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Linus Blasts SCO's Header Claims
jonbryce writes "Linus has responded to the latest claims made by SCO in their letter to the Fortune 1000 companies. Basically, he wrote the code himself, and it has been there since Linux 0.0.1. No copying from BSD or any other source." You can also read his comment to the Linux kernel mailing list, which reads in part "I think we can totally _demolish_ the SCO claim that these
65 files were somehow 'copied.' They clearly are not."
A reputable publicly-traded tax-paying United States corporation and some Finnish teenager from goddamn Communist country. Hmm, I wonder who's telling the truth.
Wow, it's a bloody SCO story trifecta day today! :)
Don't we need to inspect all the patches applied to these files and make sure that they were from sources that are as clean as the original code?
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" --Salvor Hardin
Do any of you Slashot people here have a copy of Linux 0.0.1 to prove it? :)
56 days till it's all over
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing I worked with more coders like Linus Torvalds. How many times have we programmers found some code that didn't work like it should, asked the original coder about it, and had our heads bitten off for daring to suggest that there was anything sub-optimum about their baby?
;) ... So there is definitely a lot of proof that my ctype.h is original work.
Mr. Torvalds, on the other hand, shows his value by his honesty:
- I wrote them [ctype.h] (and looking at the original ones, I'm a bit ashamed: the "toupper()" and "tolower()" macros are so horribly ugly that I wouldn't admit to writing them if it wasn't because somebody else claimed to have done so
It's like a doctor admitting a misdiagnosis to the patient... a wizard willing to work on Dorothy's side of the curtain. I hope that I'm as honest about my code as Linus -- and that my management continues to understand that you don't get good code by pretending you never make mistakes.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Linus' analysis spawned a masterful trolling Subject header on the Yahoo message board for scox: Linus caught - confessing to be ashamed. Nevermind that Linus' shameful confession wasn't copying code, but rather that his Linux 0.01 implementation of ctype wasn't threadsafe. Such beautiful spin. Darl would be proud. :)
It is obvious that SCO (trying to keep up it's inflated stock price) is issuing ridiculous claims about once a week. Given the amount of time that we have until they have to put up or shut up during a trial we can look forward to more of Darl's comedic stylings in the form of outlandish claims.
In case you're curious about where to get shares to short SCOX, Vanguard has them.
This is utterly insane.. It just goes to show how low they will sink to try and make a buck.
This troll would be a lot funnier if the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for a Google search of the name "Linus" didn't take you DIRECTLY to Linus Torvalds' home page.
Linus probably spent the better part of the day responding to this SCO sillyness. What a waste of time. SCO should somehow be made to pay for there frivolous bullshit!
SCO seems to be run by raving madmen.
I wonder if Darl and Co. will be trying to leave the US before the trial and this is all some contrivance to get the stock price up a bit more for some spending money.
Johnnyv
Isn't there some way to just shrug off SCO? I mean, it's like some annoying little man that constantly claims your head as his and is suing you for taking your head from him...
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I wrote that exact same letter in 1997!
He's the main thief of SCO property. /sarcasm :)
I can't remeber now what those 65 thingies are but I remember writing them. I did it with charcoal, a small floating rock and a duck I always keep in my pocket. I kept an onion tied around my waist, which was the style of the times, and I dreamt of marrying my comely cousin. Alas I lived in Springfield not Shelbyville. Anyway... I was writing code that I never saw before in BSD Free, Open or otherwise.
There was a boy with a blanket being pulled by a beagle. He was quoting Chaucer and blathering about a pumpkin, possibly Great. In any event he took from me my charcoaled rock and yelled, "You're a good man ellem!"
I hadn't thought much about him until slightly after I invented a small programming language called Sea which two nice gentlemen asked to look at, I showed it to them and another man took my hand-held rolly-ma-jig I called a rat. Anyway...
This
If SCO has these files in their OS, is it possible some overzealous SCO programmer stole these files and included them in SCO Unix and re-copyrighted them under SCO's terms?
"I wrote them (and looking at the original ones, I'm a bit ashamed: the "toupper()" and "tolower()" macros are so horribly ugly that I wouldn't admit to writing them if it wasn't because somebody else claimed to have done so ;)"
:-)
If SCO is big on claiming ugly code, I can only imagine what a convoluted mess UnixWarez actually is.
I can't believe anyone on Slashdot doesn't know who Linus is.
He's Lucy's baby brother, dumbass! You know, the one with the blanket?
Where have you *been* the last 50 years?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I am considering going after New Line and all for making movies of my books, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (perhaps you've heard of them?)
Those are my writings, printed without my permission, and so what if they have been printing for many years now and I haven't done anything about it, until this moment...
Lame.
'/dev/wit' is not available.
and SCO is claiming copywrite over them, one can only assume that SCO is using Linus' code.
Could SCO, not the Linux community, be afoul of the copyright laws?
Code under the GPL is still covered by copyright law. In fact without the copyright, the owner of the code would not be able to license the code at all. If SCO is using Linus' code and not abiding by the license under which it was released then they are guilty of cival and possible criminal violations.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
We already knew the entire case was FUD - and now there's a little more evidence, but it's not going to change the perception which SCO has created: that there's something shakey about Open Source.
I don't see this blowing over until SCO is either acquired by IBM or countersued into oblivion...
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
After reading Linus' code review of a younger Linus's work, it seems Tannenbaum was right.
Tannenbaum: Linus, you fail it! 'F' for you!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
SCO, n: a concise example of everything that's wrong with IP laws. example: Want to see how the DMCA is broken, go look at the actions of a SCO. Also, a company who's only product is lawsuits. example: That SCO only showed a profit because they forced another company to settle out of court.
SCO, v: to lie about a technical issue in an effort to increase stock prices while the upper management sell their stock. example: That company is SCOing, lookout.
clearly linus works for SCO.
so he got paid off to say he wrote them, when he really copied them.
more shady deals from sco... *rolls eyes*
Mind you, the mainstream press still doesn't know who to believe, since for them it's all greek. But anybody with even an inkling of an ability to read code can check these files out and follow Linus' discussion. And bits of information like this will make serious industry players fall squarely opposed to SCO (though the middle-manager types will still believe what they are spoon-fed by SCO, or rather be unable to analyze the argument sufficiently themselves to come to any conclusions). Bad SCO - very, very dumb.
Buy! Buy! Buy!
Except I was serious.
This is something that we need to do. If we are going to stand up in front of the world with a holier-than-thou attitude, we must make absolutely sure that our house is in order. We need to determine the origin of every patch applied to ctype.h and whatever other files are named, and prove that we have fair claim to the code.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" --Salvor Hardin
On the other hand, it's kind of entertaining. Like rooting against Johnny Fairplay on Survivor, we tune in every week hoping to finally see SCO get their comeuppance.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
I think we've clearly determined that SCO's claims (at least up till now) are completely baseless to the point of laughability. The problem here is that by Linus and various other open source figures discussing this, it almost gives credibility to their claims.
I think it's time that this nonsense stop...by all means, Linus should talk with the IBM and Novell legal team if he is so inclined, but this is only giving SCO publicity...SCO knows that if they can get their name in the news (even in a negative light), it's still better than fading away...
If news sites refuse to carry SCO's press releases, the whole thing would be moot...
What really need to happen is the courts need to put a gag order on everyone involved with the case...IBM knows where to go if they need more information, but keeping SCO from making any more claims regarding Linux would stop this whole thing in its tracks...I'm not even talking about the validity of their accusations, just that they shouldn't be allowed to keep attacking IBM and the Linux community until they win their case in court...
Boost of stock price? Can't be, what with quartely earnings depressed because of lawyer fees
Name recognition? This is like naming your baby George Bush because it has name recognition
Why then? The only reason I can think of is because they're headed for the gutter anyway, so the executives enrich themselves with a pump and dump. I wonder what SCO shareholders think of this mess
Wow, three SCO articles in one day! I'm always up for more SCO stupidity (being the owner of SCO Report and SCO Countdown), but don't the editors think they can stretch out the SCO news, so there's one article every day? Certainly would make me pay up for a subscription...
/. story came online, and I have to say, the IBM lawyers are going to have a field day kicking SCO's butt. However, I just _know_ tomorrow, I'll wake up and there's going to be a slashdot story about SCO rolling back their comments, saying "Well, those are just examples to justify our DMCA notices; we have more examples for the court" or something along the lines of what happened in the slideshow incident, with SCO saying the example code was just a sample, it wasn't representative of their whole case.
Anyway, yes, I RTFA'ed Linus's response before the
Besides, think about it. SCO has been saying for months that they're not going to release what the infringing code is in public. I find it hard to believe that SCO is, with one fell swoop, slicing off the head of it's own case.
In this case, I think I'll reach into the history books. To quote Winston Churchill:
"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
Remember to visit my sites for more SCO stupidity...
It would seem that SCO is claiming ownership of the error codes themselves, not necessarily the character-for-character code of the .h files. Maybe SCO is claiming that this is some kind of illegal (by DCMA) reverse-engineering of error codes, though kernel 0.0.1 predates the DCMA by years, and SCO can't exactly claim the codes were under some form of encryption...
I can see the SCO press release now: "Linus Torvalds admits he is 'a bit ashamed' regarding our copyrighted code".
Way to go Linus! Strike the final blow! KILL SCO NOW! It's damaging IT industry enough. SCO is like a group of terrorists! We lose jobs in IT industry because of their claims!
OK folks, now let's be realistic - SCO isn't looking for billions of dollars from "licenses", or even from IBM.
No one would come up with such a poor plan for promoting their product, intellectual property, lawsuit, or anything else.
So what is SCO doing? I think the answer is "Bad Marketing is better than No Marketing". In other words, SCO has nothing to lose.
In SCO's worst case, they end up with nothing. That's just about where they started. Just about every other case is better
Remember when Enron puked on America? What happened? Enron Corporate letterheads were being sold on eBay for a pretty penny! People wanted to BUY this crap because it was associated with the deplorable. And ya know what? SCO can do the same thing and make some serious money and fame.
