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SCO Says Email Is Inaccurate

daria42 writes "The SCO Group has slammed as 'inaccurate' suggestions that an e-mail from one of its own engineers showed Linux did not contain copyright Unix code, and even forwarded its own historical memo to journalists in an attempt to discredit the e-mail published on Groklaw." From the article: "This memo shows that Mr. Davidson's e-mail is referring to an investigation limited to literal copying, which is not the standard for copyright violations, and which can be avoided by deliberate obfuscation, as the memo itself points out..." We reported on the email yesterday.

16 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Avoiding Jail by drooling-dog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anybody else getting the feeling that these guys are just trying to stay out of jail now?

  2. Scrambling... by Phs2501 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I love the sweet smell of desperation. From the letter in question (strong tag mine):
    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.

  3. but Darl said there was literal copying! by crimethinker · · Score: 4, Interesting
    So if Darl says that the 2002 memo only cleared linux of "literal" copying and didn't find deliberate obfuscation, how does he justify the "entire sections of code verbatim" remarks he made to the press?

    I smell a shareholder lawsuit, an SEC investigation, and hopefully, a Sarbanes-Oxley smackdown of such grand proportions as to make Bernie Ebbers look like a slap on the wrist.

    -paul

    --
    Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
  4. A SCO developer running Windows 98? by CyricZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I still find it very interesting that the SCO developer in question sent the email from a computer running Windows 98.

    It contains the email header "X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I)".

    Now, it would make sense for secretaries and perhaps other execs to be using Windows 98, but not one of their UNIX and Linux developers. Even if he wasn't using UnixWare or OpenServer as his workstation OS, he should very well have been using OpenLinux.

    And remember, the email was sent in 2002. This is well after the release of Windows 2000. Even the use of Windows 2000 or Windows NT would be somewhat understandable. But Windows 98? That strikes me as very unsual.

    --
    Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
    1. Re:A SCO developer running Windows 98? by Essef · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm sorry, but either your lying or you need to find a new job. I know *NO* self-professed programmers who would tolerate a non-NT version of Windows on their computers.

  5. Re:Nice try, Darl, but... by bigjocker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not only that, but they are claiming that a 1999 investigation proves wrong the one performed on 2002.

    Also, later on they claim that 'SCO also pointed out its legal wrangling with IBM dealt with more recent versions of the Linux code than were mentioned in the memo'. Are they saying the more recent version was available on 1999, but not in 2002?

    --
    Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
  6. The beauty of the GPL by RealProgrammer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm not a GNU fanboy, but the GPL works wonderfully.

    You see, SCO shipped Linux for years. They did so, knowingly, under the GPL. The GPL was their license.

    They claimed that they stopped shipping Linux as soon as they could when they realized that IBM was "dumping UNIX code into Linux". That's hogwash, but that's not my point.

    The point is that now, when they claim there were pre-IBM copyright violations, they are caught by the GPL. They shipped all that code included in Linux and other supporting programs under the GPL.

    If they believed there was SCO code hidden in Linux, shipping under the GPL means they approved of it.

    --
    sigs, as if you care.
  7. SCO IP website has a Swartz memo with IP copying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The SCO IP website has made a Swartz memo available here: Which seems to be entirely different and gives concrete information on similarities and copied code. I haven't verified the conclusions but this is what SCO is now making public to confuse people.
  8. OMGWTFBBQ by aws4y · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I just read the Fscking email and it says the opposite of what Stowell said. The email states directly that this entire scheme was concoted because executives cannot understand that simpling because two things work the same way it dosent mean that one thing is a copy of the other. This just makes them look more guilty of sock manipulation, this also brings into question there direct statements to the public. If an officer at a corporation lies to the public but didn't know it at the time then he or she made a mistake. If you lie to the public and you know its a lie, then that is fraud.

    this memo clearly shows that SCO executives knew that there was no litteral copying in GNU/Linux, they then went out and made statements that they new were demonstrably false, i.e. Daryl's Line by Line copying comment. It is now very clear that SCO executives should at least be charged with fraud.

