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Randall Davis: IBM Has No SCO Code
Mick Ohrberg writes "As reported by Groklaw, Randall Davis, renowned professor of Computer Science at MIT has after an extensive search found no evidence of SCO's claims that IBM has incorporated parts of the Unix System V code. Davis says "Accordingly, the IBM Code cannot be said, in my opinion, to be a modification or a derivative work based on the Unix System V Code." Surprised, anyone?"
So basically, SCO is bankrupt now?
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
you mean that SCO has been lying to us?
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
Well, you thought that SCO's case had to be standing on SOMETHING, right? COlor me surprised! ;)
One thing was pointed out on Groklaw that I think was relevant. Although I think SCO has no case, I'm sure they will jump on the fact that the expert didn't provide an example of a true derivative work run through the same procedure.
It surely wouldn't have been hard to take some, say, early and "in the clear" code that has been reused and modified over time to show both that it can be identified and to show how code that has evolved can still leave the fingerprint of the original code. Without that counter example the failure to find matches would seem underwhelming. (The closest the testimony came to this was showing a positive result that was generated and showing how it was a commonly repeated pattern in all software written in C, not something specific to these two programs).
Perhaps elsewhere in IBMs testimony there was reference to this same procedure being successfully?
Sig under construction since 1998.
rocks are hard and water is wet.
More at 11.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
I thought SCO was telling the truth the whole time. You mean to tell me that those bastardly socialist hackers have done nothing wrong? Impudence!
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
nedit lawsuitammo.txt
(null)
8. I have been retained by counsel for IBM in this lawsuit and am being compensated at a rate of $550 per hour.
20. These comparisons required on the order of 10 hours of computation time on a dual 3 GHz Xeon processor system with 2 GB of RAM. This is a high-end workstation routinely and easily available off the shelf from commercial vendors such as Dell.
At $550 per hour, I would've used something like a 386 processor with 8MB of RAM.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
After that, who will have the copyright of Unix? Open Group? or IBM? or Novel?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
What about these snippets? // /*f (...)
*/
while(1)
{
}
return(0);
return(1);
i
elseif (...)
else
And don't forget the white space! That is a clear copy!
The article is a good start but what are the criterias for determining derivatives?
Which method is covered for source code comparisions?
1. two printouts held together and up toward a lighted source?
2. side-by-side subjective eyeball comparision
3. diff (and all derivative comparision tools)
4. diff with some wiggle-room command line options?
5. NSA-grade pattern analysis supercomputer?
I'm slightly guarded here, but these SCO FUD-busting articles seemed very promising...
SCO, don't try and claim that IBM has your code. That's impossible. Instead, realize the truth. There is no SCO code.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
... who wrote the comparator tool which was one of the two tools used in the analysis.
ESR deserves three cheers for 'scratching his itch', making a tool to compare copyrighted code. To have it actually used in the SCO case which was the annoying impetus for its creation (AFAICT) has to be a nice feeling.
I'm not an ESR fanboy, but I'll give him props when I think he deserves it and in this case I think he does.
--LP
Where do I get a gig like that?
He basically had some software look for similarities in the code, and then manually verified the hits.
Wow....$550/hour to do that. I've got a CS degree - I'll volunteer to do it for half that!
Oh yeah, he also explained the significance of return statements so that non-programmer types could understand.
-ted
"I used two programs, COMPARATOR and SIM [...] to compare all 26,759 lines of the IBM Code identified by SCO against all 67,797,569 lines in the Unix System V Code.
COMPARATOR reported 15 potential hits. I reviewed each of these potential hits in detail and determined them [...] to be matches of common terms in the C programming language.
SIM did not report any potential hits."
so... all this SCO bullshit is finally over?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
That's ... that's ... that's because Randall Davis doesn't have the Secret SCO Decoder Ring (tm) (patent pending) (C 2004 SCO). The Decoder Ring ... it ... it detects our IP where no mere mortal could ever hope to find it!
