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The SCO Trial Through A New Lens
An anonymous reader writes "On Yahoo! News they've got an article by Paul Murphy entitled, SCO, IBM and Outcomes-Based Circular Reasoning. Murphy claims to be 'a 20-year veteran of the I.T. consulting industry, specializing in Unix and Unix-related management issues'. He writes, 'By itself this was a straightforward contractual dispute that could, and should, have been settled quickly and easily.' And that, 'Although SCO hasn't formulated its complaint in this way, I believe it could meet these, or similar, requirements quite easily and therefore has every reason to be confident that the court will eventually enforce its stop-use order against IBM.' He also goes on to insult Linux advocates by stating that, 'the position being run up the flagpole by what Stalin famously called "useful idiots" is first that the lawsuit itself is no longer a real issue and secondly that its consequences have been generally positive.'"
The author uses some fallacies of his own. He shows how Linux said "you've got X,y,Z, and that is UNIX" and then goes on to say that the Linux community says "Linux is not UNIX". He's keying off two different usages of the term UNIX, which isn't a valid point.
We've all heard this stuff before. Nothing to see here.
Copyright and Patent law can only be enacted to promote science and the useful arts. And congress should promote science and the useful arts as cheaply as possible. Therefore Congress should be protecting Open Source, not feeding it to the Proprietary dogs. http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/
If the two teams have no contact except through the specifications documents, and neither team is contaminated by knowledge of the original engineering, then the new product is considered just that: a new product and not an illegal copy. It's possible, therefore, to recast SCO's basic claim as saying that IBM was contractually obligated to ensure that this type of "chinese wall" existed between those of its people who had some contact with the protected Unix knowledge or code and those of its people who contributed to the Linux development effort in the run-up to the 2.4 kernel release, but failed to do it. What a stupid argument. You don't need to do a "Chinese Wall" to be legal, you do it in order to prove that what you did was legal. The IBM ROM-BIOS was likely going to have a lot of code in common with the Phoenix bios that Compaq purchased. In other words, if the data is physically identically, then you're going to need some pretty strong proof that what you did didn't involve copying. On the other hand, Linux and SCO didn't contain any identical duplicate code. There were some pieces that were similar, IIRC, but those were lists of variables out of a book and had to do with meeting standards. And secondly, the "Chinese Wall" is all about preventing copyright infringement. This was a contract dispute, not a copyright case, because Linux wasn't a copy of SCO. offensive tshirts
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How on Earth is it even close to being a troll? The piece is an insightful commentary on the case (regardless of whether or not your agree with it - which I don't.) This is what's wrong with slashdot - people moderate down valid but opposing viewpoints.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
I think SCO has generally been incompetent and this guy actually admits so much from the beginning. They tried to blow a "contract violation" up to being a major copyright dispute, arguing for billions of dollars in compensation when the contract dispute itself wouldn't have pulled anything like that. Part of this is possibly SCO realising it has to go for broke because it's up against a company it'll almost certainly lose against, so it needs to find ways of getting that company to settle.
This has backfired. By making it look like they're accusing Linux of being a copy of Unix and containing multiple copyright violations, they've put IBM in a position where, given it's bet the house on GNU and Linux, it has to show it stands by what it's done and that the product it's selling is legal, and at the same time it has to prevent a precedent from being set that encourages everyone to find some minor problem they had with IBM and turn it into a lawsuit.
As for this person's view on the whole thing, I suspect he's just as wrong as the more rabid SCO opponents he chastises. He claims to have no doubt that real Unix code can be found in Linux. I have no doubt this isn't true, because we've seen the best examples of what SCO could find, and we know they're not as represented. Moreover, we have no reason to think it would even be necessary to do this.
But his point of view is interesting, and he gives good reasons to think.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
To some, the fact that SCO sees Linux as a Unix clone not only makes holding that view morally wrong but requires the immediate repudiation
Um, no, he's just wrong. Nobody cares if Linux is a "clone" of Unix. SCO sees Linux as a derivative work of Unix because it implements the same interfaces. This view has been repudiated not just by Linux advocates but also by the courts.
And no, so far to my knowledge SCO has presented nothing resembling real evidence. That's the reason they have to keep asking for more discovery and versions of AIX to prove a convoluted "the code is derived from ours but doesn't look anything like it anymore" hypothesis. IBM seems to be taking great glee in pointing out SCO's lack of evidence in their filings.
There was a time when it was reasonable to believe that SCO could have an actual case. That time is long past. Some people are just slow.
The enemies of Democracy are
Surely SCO has enough lawyers, and I bet all of them know more about IP law than Paul "Who the fuck am I, again?" Murphy.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I RTFA maybe too quickly, but one point. It is in dispute if SCO even has IP rights to Unix code. I didn't see any mention of Novell's case against SCO. So his is drawing his own conculusions?
Even assuming that SCO actually owned the copyrights to Unix (which they don't), that the "similar code" wasn't already in the public domain (which it probably was), and IBM used this kind of methodology to create their own code (which they probably didn't), SCO has no case. There is no concept in Copyright that allows holders to make broad claims over concepts and ideas. That's what Patents are for. The so-called "ladder" theory is barely a crude legal supposition on SCO's part - a plea for the worst sort of Republican judicial activism in the Utah courts.
Here is the way established law actually works. I can buy a copyrighted book, change every sentence and chapter in it until there is nothing left of the original work, and then release it as my own. By that point, it is my own. You cannot copyright people's inspiration. It is silly to try.
I mean really this is a bad opinion piece by someone that has no legal training about a law suite. If you print any story about SCO will it end up on Slashdot? Great way to drive up your ad income.
Next week at Playboy on line. The women of SCO.
The suite has been setup by SCO as Linux is evil and belongs to us and we will sue all the users that do no pay us.
