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SGI's Letter to the Linux Community
_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."
October 1, 2003
To the Linux Community:
As one of many contributors to the Open Source movement and to Linux,
SGI takes the subject of intellectual property rights seriously. Our
contributions are a valuable expression of ideas which contribute to
the intellectual richness of Linux.
Over the past four years, SGI has released over a million lines of code
under an open source license. Throughout, we have carried out a
rigorous internal process to ensure that all software contributed by
SGI represents code we are legally entitled to release as open source.
When a question was raised by the community earlier in the summer about
the ate_utils.c routine, we took immediate action to address it. We
quickly and carefully re-reviewed our contributions to open source, and
found brief fragments of code matching System V code in three generic
routines (ate_utils.c, the atoi function and systeminfo.h header file),
all within the I/O infrastructure support for SGI's platform. The three
code fragments had been inadvertently included and in fact were
redundant from the start. We found better replacements providing the
same functionality already available in the Linux kernel. 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.
As a precaution, we promptly removed the code fragments from SGIs Linux
website and distributed customer patches, and released patches to the
2.4 and 2.5 kernels on June 30 and July 3 to replace these routines and
make other fixes to the SGI infrastructure code that were already in
progress at SGI. Our changes showed up in the 2.5 kernel within a few
weeks of our submission, and the 2.4 changes were available in the
production version of the 2.4 kernel as of August 25 when the 2.4.22
kernel was released. Thus, the code in question has been completely
removed.
Following this occurrence, we continued our investigation to determine
whether any other code in the Linux kernel was even conceivably
implicated. As a result of that exhaustive investigation, SGI has
discovered a few additional code segments (similar in nature to the
segments referred to above and trivial in amount) that may arguably be
related to UNIX code. We are in the process of removing and replacing
these segments.
SCO's references to XFS are completely misplaced. XFS is an innovative
SGI- created work. It is not a derivative work of System V in any
sense, and SGI has full rights to license it to whomever we choose and
to contribute it to open source. It may be that SCO is taking the
position that merely because XFS is also distributed along with IRIX it
is somehow subject to the System V license. But if so, this is an
absurd position, with no basis either in the license or in common
sense. In fact, our UNIX license clearly provides that SGI retains
ownership and all rights as to all code that was not part of AT&Ts UNIX
System V.
I hope this answers some of the questions that you and the Linux
community might have. We continue to release new Linux work, and are
very excited about the growth and acceptance of Linux. We are
continuing full speed to do new work and release new Linux products.
We take our responsibility to the open source community seriously and
are confident that we have an effective process to verify the quality
and integrity of our contributions to Linux.
Rich Altmaier
VP of Software, SGI
richa@sgi.com
Newsforge
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
On the other hand, this also confirms that SCO is spouting non-sense and has no legal basis for its suits, since:
I predict SCO is therefore going to be squashed by IBM, SGI, Red Hat etc. Good riddance.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Unlike Big Blue, SGI might not be well placed to fight a drawn-out legal battle with SCO. Revenue is declining, cashflow is negative, and the share price is circling the toilet bowl. And since the IBM/SCO case doesn't look like it will be resolved soon, you have to wonder how much resistance SGI can put up...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
However, that may just be wishful thinking on their part.
No, it isn't. Read Eric Raymond's analysis of the code in question, it is very clear that the code has been released at some point under a license that would permit it's use.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
In any organization this will happen. SCO is saying that IBM moved the code into Linux on purpose to destroy UNIX.
This is very different from an inadvertant violation. If you took me to court and I could present evidence that I did not include your code purposefully, that I removed the offending code as soon as I knew about it and presented documentation that the code was public domain, but that I thought it would be better to remove any possibility of violation, chances are that would be the end of it. The court would see that I performed due diligence to detect and fix the problem.
That is why Linus and others keep on challenging SCO to show them the code so that they can perform their legal obligation and remove it. These people have also said that the fact that SCO won't show the code probably indicates that there are no violations, and certainly not on the grand, purposful scale SCO alleges. Look, if somone walked into your place of work and said "you are running unlicensed software," they'd be right. I have never seen a business that was NOT running unlicensed software. Does that mean they did it on purpose to destroy the maker of that software?
A bit off-topic, but in all this SCO issue, I never understood why the end user would be liable.
If I buy say a Ford, and it turns out that Ford stole intellectual property from GM, would I, as a Ford owner whose car specifications have been improved by the stollen IP, have to pay say $200 to GM? I think not. GM should only sew Ford, not Ford car owners.
Now why a Linux user would be liable? Contributors to Linux and other open source project should be liable, but not end users. If SCO limited its action against code contributors, I could understand it (assuming that there are some merits). But can they actually ask end users to pay up? Can this really stand in court?
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Zero
How do you protect against this?
Only through wistle-blowers
Is there a process to audit big companies code?
Not unless you're a big company
MS threatens me with audits to check my license compliance, can I audit them to check that no open source code is in their products?
It is to laugh!
If GPL'd code was found in a product like Windows, would Microsoft be forced to open source the entire thing?
Historically companies have been allowed to replace the code instead. Generally speaking the Open Source movement understands that a large company can fall foul of a single person, or even team, that cheats. If the company shows willing then there's no point in getting mediaeval on them. Even if it did come to a fight I think most courts would allow a company off with an unknowing violation. The fight with SCO that is now brewing is that they are knowingly in breach of the GPL, and therefore in breach of copyright law and are publicly stating that they don't care and the law can go fuck itself.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
" their stock price will bump up and that's about it. "
WTF? You terminate one of your most lucrative relationship in business and your stock goes up?
Welcome to crazy accounting world. Much like back in the day, when a company laid off workers it meant they were in financial trouble and the stock price went down, but now it is seen as a good thing they are "cutting costs" and "restructuring" so the stock price goes up; if a company decides to sue their customers it is now seen as "strongly defending their IP" and the stock price goes up, rather than people seeing it as as in the company has no leadership and can no longer produce products for sale in a competitive market.
Ultimately, it does not matter. If the stock price starts going up, people will buy in not caring why the stock price goes up. This will ultimately drive the stock price up more. A certain amount of investing is paint-by-numbers with irrational numbers. Such is the business of the stock market casino.
There is a reason for Hamlet stating "The laws delay" in his famous To be or not soliloguy
They need to sit back and do pretty much nothing, other than make demands on SCO to produce the eveidence through discovery if they indeed get sued.
Second SGI needs all the press they can get so maybe something useful can come out of this. SGI would love to be mentioned in every sentence next to IBM and RH.
Help fight continental drift.
And yes, see my sibling post about it being a mistake regarding autofilling forms. As I mentioned, it really doesn't change my idealogical stance.
and also
-- Alastair
> Is there a process to audit big companies code?
Sure. File an infringement lawsuit and convince the court that you have enough of a case (for example by producing a former employee who will testify that they used your code) to proceed to discovery.
> MS threatens me with audits to check my license
> compliance...
You entered into a contract with them. I didn't and so they have no more right to audit me than I have to audit them.
> And for that matter, which license would win?
I'm not sure what you mean by that. If they are infringing they are infringing.
> If GPL'd code was found in a product like
> Windows, would Microsoft be forced to open
> source the entire thing?
No, but they could be ordered to stop distributing it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I looked at my comments and I have never posted a link to this article before.
What about Linux International ?