... for a limited time only ... buy SCOSource licenses for 5 or more friends, and SCO will throw in a Secret SCO Decoder Ring (tm) (patent pending) (C 2004 SCO) at no additional charge!
And now
My name is Darl McBride, and I have authorized this message!
The only thing I can say is:
"All your lawsuits are belong to us"
SCO, go back to doing nothing.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Only the code SCO CURRENTLY says is infringing was tested. According to the document on Groklaw, this was not a line by line comparison.. so if SCO sneaks new code into discovery at some later point, this'll have to be done all over again.
Why? 6 million lines of code compared against 6 million (or more) will take a exponentially more time than 27000 vs 6 million.
In other news... SCO's lawyers have started filing suits with all other unix variants...
He goes into detail.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Hmmm...I wonder if he can prove that COMPARATOR and SIM do not contain any SCO code?
This almost doesn't even count as news.
Everybody knew it . . . even SCO!
1. Get Linux 2.6.8.1
2. Get Linux 2.4.0
3. left out as an exercise for the reader
4. Show positive result
5. Don't profit, but have fun.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Great! Graduate Phi Beta Cappa (summa cum laude, too), run some AI centers and also have excessive experience in Code copyright infringement cases!
See you in 10 years!
(trans: read the relevant parts of his CV in the PDF- this guy is FOR REAL.)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"No SCO code? Shaa...and monkeys might fly out of my butt!"
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
If I recall correctly, Randy told me that he has served as a special master in several cases.
Fight Spammers!
SCO: b-b-but, you're not supposed to use a COMPUTER SCIENTIST!
IBM: byte us.
stuff |
Surprised, anyone?"
...
Darl, Baystar,
He bills $550 an hour for his time, not computation time. I doubt he would sit at his desk watching the screen saver during the computation time -- He'd go to the Royal East for lunch.
Fight Spammers!
The $550/hr analyst eliminated the following filtration criterias:
1. ideas
2. purposes
3. procedures
4. processes
5. system
6. method of operations
7. facts
8. unoriginal elements
WOW! Okey Doke. So, now the IBM legal team is really looking for "copy-cat" aspect of which we, the community, are certain there aren't any (save for a few comments).
Looks like a (yet another prolonged drawned out) battleground for SCO legal team to reinstate some of the following bullet items above.
Has someone finally grasped the trailing thread of the FUD inducing cloak of obfuscation that SCO has thrown over this case from day one?
Will the whole mess finally start to unravel under expert scrutiny that is conversant engough to the non-technical person that they can explain what a load of drek SCO is peddling?
We can only hope!
This guy is the expert in code comparison, which is why he can get so much. It's like hiring Linus Torvalds as a kernel consultant.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I'll volunteer to do it for half that!
And there are people in India who will do it for 1% of what Davis got paid for it.
(That's $5.50 per hour for us non-math types)
Get your Unix fortune now!
So the lawsuits will keep on coming!
SCO claims an attack from IBM, using these weapons, is imminent. SCO has 2 carrier battle groups in the area and 250,000 troops on call to go in and find the WMD, pending UN approval. More news to come.....
-Randy
Your honour, when we apply the standard abstraction and filtration phases to any Unix System V file we can clearly see that the resulting 0 byte file is identical to every abstracted and filtered 0 byte file in the latest Linux kernel.
...it's (SCO) Some Company's Other code. How's that for ironic, a SOFTWARE company takes out a lawsuit over SOFTWARE and a computer scientist uses SOFTWARE to prove there is no case. I'm waiting for SCO to claim rights to the comparator concept. How high will the level of ludicrous behaviour will over-paid, executives in companies loosing money get? Has anyone during this entire process given thought that maybe SCO took the code and claims it as their own? How will they ever prove this case is beyond me, since Unix was in existence before SCO was established as a company.
Scientia et Potentia
treacle...
Although your deposition includes a description of your methodology, it does not indicate whether you established a proper baseline for comparison or how you calibrated your filter. I would be interested to know how far, in your direct experience, code can be modified before it fails to match COMPARATOR and SIM respectively. Furthermore, how closely does the point at which these tools fail to detect a match coincide with the legal Abstraction, Filtration, and Comparison test?
