Unsealed SCO Email Reveals Linux Code is Clean

rm69990 writes "In a recently unsealed email in the SCO vs. IBM case, it appears that an outside consultant, hired by SCO in 2002, failed to find copyright violations in the Linux Kernel. This was right around the time Darl McBride, who has before been hired by litigious companies as CEO, was hired. It appears that before SCO even began its investigation, they were hoping to find a smoking gun, not believing that Linux could possibly not contain Unix code. Apparently, they ignored the advice of this consultant."

Comments

Re:So we like consultants now?

[gsfprez]

this was ORIGINALLY a lawsuit about the derivative works from a company working with a Unix license that IBM bought.

what are you talking about? In their first filing,

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200407041 70212250

their first cause of action was "Linux is full of UNIX, which belongs to us"

First cause of action - (Misappropriation of Trade Secrets--Utah Code Ann. 13-24-1 et seq.)

this is in reference to their placing UNIX code in linux... read the previous 103 statements to see what they are alleging.

in their second (and current) complaint, they keep it up!

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402070 22922296

3. A variant or clone of UNIX currently exists in the computer marketplace called "Linux." Linux is, in material part, based upon UNIX source code and methods.

4. The UNIX software distribution vendors, such as IBM, are contractually and legally prohibited from giving away or disclosing proprietary UNIX source code and methods for external business purposes, such as contributions to Linux, or from otherwise using UNIX for the benefit of others. This prohibition extends to derivative work products that are modifications of, or derivative works based on, UNIX System V source code or technology. IBM is violating this prohibition, en masse, as though no prohibition or proprietary restrictions exist at all with respect to the UNIX technology. As a result of IBM's wholesale disregard of its contractual and legal obligations to SCO, Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x and the development Linux kernel, 2.5.x, are replete with protected technology. As such, the Linux 2.4.x and Linux 2.5.x and 2.6.x kernels are unauthorized derivatives of UNIX System V.

the are, have, and continue to claim that Linux is full of Unix, and that its a derivative because IBM put UNIX code in Linux.

That's the basics of their case, in a few words... they are hiding that contention behind their contracts with IBM. But how did they breach contract with SCO? - SCO alleges that they put UNIX in Linux.

If there is no illegal UNIX in Linux, then they've not breached any contracts, have they? To have breached contract, they would have had to have infringed on SCO's "UNIX copyrights"

Re:Perhaps more interesting than the email itself.

[mabinogi]

if you read the article properly, you'd see that they actually _say_ it was scanned in.

This is a paper exhibit, which Frank Sorenson obtained from the court, scanned for us, and did the HTML. There are misspellings in the original. Thank you, Frank.

Re:Making Sure The Guilty Pay Their Price

[Valiss]

Some of the players to watch:

Chairman
Ralph J. Yarro III

President, CEO, and Director
Darl C. McBride

CFO
Bert Young

Copy of the actual email.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the text of the email, courtesy of Groklaw.

Groklaw is intermittantly slow for me (database problems or whatever) and so I want to make sure this can be read by all.

I'd have to say this looks pretty damning, all said--it shows they found nothing and persisted anyway... Lovely.

From: Reg Broughton
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 10:05 PM
To: Darl McBride
Subject: Fwd: Re: Patents and IP Investigation

DARL

we can probably track down Bob Swartz if you want to dig further. Based on our last conversation, this summary of the code investigation probably closes that discussion.

This of course does not invalidate any of your statements on Caldera owning the central IP, and being the core provider of key technology and IP over the years into the UNIX and Linux communities.

REG

Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:26:51 -0700
From: Michael Davidson
Organization: Caldera International
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: Reg Broughton
Subject: Re: Patents and IP Investigation

The actual investigation itself was done by an outside consultant (Bob Swartz) hired by SCO. I worked with him and reviewed his findings.

My recollection is that Bob produced an initial proposal for the project which outlined the methodology to be used, and he *may* have also provided a final report, but I don't have copies of either.

The project was a result of SCO's executive management refusing to believe that it was possible for Linux and much of the GNU software to have come into existance without *someone* *somewhere* having copied pieces of proprietary UNIX source code to which SCO owned the copyright. The hope was that we would find a "smoking gun" somwhere in code that was being used by Red Hat and/or the other Linux companies that would give us some leverage. (There was, at one stage, the idea that we would sell licenses to corporate customers who were using Linux as a kind of "insurance policy" in case it turned out that they were using code which infringed our copyright).