I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at SCO were secretly selling those "SCO Sucks" t-shirts. It's a great market, and they sell like hotcakes.
I'm sorry this whole SCO thing is starting to come to its inevitable, and glorious end.
Yes, I wrote that right, I'm sorry.
Its been a heck of a lot of fun bashing SCO. Now that Linus himself is back-hand slapping the shit out of them in a most satisfyingly public style, I can only think- what about next month, next year? By then folks, we'll have no SCO. It'll only be Microsoft and IBM/SUN (on alternating Thursdays) to bash around.
SCO-y, we hardly knew ye
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
#include
Darl: Right. Now we jump out of the rabbit, thus taking them by suprise!!
David: Nrrgghh...
Darl: OK, well, in that case lets build some ancient header files, and leave them outside...
How will they top themselves now? Try to patent the question mark? Sue Algore for infringement of thier Internet IP?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
...and I pronounce SCO as "Bullshit."
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
IBM Attorney: "We would like to present as exhibit 128 the letter SCO recently sent to the Fortune 1000. Note how they threaten huge financial liability while claiming ownership of the most basic, internationally standardized, publically available C header files, some practically identical form of which has been present in every modern operating system and software development platform for over a decade, and several of which are freely published in first-year programming textbooks."
Mr. Boies: "I object!"
Judge: "And why is that, Mr. Boies?"
Mr. Boies: "Because it's devastating to my case, your honor!"
include $sig;
1;
#ifdef TWIT
abort();
#endif
If so, the judge on this case reserves the right to dismiss the case immediately and with prejudice.
This sig no verb.
Has anyone taken the time to send an official complaint to the SEC? It seems VERY strange that these "revelations" always seem to co-inside with poor stock performance annoucements. It would seem that SCO is intentionally trying to boost it's stock performance by making clearly false statements. I do believe that would be illegal - fraudulent speech isn't protected by the first amendment. IANAL so - is it?
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
...that Linus just crafted a well-organized, thorough, LOGICAL explanation.
Someone tell me what good we expect that to do with SCO? Isn't that a little bit like selling make-up to an orc?
Chicks dig my good /. karma.
http://www.sco.com/company/jobs/
I wonder if the other ones quit?
ummm... Take a look at ctype.h It's just a bunch of #defines like
#define _U 0x01
If sco's best case is that upper and lower limits have been defined the same, they've got a pretty weak case. I don't think looking at the patch history would do anything because there's very little in those files. I would be suprised if some of those were ever changed (except errno as explained by linus). This is a far cry from the SMP code originally claimed by SCO.
McBride is no Irishman. We have honour.
Actually, Irish mythology is that the [Milesian] Irish are descendants of an egyptian pharoah's daughter, Scota (hence Scotia) that eloped with a greek prince, Gathelos (hence Gael). Known historical sources don't exclude this possibility, but they don't confirm it either. Freemasons are commonly assumed to know a bit more about it, but they're not telling.
uhhh, yeah, sure, McBride, obviously a Jewish family name, from the little-known thirteenth tribe of Israel that migrated to, ummm, Ireland.
You meant to say: Utah!
Moron.
You meant to say: Mormon!
If we are going to stand up in front of the world with a holier-than-thou attitude...The standards are somewhat lower for having a holier-than-SCO attitude.
It is obvious that SCO (trying to keep up it's inflated stock price) is issuing ridiculous claims about once a week. Given the amount of time that we have until they have to put up or shut up during a trial we can look forward to more of Darl's comedic stylings in the form of outlandish claims.
SCO sent these letters out to Linux using companies, right? Not to the court. They can say whatever bullshit they want to the public, and that's not going to affect their court case all that much.
If they can pump up their share price with their outlandish claims that "we own the sun, stars, and moon!" then only go to court and tell the judge they own one star and someone stole it...well hell, it's not a bad plan from their view.
Good to see racism is alive and well. Ever wonder why the racists are always named "Anonymous Coward"?
The solution is to take all of SCO's code away and give it to the masses by making it Public Domain. Clearly it isn't worth anything, or they would be able to do business by selling a product, rather than filing lawsuits. Still, it's got to be the bulk of their assets by now, and as such, it should be seized and given to the public.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And of course, Some "John McDoe" is obviously Scottish you dumbass. A "John O'Doe" would be Irish...
But you can convert to Judaism in no time flat - just cut your foreskin and be a greedy CEO - and bingo, you're a jew h.c.
According to his LKML post, it was more like half an hour.
I want my Cowboyneal
I'd say it's time for more countersuits against SCO. These morons are wasting everybody's time -- and we all know time = money.
Berto
Does anyone else here think that it may not be the best idea to publicly (on Slashdot and Groklaw at least) counter claims made against something that seems bound for court? Doesn't this just give your opponent a head start on how to properly accuse you to get their desired results? I am not looking for security through obscurity, but given the veracity of the claimants, wouldn't some caution be in order?
Mark.
The / in
There are only 9 files total.
The files are slightly different depending if you're compiling Linux for Alpha, Vax, PowerPC, etc..
IANAL, but if SCO's really basing their claim(s) on errno.h and the like, I can't imagine how their attorneys justify $9M in fees over the last year. Google 'merger doctrine' and 'scenes a faire' and have fun with the analysis!
geek. lawyer.
Linus Torvalds says:
Perhaps I have an old copy of the standard. Identifiers beginning with an underscore are reserved the compilers and libraries, but I don't see anything about capital letters.
It's not a good idea to use an argument more than once in a macro definition, but there's nothing in the C standard that prohibits it. I've never even met a compiler or preprocessor that warns about it.
Ever wonder why the racists are always named "Anonymous Coward"?
Yeah, I hate Anonymous Coward. He's the one that posts all those Goatse links as well, the bastard.
we should all take a deep breath, sit back, and have a sco juice
No. They claim copyright violation so they have to prove it. Imagine if what you said was true then SCO simply would have to file lots of (bogus) complaints every year and the kernel-hackers would be tied up for the rest of their lives trying to counter the claims. The burden of proof is on SCOs side.
Try isdigit(++foo)
Uh. No. Mc is Irish and Scottish (until the 10th century, Ireland and scotland were one nation, Scotia, BTW), it's short for Mac. The Gaelic (Irish and Scots) for "Son". Some people claim scots use Mc and Irish use Mac, but that's 100% true - almost all scots use Mc, but Mc/Mac is about 50/50 in Ireland.
Not really. Do the math: On 32-bit machines, there are more than 4 billion possibilities for both upper and lower limits. That means that the odds of picking the same limits that SCO's innovators did are less than 1 in 10^19. Clearly, $3 Billion in damages wouldn't begin to make up for this kind of blatant copying; it's less than 1 billionth of one dollar for each non-infringing alternative set of limits.
Correct. That would be a violation. I completely ignored the fact that isdigit() is a macro in this instance.
It's not exactly against the C standard (i.e. the program will still compile and behave predictably), but violates good programming practice.
That's one reasons why macros are frowned upon by modern programming languages.
but that's NOT 100% true. Geez.
Further information : O' just means "of" [masculine]. So O'Brian is "of Brian". If you're a female called O'Something, you should really call yourself Ni Something (the feminine form).
The macro doesn't modify x, but consider what happens when you call (for instance) isdigit(fgetc(stream)). The macro, as is, will result in 2 characters being read from the file, instead of just one.
My understanding is there are several #define gotchas
If you write
isdigit(car++);
some poorly written macros might increment the character car TWICE.
So lets give Linus a C++ instead of a F!
SCO are now in this catagory or waste because they are screwing up Linus' valuable eating time. He shipped the 2.6.0 - we've all now built it and he needs his rest ready for the new year.
SCO dispute is with IBM on subtle contract issues not Linus on what he wrote (non-thread-safely) 11 years ago !
Yup. isdigit() is a macro. I unintentionally ignored that.
When being pedantic, double-check yourself more carefully.
I don't remember if && creates a sequence point, but using a macro parameter twice is always a bad idea.
Look at:
#define isdigit(x) ((x) >= '0' && (x) <= '9')
Think about what happens if you called isdigit(char++) It expands to:
((char++) >= '0' && (char++) <= '9')
which leads to x being incremented twice, when the programmer only meant to do it once.
And for good reason. As I've pointed out to other replies I neglected to take the fact that isdigit() is a macro in this instance... and that's a reason why you shouldn't post to
Okay, maybe he's not lying, but he ought to check his own code. errno.h was taken from Minix, according to his comments
/*
* ok, as I hadn't got any other source of information about
* possible error numbers, I was forced to use the same numbers
* as minix.
* Hopefully these are posix or something. I wouldn't know (and posix
* isn't telling me - they want $$$ for their f***ing standard).
*
* We don't use the _SIGN cludge of minix, so kernel returns must
* see to the sign by themselves.
*
* NOTE! Remember to change strerror() if you change this file!
*/
Now, Minix was also a homegrown Unix and written completely apart from the AT&T source, so if Linus copied Minix, that's fine.
You can read all 3 or 4 sentences of the Minix license, but I think it's summed up pretty well with: For all practical purposes, MINIX can be treated as if it were in the public domain..
And I haven't even looked at the other files yet.
Defining "myisdigit()" like that would be perfectly legal, but the standard requires that isdigit() behave as if it were a function, and only evaluate its argument once.
'x' can't be evaluated twice, because 'x' could be a statement that has side effects.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
SCOX via Google
:) As best I can read it, a few people think it's worth about 4 cents, the others think they should get $892 for it...
Last Trade: 17.73
Bid: 0.04 x 100
Ask: 892.00 x 100
Any stock gurus care to explain that one to us?
The ones who put Ken Lay behind bars? The ones regulating mutual funds? The ones regulating stock traders who skim between buy and sell? The ones appointed by an administration who comes from the scratch your back school of croneyism?
They're all prolly taking notes from Darl.