I do not fault your analysis; I would like to know more about your methodology, beyond the limited scope of the deposition.
-Hope
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/davis/bio.pdf
IANAL but isnt there something forbidding lawyers from taking on cases they know to be false or something like that? When SCOs case is proven to have no grounds - and never did (and thats merely a matter of time) whats going to happen to the lawyers after this case. Im presuming they`re going to swear blind they thought SCO would win ( chortle etc ). It would be nice to see the lawyers in chain - dragged off to the stockade along with Darl + co
I wish that I could bill my time for $550/hr and then get my assistant to do all of the real work. It sounds like all he really did was manually check the very few matches that came up. If they're all like the example he gave then I don't see any reason it would have taken him more then 10 minutes of actual work.
So can I get a refund on my SCO extortio^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H license fee?
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Law is an ass, and there is no way to tell which way this will still come out - on all the arguments.
It only takes a . out of line to sway the legal result, not necessary the correct and right result.
It not over until the fat penguin sings, then we can all rejoice.
Well, it looks like we only have 2 more months until SCOX is back to where it should be.
Will he have to re-run the comparison now that Sims 2 is out?
Wait for the contersue:
"We don't exist"
To strengthen their case, IBM needed to trot out an MIT professor to counteract all of those fictional MIT folks that found this infringement in the first place.
-- dR.fuZZo
I love this part:
"I have also been retained by the Department of Justice in its investigation of the INSLAW matter. In 1992 (and later in 1995) my task in that engagement was to investigate alleged copyright theft and subsequent cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency."
Holy rat shit Batman!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Even though what he did may only require a CS degree, if IBM just hired someone with a CS degree to do the same job the SCO lawyers might hire an expert with a better looking resume and be able to convince a non-technical judge/jury that their side was correct.
It's sort of a credentials arms race.
Sure, you expect me to believe that. I willwait for a judges ruling first.
Out of the AFC (Abstraction-Filtration-Comparision), only two were applied.
If the 3rd, Filtration, was ever evoked, then muddy waters ensures.
What a cool legal concept. Open-n-shut case.
SCO has apparently already recruited their expert, apparently it's this guy. SCO Expert
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With this additional information, is it now true that SCO claims that IBM inserted weapons of mass destruction in the Linux Source?? I guess they'll just need IBM's personal e-mails about Microsoft to find it.
That's why , to IBM, he's worth $550 an hour.
That's incorrect. Comparator makes one pass over all the lines of code, computes a hash values for line triplets, sorts that hash value, and then looks for matches in adjacent values of the sorted list.
It is not an n squared algorithm, it's n log n.
By my calculations, looking at 200 times as much SCO code (6M vs 27k) would take less than 3 times as long.
Mike
"Surprised, anyone?"
No. Nobody is surprised. And that includes SCO.
Hey, I sent SCO $200 bucks to use Linux. (I'm being facetious here)
I want my money BACK!!!!
WBG Links
www.wbglinks.net
WBG Links
www.wbglinks.net
There are no American tanks in Baghdad!
They are nowhere near Baghdad.
Their forces committed suicide by the hundreds.... The battle is very fierce and God made us victorious. The fighting continues.
Ooops, wrong script. (fumbles with papers)
IBM is lying about the lack of stolen code.
We need another delay to find stolen code.
There can be no doubt that Linux contains stolen code.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
In related news, the same researcher has determined that the brown stripe in the BVD briefs of 77-year-old Frank Wilson of Alatoosa, Mississippi does not contain SCO bullshit.
Wilson was subpoenaed on July 3, 2004 for apparently using SCO Unix bullshit in his underwear. SCO lawyers contended that, in addition to all of their other bullshit, this particular stripe of fecal matter in Wilson's BVDs was, in fact, similar the other bullshit that they have spread around since they began their legal actions.
