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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."
You mean that McBride's rants may actually have a bit of substance behind them? OK, most of the code is gone now, and what code was there was Public Domin anyway, but McBride whining about the simple fact that the code was there now has some merit to it?
oh, man.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
"found brief fragments of code matching System V code in three generic routines (ate_utils.c, the atoi function " they're complaining about copied atoi code?!?!?! exactly how many variations of converting ascii to integers could there be? And why would anyone care about something so simple? Unless it was a FUD screen...
I don't see anything new here.
:-)
This was one of my thoughts as well. We still have no real idea what the hell anybody is talking about.
OK, OK, SGI said:
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.
OK so they point out a few places to look, but they also go on to say:
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.
OK, so they found "a few" other things. What are those "other things"? OK, it's cool they are doing a bit of busting their asses to make sure that they are clean and that SCO is wrong, but it would be nice to see a bit more than that.
To any SGI person that may be reading:
I'm not downing the efforts, I'm just questioning the accuracy of what the hell is going on because none of us out here really know the TRUE facts.
I guess I could check with your diff's though...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
SGI admitting to having contributed some System V code to the Linux kernel brings to mind a question I've had for years: what are the chances that in a big closed source project (like Windows for example), that some developer hasn't used some open source code at one point or another? How do you protect against this?
Is there a process to audit big companies code? 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?
And for that matter, which license would win? If GPL'd code was found in a product like Windows, would Microsoft be forced to open source the entire thing?
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Oct/10012003/business/9 7397.asp:
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said Tuesday that he understood the extension is being sought "for the purpose of gaining documents from IBM related to the patents they claim. . . . Some of the patents aren't even filed with the U.S. Patent Office, as far as we can learn."
From http://lwn.net/Articles/43592/ the patent numbers are:
4,814,746
4,821,211
4,953,209
5,805,785
Go here http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm [uspto.gov]
Type in the patent numbers into uspto.gov form
You will find them all. Immediately. In fact they load up immediately after typing in the number.
I've seen a lot of people for the last few months expressing outrage over SCO's actions. If you are convinced that SCO has no case and that their claims are false, why not short their stock? Put your money where your mouth is. I have.
SCO has a P/E ratio over 80 lately which indicates it's stock price is inflated anyway so it makes sense. If they're going to be a bunch of lying bastards, why shouldn't we profit from them going out of business?
Bullshit. Are you trolling for SCO?
As I have stated previously,
You were wrong then, too.
Now SGI is ADMITTING that they put SYSV code in the Linux codebase.
No they're not. They're saying that they found code that happens to match some Sys V code in what they submitted -- less than 0.02% worth. The exact provenance of that code isn't clear, SysV may have got it from the same place SGI did. Your statement implies several levels of culpability that is just plain not in the SGI letter.
Whether or not it has been removed is IMMATERIAL for purposes of this case.
What case? So far the only "case" (lawsuit) is between IBM and SCO, and between RedHat and SCO. IF SCO decides to launch yet another lawsuit and sue SGI for copyright infringment (and remember, SCO has NOT made any copyright complaints against IBM (but IBM has against SCO)), then there may be a case. But SGI's action in removing the questionable code is VERY MATERIAL -- it limits SCO's claims. (Furthermore, since SCO has so far refused to reveal what code it thinks infringes, it may have no claim because it hasn't taken the necessary steps to mitigate damage.)
-- Alastair
for ( i = 0; i < max; ++ i )
The line of code above belongs to me, I wrote it and everyone who has any similar code, including code resulting in compilation needs to pay me.
The poster of the parent article is herby given notice of infringement and $150,000 damages for each infringement. I estimate that $1e12 (1 trillion dollars) is a good starting point.
The point I'm trying to make is that Copyright laws are far more complex than you make it out to be. Firstly, being a civil suit, damages need to be assesed. If damage to SCO is immaterial, then SCO is far worse position now by revoking SGI's licence because it will be easily shown to the jury as extortion.
As a counter-example, if IBM had released some unique feature, say for example as O(1) scheduler, from the Unix code base, then SCO would have some reason to rattle a little.
I remeber a civil suit once where someone was being sued for service overcharges and once of the pieces of evidence was a $75 overcharge which was even in doubt. The judge turned to the claimant's attorney and said somthing like this, "you have spent half and hour of the court's time attempting to show a transgression of $75. Do you realize just how much that 30 minutes of court time costs ?".
The point is, the judicial system expects parties to be fair. If I make a claim against someone, it is not fair that I make it difficult or impossible for you to continue to do business.
Altmier's letter is an excellent defence for SGI in this case. It shows that a) the infringement was trivial and hence the actual damage is negligible, b) the transgression was corrected rapidly to minimize any pervieved issues and c) SGI was attempting to be as fair as possible. SCO on the other hand is threatening to revoke an irrevokable license and damage SGI's ability to do buisness. If SGI counter-sues for damages of lost revenue they will win because SCO is not acting in good faith.
There is more. "IP" comes in 2 flavours, Copyright and Patents. What SCO is claiming here is unclear. It seems like the wording is regarding patents but they cite Copyright infringements as evidence. Their message simply does not make any legal sense. I recall a discussion once between an attourney and an engineer regarding a legal matter. Typical engineer is trying to navigate to a solution around a county building assessor who was being particularly difficult. After listening to the engineer's brilliant alternatives the attourney says "wait, you forget somthing, the guy is a moron.". This story parallel's the case of SCO vs the world.
"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."
It would be nice if they (IBM, SGI) ran the ENTIRE Linux/GPL code base through a tokenized comparison with their reference SCO Unix trees. Thus GPL community could start identifying and removing any suspect code NOW, rather than wait for a trial outcome.
It's legally valid because you didn't licence your car from Ford -- you purchased an object. Things like cars and toasters aren't (yet) subject to licencing (just wait til your toaster has software on it though... betcha the box has a EULA).
You did, however, licence your linux software from the developers who wrote it and if they stole code, you, as a licencee, may be responsible, not for damages, but for payment of licencing fees on the code that was misappropriated.
We could argue all day about wether software *should* be considered identical to a physical object, but at present it is not. You don't buy software, you buy software licences, always.
So in summary, yes, it *could* stand up in court, not as a liability issue, i.e. damages for past illegality, but as an issue of paying a licence for the use of SCO IP. This presupposes that they can prove that Linux actually carries any such IP and that the version of the kernel you happen to be using contains any of it. The first is highly questionable and the second will be moot about a week after any infringing code segments are actually identified.
(the latter case, incidentally, does nothing to help IBM in their contractual dispute which *is* a liability issue and *is* about past damages. If infringing code is found, even if the code is removed from the linux sources, those responsible for the misappropriation, presumably IBM, will be held liable for damages. However, users should be free and clear, though linux's reputation would be substantially tarnished.)
[i am, of course, not a lawyer, but i'm pretty sure my understanding is correct.]