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SCO Lists Specific Code-Infringement Claims
mugnyte writes "Those tireless folks at groklaw have transcribed and published the documents from the latest IBM/SCO hearing. In it, the exact lines of the supposed Dynix / AIX / Linux logic are given. SCO claimed that Linux's read copy update, journaling file system, enterprise volume management system, AIO (Asynchronous I/O), and "scatter gather" I/O code had been derived from either AIX or Dynix/ptx. Now we can take a look at what SCO thinks makes Linux an enterprise-ready platform started at 2.4, stealing away their market share. However, IBM released these things under the GPL ... so what license did IBM really have from SCO to do this? Which raises the question, What license did SCO have from Novell to disallow this?"
This computerworld story seems to have it sorted out:
1) AT&T licenses SysV to IBM and Sequent
2) IBM writes a bunch of cool enterprise level stuff for their flavor of SysV, and acquires Sequent
3) AT&T writes a letter to their newsletter ($echo) saying their license doesn't cover the derivative stuff, just the basic system
3) IBM eventually kicks their stuff into Linux
6) SCO buys up all the old licenses
7) SCO says the work is derivative after all, and they ownzors it
At some point the chewbacca defense starts to look a lot more rational.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Bull. Not even SCO is claiming it's their code (IANAL, but I'm fairly sure about that). They're claiming that it's IBM's code, but the terms of IBM's UNIX license agreement didn't allow them to release it under GPL.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Not to mention that the JFS code was originally written for OS/2 before it was ported to AIX.
No sig, sorry.
Actually, if you read the article on groklaw Tables C,D,E and F are all referring to infringements in the 2.6 kernel. So it would seem that the 2.6 kernel is not "safe"....
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
Chewbacca Defense
Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee - an eight foot tall Wookiee - want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
What does that have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
None of this makes sense.
If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
"I started my blog just before the SCO case was filed. Originally, my purpose was just trying to learn how to blog, because an attorney and I were discussing the possibility of me doing some telecommuting work for him, including work on his blog
/. [Slashdot] comments about legal news and most of the comments would be way off, and I realized that there is a hunger for someone to explain what it all means, what the process is, how things play out, to people who aren't in the legal field.
[...]
My thought then was to try to explain legal news stories as they came along. I was forever reading
[...]
I didn't think too many people would ever read it, except I thought maybe IBM might find my research and it'd help them. Or someone out there would read it and realize he or she had meaningful evidence and would contact IBM or FSF. I know material I have put up can help them, if they didn't already know about it. "
So in short, yes.
Cue The Sun...
Nonsense. They list files and lines of files, and show, via the RCU example, exactly how the content of two of those files directly increased the value of Linux to the detriment of their own business. There are only two questions: whether Sequent got an exception from the derivative work license terms from AT&T, and whether Novell's case holds. I've seen no evidence from IBM to support the former, and what I've seen out of Novell is not at all convincing on the latter. That will hang on what the various people involved remember meaning when they signed the contract.
DON'T LOOK!
This publicly available Caldera documentation could contain items including but not limited to proprietary, unpublished SCO code, copyrights, trade secrets, and/or patents!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
here are only two questions: whether Sequent got an exception from the derivative work license terms from AT&T...
You must have missed AT&T's 8/85 clarification on that issue:
"Section 2.01 - The last sentence was added to assure licensees that AT&T will claim
no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software
developed by AT&T."
Here's the relevant Groklaw link.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Unixware has never achieved a substantial market share
Another quote, again no mention of _copyrights_
X/Open introduces the UNIX 95 branding programme. Novell sells UnixWare business to SCO
nwfusion makes this interesting distinction:
1992 - Purchases rights to AT&T UNIX
1995 - Sells Unixware to Santa Cruz Operation
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
SCO lost Autozone to IBM's Linux efforts. They're a huge auto parts distribution chain with about 6,000 stores the last time I looked - I used to work for a much smaller competitor of theirs that went bankrupt in the mid nineties.
m
Target has *within the last month* told SCO to go pound sand and done a deal with IBM for Linux conversion. I'm not sure how many locations they have - does anyone have that info handy? Please post if you do.
Sherwin Williams I know less about than either of the other two but IBM has helped SCO to the door there, too.
I hope Darl & company get prosecuted but I feel bad for the SCO troops - this is exactly the same behavior (pump & dump) I saw with the auto parts supplier where I worked in the mid nineties. I wrote a perl script that calculated severance for 4,000 employees and the scumbag behind the whole scheme went right into something much nicer than unemployment and vocational training:
http://www.corporateexpress.com/Mark_Hoffman.ht
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
Nothing they've told me as of yet, then again, I haven't asked. Point is that they were interested enough to want evidence. I've filed a complaint with them before and their response was more or less "That's nice, we'll add you to the pile".
GCC is not specific to Linux. IBM's work on gcc in the mid-90s would have been for their UNIX customers.
alright, alright, i admit it was pretty bad, heck i came up with it in like 2 minutes :)
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
states that AT&T has no interest or title in works derived from or used with UNIX. I remember reading this someplace.
