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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?"
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]
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 . . . . .
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
They are far from bankrupt, and probably won't be for a while either. They've already played down their accusations, perhaps trying to have people forget them. Perhaps people will go about their business as they did before this thing started, personally, I hope IBM takes action and drags their sorry faces into the mud.
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!
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
So wait, you're trying to say they are EXACTLY THE SAME?
Never confuse volume with power.
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!
He goes into detail.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
They're not quite dead yet. But keep a good thought!
The courts have their thorough processes to run through. SCO will get umpteen chances to submit memorandums, emergency memorandums, memorandums in opposition to motions, memorandums in support of motions, motions to support memorandums in support of motions for summary judgement, no wait, theres more...
It's making me ill to watch how easily the process is to abuse. But thank God, unless a MS steps in and ponies up the cash, it will eventually be over.
Since Dr. Randall Davis is an expert witness for IBM, I am guessing that SCO will say, "ain't so!" and then they will ask for time to refute Randall's findings and perhaps come up with an expert witness of their own that finds thousands of "matches." Hopefully the judge in this case will recognize Randall for the expert that he is and accept his findings. However, that just doesn't seem likely to me. This is just another round in a case that will continue like this ad nauseum.
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
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.
Wow. That was a quick read, and you know what? Assuming that this guy's completely on the level (and considering his pro-IP stance, I'm willing to do that), SCO really has fuck-all. Up until now, I was ready to give them a chance, mostly due to their sabre rattling about protecting the little guy from the cloning behavior inherent in OSS. But Davis' observations, if substantiated, prove exactly what the OSS community was talking about: the code similarities are largely trivial, and SCO's "code theft" claims are bunkum.
Whether they still have any patents or copyrights on the functionality of UNIX remains to be seen, and such a case wouldn't necessarily NEED code theft to go forward. Any idiot can see that Linux is a UNIX clone -- the question at that point would be the legality of the cloning process and the layers of licensing that surround it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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 |
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
This has been gone over at length on Groklaw. IBM HAS taken action. No matter what SCO does, IBM still has a huge countersuit under something called Lanham Act . Methinks SCO is in a bit of trouble
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
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
Exactly. This is some of the most convincing anti-SCO evidence I've seen. This man has been an expert witness in court in the past and is indisputably an expert in this kind of analysis. Look at the (badly scanned...bleh!) table in the pdf. Line after line after line of code identified by SCO as being stolen, and Davis found absolutely nothing.
That's a final word as far as I'm concerned, and I'd venture so far as to say if IBM wants to make it so it's the final word as far as the law is concerned.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
They're not quite dead yet.
SCO: I don't want to go on the cart!
Oh, don't be such a baby. You're not fooling anyone, you'll be stone dead in a moment.Suudsu, that stuff is G-E-W-D.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since Dr. Randall Davis is an expert witness for IBM, I am guessing that SCO will say, "ain't so!" and then they will ask for time to refute Randall's findings and perhaps come up with an expert witness of their own that finds thousands of "matches." Hopefully the judge in this case will recognize Randall for the expert that he is and accept his findings. However, that just doesn't seem likely to me. This is just another round in a case that will continue like this ad nauseum.
Dr. Davis is the person who first elucidated how you compare code (the "abstraction, filtration, comparison" test - Computer Associates vs. Aitai) to see if it violates copyright. SCO will have a hard time trying to argue that its depositions (which are from non-experts, though they claim 'unnamed' experts performed the work) are from people more qualified than Dr. Davis.
So I guess what I'm saying is that SCO will have a hard time finding an expert witness more qualified than Dr. Davis. (Please note that if they try to present a deposition from one, that will likely be stricken - as SCO has been ordered by the court to present such a deposition, and has not - thus indicating it doesn't have one) And I highly doubt that the court will value any other expert over Dr. Davis anyway.
SCO has two of its own employees (Dr. Davis is not an IBM employee, though he is being retained by IBM). IBM has the expert witness who first defined how you compare code. Hmm, I wonder which the judge will believe...
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
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.
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.
If you paid attention to the FA, you might have noticed that what McBride is accusing IBM or other Linux developers of doing, includes changing the variable names to hide the 'stolen' code, and that the software that the Dr. used takes this possibility into consideration, and would find such lines if they existed.
The basic result is that no such lines existed that can be demonstrated to be non-literal copying, or literal copying.
-Rusty
You never know...
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???
Davis saw no -infringing- code. That's not the same thing as seeing no common code. Copying a ten-line function almost verbatim is likely a copyright violation. Ending up with a handful of lines that look a lot alike, by contrast, is often just an unavoidable side-effect of writing two pieces of code that do the same thing.
Small blocks of code (under 3 lines) are generally not protected by copyright (unless we're talking obfuscated C lines). Even larger blocks of code may not be protected, depending on content.
For example, in many cases (drivers come to mind), there may only be exactly one way to do something (e.g. you must set this register to 1, wait 5 ms, set it to zero, wait 5 ms, then set a second register to 1), in which case those specific bits are unlikely to be copyrightable at all, even if they represent a fairly substantial number of lines of code.
Also, in order for the code to be infringing, it must have been taken from AT&T UNIX or its descendants, and must not have been put there by someone who owned copyright on said code. That means that A. the code must not have been placed there by anyone working for SCO or Novell, and B. the code must not have come from a third, shared source such as BSD. A very large chunk of SCO's UNIX code fails the "B." test, and SCO was an active contributor to Linux, so many cases where code appears the same could easily fail the "A." test as well.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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