Note that the scope of the project was limited to looking for evidence of copyright infringement (we didn't consider patents because SCO didn't own the rights to any patents, and more general IP issues were just too vague - besides SCO was *sure* that it was going to find evidence of copyright violations which are comparatively straightforward to prove once you have found them)

An outside consultant was brought in bacause I had alrady voiced the opinion (based on very detailed knowledge of our own source code and a reasonably broad exposure to Linux and other open source projects) that it was a waste of time and that we were not going to find anything.

Bob worked on the project for (I think) 4 to 6 months during which time he looked at the Linux kernel, and a large number of libraries and utilities and compared them with several different vesrions of AT&T UNIX source code. (Most of this work was automated using tools which were designed to to fuzzy matching and ignore trivial differences in formatting and spelling)

At the end, we had found absolutely *nothing*. ie no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever.

There is, indeed, a lot of code that is common between UNIX and Linux (all of the X Windows system, for example) but invariably it turned out that the common code was something that both we (SCO) and the Linux community had obtained (legitimately) from some third party.

md

There is no parole in federal prison

[gad_zuki!]

Some groups would like to change this, but if you get 25 years you're probably serving 25 years. H.R. 3072 is a bill to bring back parole, and as much as I hate people like Ebbers, its much needed when non-violent drug offenders spend their lives in prison because of the puritanical drug war.

The upside is that federal prisons tend to be a bit nicer than state prisons.

Re:Interesting

[Homology]

Maybe your branch of service doesn't teach about the Nuremberg Trials?

The current administration and Pentagon brass should read Charter of the International Military Tribunal

ARTICLE 6

The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to in Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes.
The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a) Crimes against Peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
(c) Crimes against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war,14 or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Leaders, organizers, instigators, and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution
of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

But hey, US has bullied most states/allies into agreements not extradite US citizens to the International Criminal Court. Of course, only low ranking service men/women are prosecuted in US for torture and other war crimes.

BSD = legal security

[softweyr]

What other system has been vetted so carefully and scrutinized by so many hostile lawyers and experts?

BSD. Duh.

Davidson's not a consultant..

[Anonymous Coward]

He was SCO's chief architect during the early years. If anyone knows, it's him.

Re:Linux is CLEAN! How about Windows.

[rm69990]

HP never bought insurance from SCO. HP was going to, and then backed out at the last minute and announced indemnification for their customers.

Click here for story

HP probably felt that by paying the insurance instead of offering indemnification, they would be admitting guilt. They probably also have access to the source code and did their own audit of Linux and gave the green light.

Re:Linux is CLEAN! How about Windows.

[jmking1]

Still, I do think Windows is probably fairly clean.

I thought it was relatively well-known speculation that much of NT was ripped off from DEC's VMS, especially considering DEC filed suit against Microsoft and MS ended up settling out of court.

Re:Reveals Darl McBride is Dirty

[brandido]

Do you have any links or references indicating that there were other sources for the claim that Saddam was trying get uranium from Niger, or are you just making unsupported claims to muddy the water? I recommend that you do a search on the web, not just a few blogs, and read the information that you find from a variety of sources. What I find is that the basis for the Bush Administration's claim that Saddam was seeking uranium from Iraq was information from the British goverment. The British government based it's information on a document that the IAEA was able to determine were forgeries in a few hours. Please note that this link is not from a site I frequent, just one of the first that came up with a goodle search. Also covered in that link is that "Well before the IAEA rained on the pro-war parade, the CIA was telling its masters in the Bush administration that the British intelligence on the Niger connection was nonsense." In otherwords the CIA was telling Bush that the intelligence was bad (as I mentioned), yet bush still included it in his SOTU Address. He lied.

Regarding Europes participation in the War in Iraq, I know it is easier to argue with someone when you put words in their mouth. Much easier than actually providing references and clearly arguing your points. However, I did not say they none of Europe participated. I would say that different countries in Europe made different decisions regarding participation in Iraq, and that some choose to participate with varying levels of committment. The main point I would make is that many of our previously staunch allies did not participate, and that, realistically, only England participated in a significant way. I know some might try to argue that their was a coalition of huge proportion, but only America had over 100K troops, and only America and England had over 10K troops, and everyone else was well below that, measured in the few thousand, a few hundred, or well wishes.

Re:Linux is CLEAN! How about Windows.

[belmolis]

We can be quite confident that NT does not contain VMS code: VMS was written mostly in VAX assembly language. NT was written, I believe, mostly in C. In any case, one thing we can be sure of is that it was NOT written in VAX assembly language.