So SCO has no case.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
2.6.0 is now in freeze mode and it will be really hard to remove all the lines that SCO alleges are infringement
I don't know where you got that idea. Remember when the entire VM was replaced in the midst of a stable kernel?
SCO is already in trouble in Germany and New Zealand for such things. In Germany, they're under an injunction not to send demand letters to Linux users, and in New Zealand, the Commerce Commission is looking into SCO's activities. "A person or a company falsely claiming to have ownership of a product or service or the rights to payment could breach the Fair Trading Act", says the spokesperson for the New Zealand Commerce Commission. There are also unconfirmed reports of investigations by the authorities in Australia and by the US Federal Trade Commission.
SCO's "sue and threaten everybody" strategy is backfiring.
As a bit of trivia: you can't sue the government as a whole. Only departments and individuals. But I'm sure that hasn't stopped people from trying.
Let's look at this a little closer, with help from dictionary.com:Illegally copying a work does not involve capturing it physically (since the physical object need never leave possession of the rightful owner), confiscating it (again, because it is not removed from the owner), or killing, snaring or trapping (because it's not a friggin' squirrel). So to steal, you have to take, and to take, you have to physically remove something from the owner.
Let's start with the fact that "stolen" IP is almost never in the possession of the "owner" when it it "stolen." Generally, someone copies it not directly from the owner, but from a legal license holder. Therefore, even if it does involve physically removing the item (and, under right of first sale, if you *do* physically remove the item from the previous owner, you are specifically *not* infringing on copyright), you did not remove it from the "owner" as defined by copyright law.
It is possible to steal a CD from your roommate, but that is not copyright infringement. It is possible to infringe on copyright by copying a CD your roommate owns, but that is not stealing. It is possible to steal the CD from your roommate and copy it and pass it out to all your friends, in which case you've both stolen and infringed, but you haven't even done them to the same person. This is why the difference is important: stealing involves possession of a physical object. Copyright infringement does not. Therefore, they have to be defined differently, and so the law makes a distinction.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
If you obtain something without paying for it, it doesn't matter that the medium happens to allow a direct copy of it.
Your mistake is that you think "steal" means "obtain something without paying for it." It doesn't. It means removing something from someone else's possession (as more completely described, with dictionary citations, in another post of mine above). If all that was necessary to steal something was to obtain it without paying for it, we'd have a heck of a time with gift-giving, not to mention the Free Software movement.
Laws about stealing are about removal of property without consent. Laws about copyright infringement are about possession, distribution, or use of material without consent. They are not the same. Stop confusing them.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
According to those busy beavers at groklaw the kernel version they are referring to is *not* a vanilla kernel. It's vanilla-2.4.1 with rclock-2.4.2-01.patch from http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking/rclock.html applied.
Looking at the patch, IBM is listed as the copyright holder. The code also acknowledges that it is based on the Dynix implementation.
"More than 1,107 Target stores operate in 47 states"
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And for those of you who haven't heard what actually happened.
Admittedly, the version recorded by the directional mic is pretty funny, but if you had actually been standing there, you wouldn't have been able to hear the man.
Thanks for the information. However,
i) SCO has added a complaint of copyright infringement. See Groklaw.
ii) The case is being heard by Judge Dale Kimball in *Federal* court, not Utah state court. So, the court is perfectly entitled to rule on copyrights.
iii) As for the process being long or short, who knows. However, it seems unlikely to be very long if SCO fails to bring any evidence to discovery, as has been the case so far.
So, your cut-and-paste review is inaccurate in a couple of instances, but let's see what happens.
From :- http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/gove rnment/legalissues/story/0,108 01,90205,00.html
It looks like AT&T may have put another nail in SCO's coffin - interesting timing!
I scanned through the lists, and found quite a few single line entires in the table. I decided to look one up, specifically net/bridge/br_stp.c. Here's the offending line:
p = br->port_list;
If it wasn't for the history behind this, I'd have to laugh out loud. The only conclusion I can come to is that the majority of the claim comes from structure/union definitions in header files, and they extend it to C files wherever a structure/union member is referenced.
If I get some time, I may do an analysis of the list and determine exactly how little this case actually has to do with IP theft.
Let's see, he's:
Prosecuted Microsoft (Antitrust)
Boies and his team kicked microsoft's tail in court. Only afterwards, the gov't decided that a friendly handshake was punishment enough for the software company. It's been suggested that the change in presidency (and DOJ) had something to do with the 'punishment'.
I am not a sig.
-
SCO has repeatedly and publicly claimed that System V code is in Linux.
-
They then indicated that methods and knowledge transferred to IBM by their Sys V license were in Linux.
-
Now they are claiming that methods and knowledge created and owned by IBM are in Linux, but that they are derivative works of Sys V.
This requires them to use the 'ultra-viral' definition of derivative, which is that any code which has shared a code-base with Sys V original or derivative code is sys V derivative.Are you laughing at the fools yet?!
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
You don't do what whatever crackpot on the street tells you to do if you believe you are in the right.
