Slashdot Mirror
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."
How "carefully reasoned" can a piece be by a guy called maddog???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
(note: this is NOT an intentional troll. i'm just trying to understand this issue as best i can. thanks for not kicking me in the teeth :)
as far as i can tell, the SCO is upset with linux because several of its programmers contributed to the linux kernel, and so SCO feels that it deserves some sort of monetary kickback, right?
but, if you contribute to something that you KNOW is open-source, don't you, like, forfeit any ability to request monetary compensation for your effort? or am i missing something big here?
Now that the Denial of Service stuff is over with, we can get back to the regular SCO articles...
Though it would be fun for everyone who reads Slashdot to send SCO a letter in complaint of their business practices, especially if they were all sent within the same week. Would they try to call receiving a million pieces of mail in six days an 'attack' too?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This article is interesting because it shows that some of the code allegedly added by IBM was in fact added by SCO itself.
... and here I was thinking that I needed a tinfoil hat.
Trolling is a art,
"Hello! Hello, McBride!!! Anybody home?"
Well, it's more Biff Tannen, but it's a descendant of Mad Dog.
Other Mad Dog quotes:
"We have ourselves a new court house, high time we had a hanging!"
"What's wrong dude, you yellow?"
And perhaps the most appropriate:
"I hate manure!"
Seriously, this is not a troll:
Being as
Trolling is a art,
The site to read when you want to see whatever was on Groklaw 48 hours ago.
Does anyone wonder...
1. The technological world moves fast, this is its nature. To slow any portion of it down is to kill it. If you force a technology to wait on slower social systems like justice the world moves on without it.
2. We saw this with Netscape. Sure they won the case, Mircrosoft was held to be in violation of the law, but by the time the issue was resolved the browser wars were old news.
3. Is this what we're seeing with SCO? Freeze up the linux community just long enough and the world will pass them by. Are the same actors involved? Does SCO get money from Microsoft? Bill's a smart man, why not loose a battle to win the war?
** Insert popular political comment here.**
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
If only more execs were like him, we would have a much better business atmosphere here in the U.S. of A.
Thanks Mr. Young, I've always had the utmost respect for you.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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.
Get Movie Posters
The JFS code came from OS/2, not from AIX.
Please, if you don't know what you are talking about, don't present it as fact.
Would it have killed you to have added the words I think somewhere in that sentence?
"Groklaw today reported that they have discovered another SCO programmer, Tigran Aivazian, who has committed code to the Linux kernel."
My take is that if a SCO programmer contributed code, then of course SCO wanted the code contributed and it then falls under the GPL. This seems reasonable. The idea that worries me is that SCO may claim that the programmer(s) was/were rogue and made the contributions against their "corporate policy". Then what do you do? The genie is out of the bottle, you can't take it back and who does SCO go after - the programer or the Linux community?
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Well, since they have been ordered to show the code in the court in january I think we will se the end of this. One question I Do have is:
I do not live in America, but shouldnt there be a lot of people reporting SCO to the appropriate governmental Body that oversees frauds in the stockmarket? (SEC)
How is that going, do they have any official stance on that or?
Are they waiting until the hammer falls (most likely) in heavy disfavor to Sco?
Care to enlighten a foreigner?
You'll notice that the entire point is that Groklaw has now established these contributors had policy/supervisor approval.
We always knew that Mr. Aivazian contributed to Linux; the new thing that Groklaw has unveiled here is that he can be proven to have been acting as an authorized agent of SCO.
-- Super Ugly Ultraman
"'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?'"
maddog isn't careful enough to avoid the irrelevant "author's intent" of the "framers" of the US Constitution. The primary design principle of the Constitution was to model the "natural" rights of people in a document that would guide a just government, mainly by limiting its power. Their primary mechanism for making the model accurate was to enumerate mechanisms for keeping it current, starting immediately with the first 10 amendments (the Bill of Rights). That's why the US government is now the oldest in existence, excepting some ways of looking at China and the Vatican (and some other tiny places). The founders of the USA had insight, more accurate than foresight. Much of that insight was gained through the importance of publishing in the colonies - NB Ben Franklin as publisher, Thomas Paine the leafleteer, and many others.
The self-reinforcing dynamic feedback relationship between the US government structure and the people has shaped both the government and the people, keeping them in relative harmony. maddog can forget about the "founders", as long as he keeps the Constitution (to be read in the present tense) in mind - a living document that really works.
--
make install -not war
This is devastating news for SCO, for they can no longer claim to have protected they 'trade secrets' appropriately, thus they might loose rights to whatever they did on jfs in the courts.
... loose. Good.
On the other hand, they failed to cough up any sensible evidence so far, and my guess is that they are clueless about the affairs at 'old' SCO. This relevation might point them to the right direction - they can pinpoint precisely where code exchange between unixware and linux took place. They can either submit this as new evidence (deadline: jan 8?) and loose, or disregard it and
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?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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.
