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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."
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 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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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...
I can see the SCO press release now: "Linus Torvalds admits he is 'a bit ashamed' regarding our copyrighted code".
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.
...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;
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.
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.
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.
CO can't exactly claim the codes were under some form of encryption...
<Darl McBride>Not encrypted? Then why are they called codes? Any manager can see that. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must buy up my stock.</Darl McBride>
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
According to his LKML post, it was more like half an hour.
I want my Cowboyneal
I wonder if the other ones quit?
Well, the new job listing in your link, for the "Director of Financial Reporting" position (posted 12/08/03), does seem to be missing one important detail under "Job Responsibilities".
I don't see "Serving as scapegoat during inevitable corporate collapse." Do you think that's what they mean by "Additional special projects will be given on an 'as occurring' basis?"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
I wonder WHY they quit. Did they see something in the course of their work that made them scared to be associated with SCO? Director of Financial Reporting AND Internal Auditor, both leaving within a couple of weeks of each other? I wonder if they'll pass whatever they found out on to the SEC?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not a stock guru. But I think it's not the price, but the number of Bids and Asks.
In another word...
400 People wants to buy the stock.
89200 wants to sell it.
In a few more words...
They're in deep sh*t.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
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?
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.
They may have been under some pressure to book the Baystar and RBC investments as revenue, or some other similar "creative accounting" move, to make the 4th quarter look like a gain rather than a loss. And the finance guys said "No way do I want to share a cell with the Enron guys! I quit!".
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!
BTW, Web technologies started with webservers and web browsers. Not with CGI scripting.
The term "Web Technologies" usually refers to interactive web sites. The term didn't exist when I started programming HTML back in '96 or even when I was coding servlets in '98. Perhaps they meant web browsers and HTTPD servers, but that's not what they said.
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.
Sounds to me like you're too insecure in your own skills to find the humor in the "10+ years in Java" type job ads. Sure, you could probably find some sort of rationalization, but the truth is that these things are written by HR departments that don't know any better.
In other words, don't be such a stick in the mud. It's funny! Laugh!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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!
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.
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.
No.
The "bid price" is the highest amount that any buyer is willing to pay for a stock at a particular time. Likewise, the "ask price" is the lowest amount that any seller is willing to sell the stock for.
So, one particular buyer is asking to buy 100 shares at 4 cents, while one seller is offering to sell 100 shares at $892 each.
Since you're looking at the closing quote, the bid and ask prices are not particularly meaningful. One way to read those numbers is that "all reasonable orders were filled by the end of the day, and the remaining unfilled orders were ridculous (4 cents and $892)."
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.
[...] 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
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.
Proficient in Java technologies or Microsoft.Net
7+ years in Web technologies
Lemme see. Java servlets were introduced in 1998. That was a mere 5 years ago.
Back in '97 a programmer friend of mine looking for work showed me a job ad asking for people with at least 5 years experience with Windows 95.
Its a conspiracy I tell you, they're trying to catch careless time travellers...
You can't take the sky from me...
Well, as the other posts say the final bid/ask amounts don't tell you much. But something else does. You can no longer short sell SCO. Noone is willing to lend that stock for short sale cause it is expected to fall much faster than the amount of money one could recoup from the interest on lending a stock. The only time this kind of situation happened in recent history was when 3com stock was worth less than the palm stock (at the time palm was a 3com subsidiary).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
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.)
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.
The real problem is that SCO had to pick a part of the Linux system that actually was similar to their UNIXes. After all, any number of people have access to the code that SCO is saying IBM put into Linux. If they picked something that was obviously bogus then IBM (or Novell) could simply call their bluff. Since no such beast exists SCO simply had to pick a part of the Linux kernel that had to be similar to their UNIX (because there was no other way to write it).
SCO's lie does not have to be terribly convincing. After all, what they really are doing is trying to drive their stock price up, and almost no investors have a clue about UNIX history or copyright law. So SCO simply has to float a big lie and then rely on Microsoft and Sun (and the many analysts and journalists that have a vested interest in derailing Free Software) to act as if the lie was somewhat credible. SCO has said all sorts of crazy things in the press, and people that should know better are acting as if SCO actually has a point.