I'm not even sure that NT can be said to contain ideas proprietary to VMS. Is there any evidence of that? The general nature of VMS has been public knowledge since the outset, and as far as I know there is nothing in VMS that requires unusual algorithms or coding tricks that would make it hard to implement without detailed knowledge of the code. I'm no MS lover (and use no MS software), but I haven't heard anything that would make me thing that MS played dirty on this one.

Re:Reveals Darl McBride is Dirty

[Eric S. Smith]

if the Bush administration had such clear intelligence that Saddam had the WMDs, why couldn't they share that information with the Weapon inspectors?

Saddam kicked out the weapons inspectors when Clinton was president. From 1998 until the war began in 2003, there were no inspectors in the country. Further, he didn't offer to bring them back until the invasion was imminent with a carrier group in the persian gulf.

"After the war began?" The inspections resumed in 2003, under the threat of war. Sure, we now realize that the White House had by that point decided that there would be an invasion, but it's the basis for that decision that's controversial. Thus, the original question stands: the inspectors were there, the world was watching, what was the rush?

(In answering that question, the contemporary pro-war mindset concentrated on two general points: one was that the UN inspectors wouldn't find anything anyway because the UN is a pack of America-hating sissies so can't we hurry up and have our war; the second was the 45 MINUTES FROM DOOM baloney. The first point effectively begged the question; the second was more of that brilliant intelligence analysis that's been such a hallmark of the War on Terra.)

Re:Reveals Darl McBride is Dirty

[brandido]

Clearly you have no historical context on the last 5000 years of military history.

Never claimed to be. However, the majority of this conversation does not need a 5000 year perspective - a 3 year perspective is quite informative on it's own.

Of course, when there is an imminent threat the US, the military should be used to counteract that threat. However, even if the intelligence that Saddam had limited quantities of WMDs and Uranium yellow cake had been true (it wasn't) and the intelligence indicating didn't have those things was false (it wasn't) he was still not an imminent threat to the US. Why do I say that? He had no ability to deliver these WMDs to the US, no ability to process the Uranium, and was not cooperating with Al Quada to deliver these to the US. Who was an imminent threat?

• Osama Bin Laden. He had shown the capability to attack the US.
• North Korea. Has the ability to build nuclear bombs, and has shown a pre-disposition to seelign weapons to "rogue" nations. Durring Bush's watch, has gone from threatening to build weapons to likely having weapons.
• Iran. Actively developing capability to build nuclear weapons.

However, instead of addressing these issues, we have over-extended our military to attack the country that was the least likely to be a threat to the US.

Military intelligence is the art of guessing the other side's secrets, and at essentially no point has there been a case of any military intelligence organization that knew all of the other side's secrets. Even in World War II when the Allies had cracked the Enigma code, that didn't allow them to discover all of Nazi Germany's military secrets, though it did allow them to find out a treasure trove of operational intelligence (which was the main use of Enigma).

Interesting background - I appreciate the information. However, the difference here is we didn't decide to go to war or not based on the intelligence gleaned from Enigma. We based strategic and tactical decisions based on it. Huge difference.

In the case of the Iraq WMD issue, there were a lot of people looking at the same intelligence - including both Republicans and Democrats (including John Kerry BTW), the UN, the major European powers, etc. Everyone who looked at it had some degree of concern that Iraq was interested in WMD's - and Saddam didn't do much to dissuade from that conclusion.

Yes, many people had concerns, but they also had concerns about the validity of the intelligence. Say I have concerns that the guy across the street is dealing drugs - no concrete proof, but some indications that he is and some indications that he is not. Do I try and blow up his house? No, I call the police, and hope they search his house for drugs and drug paraphenalia - just as the weapon inspectors were searching for WMDs and associated infrastructure.

Remember that the other side in any conflict isn't just going to let their secrets be an open book ... The point is that both sides are deliberatly trying to mislead each other.

Of course this was a case of misdirection and lying and smokescreens. However, there was no concrete evidence of WMDs in spite of years of inspections. And there was no imminent threat from Saddam, so why go to war?

If one side does in fact get misled, does that mean that they are lying or does it mean that they made a mistake in analysis or judgement, or that the other side's ruse was complete? Unless there's clear evidence that all indications were pointing against WMD's, I don't think it's at all a fair characterization that Bush was "lying"

So I am a bit unclear on your point here? The Bush administration was suckered by Saddam into thinking that he had WMDs, so they aren't lying? Ok, I will revise my statement - The Bush administration was either lieing or incompetent.