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Groklaw Outlines More SCO Linux Contributions
An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw today reported that they have discovered another SCO programmer, Tigran Aivazian, who has committed code to the Linux kernel. According to the latest story Mr. Aivazian contributed a microcode update feature, a testing program, and made contributions to SMP and vmalloc. This new story adds weight to earlier stories about Caldera coder Chris Hellwig's additions to XFS, SMP and JFS. " Also on the SCO front, an anonymous reader writes "SCO's last Open Letter has drawn two new responses, one from Red Hat cofounder Bob Young, and the other from Jon 'maddog' Hall. 'maddog' makes a carefully reasoned rebuttal that defends the GPL and includes observations like 'How could the founding fathers or the early legislators have foreseen the Web, or even computers?' Young curtly offers McBride the following advice: 'Be less vocal' - making him the King Canute of Linux, perhaps, because it ain't gonna happen anytime soon."
Seriously, this is not a troll:
Being as
Trolling is a art,
But when push comes to shove the courts system is going to have the final say so. I hope with all my heart that whatever judge oversees this case will make the correct decision and squash SCO like the bug they are.
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As we all know, open source code is transparent; it's all out there for everyone to see.
So why did it take four years to notice this?
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Its been thought of. And more or less refuted in general. And while I cant find the link, I remember a groklaw admin specificly stating that being slashdotted wasent an issue; they could handle it.
Freeze up the linux community just long enough and the world will pass them by.
has anyone else noticed even the smallest slowdown in open source development? i haven't. it certainly hasnt been frozen.
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"'Now I know it's trollish to root for MS in any case,"
Especially here where the MS fanboys and astro turfers will mod you up like crazy.
It does take a special kind of troll to suggest that MS actions and sleazeball tactics had zero effect on the demise of netscape though. Congratulations.
Go teach your children that crime does pay. Teach them that it's ok to break the law, to throw all their moral and ethical lessons out the windows and do anything they want to as long as they "win" and "laugh all the way to the bank".
No wonder kids flip out in school. The cognitive dissonance must be too much to bear. Their parents tell them to be nice and share, their churches tell them to be moral and ethical but the law and society tells them that it's OK lie, cheat and steal as long as you make lots of money.
War is necrophilia.
What this further demonstrates is that SCO obviously did not, based on their original lawsuit and all arguments after, perform adequate pre-acquisition due diligence to protect the Intellectual Property they are claiming is infringed.
SCO investors should be extremely interested in this point when the courts rule against SCO. This opens up the possibility of investor lawsuits against Darl and his E-staff personally (regardless of any governmental actions contemplated by the SEC and/or FTC)
.Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of fuckwits.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
The second point is that this is not a case where copyrighted material has escaped, been used by a competing company, and the competing company is claiming that because the copyrighted material is now in public view, it is no longer under copyright protection.
This is a case where the accused party is perfectly willing to discuss specific instances of copyright violation, and, if proved valid, remove the code.
The things that complicate this is whether IBM was under the standard or modified UNIX agreement, and whether anyone who ever worked in UNIX can be considered to have stolen IP from UNIX.
And this is why most of the discussion on this topic is irrelevant. The suite against IBM is probably a valid question, and maybe even justifiable due to the previous action of IBM. If the laws are followed, it will only affect IBM, at least until another battle is fought to prove the code in Linux is substantially similar. At which point the code will simply be removed and life will go on.
This is why they are trying to attack on the second front, essentially saying that Linux stole everything from Unix. There is no reason to show specific code, because all the code in effect breaks copyright because it was all done by people who saw Unix code. Saying that a programmer here and there legally contributed little pieces of code does not mean that overall product is does not break Unix copyright. Many would say this is a silly argument. But this is not something that will be won in courts. This will be won in the marketplace. And even thought the OSS software has no more risk than closed software, people may begin to believe that it does. And by fight SCO on the battlefield it selects, with articles such as this, we play into their strategy.
There are only two things that matter. First, the real battle is between IBM and SCO. That is the lawsuit that is filed. That is the only battle SCO needs to actively defend. If SCO wins, Linux will adjust the code. I think everyone has said this. Until a judgment is handed down, nothing needs to be done.
The second is the assumption that Linux breaks copyrights from Unix. SCO is not putting anything substantial into this fight. It is merely a distraction to make the OS community waste time. The only reasonable response is to sumarily state that there is no legal basis to find that Linux is derived from Unix and no known copyright infringement exists. If any are found, they will be corrected, as in the past. If asked why this is true, all one needs to do is ask why SCO has not filed suit to defend their point. At this point it is all words.
OSS can and should define the battlefield, and not just respond to SCO. I am sure that people will correct me or mod me down if they disagree.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So...why the heck did SCO allow employees to contribute to Linux? That seems massively stupid.
That doesn't mean that SCO won't claim otherwise, or claim that the person that authorized such contributions didn't have the authority to do so. Lets face it, it's not like telling a falsehood is a problem for SCO. That is my point from the first post albeit not well made. I assumed everyone had read the article and would infer that I was impying that SCO would lie about the companies past contributions
While your analysis is interesting, I think there is enough legal history in the BSD case to make it hard for SCO to pursue that "all of linux is in violation".
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.