If somebody has an issue with your actions they need to negotiate with you or to force you to change your ways. Since SCO has not negotiated (hint: they have nothing to negotiate, they own nothing in Linux, their plan was to make money, not to correct a legal problem) then the Linux developpers should be told by a court of law that there is actually an infringement.
I will never submit to the first idiot telling me I am infringing on his rights if I believe the claim to be untrue, Linux developpers should do similarly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In that 1985 copy of $ echo, AT&T said they would "assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T." In a recent Computerworld article, Frank Hayes calls that a clarification of the license's derivative-works clause:
Long story short, if SCO inherited from Novell the rights Novell inherited from AT&T, SCO has no claim over derivative works, only over the original AT&T code, and, of course, whatever they have written themselves.
This is not my sandwich.
While they extend their argument by saying that code made linux a lot better, this argument is meant to extort higher damages from IBM - it does not indicate viral ownership of Linux code, not even the matching code.
If this is true, the only possible defence for IBM is that the code was added to Dynix later that the agreement with SCO about not using Dynix code, making it effectively non-Dynix-old-version.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
What clear statement of intent? The $echo article is no statement of intent: it is not a deposition; it is not presented over the signature of a corporate officer, nor on the letterhead of an attorney representing AT&T. It has exactly as much legal force as my trolling here does: none.
Although it is no legal document the $echo article is a statement of ATT's interpretation and intent for what the license covers. In any contract dispute the intentions of the parties are almost as key as the language of the contract, if that intent can be proven. This article provides proof of what ATT intended the contract to mean and is highly relevant to any contract dispute. If ATT and IBM meant something other than they wrote and it can be proved the Judge will rule based on the intent and not the language. The problem in these disputes is often intent is hard to prove, the $echo article lays out exactly what ATT intended, IBM simply has to agree that is how they interpreted it.
SCO clearly admits that the code that IBM allegedly agreed not to share was created by IBM! I understand that they are claiming copyright protection to derivative works, but doesn't this greatly weeken their claim that IBM gave away trade secrets since this is code that IBM clearly wrote?
Until SCO can get a detailed response from IBM, it's difficult for SCO to prove that IBM gave code they wrote for AIX and Dynix/ptx to Linux, since they can't prove that IBM didn't write the code for Linux and then put it into AIX and Dynix/ptx. Without knowing who wrote each line and when and for what purpose, you can't say for sure whether or not code portions SCO highlighed are not a derivative of Linux.
Then, if any code was written with for both IBM's Unix and Linux, then which is it a derivative of? Clearly, IBM was writing code for both platforms, and some of it was bound to overlap. If a developer who wrote the code at IBM was trying to ensure it worked in both platforms, then isn't it, by SCO's definition of derivation, both a derivative of Linux and Unix?
Is there a legal precedent in copyright court cases for when product A (code in question) is a derivative of BOTH product B (AIX) and C (Linux), product B is a derivative of product D (SCO Unix), and owner of product D claims that product A cannot be a derivative of anything other than product B, and this should not have been part of product C, which it was also a derivative of?
SCO's whole ability to sue Linux users is based on copyright of the code in question. Yet both copyright and trade secrecy allegations seem to pinge on this concept of just how far derivative works can be defined.
This case seems to be defining them in contractual terms. Yet even the contractual claims cannot avoid addressing who owns the copyright of "derivative" works. To what extent does copyright law support it in complicated scenarios like this?
Add to that that user of product C (Linux binaries) has no knowledge of product B (Unix source).
When SCO and Novell copyrighted Unix source code, did either of them actually include the lines of code that IBM wrote? Was this all backported into Unix System V? If so, should we be suing SCO for infringement of the GNU since this code is clearly a derivative of Linux?
Open Standards Portal
First of all, thank you. I'm printing out your post and keeping it in my wallet Ann Landers style. It's one of the most profound posts ever to /. I will commend it to everyone working for me.
That said, it would be wise to consider what you have said in the harsh light of corporate politics.
What you have demonstrated is that it is possible to have integrity. Not that integrity is the only way.
Unfortunately, it remains true that any organization that relies to a large degree on trust is meat-and-potatoes to a sociopathic personality. Smart sociopaths don't become garden variety criminals, they put on suits and climb the corporate ladder. They leave behind a broad wake of deceit and betrayal. People who are drawn into this wake may lose their bearings, to the point where they begin to be unclear on what honesty and even basic decency are.
Thus you have cases like Enron, in which the management of a huge high profile company becomes in essence a massive criminal conspiracy. Enron's just the one of the big ones that got caught: this kind of culture is common enough that most of us middle aged folks have encountered it several times personally.
I think it is fair to say that if control of your own destiny is important to you, you have to choose. On one hand to be a liar and skilled in the arts that accompany this (deceipt, blame shifting, avoiding of consequences). Or to have integrity and be skilled in the arts that accompany that (tact, discretion, taking reponsibility, leadership).
In either case you can't avoid politics because one is the natural enemy of the other. And you really can't stake out a middle ground without losing control. Half measures depend on others not paying attention to succeed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Dude, you clearly have no clue about financial markets and how they work.
Kindly refrain from commenting about them until you do.