Slashdot Mirror
Why Does SCO Focus On A Minix-to-Linux Link?
ansak writes "In the latest scoop from Groklaw, Groklaw user talks_to_birds pointed out an error in SCO's version of the famous Levenez Unix Timeline. The important error is the green dotted line which shows Minix to be a derivative of Unix. If this were accepted, and if Linux was shown to be a derivative of Minix, then SCO's lawsuits would be more likely to have merit. As it turned out, even MS called Samizdat unhelpful, but at least now there may be a plausible reason why someone would try to make the link between Minix and Linux in the first place."
Inform me if I'm wrong, but didn't Linus make Linux because he didn't like Minix?
Help Fight SPAM today!
No, because the guy who made this link, Ken Brown, intentionally ignored multiple sources of information that Linux was *not* derived from Linux. It was totally untrue, and he knew it because:
-
Tanenbaum, who wrote Minix, told him so.
-
The guy Ken Brown hired to find where Linux took from Minix told him that it had not in fact happened, after analysing the code.
There never was *any* plausible support for Brown's case and he knew it *befire* making PR announcements, but he went ahead anyhow."that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
...a Microsoft-sponsored IDC telephone survey a couple of days ago did still ask me if "the SCO litigation" was one of the reasons I use Linux.
I said "Yes", of course, since I'd use Linux on principle if I hadn't been already when extortionists like TSG (The Sco Group) sued them. If they turn and sue someone like the NetBSD project, I'd find a place in my organisation for a NetBSD box as well.
For the curious, IDC called from Malaysia into Australia, and "Brian" (no idea if that's his real name) said that IDC were planning on setting up their main Asia-Pacific offices there.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If you examine Eric's original chart, you will see that this relationship between Linux, Minix, and Unix exists even there. SCO has simply made it obvious to see, and called the chart a sort of "pedigree" to suggest that Linux contains actual Unix "genetic" material.
Of course, Eric states very clearly on his site that "an arrow indicates an inheritance like a compatibility, it is not only a matter of source code"
And anyway, Minix doesn't contain any AT&T source code by Tanenbaum's own admission. Linux doesn't contain Minix code. These are both original works, influenced by the Unix flavor of their time. That is what the Levenez chart shows, nothing more.
The chart is only useful to SCO in their campaign of dishonesty to suggest something that is clearly untrue, and that has been proved repeatedly to be untrue.
The Wayback Machine indicates that "Note 1" was added in the period 2nd August 2002 to 14th October 2002.
This is well before the start of the SCO affair (7th March 2003), so the note is not a belated attempt to bolster Linux's case. The diagram genuinely does not measure source code dependence.
Where I come from we have a legal figure called (how can I put it in English? let me try...) "litigation in bad faith" ("litigância de má-fé", to the Portuguese speakers out there). It is what SCO is doing: starting a legal process against someone even when they know they don't have a case. Doesnt the American juridical system have such a thing?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Before SCO, I (and my company) used open source because of a warm fuzzy 'freedom' feeling. Today that support has hardened (and is still hardening) into a business *requirement*.
The GPL is a known quantity to me. All I have to do is agree to its straightforward terms and all my licensing worries are over.
Contrast that with SCO's EULA shenanigans. If I was with SCO, I would have to be watching my back against the EULA being changed on me, being hauled into court and having to meticulously track every license I own (or should that be rent?).
Technically, I can't see what's stopping any other software company that uses an EULA from pulling the same stunts as SCO.
The end result is my company has made a decision, for *business* reasons, that all software must be open source and to avoid EULAs if at all possible. Proprietary will be tolerated only if there is no alternative, and even then I will always be on the lookout for an open source replacement.
How many other companies must also be arriving at this view of the world?
Further more, companies such as mine are operating in stealth mode on this issue (hence the AC). I'm not going to sick my head up and asked to be shot at by a desperate software company. I don't care if I don't show up on any user surveys. What I'm really saying is that lots of companies going down the same path as my company will not be advertising the fact.
Perhaps proprietory software is a bit like a fence post being eaten by termites? No damage shows until all that is left is a paper thin outer shell, at which point the post collapses.
Everyone had access to MINIX's source code. All the important bits were published on paper in Andy Tanenbaum's book on operating systems, which was a standard recommended college text at many universities at the time, and is still highly recommended today.
The workings of MINIX are discussed in the book in detail, and the complete source code and binaries are on a CD which comes with the book. The book was the standard cheap way to get MINIX, so it's pretty damn likely that Linus had a copy.
I was running Minix on my Atari and hacking the kernel source to support Cyrillic at around the time Linus started writing Linux, which was originally a replacement kernel for Minix. Linus did it because Andy Tanenbaum wouldn't add 386-only functionality to Minix, because he wanted it to be portable to whatever machines students had available to them--e.g. my Atari. Linus wanted protected virtual memory, so he started hacking on 386 assembler using his Minix system to do so.
All of this is pretty common knowledge, I thought, so I'm perplexed that so many people posting to this discussion seem unaware of it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
No! The GPL places an independent burden on distributors to independently re-GPL anything they distribute. SCO was certainly aware of what they were distributing. The alternative is that they distributed a mix of other peoples GPL code and their own proprietary code, which is for-profit copyright infringement. Since these acts (occur and continue even now) after they proclaimed linux infringing, they can't plead ignorance anymore.
So they can choose between A) losing because they GPL'd everything in dispute regardless of whether it was proprietary or not before they distributed it, or B) losing because their entire linux business was based on willful, for-profit piracy.