I say this is a deep-cover infiltration operation.
The owls are not what they seem
Well since the alleged flood on SCO's web site, I was curious enough to go visit it. Interesting are the news items there.
SCO Ranked 75 In Deloitte Technology Fast 500
The SCO(R) Group (SCO) (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of business software solutions, today announced its ranking-number 75-on the 2003 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America.
Darl McBride Ranked in Top 25 IT Executives for 2003
Darl McBride, president and CEO of The SCO Group, was ranked among the top 25 executives in the IT industry, according to CRN. The ranking represents McBride's fight to raise industry awareness of the importance of protecting intellectual property in a digital age"
and then this little troll from SCO in the NEWS
Zealots: The Three Faces of Linux
It's sad to see how people are so misguided.
I like the second version better. From the linked Wikipedia article:
DISCLAIMER: I'm danish, so of course i prefer the more favourable version. Anyway, the English owe us nearly 900 years of danegeld. (If you pay up now we might even give you a discount for the very handy assistance in WWII!)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
In an otherwise thoughtful and well-meaning letter, Bob Young incorrectly states opinions that are widely published elsewhere and fails to take Darl McBride's view of theft (versus copyright infringement) to task. Instead, Young reaffirms McBride's conflation of theft and copyright infringement and seriously mistakenly summarizes RMS' ideas.
Consider this part from Young's letter:
Everyone does not agree that "intellectual property" is a good thing. RMS, for instance, has said that he has no opinions on "intellectual property" except to point out the misleading consequences one arrives at from using the term and how it prejudices one's thinking to treat disparate areas of law like property. RMS has opinions on patents, separate opinions on copyright, and separate opinions on trademark law. RMS does not mix up his ideas into one jumbled whole called "intellectual property".
Furthermore, I have never heard nor read RMS say "it is not a good idea to copyright software" nor does young provide a source for this summary. RMS is against patenting algorithms used in the creation of computer software and most software programmers I've met are in agreement with him because so-called 'software patents' do such a profound disservice to their work. As RMS points out in his critique of the term "intellectual property", copyright and patents are not the same, in fact they differ more than they are alike. Copyrights and patents aren't acquired in the same way, they don't last for the same length of time, they don't cover the same things, policy concerning these two disparate sets of laws aren't governed by the same office, and defending against copyright infringement is not at all the same as defending against patent infringement. But you can see how someone who believes "[e]veryone agrees intellectual property, from trademark law to copyrights and patents, is a good thing" would arrive at such a mistaken conclusion about RMS' ideas and whether these laws are well received.
With respect to the term of copyright, Young notes that "[t]he Supreme Court case that you [McBride] misrepresent in your latest open letter demonstrates the Justices think too much of a good thing may no longer be so good" but doesn't understand how he is (in the FSF's words) "making an appeal to authority...and misrepresenting what the authority says" by talking about copyright infringement as theft.
If we accept the idea that property and ideas and expression are all one and the same, we allow ourselves to deny that new ideas are built on old ideas (or more generally, the future is built on the past). The limits of copyright law look very wrong and we champion the same goals as the Bonos and we buy into the hypocrisy exhibited by the Disney corporation. Then we lose the argument we are struggling to make with legislators.
Digital Citizen
If I were really cynical I might suspect the timing...just before MS was making a big push to roll out 2003, as the IT industry was coming out of a 2 1/2 year stretch where many companies were not buying much of anything, just as NT is getting near the end of its life cycle. You have to admit that questions arising about Linux IP purity and a potential liability scare right at this particular time was really convenient for MS. Likely just coincidence, but a mighty handy one all the same.
Fortunately it hasn't done much of anything to stall the advance. At this point trying to stop Linux is like trying to stop the wind. The code is out there in so many places in so many flavors, in so many countries that don't give a crap about US copyright law in the first place. The switch is on. SCO is little more than side show entertainment. What my grandfather would've called a fart in a whirlwind.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Announcing... (drumroll)
SCO Countdown
Countind Down To The End Of This fiaSCO!
This makes me wonder. Did the ancient tribes of man know about metal instruments? Would they understand guns, or explosives, cities, or genetic engineering? Did the egyptians know why their bronze swords would break when hit by the iron swords of their invaders?
Did mideval kingdoms have running water, magic lights, gunpowder or even the understanding of this? Could all of our founding fathers known that technology would develope so rapidly in 100 years? Fuck no, but they certainly knew how the egyptians viewed iron swords, how samarai viewed gunpowder and how the indians viewed cities. Because of this, they were wise, and from this wisdom they were able to draft a bill of rights. When a goverment begins to go downhill, it's because these rights have been violated.
