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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
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.
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/lin ux-0.01.tar.gz
Next!
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. :)
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!
"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.
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.
I can see the SCO press release now: "Linus Torvalds admits he is 'a bit ashamed' regarding our copyrighted code".
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;
There you are! Thought you got away did you? Gimme my head you bastard. And how dare you call me little, I'd be taller if I had my head back.
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
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.
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.
I thought you were just kidding with this, so I took out the CD-ROM that came with the "LINUX Core Kernel Commentary" book, since it has a 0.01 version for comparison with 2.2.x. The original is definitely not copied and the one from 2.2.10 looks like an incremental change (comments added, new error numbers, but the file itself doesn't look any diffferent).
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.
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.
Yes, it's telling. You have a college student who's writing his own OS because he can't afford the money to purchase a commercial *nix. He'd like to make it comply to the standards, but he can't afford the money to buy the standard either. This is exactly why standards should be open in every sense of the word.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
But really, Darl isn't half the guitarist the Keith Richards is...
On the other hand, from reading his press releases, I think he might be taking even more drugs than the Keith.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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
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.
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.
Nah.. He didn't quit. He was fired because he wouldn't lie..
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
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