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SCO's McBride Testifies "Linux Is a copy of UNIX"
eldavojohn writes "Here's a short update on the Novell Vs. SCO case we've been following. Our good friend Darl McBride made some interesting comments in court yesterday. He stated (under oath): 'Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers... We have evidence System V is in Linux... When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there's books on "How to Program UNIX" but when you go to the Linux section and look for "How to Program Linux" you're not gonna find it, because it doesn't exist. Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them]." This flies directly in the face of what SCO found in extensive investigations in 2002 and contradicts what SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag had just finished testifying earlier that day (testimony that McBride did not hear)."
I have a copy of 'Beginning Linux Programming' from Wrox. Doesn't say UNIX anywhere. Hey guys, if you want me to testify I'd be happy to fly over. All expenses paid of course.
Well, I actually do have a book on how to program Linux: "Beginning Linux Programming" (Matthew and Stones), in all its red glory here on my shelf. Now I don't know whether the summary quoted McBride very well and I don't have much time to investigate right now, but if he did say what he said, that was pretty silly.
I also have the "Teach yourself Linux Programming in 24 hours, did not read it much, though. However, it exists, and more Linux programming literature exists, too.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
No worries! This is a bench trial, so there is no jury. Just judge Kimball.
errno.h is part of the POSIX standard and is the property of the Open Group.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
You're right. It isn't. It is, however, Unix-like. And intended to be POSIX compliant. And an awful lot of Unix utilities and abilities have found their way into Linux, starting with the System V-compatible init. X, BASH (and its variants)... you could go on for hours listing programs and commands that have found their way into Linux from the Unix world. Perhaps the most obvious example aside from BASH would be XFCE, which models its interface after the CDE.
<sigh/>
You expect Slashdot readers to be tech literate, but sadly they ain't. Not these days anyway.
'Linux' is a kernel. Both in fact and in the context of this court case, that's all 'Linux' is. Bash is not part of Linux. Init is not part of Linux. They are programs which can run on top of Linux (or any other POSIX compliant operating system, including UNIX).
Yes, I know we've all got lazy and refer to Ubuntu and Debian and Slackware and RedHat as 'Linux', but they aren't. They are software distributions which use the Linux kernel. The kernel - and only the kernel - is 'Linux'.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Perjury charge?
No. He's an idiot. You can't reasonably expect him to know that he was wrong when he made the statement, therefore, no matter what statements he makes, they're not perjury.
Code or be coded.
Nope. Canopy divested itself of SCO in 2005..