You want SEC to actually do anything? Don't vote Republican next year for any office.
I feel like I'm watching some sort of play by play here. As Linus enumerates the various header files, I'm poppin' 'em into vim or emacs (or pico.. whatever mood strikes) and walking through them.
Shit... a few more weeks of these ridiculous SCO claims and maybe I'll know enough about the kernel to become a Linux hacker. Laugh if you will, but I didn't know anymore about C than the data types and basic syntax before this crap started. I've learned all sorts of neat stuff since then!
Thanks SCO! You've taught me in 9 months what I wouldn't let 4 years of college education beat into my thick skull!
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
'The SCO Group cannot expect to win any case based upon application interfaces which it's AT&T, USL and Novell predecessors relased in open standards specifically for the purpose of interoperability.
signal.h, errorno.h,and ioctl are all parts of many released standards including The Open Group and IEEE POSIX Base Specifications and the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 151-2.
Note that The SCO Group does not own the copyrights on any of those standards and it does not own clear title to the copyrights on most of the AT&T Unix base.
From 1989, the then SCO activity pushed for the adoption of the iBCS Intel Binary Compatibility Specifications across *all* i386 Unix vendors
'Even SCO admits, no requries these definitions to be present in order to be standards compliant.
And what if the user of the original macro invokes it like this:
char * cp;
if (isdigit(cp++))
do_something();
What then, O wise one?
You mean, like, say, suing them?
The business world doesn't go by what people say on linux-kernel. Or what is said to various computer mags. No, it goes off of legal action. Linus and company need to recognize that they MUST DEFEND THEIR WORK LEGALLY. Given the sheer number of people whose work SCO has laid claim to, if they simply got off their asses and sued, SCO would be loosing the PR war and their lawyers would be tied up in litigation SCO doesn't want to be tied up in.
Everything else is just a whole lot of hot air, regardless of how true it is. You've GOT TO STAND UP FOR YOUR WORK.
Please help metamoderate.
Point taken. I to think I went to all that trouble hauling out the ISO document to quote the relevent parts but ignored the obvious point that isdigit() is a macro
The other problem is that this assumes ASCII encoding. That's why most real implementations do array lookups, e.g.,
#isdigit(x) ((charset[(x)] & DIGIT_MASK) ? 1 : 0)
where 'charset' is actually something that can be specified at boot time.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
It results in undefined behaviour. I admit it. I'm a tool.
#define isdigit(x) ((x) >= '0' && (x) <= '9')
I'm not going to dig through C standard, but this code is unsafe, so there is a perfectly good reason to disallow this (even though it will compile).
This macro is expanded in-line, so the code
isdigit('5')
is translated by C preprocessor to
(('5') >= '0' && ('5') = '9')
Now imagine what happens with isdigit(i++). If i == 9, i will be incremented twice and you will get the wrong answer.
Also consider what happens if x is a return value of a function, e.g. isdigit( foo(...) ). First, the function is called twice (which can be slow and certainly unneccessary). Second, the function may have side-effects (i.e. it may modify an external variable, write to a file, etc.), so doing it twice is equally bad.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Using the same numbers isn't copying the file.
All your ugly code are belong to us.
If you're going to waste so much space responding, how about you address what the man fucking said?
It was a statement about a racist statement, not national policies, dumbass.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
2. The court case is against IBM and notably on some contractual issues. Again public opinion equates the two but this is wrong. IBM could lose and Linux could be unharmed in theory.
3. Groklaw and to a lesser degree Slashdot is part of an experiment. OpenSource lawsuit. The methodology of OpenSource is being used against SCO.
The debunking of anything SCO claims in hours after they make it public or file it in court is something that is new and will be lethal to SCO in the end.
Help fight continental drift.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
sue, maybe not, but subpoenate, requesting to reveal the infriging code, why not?
I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The product link you posted is clearly infringing on SCO's trademark and product branding. Their lawyers, distributors, and consumers will hear from our lawyers shortly.
Accept no imitations. The original, the one, the only, refreshing SCO juice
If we are to be the morally right crowd, then we should at least learn some grammar.
litigious bastards
suck it sco!
Located here
I had mod points earlier. If I had some left, I would mod you up for the great humility that you are now showing. It's very refreshing.
In more other news, SCO sues the Catholic Church for infringing SCO's copyrights and patents through unlawful reproduction and distribution of the Holy Bible. According to SCO CEO Darl McBride, the Bible contains over 1 million verses copied illegally from SCO intellectual property.
In yet more other news... oh I give up.
Others have pointed out your are wrong, but I think that you deserve props.
Anyone that has the balls to declare that Linus is flat-out-wrong on Slashdot deserves to be commended for his bravery.
as if there wouldn't be enough to do discovering/publishing stuff (anything) that matters somewhere in between all this corepirate nazi stock markup fraud execrable cheerleading/bootlicking?
some are saying that the won eyed girl in the jump-you ads, may not be real, & if she is, she's not a paid up member of robbIE's dating service?
...on the bloody. For Christmas, Santa gave SCO a nice big scheisse all over their lawsuit.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
If only Linus updated his page once in a while :)
You need to bone up on your political science a bit. Finland, despite your moronic point of view, is not communist.
...the SCO stole the code from Linux, copyrighted it with System V or whatever, and is now accusing Linux of stealing it?
Of course there are substantial similarities between UNIX and Linux in the header files, because Linux is a UNIX work-alike. It must have the same or substantially similar interfaces in order to "work-alike". This is nothing other than the old user-interface lawsuits from previous decades.
A bunch of lawyers or PHB's heard that errno.h was similar but don't understand the concept of interface and implementation.
I suspect the OSS side will have to prove to a court what an interface is and that having substantially similar interfaces does not mean copyright violation. I think this actually may be rather difficult. It also places in jeaopardy any work-alike application (Samba, Apache, NFS, Wine etc) because somewhere, somebody has a copyright on some substantially similar interface code. In fact for most of these multiple companies have copyrights on substantially similar interface code.
Makes a good case for all interface code to actually be in the public domain.
Reverse engineering case law (clean-room) is probably also applicable, as reverse engineering is a legal activity.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
file for copyright on papers from First Grade, cicra 1968, where I was practicing how to print. I will specifically file for copyright on papers where I used the letters S, C and O.
I can sue for infringement, cant I???
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
#define tolowerlip(c) (_chump=c,isupperlip(_chump)?_chump+('a'+'A'):_chu mp)
Linus commented that he himself remembers writing those files. Well, thanks to Kernel.org and a little too much time on my hands, I did a little exploring. Kernel 2.6.0 has errno.h in two files. To make my life a little easier, I combined the two files, errno.h and errno-base.h. In Kernel 2.3.50 it is one file.
/*Argument list too long*/ -- 2.6.0 /*Arg list too long*/ -- 2.3.50
Well, as we know, SCO is claiming that 2.4.21 is the kernel that started with the problems. If that is the case, assuming that SCO actually has a case then we have a problem.
But the thing is that the errno.h and errno-base.h in 2.6.0 and the errno.h in 2.3.50 have only one difference other than being split up and the appropriate location indicators. The only difference is:
#define E2BIG 7
#define E2BIG 7
I obtained this by using diff. So a simple utility disproves SCO's claim on that ground. Also, you will notice that the Kernel v. 0.01 has only 39 error numbers. They are also included, with the same error numbers in the current 2.3.50 and the 2.6.0 files. A cursory look revealed that 2.4.23 has the same errno.h err codes.
So when Linus says that he wrote them there is proof. Further, since 2.4.21 is the infected one, what is the difference between 2.3.50 and 2.4.23 and the comments. Surely SCO can not be so stupid as to say that comments are a cause for action -- the end user does not even see nor are they accessable to the end user unless they have the source.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
... that Darl and Co probably don't know anything about Unix or Linux.
What's the bet that Bill and Darl play golf on weekends, or that Steve (Ballmer) takes Chris (Sonntag) out regularly to a fancy-pants restaurant.
Then a piece of paper is handed over at the end of each meeting, "Our next list of suggestions for your strategy to rebuild your business".
I suspect SCO is nothing more than a puppet.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I haven't seen anyone throw this out, but I'm wondering who is saying that the UNIX and LINUX code is similar?
Clearly it's not an engineer, they wouldn't stoop to this. Any developer worth their weight in RAM would know better - especially with the simple C functions/macros like Linus has pointed out?
Is it possible that there are marking, sales, managers, or even layers going through the code and saying that it's similar because it looks similar to them and they don't know any better?
Will the courts know any better? NO - but rember that SCO has already called on Linus to testify - and he knows better!
No. They claim copyright violation so they have to prove it. Imagine if what you said was true then SCO simply would have to file lots of (bogus) complaints every year and the kernel-hackers would be tied up for the rest of their lives trying to counter the claims. The burden of proof is on SCOs side.
Besides, since the header files contain only facts, there is no copyright value to them.
he replied to my post in under an hour.
What if SCO copied these files from Linux into Unix? That would explain why they're now finding these supposed verbatim copies. Would such an act help their Linux Kernel Personality be more compatible? Darl's busy pointing the finger at the linux community when maybe he should be pointing it at the Caldera owners...
Linus used the word "the" in his analysis. I believe that word was stolen from the SCO letter to the 1000 customers, and clearly was not an original work on Linus' part. I hope he doesn't have to answer challenges from the lawyers on this one. Oh wait, I used "the".... damn...
Why is the judge letting SCO get away with this coy "they infringed, but we're not going to show you how yet" stuff? Why hasn't he said, "Put the infringing source code in a brief and hand it over tomorrow, or I'm tossing this"? If, as SCO claims, they're being horrifically damaged, shouldn't they in fact be eager to get the offending code removed, which IBM could do, once it knows what the problem is? If I were the judge in this case, I'd be telling them to make their case or withdraw it. But, as Dennis Miller say, that's just me, I could be wrong.
