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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."
How "carefully reasoned" can a piece be by a guy called maddog???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
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.
"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!"
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.
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
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
Groklaw has a paypal donation button. Give them a few bucks for all the good work.
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.
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
Please come to the site; we should be able to handle the Slashdot crowd.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
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.]
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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