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."

Comments

Re:A humble programmer!

[wes33]

humble my ass ... a "mistake" in a work that is under copyright investigation is like a gold nugget; that's why the old map makers would put in mistaken information in their maps. When the false info turned up in some competitor's map ... wham.

Linus is setting SCO up for something similar

Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start

[Ann Elk]

Here's the comment from the beginning of Linux 0.1's errno.h:

/*
* 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!
*/

BTW: I downloaded this code LONG before the SCO bullshit started to fly.

Re:What about patches and bugfixes?

[rifter]

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.

This just made the New York Times

[An Anonymous Hero]

Looks like they won't fool everyone this time:

Creator of Linux Defends Its Originality

also:

Novell Registers Unix Copyrights

SCO's Linux Kernel Personality

[LinuxGeek]

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.