Through all this madness everyone thinks that SCO is against Linux. In reality this is the boost that Linux needed to get it's name out there to really start to get big. Maybe Darl gave up on his UNIX and decided to give Linux a hand up.....
Well, I can dream can't I?
You know, I'm about ready to chip in to a "Darl STFU Fund" myself.
(We can always catch in the parking lot later and beat it out him.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
7+ years in Web technologies
.Net and Java in the meantime.
What "Web Technologies" do they want? CGI scripting!? Out of a Java programmer?!
It's not because you weren't on the Web 7 years ago that nobody was. And yes, they could have learned
BTW, Web technologies started with webservers and web browsers. Not with CGI scripting.
I don't see anything funny, insighful or even relevant in the parent post. Just a newbie that probably thinks that the web was created when he discovered it.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I don't know, but if I ever find that guy I am going to strangle him. He's damn near everywhere, and everything he says is crap.
They didn't say 7 years of java. Or 7 years of .NET.
.NET, and that you should have at least 7 years of web technology experience.
They said they want you to be proficient in either java or
They want someone who has been in the web business for a long time... whether they have used java the whole time isn't relevant.
Actually, since the macro evaluates *p++ twice between sequence points, it *IS* against the standard. The program is not required to compile or behave in any particular fashion.
IOW, the program
int main(int a, char *b[]) { int i = 0; i = i++ + i++; return i; }
has no defined meaning according to the C standard. A conforming compiler may refuse to compile it, and if compiled main may return any value, or even crash with a runtime error.
In real life, two and one will be common return values.
Hahaha
Hahaha Hahaha hahaha.
I'm drunk. Hahaha.
Darl's brother and possibly a lawtyer with ethics violations in Florida who can't win a case.
So, uh, how does it feel to have the statement "I'm a tool" modded up as "Informative?" =)
...of utter crap. Don't all of you see that this is an obvious red herring? These aren't the actual files SCO is pursuing, they're just throwing out chaff to get the heat off of them for not "releasing the code". If they're going this far, Darl must know that if the claims are crap, he's going to jail. Ergo "evidence" this flimsy is nothing more than a parlor trick.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
/*
* Copyright (c) 1989, 1993
* The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
* (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
* All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
* to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
* Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein with
* the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
*
* This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
* Paul Borman at Krystal Technologies.
*
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
* must display the following acknowledgement:
* This product includes software developed by the University of
* California, Berkeley and its contributors.
* 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
* may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
* without specific prior written permission.
*
* THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
* ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
* IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
* ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
* FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
* DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
* OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
* HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
* LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
* OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
* SUCH DAMAGE.
*
* @(#)ctype.h 8.4 (Berkeley) 1/21/94
*/
Is it possible that two people working independently of one another could write what amounted to the same header file?
Let's examine what is in a header file. It is a list of the names of the variables, constants and functions used in the main programme source code. The names of these entities are chosen at the whim of the programmer, but good practice teaches that names should be short and meaningful; this is done for the benefit of future developers. Two programmers who learned from similar texts might develop a particular style. Of course, some names might be influenced by specific extant personality traits. If psychometric testing of the two programmers revealed significant differences that might influence choice of variable names, then we might be surer that the two sets of header files are derived from a common ancestor.
Then there is the question of ordering. Convention dictates that the declarations be split into groups by type, and ordered either alphabetically or as they appear in the programme proper. If both programmers have used alphabetical ordering then this is not an issue, but given some automatic latitude by virtue of mathematical equivalency in the order of statements, it would be a greater coincidence for two programmers to code their functions, make use of constants and initialise their variables in the same order.
Of course, if the code in question is trivial, the circumstances are such that names are effectively prescribed {for instance, "port_addr" might well be a popular choice for a variable specifying a port address; and "init_printer()" is a logical choice of a name for a function to initialise a printer}, and/or it acts in certain very specific ways that depend on an exact sequence of instructions {thereby negating the "automatic latitude" proposed above} then there is more likelihood that two programmers would produce identical code when working independently to perform the same function.
The greatest degree of freedom comes in the addition of comments to code. An individual will inevitably develop a particular style in writing comments. Even this might be influenced by mood. Anything beyond the mere explanatory {for instance, "Jeff was here 9T6!"} is as individual as a fingerprint. However, coding convention in certain environments {a corporation keen to project a "professional" image, for instance; or a fluid international collaborative effort} might demand that comments are confined to the minimum necessary to explain the functionality of the code, with correspondingly less scope for personal expression.
In the light of the fact that we are talking about short programmes to accomplish specific simple tasks, in an environment which necessarily minimises an individual's latitude to leave a personal stamp on their code, it becomes more likely that two independent developers could indeed produce identical code. Alternatively, the existence of ancestral code on which Linux could legally have been based would cast reasonable doubt on SCO's assertions that portions of Linux were copied from SCO Unix.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Seriously, until we hear it in court, delivered under oath, I wouldn't believe a word of it Maybe not even then.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
SCO has now publically made claims that are not only untrue but serve to damage another organization. Also,they have now proved that they are trying to make a profit out of something they do not own and are not following the licenses that protect that product.
How are they not breaking the law??? Can someone with some legal experience explain this to me??? If anything isn't this slander?
I am no expert in this software patent field. But, looking at the claims and today's specifics, it sure seems to me to suggest the real intellectual property claim. It sure looks to me like SCO is claiming rights on the material specifics embodied in the files they've listed. So, its not the actual text, but the logical content of the files. Thus, errno.h is significant in the actual values, and the concepts behind how errors get returned to the caller (its not a return value, its in the errno global... ). ctype is significant for the character type operations, not for the very specific text comprising the file.
I am sure the anti-SCO folks, myself included, will be quick to point out that these things are NOT patentable. But, they are material enough that I CAN see how SCO might claim them for their own. I also don't see how one can write Linux, or any other *nix, without them being substantially interoperable, and there is likely the basis of the SCO claim.
sigh, crowning myself king dork with this one :P
:P), right?
(nerd alert!)
you're passing isdigit a char pointer (char*), not an int or char -- so you're comparing a memory location (a large value like 0x40xxxx in windows, or 0xbffxxxxx if on the linux stack for example. it doesn't really matter.) to a const char ('0', and '9' -- integer values 0x30 and 0x39 respectively), which will first of all generate a compiler warning or error since you're comparing a char* to a const char -- and even if you cast it, first you're a dipshit, and second it'll probably return false since the memory location probably won't be between those two values.
and if you use the clumsy first version where x or whatever is referred to twice (as opposed to using a temp variable or something), you'll increment the pointer twice, and if you use the typical c library version of isdigit, the pointer will be incremented once.
little bit of overkill there, but hey, the more you know (cue nbc jingle and shooting star
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
If thou see an ujgly woman pay no court to her, for thus thou wilt wilt. ;)
Does SCO have an accounting department? Or did the lawyers shoot them first? Somehow this is the only thing that makes any sense. The claims are becoming frivolous to the point of rediculum. The financial implications should become clear around the Ides of March. When there is no more money to pay the lawyers. Then, like a wild stampede of rats we will see an end to this fiaSCO. You can bet that some company will step up to the bat to buy out the shell that is left. Anyone taking bets on Microsoft?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Something about 640kb is enough memory for everybody huh? (or not)..
:Pn ux-0.01.tar.gz
... I know.. but I need my bad karma removed :P
but Linus had his *moments* too
In: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/li
in file: linux/boot/boot.s
you can read this little line:
"This 512 kB kernel size should be enough"
---
But what if (x) modifies itself?
To wit: isdigit( c++ )
Then (x) is (c++), and the expansion is
( (c++) >= '0' && (c++) = '9' )
Clearly isdigit will be buggy, appearing to work most of the time, but failing under certain cases.
So, Linus is correct, in fact, although he might have misstated precisely why.
emt 377 emt 4
I thought SCO sued IBM. Shouldn't the burden of proof be on SCO to prove that these files are in fact stolen from the UNIX code base?
It's not
....
(('5') >= '0' && ('5') = '9')
you missed the =
Gee. I get 10 for this
i = 9;
if (isdigit(i++) ) {}
printf("i = %d\n",i);
______
i = 10
On an offtopic sidenote: Although the GPL hasn't been tested in court yet, I would think that any legal holes would have been taken advantage of by Microsoft a long time ago. It seems to me that the fact that they haven't is a pretty good proof of the GPL's water-tightness.
IANAL: Eventhough I don't think SCO has a case, I don't like articles like the one above. Didn't the courts recently uphold an IBM motion that forces SCO to reveal some of the code infrigements it claims? I would think a common legal tactic would be to give an impression of satisfying the court while sending out the least useful information at the worst possible time and in a voluminous quantity that actually says very little. 65 files containing lots of redundancy sent out three days before Christmas could be seen as a delaying tactic. I sure hope this is not what SCO will reiterate to the court in answer to the IBM discovery, because they will have bought themselves time for another round of antics. "But your honor, we gave them thousands of line of code in 65 five files, and yet they are still not satisfied?" For various reasons, I would think SCO would like to reveal the stronger evidence of their argument at the latest stage possible. For one, if someone comes forward to defend open source while chosing undisclosed evidence as an example then SCO could pose the question as to why the defender knew that was a sore point. That is why I still don't understand the seemingly benign actions like the public retraction of some code by SGI or the immediate "feel good" response given to SCO's last offensive. The former can be construed as an admission of some sort while the latter places Linus as the original owner of disputed files. So even if someone else patched in something at a later stage, SCO may have an argument to drag Linus further in: the owner of the file and project should monitor more carefully the progression of the work. In fact this may be similar to something argued in the past. The Linus response makes you feel good with its mockery, but I do not think it a smart response. Let SCO have the burden of establishing everything. As the accuser, let them do all the work. Even if some of the information is public domain, it'll take them longer than if someone spells it out and they may not have time to cover more ground to finesse their weak arguments. Linux does not need to win a PR war, it needs to establish its case in court. Very few people outside of Linux fans will read this article, therefore making such as response of little PR value to start with.