Since SCO isn't actually trying to win the case (instead they are simply trying to drag it out so that they can dump their shares without getting targetted by the SEC), they can say whatever they want in the press. IBM, Novell, and Red Hat, on the other hand are actually trying to win their respective cases and they know that things that they say in public can be used against them in court. These companies know that the proper place to do your talking is in court. Linus apparently doesn't care that his comments could run him into legal trouble down the road (well, he already had been subpoenaed).
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 (=
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??!!?
Linus apparently doesn't care that his comments could run him into legal trouble down the road
How so? He is making a factual statement, then expressing his own personal opinion. Neither of which are illegal the last time I checked.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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.
It's not a question of whether his statements are legal or not. You can say whatever dumb thing you want, whenever you want. The problem is that Linus' words can now be considered "evidence," and they can be used against him in a court of law.
For example, he is now on the record stating that he wrote the original version of these files, but that these files are now different than the originals that he wrote. That may seem innocuous, but who knows what SCO might want to prove in a court of law. Any way you look at it he is making SCO's life easier by pointing out possible flaws in their case.
No, the trick when you have legal difficulties is to say as little as possible, and to never say anything without legal counsel going over the angles.
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.
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.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
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
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
So, do you admit that Linus copied the entire substance of include/errno.h from somewhere else?
...
I dug out Unix 5th Edition because it's the closest to the original that I could find. Linus says that he copied his errno.h from Minix. Tanenbaum probably copied his from somewhere else. The chain of copying goes back to the original AT&T Unix code.
Compare with the paranoid attitude of gcc: gcc doesn't include copies of other people's system header files from, say, solaris or hp-ux; gcc includes scripts that manipulate the files on the end user's system, if the end user has legal copies of these files.
See this bit from the GNU coding standard:
Referring to Proprietary Programs
RMS has a stick up his a** about a lot of things, but better RMS's stick than Boies' dick.
I haven't read the Posix standard
Here is the 2003 version of the standard for errno.h.
The names are standardized in 2003 (and were probably standardized before 1991). But the values are not standardized. If you or I were to write an errno.h from that specifcation, the odds are incredible that we would happen to choose the same 31 values in the same order as the original Unix implementation. Personally, I would follow the order in the specification, which is alphabetical.
Again, from a legal point of view, it's a molehill. The actual value of those identical error numbers numbers is not $3,000,000,000. More like $300 or $3000. Ditto with the ioctl numbers. As you point out, the values of certain signal numbers (like SIGKILL) are well known. And all of these files are completely unrelated to SCO's claims that IBM copied SMP, NUMA, JFS, RCU code into Linux.
But from a PR point of view, it's damaging to us.
This activity looks uncomfortably like SCO's allegations about how Linux is developed. Here's Unix code; here's Linux code; the Linux code is a verbatim copy of the Unix code.
A nasty twist: because this is part of the ABI, it would be difficult and painful to replace include/asm-*/errno.h with a clean room implementation from the Single Unix Specification.
A note here: I'm not pro-SCO, and I'm not trolling. I'm looking to find the strongest SCO points because we're at war with SCO, so it's important to understand the strong points of the enemy's position.
Actually, I think the SCO strategy is just lying about everything and hoping everyone is too stupid to realize it.
... They have started throwing those pencils, but they are not pencils, they are booby traps to kill the children."
I think we should follow their lead.
"NO. We have retaken the Unix source code. There are NO SCO execs there. I will take you there and show you. IN ONE HOUR!"
"We defeated them yesterday. God willing, I will provide you with more information. I swear by God, I swear by God, those who are staying in Utah and the SCO headquarters have thrown these mercenaries in a crematorium."
"We are not afraid of SCO. Allah has condemned them. They are stupid. They are stupid" (dramatic pause) "and they are condemned."
"We have destroyed 50 Unix machines today. That 5-ohhh tanks" [while holding up his fingers]
"I am not talking about the Utah people, I am talking about those mercenaries.
"I would like to clarify a simple fact here: How can you lay siege to a whole Operating System source code? Who is really under siege now? vmsystem.h cannot be besieged. ctype.h cannot be besieged. kernel.h cannot be besieged."
There. I feel our public support growing already.
It's been a long time.
But they do such a good job of it themselves.