It's not hippie rhetoric, it's no fundementalist anarchism or socialism, and it isn't a fools game. Because we have the internet and access to more books and media than ever before, we can become, and some are, smarter than they are. You can view a political debate 2 ways; a logical system much like any router or electrical equipment that must be balanced and mouled to certan rules, or you can view it as 2 gods fighting over a bunch of ants. If you believe the ladder is going on, you are an idiot. If you can understand the former, you have a brain and you use it. There's your litmus paper test.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Hall writes: ".. GPL does not allow a company to take the software created by the sweat and work of another person, add a few lines of code to it and then sell it to make a huge profit."
In fact, the GPL _does_ allow this. There is no restriction in taking a GPLed piece of code, adding lines of code (or not) and then selling it to someone for $X dollars. (1 Jillion Dollars! finger to corner of mouth). In fact, it's completely allowed so long as the buyer recieves the _same_ GPL rights (and source on demand). Why someone would purchase a GPLed product (sans support or other value added) for such an amount is another question, but in fact, a number of people out there do just such a thing, including with code that the original author has changed license terms on and no longer provides GPLed code themselves. Once a GPLed copy is out there, it's out there. Which is a good thing. Despite SCO's claims.
[Major market players such as Mandrake began by 'adding lines of code' to existing products such as Red Hat.]
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
A statement "by an elder". That's what it is.
;-)
And it's exactly the card that SCO is mostly playing, to get trenched in (former) bigshots to dilute the debate -- and that's only the debate on *this* side of the fence, on the other side I'm sure it goes quite differently and with lots of chuckling -- and step by step get more of their reasoning accepted or refuted quickly and then looked over, thus effectively accepted by the journaille.
The devil indeed is in the details. So they tell you to discuss details. Get it? They do. Not that that'll save them in the end. But surely they get that as well. This is their finest hour, or well at least Kevins
So...why the heck did SCO allow employees to contribute to Linux? That seems massively stupid.
SCO now has the following job openings available...
Now pay attention to the date on that last job opening. That is Monday following SCOX's 5-Dec lame oral arguments.
Why suddenly is this position vacant? Some theories...
So, if you're out of work and qualified, a great career opportunity would be to work at SCO!
Director of Financial Reporting and SEC/GAAP Compliance Requisition# 40238
http://www.sco.com/company/jobs/
Type: Exempt
Posted 08 December, 2003
Location: Lindon, UT
Department:
Reports To: Controller
Apply Now
Job Description:
Responsible for the financial reporting of quarterly and annual results in accordance with SEC rules and regulations. Responsible for the filing of registration statements and other periodic filings as required. Duties will include the drafting and review of quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, annual reports on Form 10-K, periodic reports on Form 8-K, as well as assist in the preparation of registration and proxy statements and any other filings. Other responsibilities will include the monitoring of the Company's compliance with current SEC, FASB and other regulatory literature that pertains to accounting and financial reporting. This position will also lead the Company's effort on maintaining an effective system of internal control, and ensuring the internal control structure is in compliance with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Additional special projects will be given on an "as occurring" basis.
Job Responsibilities:
Financial reporting of quarterly and annual results in accordance with SEC rules and regulations Filing of registration statements and other periodic filings as required Drafting and review of quarterly and annual reports Assist in the preparation of registration and proxy statements and any other filings Monitoring of the Company's compliance with current SEC, FASB and other regulatory literature that pertains to accounting and financial reporting Additional special projects will be given on an "as occurring" basis.
Job Requirements:
Masters degree in accounting and experience as a manager with a public accounting firm and a minimum of 8 years accounting experience. Extensive financial reporting experience
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Relevant SCO info seems to be coming from Groklaw. Even technical info that seems more suited to be coming from readers of /.
Some very interesting aspects of timing of efforts by Mr. Aivazian that include the following:
"It seems everything Mr. Aivazian does works together. If SMP or vmalloc.c doesn't work, the microcode update feature might fail, so he works on SMP and vmalloc.c. If either SMP or microcode update is crashing, he needs to know why, so he works on the debugger."
First of all I am damn impressed that anyone can over-ride a processor microcode !
The debugger is equally impressive. If you can't find why it breaks, ya can't fix it.
This is very credible and just might sink SCO's claims altogether.
TG
"If you really cared you would be pushing/calling for the ouster/trial of Arafat for stealing so much money from a people that desperatly need the money."
I am all for it. I also believe that Sharon should be tried for war crimes. Let's do both. Let's arrest and try both Arafat and Sharon. Let's crack down on hamas, kill and arrest their leaders and at the same time let's dismantle all the settlements, tear down the fence, and give the palestenian people the freedom they deserve.
You are the one that's one sided. I do not dismiss anything the PA does but neither am I willing to give the Israeli govt a pass.
A civilized nation eventually makes the people it conquered citizens. The US did this, Russia did this, and China did this. If you gain ground in war then eventually you must assimilate the people you have conqered. The palestenians are the keep of the Israeli govt. Israel should annex the terrorotories as spoils of war and give full citizenship to everybody living there. That's how civilized nations act.
War is necrophilia.