#isdigit(x) ((charset[(x)] & DIGIT_MASK) ? 1 : 0)
And this is why you need to cast the argument to unsigned char if you want to avoid undefined behaviour.
But send the $$$ to PJ @ Groklaw
I'm not so well off as to pay it all at once, but I've started sending *my* Linux license cost to her, bit by bit, even though I'm one of *those*
[tara] ~> uname -a
FreeBSD tara.slashdot.org 4.9-STABLE FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE #0
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
C standard guarantees that digits are continuous.
Looks like they won't fool everyone this time:
Creator of Linux Defends Its Originality
also:
Novell Registers Unix Copyrights
unfortunately jounalists don't read slashdot or Groklaw. It is very obvious for us that SCOs claims are baseless, but obviously not for mainstream press.
So when you see a journalist who is clueless, write a letter (to his editor if you can't figure out how to contact him)
- politely correcting him,
- linking to the most authoritative postings (i.e. Linus' letter) refuting SCO's claim that you can find, and
- pointing out sites (such as groklaw and slashdot) where a truth-squad is digging out and posting refutations as fast as SCO makes up another claim.
And don't sweat it if a lot of other people do it too. The more the merrier. (It creates an unspoken subtext: "If a LOT of people know this, Mr, Reporter, why don't you?")
Reporters don't like to be played for fools. It ruins their reputations and hurts their carreers. Some polite letters turning them on to new sources could get a couple of them posting our side of the story - if only for the appearance of balance. And once one or two do that, any of the rest that don't follow along look like idiots - so the herd stampeeds.
Imagine the whole establishment media looking at SCO's claims, through a microscope, skeptically.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yes, Linus wrote most of it. But they included errno.h was because of
/* This does not make sense */
#define ENOSENSE 169
which was, of course, written by Chewbacca. They didn't want to give away their defense strategy, so they threw in the FUD in hopes people would not notice they are using the Chewbacca Strategy.
Isn't his kid in primary school? and he's working up in Beaverton Or. Is transmedia still making silicon IP, or even im business?
Linus
Wouldn't it be great if whichever mods pulled the trigger on the grandparent limited themselves to only modding up stuff that actually was correct? Sigh...
back that we need to make sure we say SCOX in places we want to be sure SCO's potential investors might see the information we want them to see:
Not only is SCO obviously morally bankrupt, but with their only business model relying on this claim, I believe they may soon be financially as well.
Hopefully the investment community will feel this way as well and send SCOX stock into the bottomless pit they have dug for themselves.
He's Lucy's baby brother, dumbass!
I hate people who spread disinformation on Slashdot.
Rerun is Lucy's baby brother. Linus is Lucy's younger, not youngest, brother.
Sheesh.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Note: This is a repost of a comment that I sent to groklaw.
I do have a copy of the Unix source, circa 1988, and I can't see how anyone who knew any C could possibly think that the ctype implementation is copied.
The array has a similar name (_ctype in Linux, a variation on that in Unix). Some of the C macros used to perform each test (see the definition of _U, _L etc in include/linux/ctype.h) have the same names as they do in Unix. Some do not. For example, isdigit() uses _D (for digit) in Linux and but Unix uses a different capital letter. Similarly, _SP in the Linux version has a single-capital-letter name in Unix.
Notably, the order that the macros are defined (and hence their specific bit values) are different.
The implementations are also interestingly different. The specific isxxx() macros, for example, are written in a different way in Linux and in Unix. Unix doesn't use an __ismask()-like macro, preferring to access the array directly.
As Linus pointed out, there are only so many ways to write an ISO-compliant ctype implementation in C. I can see how anyone who didn't know this might think that the Linux code could be copied, but nobody who knew any C could possibly make this mistake.
The most telling difference for me is that the Unix ctype handles EOF, like the ANSI/ISO standard says it should, but the Linux version does not. Why someone would copy the Unix code AND go to the trouble of introducing an incompatibility with the ANSI/ISO standard is one for the lawyers to sort out.
DMCA means you can't reverse eng the code, so weather Linux wrote it from scratch or not isn't the issue, it's the patches after, and the fact that the code was reverse eng from the unix.
Reverse engineering was legal before the DMCA was passed. If I understand it correctly, it still is in some cases. But now, if the owner of proprietary code takes certain steps to guard it - such as encryption and restrictive EULAs - the DMCA criminalizes bypassing the encryption and makes the EULA enforcable in civil court.
If the claim is that Linus reverse engineered trade-secret code pre-DMCA, tough rocks. Wasn't a crime, and once the cat's out of the bag a trade secret is legally ancient history.
But that's NOT the claim. The claim is that he COPIED COPYRIGHTED code. It's clear that what he did is write new code, then warp it toward open and published standards - which happened to be equivalent to the code SCO alleges is proprietary. SCO loses on that claims.
Also: Haven't the federal courts decided that cloning an interface definition for interoperability purposes is fair use? Didn't they decide this SPECIFICIALLY in a DMCA case? If so, SCO claiming DMCA violation for a near-clone of a handful of interface files seems a real desperation move - and one that could open them up to suits.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
[...] what about next month, next year? By then folks, we'll have no SCO. It'll only be Microsoft and IBM/SUN (on alternating Thursdays) to bash around.
Don't sweat it. Somebody else will screw up badly enough to give us a third target. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You want SEC to actually do anything? Don't vote Republican next year for any office.
You mean like the Democrats who were in office when the SEC turned their back on the likes of Enron and Worldtalk while they were actually DOING their monkeyshines?"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok, that image depicting me might be fake but claiming that my subject line was 'stupid' has hit me very hard ;) It was carefully crafted as a subtile bait for those poor SCOX longs lurking around at the Yahoo board scanning the SCOX board for some 'good' (from their point of view) news. BTW: if you are reading subject lines only without checking content you deserve to make those wrong investment decisions.
SCO keeps talking about the "ABI". It appears that they are not claiming copyright on the headers themselves, but on the general kind of interface those headers specify. Whether Linus looked at BSD or SysV headers is then immaterial.
It's not clear that something that general is copyrightable--they seem to be fishing. But keep in mind that movie plots have been defended using copyright law, so it's possible.
I truly wonder if anyone here, on the Kernel mailing list or at Grocklaw actually thought about sending Linus' message over to the major IT shitrags, such as CNet, or even Forbes and Business World (Hopefully in language that is not as technically heavy as Linus')?
This claim by SCO should, although IANAL, finally be enough for Linus to start sueing SCO for, at the very least, Libel, and the cops should truly be able to do something in an extortion case.
I mean, please! Finally SCO has named some files directly, in a letter which is on record. It has claimed DMCA rights on those files, illegally and is attempting to extort money for them as well as illegally control the files destiny.
But no, all we loudmouth idiots here at slashdot are so busy feeling self satisfied that we don't even thin of alerting the press.
Depressing, or am I seeing this too darkly?
Why is there no comment "written by Linus Torvalds 1991, POSIX - enhanced by xxxx in yyyy"? Without heritage documentation the next legal truble is just a dumb CEO away.
'nuf said
Just because a standards body has written a published standard on something does not mean that the thing being standardized is free, or even that you can implement the standard freely. Patents, trademarks, and copyrights might all get in the way.
Granted, the existence of those standards makes SCO's case harder, but it isn't clear by how much.
Standards guarantee openness if all the owners of related IP are members and all the members of the standards body agree, in writing, to permit free and unencumbered use of their IP by anyone for any purpose.
(Note that a license only for compliant implementations isn't good enough because Linux could be argued not to comply.)
$9.4 million?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
paragraph ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-grf)
n.
1. A distinct division of written or printed matter that begins on a new, usually indented line, consists of one or more sentences, and typically deals with a single thought or topic or quotes one speaker's continuous words.
2. A mark ( ) used to indicate where a new paragraph should begin or to serve as a reference mark.
3. A brief article, notice, or announcement, as in a newspaper.
tr.v. paragraphed, paragraphing, paragraphs
To divide or arrange into paragraphs.
(courtesy of Dictionary.com)
You're assuming such things are totally random, which they're most likely not.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
No, no. Don't laugh.
It makes Darl vewy angry when people laugh at his wittle wabbit.
I can just see it now!
We need an opensource movie producer to do it!
You're assuming the parent is serious, which the're most likely not. ;-)
I was 5 inches away from trying united linux. When I saw SCO group as part of the distribution, I shut the web browser, the monitor, the computer... and threw it out the window.
Thanks to SCO, I should sue them for leading me on such a rage.
But that doesn't mean that you want to sit back and wait. Even if they wouldn't be able to prove it, if we can speed their demise by actively showing that the lot of them are insane, so much the better.
Have a look at the "Short Interest", and you realize that the financial community is aware of what is going on at SCOX.
Settlement Date | Short Interest | Avg Daily Share Volume | Days to Cover
Nov. 14, 2003 1,616,098 345,608 4.68
Oct. 15, 2003 925,518 376,803 2.46
Sep. 15, 2003 894,777 327,845 2.73
Aug. 15, 2003 458,520 267,924 1.71
Jul. 15, 2003 391,346 204,006 1.92
Jun. 13, 2003 276,810 686,127 1.00
May 15, 2003 33,397 54,870 1.00
Apr. 15, 2003 37,437 55,726 1.00
Mar. 14, 2003 84,150 114,525 1.00
Feb. 14, 2003 35,651 17,187 2.07
Jan. 15, 2003 35,966 14,710 2.45
Dec. 13, 2002 38,677 14,671 2.64
They are headed down the drain in a very rapid manner.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
who the fuck is google?
When SCO first mentioned Linus in a press release, I wondered why. At that point, SCO didn't seem to be claiming all of Linux, and making it personal regarding Linus seemed poorly planned at best. SCO seemed to be alienating someone who might have ended up being a witness for either side, and was very likely to be called by someone before the case was all over.