There are no Linux advocates involved with the court case it is Freaking IBM that is involved.
Here is what happened.
Someone convinced SCO that Linux could only have gotten so good by stealing SCO's code. SCO was going down fast and grabbed that straw with the hopes that IBM would just buy them to shut them up.
IBM knew that SCO did not have a case so it decided to make an example of them.
SCO trying to get more people to pony up attacked any deep pockets that it could. Autozone and other show the court that SCO had nothing so that backfired.
Frankly at this point I really want to believe that McBride really did believe that IBM had stolen the code. I would like to think that he has just backed himself into a corner and can not see anyway out. The only other answer is he is delusional.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Me, I've read the correspondence filed with the Court on the subject. IBM asked what they were supposed to have done wrong so that they could remedy the problem, SCOX told them they'd see them in court.
Yeah, that's bad faith on IBM's part all right. Here we are more than two years later and IBM is still trying to get the Court to make SCOX tell them what IBM is supposed to have done wrong, so far with no luck.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
is a more appropriate title to the tripe the FA has in it.
The man makes wild assumptions based on loose guesses he himself made, where-as 20 minutes with google would have produced facts to write an article that would have had some merit. Most of what he rants on about are flat-out wrong. He knows nothing about linux and I strongly suspect his claims about Unix experience.
I am very interested in how supposedly linux supporters are suddenly claiming that Linux is not unix as he mentions in the article? From what I remember this has been the norm cince 1994 when I started dabbling in it and I bet that if someone looked they would find even earlier evidence of that fact.
that article tarnishes not only the writers reputation but the publication that carried it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, he was trolling. He deliberately misrepresnts the position of the linux community on several issues (such as whether linux "is" unix, and whether linux code inspections "prove" that the linux development process is uncontaminated) and then attempts to use these misrepresentations to discredit the community. He's just good enough at it that most people are stupid enough to believe that he's thinking critically. I'm not saying he's wrong, but he's definitely trolling.
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)
Tannenbaum was merely ahead of his time. We're already almost in an age where the operating system overhead is pretty minimal, and the latest advances in microkernels put message passing almost on a par with direct context switching anyway.
What this means is that, at some point in the not too distant future, the monolithic kernel will be seen as a really bad idea on all counts, and with no performance benefit at all. And we all know that loading graphic binary drivers into our kernel images is compromising our uptimes, so the realities of "a bad idea" are with us already.
It was just his 1991 time frame that didn't match up to reality all that well. The substance was good.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The entire article looks suspiciously like what the public relations firms call a "press hit", meaning that the public relations firm feed factual background information to one of their reporter contacts, which may not be entirely false but almost certainly represents a selected truth (e.g., figures don't lie, but liars sure do figure), who then cuts and pastes the "facts" into an article. The end result is that one news bureau after another reprints the "facts" until the real source of the information in the article, (.i.e., the public relations firm), becomes entirely obscured. The vast majority of the public has no idea that the majority of the articles that they read today, especially trade-magazine articles and technology pieces where reporters have to rely more on outside experts, are "press hits" prepared by public relations firms for their clients. If I were SCO then I would certainly be engaging the services of a PR firm in light of the acrimonious nature of the ongoing litigation. A good PR firm can charge upwards of $20,000 per month for their services, but the really good ones get results and marketers, advertisers, and lawyers everywhere know that.
Since no one has seen fit to respond to this so far, let me point out emphatically that this post is making an an outrageous and completely unsubstantiated accusation, and it is a lousy, indecent thing to be doing to Paul Murphy. You may or may not like what he says about SCO, but he most certainly does not deserve an anonymous accusation of attempted rape.
I frankly would like to meet the person who wrote this post, so that I could give him solid kick in the ass. I'm not using a figure of speech here. Far from acknowledging any "obvious reasons", Mr. Anonymous Accuser, I say that you are loathsome coward, and you damn well better come back with something more substantial, or shut your filthy mouth.
As for you moderators who modded the post up to 5 Interesting, I submit that you are among the stupidest morons ever to visit Slashdot. If anything deserves a -1 Troll, this is it.
As for the question of whether or not the accusation is true, in the absence of any verifiable evidence there is no reason at all to consider such a possibility. To make any such assumption about Paul Murphy on the basis of an anonymous accusation is so unfair as to be utterly indecent.
I never thought I would attack someone for an anonymous post, because I'm often irritated by all of the pithy sigs about how anonymous posters cannot be believed. In almost all cases, that's a logical fallacy, because the merit of post in a discussion group lies solely in the strength of the evidence and arguments it presents, which usually has nothing at all to do with the identity of the poster. The only situation in which the anonymity of the poster detracts from his credibility is when his identity is one of the issues addressed in his post.
But this is precisely that kind of situation. Someone here is saying that he knows Paul Murphy personally and is accusing him of a crime, but the accuser won't tell us who he is and how he supposedly knows these things. That kind of crap deserves no credibility until the poster comes back and tells us why we should believe anything he says.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Murphy claims to be 'a 20-year veteran of the I.T. consulting industry, specializing in Unix and Unix-related management issues'.
and translated it
Murphy claims to be 'a 20-year veteran of the I.T. consulting industry', so it's been 20 years since he's done anything but produce fluffy white papers for non-technical management.
Sure, he used some ideas from Minix (and *nix in general), but I don't see how he could have used actual code. Or am I missing some way that he would have had access to the code?
Actually, that IS part of the Peter Principle. Can't remember which corollaries these are, but:
1. To an incompetent manager, superincompetence is indistinguishable from supercompetence.
2. Since everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence, the managerial staff will eventually be composed entirely of incompent people.
Therefore, at some point superincompetence will always be cause for promotion.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.