  6. Given sco's record of press releases and FUD by snakecoder · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't wait to see how they will spin this. "SGI ADMITS PLACING SCO CODE IN LINUX!" maybe time to day trade today.

    --
    -Nuke the moon
  7. Re:Uh-oh... by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 5, Funny
    My God! You are right! SCO have forced SGI to admit that core, critical components of Linux have actually been ripped out of System V! I mean, take one example from the massive 200 lines of offending code: the atoi(3) function. Yep, a function of such mind-blowing sophistication and complexity that it takes a NULL-terminated string argument and converts it to an integer. It is true, the Linux community lacks the technical ability to reproduce this function, hence the necessity to rip it from System V. Yes, this really is a tragic day for Linux.


    Perhaps there is already a freely-available atoi(3) implementation that can be used by the Kernel? Yes, in fact there is! Even better, it coincides with the atoi(3) function that was removed! Woohoo! We are saved! There is not even eny need to look further afield, like the multitude of *other* free implementations around the place (say, glibc? BSD?), or (at last resort) actually finding a master C programmer to lock himself in a room for the long winter months in an effort to come up with an independent implementation.


    The funniest thing is, that it probably WOULD take a huge effort by a master programmer to actually find an implementation of atoi(3) that was truely independent ;-)

  8. SCO's *real* objective by phliar · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've got it! The real objective behind these ridiculous statements SCO is making: to consolidate and solidify support for the GPL and Linux by making large companies like IBM and SGI make public statements in support! Sure, contributing code to Linux is all very well, but until now the press releases had always been a little diffident and scattered. Now the industry is unified and strong in support of Linux and the GPL. Since the GPL hadn't been tested in court, what better way to help than by filing a completely ridiculous case against it? "The GPL is invalid because US Copyright Law only allows you to make one copy."

    --
    Unlimited growth == Cancer.
  9. I've figured out how SCO will spin this by yeremein · · Score: 5, Funny
    SGI says:
    All together, these three small code fragments comprised no more than 200 lines out of the more than one million lines of our overall contributions to Linux. Notably, it appears that most or all of the System V code fragments we found had previously been placed in the public domain, meaning it is very doubtful that the SCO Group has any proprietary claim to these code fragments in any case.

    Tomorrow's SCO press release will say:

    All together, these ... code fragments comprised ... more than one million lines of ... System V code ... that the SCO Group has ... proprietary claim to.
  10. Whore? by Kommet · · Score: 5, Funny
    Um, yeah. A "Karma Whore" who can't possibly get Karma for posting this since it was posted AC. Now calling him/her/it a "Karma Thief" I could get behind!

    Hey, now there's an idea!

    A new class of hated Slashdot readers: evil Karma Thieves who post an article as an Anonymous Coward, thus depriving all the good, honest, hard-working Karma Whores of their cheap-ass mod points.