It looked really stupid if there was any possibility they might have called Linus to the stand themselves, but why give him enough grief that he might volunteer to testify on IBM's behalf, unless SCO was sure that he would end up opposed anyway?
But, if SCO has believed that their code was in the very oldest versions of the kernel, then it got there by act of Linus himself. If they've been acting on that assumption all along, then they also have been expecting from the start to have to claim things that would alienate the Linux community all along.
This doesn't really dispel the alternate possibility that SCO is just deliberately out to wreck Linux even if they can't profit financially by it (except maybe under the table), for those who want to believe that, but it does support the idea that SCO has acted on a consistent premise, rather than just whipping up a new claim from thin air each time they need another press release.
Who is John Cabal?
Tell SCO what you think
So Darl McBride claims to have a Linux expert that can rebut the assertion that Linus has hard evidence that the disputed files were written by him in the form of those actual files, archived in a Linux tarball that is mirrored the world over.
Well, all I can say is, if SCO can do that, then they deserve to win this case; we can all celebrate their victory by building snowforts in Hell.
Jay (=
If anyone wants the original sources they are available from several ftp sites, linked from here http://www.tuhs.org/archive_sites.html I know At&t System 3 Sources are available thats 1980 folks. I got the archive on cd from SCO back in 2001 when they ran a free licence offer for old outdated unix code. So if anyone really wants to compare the headers in linux to non bsd unix headers you can get them from the above site. Eat your heart out SCO.
"I think we can totally _demolish_ the SCO claim that these 65 files were somehow 'copied.' They clearly are not."
That is: Not from SCO to Linux??
Damn, and by all logic, it should be 0 since both are postdecrement. ;-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Troll.
slashdot.org has a lot of interesting stuff, but its useless++ for BSD related news, and stuff like this just makes the site even less relevant than it was for such issues.
As a few people here might have pointed out, SCO isn't claiming they wrote the actual code in these files, they're claiming that they merely own the copyright on the programming interface. So while it's great for Linus to admit that he made mistakes in writing toupper(), this is really irrelevant, as SCO would claim that they have the copyright to any such implementation of a function (or macro, as the case may be) named toupper() that performs the same functionality as the UNIX version.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they'll ultimately be able to win in court with this, but pointing to the code of certain routines and saying "see, I wrote that", when they're basically claiming that you stole the function header (Linus admitted to doing this), doesn't seem so useful.
The real question here is whether SCO can indeed hold a copyright over something like a general function definition, or more specifically THESE function definitions, which clearly appear in other sources (Minix, BSD). Hopefully the open standard nature of these interfaces will prevent this.
check it out
2 174158852#c41366)
Subj: AT&T donated rights
By: radicimo Date: 12/22/03 10:21 pm
from Groklaw thread on Linus' code
(h++p://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2003122
--
Standards
Authored by: meissner on Monday, December 22 2003 @ 09:10 PM EST
I was a member of the ANSI X3J11 C standards committee from its founding in 1983 until after the first ANSI and later ISO standards were released in 1989 and 1990 respecitively. As part of the process, AT&T through its official representive (Lawrence Rosler) specificially gave the rights to the C language and its library (including the ctype.h, signal.h, and errno.h header files) to the committe. I believe they did the same thing officially to the POSIX committee at the same time (which would cover ioctl.h and more of the errnos in errno.h, and more of the signals in signal.h). Unfortunately, I no longer retain paper documents from that period, but if it becomes important to establish a clear paper trail, I suspect Jim Brody (chair), Tom Plum (Vice char), and P. J. Plauger (secretary) probably do retain their copies.
Of course, as has been shown in the past, SCO really has no institutional memory of the past.
I can't imagine why the last guy quit! Any takers??!!?
Come on Linus, admit it, there is SCO code in your programs, I've checked and confirmed everything.
"iostream.h" is in there, along with "string.h" and "iomanip.h." These are just a few of the headers that can easily be found many SCO programs.
Save the Open Source community now by admitting to this before Microsoft comes after us for using their patented 1's and 0's in binary. What then Linus, WHAT THEN!?
What idiot would buy 100 shares of SCOX for 4 cents? I've got better things to do with my money.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
SCO said it was in linux 2.4. Comparing the original kernel sources is nice, but kind of useless. Linus himself admits that most of the files have been changed a lot.
I know as well as most /.ers that the code was definitely not copied into Linux. But, Linus usually doesn't make casual slips like this. Then again, Darl has probably made some stupid statement at some point about it being in every version of Linux. Go figure.
5?
That's what this is all about. SCO couldn't raise enough hundreds of millions of dollars to do more discovery and debunking than the sum of the entire free software and linux community.
Imagine the dismay of SCO's million-dollar lawyers as they read slashdot and groklaw and see their case being categorically RIPPED TO SHREDS before it's even had it's day in court?
Imagine how easy it would be find evidence to counter SCO's claims EVEN FOR BAD LAWYERS... all they need to do is quite literally enter a plain english sentence question about SCO's claims into Google, and they've got the results of a million opensource paralegals (of which, at least a dozen or so are probably providing critical info.)
This harkens to the meme of The Second Superpower
The more I think about it, all these SCO guys are quite likely going to end up in jail (perhaps a nice jail, but still... jail)
Well, isn't it about time that the linux community takes on the same strategy as SCO does? It shouldn't be that difficult to get the same exposure towards the press and the business guys. Just write a simple, non-technical press release (but based on technical facts) and distribute it to the appropriate channels.
A normal human being with a virgin sphincter could pull out Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups.
An experiencied homosexual "bottom" could manage Windows 95 or Windows 98.
Mr. Goatsex was the release manager for Windows 2K and Windows ME.
But I'm sorry, I just don't think ANYONE could accommodate Longhorn!
Was there an error during pasting?
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Interestingly enough, the URL google uses is the same! Hmmm. So if you have a browser that allows you to customize the Referer header, you'll probably be able to access the article by just setting it to google, without actually going to Google News before...
Yes, indeed, it works!:
> telnet www.nytimes.com 80 /2003/12/23/technology/23linux.html HTTP/1.0
...
...
Trying 199.239.136.200...
Connected to www.nytimes.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET
Host: www.nytimes.com
Referer: http://news.google.com
Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux computer operating system, defended his work yesterday as not always lovely but original - and certainly not copied, as a Utah company has contended.
Here are the SEC filings for SCO.
Okay, mods, get out the mod-bombs like you did with the parent. But first, read my other comments this year -- I've put in a lot of time digging into SCO financials and reporting on SCO conference calls.
Start here: google "sco ancient unix". Follow the link. Download the tarball for 5th Edition UNIX, v5root.tar.gz. Unpack it. Look at the list of error numbers at the end of usr/sys/user.h. Note that the date on usr/sys/user.h is 1974-11-26.
Then download linux-0.0.1.tar.bz2 from ftp.kernel.org. Unpack it. Look at include/errno.h. Notice the literal copying of values.
This file is not an original work by Linus Torvalds. He says as much in the comment which the parent poster quoted.
Of course, there are questions: did Linus copy this file legally from a public-domain or freely licensed source, such as a standards body? Even if the copying is illegal, has SCO been damaged? Has SCO sent proper specific notice to people and corporations that distribute errno.h?
Now, go ahead and mod-bomb me the way you did the parent. I've spent a ton of time reseasching SCO and posting the results of my research here and on Groklaw. But check the references I quoted before you moderate. Are you moderating because my argument is faulty, or are you moderating because you don't want to hear the strong points of the enemy's case?
After this many years of service, the famed Anonymous Coward turns out to be a 44 year old housewife living in New York.
What next? Darl McBride lived the most parts of his life being a penis for a transvestite?
Both AT&T and Santa Cruz Operation participated in the development of the POSIX / FIPS 151-X standards and they did not identify any such royalty/patent dependent section as required for Federal endorsed standards.
In terms of copyright, anyone and any organization who has purchased and ISO standard is free to release implementations based upon those standards.
... And lastly to totally blow away your argument From This is the final listing of Testing Laboratories and Validated Products from the NIST POSIX Testing Program, dated December 31, 1997.
Linux has met the required standard as a POSIX plaform and today Linux *IS* the defacto industry standard for the common Unix platform.A standard body would set a standard in which the patent or copyright holder is not releasing any rights they may have.
Give me some of that thing you are smoking, I'll need it for the festive season.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
ANSI Patent policy
1.2.11 ANSI patent policy - Inclusion of Patents in American National Standards
There is no objection in principle to drafting a proposed American National Standard in terms that include the use of a patented item, if it is considered that technical reasons justify this approach.
If the Institute receives a notice that a proposed American National Standard may require the use of a patented invention, the procedures in 1.2.11.1 through 1.2.11.4 shall be followed.
1.2.11.1 Statement from patent holder
Prior to approval of such a proposed American National Standard, the Institute shall receive from the identified party or patent holder (in a form approved by the Institute) either: assurance in the form of a general disclaimer to the effect that such party does not hold and does not currently intend holding any invention the use of which would be required for compliance with the proposed American National Standard or assurance that:
1.
a license will be made available without compensation to the applicants desiring to utilize the license for the purpose of implementing the standard; or
2.
a license will be made available to applicants under reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination.
1.2.11.2 Record of statement
A record of the patent holder's statement shall be placed and retained in the files of the Institute.
1.2.11.3 Notice
When the Institute receives from a patent holder the assurance set forth in 1.2.11.1 a) or b), the standard shall include a note as follows:
NOTE - The user's attention is called to the possibility that compliance with this standard may require use of an invention covered by patent rights.
By publication of this standard, no position is taken with respect to the validity of this claim or of any patent rights in connection therewith. The patent holder has, however, filed a statement of willingness to grant a license under these rights on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions to applicants desiring to obtain such a license. Details may be obtained from the standards developer.
1.2.11.4 Responsibility for identifying patents
The Institute shall not be responsible for identifying all patents for which a license may be required by an American National Standard or for conducting inquiries into the legal validity or scope of those patents that are brought to its attention.