Wilson, a World War II veteran and resident at the Shady Acres Memory Care facility on the western edge of Alatoosa, was not immediately aware of what SCO was in the first place.
"I thought it was the VA -- finally giving me my money for that piece of Kraut shrapnel I took in 1942! Fucking Krauts! Where's my applesauce? Is my wife around?"
Officials at the memory care facility noted that Wilson is an Alzheimers patient who frequently forgets to wipe himself after using the bedpan, hence the source of the stripe in his underwear. They were aware of the legal action again Wilson by SCO, but rather than stir up his angina and blood pressure by witholding the mail that he watches being delivered every day, they let him open the SCO legal letter himself.
"We're just glad he didn't keel over with a stroke," said Frank Johnson, the head nurse of the memory care facility. "He just ranted about the VA and pissed down his leg while asking for his son, who has been dead for 16 years after a car accident. It could've been a lot worse."
The examination of the fecal stripe in the suspect pair of BVDs turned up concrete evidence that, in fact, the shit was Wilson's. In fact, it was not even bullshit and thus not legally open to subpoena by SCO on the grounds that it was more of SCO's bullshit. No countersuit has been filed, as Wilson's surviving family members have apparently never visited him at the facility and only wish to pay the bills for his care.
IronChefMorimoto
Way back in April McBride admitted there were no "line-by-line, exact copies" of code taken from Unix and placed in Linux. He stated that it was a merely a "nonliteral" copy.
. as p
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1561611,00
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This whole saga comes down to SCO being a pawn in a much bigger game played by the big boys. Realistically everyone looses in many cases like this. Because it comes down to a trust issue.
I think SCO is stalling so that they can rewrite their code to match the Linux code...
I think that pretty much sums up this whole case from the beginning.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Actually, Dr. Davis is already refuting the declaration (currently under seal) of SCO's "expert witness", Sandeep Gupta. Mr. Gupta happens to be the SCO VP of Engineering. Yeah, they searched far and wide to find that expert... :-)
Remember, SCO must present evidence, or have experts present evidence, that there is copying. IBM then just needs to show that SCO is full of it, like they did here...
MIke
This guy is the expert in code comparison, which is why he can get so much. It's like hiring Linus Torvalds as a kernel consultant.
Umm.. But Linus only an expert on one kernel. He's demonstrated on several occasions that he doesn't understand any others.
Since the code he used was open source, the conclusions he reached are obviously false and probably derived from someone else's work.
...by sco, to testify at length defending it against allegations by sco that the tool is flawed and biased against them (and them alone).
I think he's doing that so that SCO can't say "No fair! He used IBM's computers - they must have changed the outcome!"
I think I'm joking, but I suspect that SCO would be just desperate enough to try it.
If Davis sees no common code, then what did Laura Didio see?
d =9
http://www.groklaw.net/quotes/showperson.phtml?pi
"My impression is that [SCO's claim] is credible," says Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group analyst who was shown the evidence by SCO Group earlier this week. "It appears to be the same" code.-- Laura DiDio, 2003-06-05
Your logic is flawed. If not true, it's unclear whether it's interesting.
Your conclusion would be true if your premise were "interesting if and only if true."
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
Move my bowels.
Check SCO.
Move my bowels.
Check SCO.
Move my bowels.
Check SCO.
Move my bowels.
Check SCO.
Honestly, we all know it's just a matter of time before the entire state of Utah is set afire and salt sewn into the ground. It's getting old hearing about SCO every other day...
...but what if you build a Beowulf cluster of *those*?
...without the Smoke & Mirrors.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
5. In 1990 I served as expert to the Court (Eastern District of NY) in Computer Associates v. Altai, a software copyright infringement case that articulated the abstraction, filtration, comparison test for software. I have also been retained by the Department of Justice on its investigation of the INSLAW matter. In 1992 (and later in 1995) my task in that engagement was to investigate alleged copyright theft and subsequent cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
whoo-hoo-heehee
Dan and CBS is very good at finding documents even when they don't exist so they ought to be able to find code that was "stolen" from SCO.