    --
    Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
  9. OT, but somewhat relevant to the issues at hand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If SCO does end up prevailing at all in this circus, then I predict that someday musical instument makers, like say for example, Stienway Pianos, will claim that because you used one of their pianos to compose a song, then that song is automatically a "derivative work" of their I.P. and therefore you must pay license royalties back to them. Ditto for public performances played on the instruments. A portion of each concert ticket sold must be paid back to them, and free public performances would be outlawed because that would be "stealing potential revenue" from them.

    Someday, you will have to agree to a usage rights control contract for everything you buy.

    Somebody will patent some kind of registration system to track all kinds of usages of all these products and you're be required to be a member of that before you'll even be able permitted to purchase anything at all, and you'll actually not be purchaing anything, but rather leasing the temporary usage rights for a short term.

  10. Re:Well finally by stevesliva · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Except for Forbes. Forbes loves to intimate that Linux is doomed as often as possible, so that they get lots of page views from angry zealots. And CNET will of course report anything.

    --
    Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
  11. Re:SCO IP website has a Swartz memo with IP copyin by jshepher · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is easy to tell which is the SCO fabrication -- the font size changes!!! It shrinks about 2 points.

  12. Re:Well finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Forbes once wrote a major article on 64 bit machines and claimed that a 64 bit machine could address 64! (yes, factorial) bytes of memory. In the same article, they called Unix a programming language. From the context it was clear that the author did not understand the difference between an os and a programming language. They don't have a very good understanding of technology.

  13. Re:Nice try, Darl, but... by Haeleth · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "for (int i"? C won't let you declare a variable in that context. D'uh!

    Really? Let's try it!
    haeleth@cynewulf ~
    $ cat > test.c
    int main (void)
    {
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
    // do nothing
    }
    return 0;
    }

    haeleth@cynewulf ~
    $ gcc -Wall -pedantic -std=c99 test.c

    haeleth@cynewulf ~
    $
    Hmm, it compiled. And note the conspicuous absence of any errors or warnings whatsoever, which indicate that the code in question is 100% strict valid C in accordance with the current C standard (ISO C99).
  14. Re:People are full of practical common sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    we need to have the selection "NONE OF THE ABOVE" for each ballot choice in any election,

    There is a way to select "none of the above": spoil your ballot. And make it damn clear you spoiled it on purpose. Using a write-in candidate such as "Mickey Mouse" (or even, um, "None Of The Above") is one way.

    to have the option to force the political system to endure starvation instead of a mandatory minimum feeding.

    I'm not sure what you mean by this. A large vote for "none of the above" might deprive the winning party of a moral mandate, but not power. Anyway, you continue:

    The system of corruption generally takes steps to make the environment safe for corruption. This tends to expand corruption. And such expansion crashes the system eventually. Knowing this, we should understand and prefer to have the harsh measure of medicine over the comfortable safety of increasing numbness (until the gangrene sets in and the limb falls off).

    As much as I agree with you, and as much as I'm in favor of the "none of the above" option, I'm not sure that such an option is strong enough "medicine" to achieve your goal. Sometimes revolution (hopefully peaceful) is inevitable if a political system is to reform.

    Corrupt systems have to be fixed one way or another. Either they get fixed by eternal vigilance, or they are fixed by extinction. People have to understand that even by making no choice whatsoever, they've still made a choice, hence they've still selected or supported an outcome.

    Fair enough, but again, voting "none of the above" is still "making no choice", albeit making it visibly.

  15. Re:People are full of practical common sense by LaCosaNostradamus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The choice of NOTA is one not of notice, but legal force. When an office is up for grabs, but enough people say NOTA, then the office goes unoccupied until an election is held that also has enough people voting for a real candidate.

    The NOTA option might be better called "LEAVE THIS OFFICE OR POSITION EMPTY UNTIL YOU PROVIDE BETTER CANDIDATES". Which is why I said "starvation".

    Sometimes revolution (hopefully peaceful) is inevitable if a political system is to reform.

    I agree, but I'd rather not shoot people when it's clear that most people will run things more honestly upon the knowledge that yes, shooting will happen, and that yes, they will be targeted when it happens. Having forebrains, why can't we Humans understand inevitability?

    --
    [You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]