ISO and IEC Patent Policy
...subclause...). ISO [and/or] IEC take[s] no position concerning the evidence, validity and scope of this patent right. The holder of this patent right has assured the ISO [and/or] IEC that he/she is willing to negotiate licences under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and c
2.14.1 If, in exceptional situations, technical reasons justify such a step, there is no objection in principle to preparing an International Standard in terms which include the use of items covered by patent rights - defined as patents, utility models and other statutory rights based on inventions, including any published applications for any of the foregoing - even if the terms of the standard are such that there are no alternative means of compliance. The rules given below and in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, 2001, Annex H shall be applied.
2.14.2 If technical reasons justify the preparation of a document in terms which include the use of items covered by patent rights, the following procedures shall be complied with.
19.
The originator of a proposal for a document shall draw the attention of the committee to any patent rights of which the originator is aware and considers to cover any item of the proposal. Any party involved in the preparation of a document shall draw the attention of the committee to any patent rights of which it becomes aware during any stage in the development of the document.
20.
If the proposal is accepted on technical grounds, the originator shall ask any holder of such identified patent rights for a statement that the holder would be willing to negotiate worldwide licences under his rights with applicants throughout the world on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions. Such negotiations are left to the parties concerned and are performed outside ISO and/or IEC. A record of the right holder's statement shall be placed in the registry of the ISO Central Secretariat or IEC Central Office as appropriate, and shall be referred to in the introduction to the relevant document [see ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, 2001, H.3]. If the right holder does not provide such a statement, the committee concerned shall not proceed with inclusion of an item covered by a patent right in the document without authorization from ISO Council or IEC Council as appropriate.
21.
A document shall not be published until the statements of the holders of all identified patent rights have been received, unless the Council concerned gives authorization.
2.14.3 Should it be revealed after publication of a document that licences under patent rights, which appear to cover items included in the document, cannot be obtained under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and conditions, the document shall be referred back to the relevant committee for further consideration
Annex H
(normative)
Patent rights
H.1 All drafts submitted for comment shall include on the cover page the following text: "Recipients of this draft are invited to submit, with their comments, notification of any relevant patent rights of which they are aware and to provide supporting documentation."
H.2 A published document for which no patent rights are identified during the preparation thereof, shall contain the following notice in the foreword:
"Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO [and/or] IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights."
H.3 A published document for which patent rights have been identified during the preparation thereof, shall include the following notice in the introduction: "The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) [and/or] International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) draws attention to the fact that it is claimed that compliance with this document may involve the use of a patent concerning (...subject matter...) given in
It's even worse. It will read 1 or 2 characters from the file, depending on the value of the first character.
The Coherent episode suggests one approach to disproving the SCO case: if undocumented SCO/UNIX bugs (or features) are missing from Linux, that strongly suggests that the Linux code was not copied from UNIX. Documenting subtle differences in behavior between the two kernels could put the final nail into SCO's coffin.
If SCO thinks that it somehow has a copyright on the intellectual content of the code (e.g., that only it can publish a macro called "isdigit()"), well, AT&T long ago chose not to assert that claim.
[this
How can they include things like the correct errno.h for Linux into their closed source binaries without being in copyright violation? Remember that several of the Linux i386 values aren't POSIX compliant so SCO can't say they used the standards.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Has anyone thought, perhaps, that SCO knew -- years ago -- that Linux was a far superior product to their own?
All SCO had to do was maliciously get some of their own code into Linux - let companies make their networks dependent on Linux - then BLAM. They sue.
If SCO really has rights to some code in Linux - my first thoughts would be that SCO was responsible for that code being contributed to begin with.
If they're not conspiring to lie, they're conspiring to steal. It's obvious this is the nature of SCO -- as with these lawsuits SCO is more then obviously trying to trap as many Linux users as it possibly can. And even now, with no proof of IP, SCO is selling licenses with a "buy it or get sued" attitude.
I can't wait to see SCO trash getting poked in the pokey. I wish the mainstream press would get a clue - and expose SCO to investors as the trash that they are.
Hell, I'd like to see it on the O'Reilly factor!
This is another case of tech-ignorant people eating up tech-talk. It's like politicians writing another DMCA.
A few more years of this crap and I'll go insane.
if they have to rove it, that would mean releasing their headers. they are never going to do that.
...these aren't my real teeth.
I'm so pissed off that Linus has had to waste his time on this shite just because SCO thought they might make some fast cash.
I want him working on the kernel (and I believe he wants to work on the kernel too) without all these inane distractions
Quoting Linus in the Article:
;)
:
d efine toupper(c) (_ctmp=c,islower(_ctmp)?_ctmp+('A'-'a'):_ctmp)
For example, SCO lists the files "include/linux/ctype.h" and
"lib/ctype.h", and some trivial digging shows that those files are
actually there in the original 0.01 distribution of Linux (ie September of
1991). And I can state
- I wrote them (and looking at the original ones, I'm a bit ashamed:
the "toupper()" and "tolower()" macros are so horribly ugly that I
wouldn't admit to writing them if it wasn't because somebody else
claimed to have done so
Quoting Linus in ctype,h, linux 0.0.1
#define tolower(c) (_ctmp=c,isupper(_ctmp)?_ctmp+('a'+'A'):_ctmp)
#
-><- no
...just wrong :) The "++" is evaluated twice, once for each place in the macro. So if your macro tested say x == x, it'd fail because it would be expanded to cp++ == cp++ and the first would evaluate to cp, the other to cp+1 (first increment is done when second cp++ is evaluated) and the final value, after the macro would be cp+2.
So it's completely predictable, but of course total meaningless.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We cloned him from George Bush sr.! The fact that they both have the same name proves that they are clones."
Since 30 days from Dec. 12 is Jan. 11, a Sunday, SCO's response actually isn't due until Monday, January 12th.
There hasn't been freedom in the US for a while.
It's not the stock price they're after. I think they're financing the lawyers. It wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that the law firm was behind this all: after all, they are the obvious ones who profit from this whole mess.
"I am a tool" got modded +5 informative?
Heh, maybe there is not even a SCO-MS connection.
What if this is just a way to drain money?
A short theory:
Say that I have an old friend who is a top lawyer.
Say that I acquire a firm and I see it is beyond help. Now I can't use a pump and dump scheme, because the SEC will be all over me. I contact my old friend and hire his firm to represent me in a court case I start. Then I can legally pay him lots of money, perhaps even more than my firm actually earns, without violating SEC rules.
I'm not saying this is true, not even saying that this is my opinion. It's just a theory. Could this work? Is it legal?
And would it be legal if, when all this is over, my old friends lets me get a share of the money he earned while representing my case?
The SCO corporation has in their possession irrefutable evidence that Mr. Torvald (sic) referred to our great American enterprise as manure of our great Nation's main foodstaple, thereby also directly attacking our Great Nation which was established and built by our great Forefathers. Compassionate neo-conservative newsletters immediately recognized Mr. Torvald (sic) as a terrorist and called for his immediate internment in the Guantanamo Bay Terrorist Care Facility. The tireless patriotic work of our 1.3 million brave men and women serving in the US Armed Forces across the globe under our glorious Commander-in-Chief must not be allowed to put in jeopardy by the defamatory schemes deployed by this terrorist leader.
Furthermore, Mr. Torvald (sic) must be convicted as an illegal combatant because his evil terrorist plot was carried out under false identity. We are therefore launching another multi-billion-dollar suit against Mr. Torvald (sic) over his illegal use of a copyrighted pseudonym on behalf of another great American enterprise. Mr. George Lucas, who has gracefully endorsed our great nation's military project known as Star Wars, is reportedly screaming murder over the terrorist's use of the good name "Maul", which is under his sole ownership, for evil purposes without appropriate royalty payments.
The DMCA Governing Council has already called for the ultimate penalty for anyone abusing or circumventing property belonging to campaign contributors. We are expecting to announce the capture of this slimy evil-doer shortly. The National Guard are said to be closing in on his rathole thanks to tearful confessions by numerous other OSDL terrorists already undergoing intensive interrogation at various Freedom Facilities in undisclosed locations.
God Bless America!
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
http://docsrv.caldera.com:507/cgi-bin/info2html?(s tandards.info.gz)Reading%2520Non-Free%2520Code&lan g=en
Referring to Proprietary Programs
Don't in any circumstances refer to Unix source code for or during
your work on GNU! (Or to any other proprietary programs.)
If you have a vague recollection of the internals of a Unix program,
this does not absolutely mean you can't write an imitation of it, but
do try to organize the imitation internally along different lines,
because this is likely to make the details of the Unix version
irrelevant and dissimilar to your results.
For example, Unix utilities were generally optimized to minimize
memory use; if you go for speed instead, your program will be very
different. You could keep the entire input file in core and scan it
there instead of using stdio. Use a smarter algorithm discovered more
recently than the Unix program. Eliminate use of temporary files. Do
it in one pass instead of two (we did this in the assembler).
Or, on the contrary, emphasize simplicity instead of speed. For some
applications, the speed of today's computers makes simpler algorithms
adequate.
Or go for generality. For example, Unix programs often have static
tables or fixed-size strings, which make for arbitrary limits; use
dynamic allocation instead. Make sure your program handles NULs and
other funny characters in the input files. Add a programming language
for extensibility and write part of the program in that language.
Or turn some parts of the program into independently usable
libraries. Or use a simple garbage collector instead of tracking
precisely when to free memory, or use a new GNU facility such as
obstacks.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20031222174158852&title=Standards&type=article&o rder=&pid=41223
or: groklaw great post! thanks!
Just pointing a reporter to a valid technical article, treatise or discussion will not necessarily result in their understanding the issues. Reporters are under extreme deadlines and getting the story done without egregious errors is often more imporant than getting it right. They will probably need help in sorting out the core issues from the peripheral sidelights.