6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
My other Sig is a 229.
Or become a CEO of TSG...
Darl makes over $1,000,000 per year which works out to (1,040,000/2080)= $550/hour - although if you think he punches a clock or works 40 weeks you would probably be wrong.
And the only thing Darl is doing is sucking the life out of the company and riding it into bankruptcy.
Shoot, a BUNCH easier than all that studying and work to actually ACCOMPLISH something!
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Holy fuck, how'd this guy avoid ending up dead in a ditch somewhere?!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Good job spelling "Anonymous" right. Loser.
I don't use Emacs; it uses me.
He may be qualified in any number of things, but he didn't show any of those qualifications here. He ran some already-written software, manually verified a handful of results, and reported what the software said. Anyone who can operate a computer can do that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
However, that does not mean that part of the "deal" with the SCO vs IBM lawsuits won't be "And since this matter is settled, you must drop your countersuit."
It's happened lots of times.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Only try to realize the truth: There is no code.
Then you will see it is not the code that is gone; it is only your head.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
joeniner at netscape dot net
While news of no infringing code is hardly a surprise to everyone here, it really explains a lot of SCO's behavior. Everyone believes there probably isn't literal copying in Linux. SCO probaly does too. But SCO is stuck having made so many public statements. What they've been trying to do is sneak in the derivatives, modifications, "methods and concepts" copyright infringements. This explains their steadfast and unbending request for all of AIX and Dynix source code. They know that nobody copied SysV and put it into Linux. But many people at IBM (and others) may have used SysV as a guide to develop their own code. They want to get their hands on anything that looks like somebody at IBM wrote that might be similiar enough to pass off as having some lineage to SysV. Problem for SCO is that current copyright laws do not support this notion.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
HA HA!
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Lets see: on the Advisory Board of the US Congressional Office of Technology Assesment on software and I.P., published in 1992.
Check.
Columbia Law Review article on "the Legal protection of Computer Programs". Check.
Software Law journal article on "The Nature of Software and its Consequences for Establishing and Evaluating Similarity. BIG Check.
Court Expert on Software Copyright Infringement. Check.
Retained by the DOJ to investigate copyright theft (and subsequent cover up) by the FBI, NSA, DEA, US Customs, and DIA. Check.
Served as chairman of the National Academy of Sciences study on ip rights and emerging information infrastructure. Check.
Retained as an expert in over 30 cases of ip infringement. Check.
Yeah, I don't care if you aren't impressed with his write up. He's got the skills to pay the bills.
He ran some already-written software, manually verified a handful of results, and reported what the software said. Anyone who can operate a computer can do that.
Actually, its the MANUALLY verified results that "anyone who can operate a computer" CAN'T do. The above C.V. gives gravitas to his methodology, choice of programs, modifications to said programs, and (most importantly) manual verification.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
So, how many years in prison do the executives of SCO get for this blatantly obvious abuse of our justice system?
In my opinion-- this is as credible as scos claim--- it goes nowhere.
You're my hero for the day! I prefer the spelling Buncombe, as Mencken spelled it, but no matter.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
For the uninitiated, "CYA Memo Diff" is the comparision of two documents during W's Guard years.
Anyone can simply go on yahoo.com and do a people find for "Darl McBride" in Salt Lake City, Utah and call him up and give him a peice of your mind. I already have, god I love such sensitive information in the public domain. Next, Bill Gates! :)
irc.enterthegame.com #linux
The expert said that his staff modified the SIM program to, among other things, improve its performance. That sounds suspicious. How long would it have run without the improvements? What time deadline were they up against? Why would it matter if that dual-3GHz machine ran four hours or forty hours on the problem? I wish the expert had spoken to these questions.
They could essentially compare the code for every sys V with every AIX code mix and match versions and find the lines of code in different places that are the same but does that mean its copying.
The results he verified are so small that they don't need to be verified at all: they could be entered verbatim into the court record, and it'd be pretty obvious those 15 lines of code aren't the infringement SCO is looking for. What the evidence rests on is that the other millions of lines the program *didn't* flag aren't infringements. That means it rests entirely on what the program does, which is something ESR could better attest to, being the one who wrote it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Great! Graduate Phi Beta Cappa (summa cum laude, too), run some AI centers and also have excessive experience in Code copyright infringement cases!
And while you're at it:
Be THE consulting expert in THE case where the legal rule defining what constitutes copyright-infringing copying of, or derivation from, a computer program and how to detect it by comparision, are ORIGINGALLY DEFINED and made into legal precedent.
Oops. Too late. You'll need a time machine, too.
(Looks like, when they were "bringing in the big guns", IBM brought in the biggest gun there is.)
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 that's right, I didn't say that IBM had the code, I said I said they had our code.
I have Dan Rather here to help explain to you, that even if they don't have the code, IBM still has some explaining to do, Lucy, because I said I said that IBM had our code.
Kisses,
Daryl
And to make matters worse...
Back on March 4th 2002 they had a reverse 4 for 1 stock split to get the stock price out of the dumps. So, if one were to readjust the stock to indicate it's value now compared to pre-Darl days, today's stock should be valued at 93 cents per share (3.71 / 4).
IBM: SCO, Make your time. ...
SCO: All your code are belong to us.
If US justice required evidence to be registered and certified allowable before claims were filed, the system would shed a lot of its unbearable load. Even the appeals before a judge, of disallowed evidence, would be dealt with in a more efficient manner. It's insane that I'm paying for the legal system that SCO is exploiting to promote its equity, now that its legitimate business has failed, while their travesty hasn't even got any evidence, or demonstrated any basis for their claims. After the years they've pushed this thing through the courts, they should have at least produced some evidence. And they're just the flagship corporate operation lawsuit - billions are spent by my cohort of taxpayers to keep litigious corporations and their lawyers in business. We should nip them in the bud, by simply requiring evidence to make any claims based on it.
--
make install -not war
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is still some money left.
We see that now that you are engaged in an ass kicking contents with an entity that has 20 legs and no ass, you're loosing!
Not to mention the fact that you have no case!! Never had one, never will have one!! Do you sleep well at night, Darl? Do your employees welcome you to the office when you show up for work? Or do they jeer at the man whose cost them any future they could ever have had in the IT industry in the hope that they might "get rich quick" by trying to bust up Linux?
Caldera (let's call it what it is...) was one of the Linux leaders and you've turned this once Linux company into a litigation machine just like you're famous for. Well this time, the joke's on you pal. You've come up against two things you didn't count on. One, that a mega corporation like IBM might actually fight you instead of just paying you off and two, the tenacity of the Linux community and our unique ability to find the facts about a given situation. *This* is how it works here, we police each other with the very same eye we've used to scrutinize this farce of yours.
We have come out on top, and we will always come out on top. We've stared you in your ugly face and we've not flinched.
Screw you, Darl McBride.
Sincerely, Gregory Casamento.
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
" Surprised, anyone?"
/. ;^)
He must read
I'm sorry, that was a hit that his own programs caught that he was explaining wasn't a valid hit as an example. SCO didn't point out those lines to anybody, Professor Davis did.
"I have also been retained by the Department of Justice on its investigation of the INSLAW matter. In 1992 (and later in 1995) my task in that engagement was to investigate alleged copyright theft and subsequent cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency."
Now THAT would be an interesting read.
Anybody got a link to the results?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
One simple rule for its versus it's
A wonderful book about the suit brought by some wobourn MA parents whoose children develooped cancer (also a gd movie with j travolta). The point is, both sides had very eminent professors of geology to testify about movement of chemicals thru groundwater; both experts were total BS artists. so just because some guy with a big rep at mit says its so, dont mean its so (sort of lke 80 bucks does not guarantee a good bike lock)
I've got a CS degree
Let me see now, that was Summa Cum Laude/Phi Beta Kappa from an Ivy League school? Right?
Oh, yes and your PhD was from Stanford? MIT? or what equivalent?