Also, remember that reporters tend to seek good 'sound bites' to use as key elements in their stories. There are a number of good reasons for this, starting with the reporter's need to encapsulate a lot of info in a short space, grab the reader's scarce attention, meet deadlines, etc. In my experience, both direct and through friends, the quotes you give will be accurate, but they may or may not be illustrative of the true context. Most reporters ARE really trying to get the context right, and will take what help you can offer, within their very limited time budget.
This means that you MUST prepare when offering help; don't just wing it. Do the work of thinking up with a _concise_ explanation of the key points, filtering out ALL non-critical details, and 90% of the critical ones. Only 1 in 1000 of the details make it into the story, so YOU decide which one (i.e., don't just throw a pile of details at the reporter and then complain when (s)he picks the 'wrong' one).
Another way to think about this is that it is social engineering, not technical engineering. We are trying to sway public opinion, not create a machine that reliably performs a task. One pithy comment or analogy will outweigh 1000 pages of perfect technical 'proof'. We should be a source of those comments -- one of them just might stick.
Hmm... If your strategy is built entirely on FUD and keeping the facts secret... I think Darl and his Utah cooperatives have learned this trick from just watching tv (and fast). Come on guys, just little while ago (less than a year?) the Bush Party said that they HAD evidence of WMDs in Iraq. And that the conlusive evidence was couple of phone conversations and sattellite pictures with absolutely nothing on them. No wonder UN didn't believe them. Fortunately Darl does not have military on his side, but come to think of it, Bush as Darl's fellow Republican might turn the blind eye (in terms of SEC and legal fluff) to this case. In fact, this pretty much might happen because Bush's little history with Enron and other Oil companies. (Thought: wasn't this Iraq thing blown up after the Enron scandal?) So, Darl can't be blamed for imitating the tactics of our overlords, can he?
I play Iclod.
...if perhaps some SCO programmer somewhere liberated some linux code...
especially given that Darl's other brother is one of the lawyers, could this perhaps be where they're skimming off the $$$?
why should linus or anybody else waste their time and respond to SCO? every accusation they have made against linux has been unfounded or misconceived.
this should be linus' response to all the crap SCO dishes out:
"In this war of words, there are two parties: one party that offers the truth based upon documented fact and one party that offers false accusations based upon delusions. Anybody is able to view the work we have done to make Linux one of the best operating systems in the world. We do not hide anything. Who is telling you the truth and who is corrupt by self-delusion?"
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
nt
Linus used Minux as the source base (you can still get Minux; once also came in book form) and it's possible Minux was using Unix headers. I can't remember what I did 12 years ago so I doubt LT can, not without having notes on the very topic (yeah, right -- "hm, in 12 years SCO is gonna burn my butt, better make a note of this..."I'm copying Minux so if I get sued, it's that Minux guy's fault").
I'm pretty sure that whenever Darl McBride speaks, baby Jesus cries.
Sorry, but the "mainstream press" isn't even covering this story. The mainstream press is busy talking about Saddam and Michael Jackson, not some unknown company suing IBM over some thing on the Internet.
"Sufferin' succotash."
"But, looking at the claims and today's specifics, it sure seems to me to suggest the real intellectual property claim." Infortunately "intellectual property" is not a valid concept in law: you have trademarks, trade secrets, patents and copyrights. Each has its own set of laws governing use and misuse. Google for USA copyright law to see what applies to SCO's claims.
So, its not the actual text, but the logical content of the files. Thus, errno.h is significant in the actual values, and the concepts behind how errors get returned to the caller (its not a return value, its in the errno global... ). " Copyright can only be used to protect "original expression" of an idea. Given that the idea of error numbers and error handling is demonstrably part of openly published standards (POSIX), the error codes are widely known and published, and the language expressing the ideas is not only publically available but extremely restrictive, the chances of their being any copyrightable material in those header files is zero. (It's like a cookbook author trying to sue over the use of a phrase like "Preheat the oven to 350F" ... it's necessary information, but totally unoriginal.)
No, you may not be using CGI now.. but your experience working with web applications, even if you used CGI at the time, DOES matter...
Let's see, 7 years ago.. that'd be December, 1996.
I was professionally desgining ecommerce and interactive websites for about a year at that time. (Professionally means at my full time job, not spare time at school). Certainly, it was a new market, but there were others workign with me, and we had competition. And it's not like we were in The Valley or anything.. or even in the United States, where things were moving faster.
Just because you discovered the web 4 years ago doesn't mean the rest of us did.
So I'd say yes, that experience matters, as the languages you use change, adn the medium has evolved over time, but the basic principles are the same.. just as someone who has been programming for 20 years generally writes cleaner, better code, no matter what language they write in... someone who has been working with web technologies for 7 years will have a far easier time digesting how a new project is going to unfold than some java jockey fresh out of university.
It's a requirement of the ISO, IEEE and ANSI standards body that participants involved in the development of standards must pre-declare and clearly lable and identify any section of a standard in developent that an implementation would be dependent upon a patent for which royalties must be paid.
Yeah, it's a "requirement". ECMA has similar requirements, yet Microsoft still claims intellectual property even on the ECMA C# standard.
And what's the legal rememdy anyway when companies fail to comply with that requirement? You seem to think it's that the intellectual property falls into the public domain. But the remedy when unexpected intellectual property issues come up is more likely to be that the standard gets dropped by the standards body. See if SCO cares if POSIX gets dropped as an official standard.
Furthermore, even though the submitter and other standards body members disclaim intellectual property rights, any third party can still assert rights. SCO might portray themselves as a third party, not bound by AT&T's original agreements with POSIX.
Linux has met the required standard as a POSIX plaform and today Linux *IS* the defacto industry standard for the common Unix platform.
You are making another logical error here. Linux may or may not have been POSIX-compliant in 1997. But Linux implements a lot of other parts besides POSIX. Even if the POSIX part of Linux is completely free and clear, then SCO can still make claims about the non-POSIX aspects of UNIX that Linux implements.
And lastly to totally blow away your argument
You don't have to "blow away" my argument. I'm merely explaining that just because something complies with a standard, you can't assume it's free or unencumbered. There are many ways in which both parties to the standards process and third parties can still make claims. Your faith in the guarantees resulting from the standards process is naive in my opinion.
Ultimately, I think SCO doesn't have a case. But they certainly can muddy the waters and still cause a lot of trouble.
SCO is making copyright claims, so the patent policy is irrelevant. And standards bodies may not even have considered the possibility of copyright claims on something as nebulous as "UNIX principles and methods" to have formulated a policy.
Furthermore, no matter what submitters are required to do, you have to ask the question what happens if they fail to comply with policy. SCO gets barred from submitting more standards? POSIX gets dropped as an official standard? I doubt SCO gives a damn at this point. The standards bodies seem to lack teeth for enforcing IP-related misbehavior even for the requirements they do list.
Finally, Linux implements other UNIX APIs besides those implemented by POSIX, so even if the POSIX argument were bullet-proof (which it is not), SCO could still keep making their claims.
Ultimately, I think SCO's case has no merit. I'm just saying that SCO's claims can't be dismissed in the way Linus and you seem to be trying to dismiss them. SCO's claims ultimately need to be struck down both by demonstrating that no copying took place and that their copyright claims on UNIX principles and methods don't make legal sense.
This is why the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 151-2 is important. The other "open" standards bodies don't hold as much legal weight as the federal standard, because the US Govenment requires all contributing parties to "sign off" on the standard. There are a number of Legislative acts past that mandated such open implementable interoperable standards for Federal Information Processing in Govt tenders ( just don't ask me to name them off the top of my head - It's well over a decade since I worked with Ada ).I'm sure that many Govt organizations would not look too kindly on the self claimed "inheritors of Unix" SCO Group attempt at such a U-turn.
For POSIX compatability all that is needed in reality is a semi successfull attempt at passing compatability and a roadmap. Microsoft got by for years claiming POSIX compatibilty in NT for federal tenders, dispite the fact the the native POSIX layer was not stable or trully functional until late 1998 with the release of Interix. Now The OpenGroup and the Linux Standard Base have a New RoadMap for providing a POSIX shell for Linux LSB.
Job Responsabilities:
* Must be a dimwit who won't see the big heavy truck through the headlights until it's too late.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
The job has been filled
Either you have an amazing gift for understatement, or you failed to realize that the post to which you responded was absurdly in jest.
The "natural" upper and lower bounds of a range of numbers on computer are determined (almost exclusively) by the hardware architecture (in particular the number of bits in an instruction operand). It's too damn expensive and unnatural to map the bit pattern 0000...0000 to anything other than "zero", and everything else pretty much flows from that, the bit length, and a few other architechural odds and ends.
Every hero needs a villain!
if the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for a Google search of the name "Linus" didn't take you DIRECTLY to Linus Torvalds' home page
i didn't know that, i lost interest in google as a jester since they removed the "got to hell" gag.
not unwary time travellers - just those looking for a paying job.
i'll give them a hint - invest a bit in long term bonds before travelling, folks. beats working for a living.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
96 might be early to you, but in 96 I can count a number of people I know from my neck of the woods working with web stuff.
This is basically like asking for a seasoned web veteran... and the number is right on the money.
But they do such a good job of it themselves.
The courts should throw out SCO's accusations as nuisance lawsuits. It's like a car manufacturer suing a competitor for having four wheels on their models and calling this copyright infringement. This is what SCO is doing. I repeat, why don't the courts throw these out as NUISANCE lawsuits. Isn't there a law out there that prevents this kind of stuff from happening, especially when it is detrimental to a company's livelihood.
To the idiots who moderated this as troll, flamebait, and overrated, you people are fucking idiots. How humor impared can you possibly be?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Since the New York Times requires registration for it's current articles I've been news googling titles when I have it and it's always worked for me before. But this tyme the signin, registration, page came up and I tried both returned links (it returned two) to the NYT article. It also returned a link to the article on C!Net's News.com and when I clicked on it the page shows up then a new page came up saying the story expired so I just opened the link again then quickly hit the stop button. After that I was able to read it.
Should there be a Law?