And you have been a chaired professor for how many years at what elite university?
Oh, and you have experience in intellectual property cases that have set relevant legal precidents?
And you have served on what national panels/policy making bodies in this field??
Completely offtopic:
I went to a strip joint tonight, and there was this Liz Hurley look-alike stripper that sat with me. After lots of talking, and lots of flirting, we went for a lap dance. During the dance we talked passionately and kissed passionately in the mouth, for long periods of time. Then she told me that she would like to see me again and that we may go out on a date.
From that moment on, I am completely in my own universe, and can't think of anything else but her. Please help a fellow geek! I sat down to write about SCO, but I can't! I know it is completely off-topic, but I need an advice:
What is the possibility that she really likes me? do strippers kiss customers in the mouth? was she faking? if she did, we are talking about a mighty actress here! should I go another day, possibly working day, and ask her out (or get her phone number)?
I am talking seriously here!
She's probably one of those women getting by on looks, not ability.
Although judging by the looks, she's getting by on looks from blind people.
Yeech.
1. Get the oldest version of BSD available (4.0 if posssible, or better yet, 2.x)
2. Get the most-developed BSD (DragonflyBSD?)
3. Show derivative code, especially that with significant editorial changes but similar structure.
(I'd suggest 7th edition, but they tried to remove all that as of the big USL lawsuit.)
You want two, as far away as possible, WITHOUT the help of 14000 intermediate steps as SCO is telling the court they can't proceed without. You want to show that you can detect similarities across a 20-year time span.
Wow. That's the first time I've heard ESR referred to as a "pinko".
Sure, i've got a CS degree - and I don't even write code for a living - I'm a network admin.
RELAX! It was supposed to be a funny post.
Geez....no sense of humor on slashdot today.
-ted
When I saw that in the Groklaw text, I thought it was a funny editorial comment regarding something involving Bill Gates, and a rubber band... I didn't know there was an actual case called that. But would law students call it the Gates Decision, the Rubber Decision, or just Rubber-Bando?
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
If this happens, will the Free Software Foundation have to change the name of their software from GNU, for "GNU's Not Unix" to GIU, "GNU IS Unix"?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Linux has no SCO code in it? Next thing we'll all be told that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction!
A useful exercise would be to run those tests on Windows vs. Linux source, to see if Microsoft violated the GPL anywhere.
Now there's comparator software out there howabout someone running Open Source against Windows code out there in P2P land .... the results might be **interesting** to say the least
The real culprits here is the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP who have used SCO to attempt to hijack the software industry.
or those two unprintable guys beginning with B who
have single handedly (?) mutilated star trek.
I find myself saddened that SCO, a company that in
the old days was one of the few who genuinely believed in UNIX like systems has fallen to such lows.
Even if they won, they would lose.
They won't win.
Ironically, in the 80's IBM was considered the evil demon of our industry. The worm sure turned.
I actually *like* IBM now. No, No, it isn't all the substance abuse, it's real...
Someone persuade them to release AmiPro and some other things open source and I'll even enthuse about how nice they are to others (big hint).
C++. You want to Own C++. Good. That will set you
on the path to insanity!
Surely you mean 'imagine a beowulf cluster of Natalie Portmans...'?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
LOL, this guy is clearly confused. ESR likes guns. A lot. There's nothing pinko about that.
I am just curious about this but is it possible to incrementally change a substantial amount of code in such a way that the functionality is maintained (or perhaps modified or enhanced) but that after some number of iterative changes, Comparitor and SIM would not find a match?
It seems to me that the argument made would be invalidated if somebody could take the same files identified by SCO, and adapt them such that the two tools used in his analysis do not identify any significant similarities.
Further, if we are talking about sets of c files that are not identical - or nearly identical - at what point do we say that one set is just too disimilar to the other to indicate an adaptation? What I find interesting about this is that it seems intuitive that given two programs that perform the display similar behavior, it should be possible to reduce one program's code to the other program's code. If this is so, just where do we draw the line?