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SCO's McBride Testifies "Linux Is a copy of UNIX"

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-spell-perjury dept.

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)."

5 of 446 comments (clear)

  1. So if Novell Owns Unix... by geoffrobinson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If Novel Owns Unix and if SCO got money for Linux and its relationship to Unix-rights, McBride basically said "we need to pay Novel the money we got."

    The only reason I can think he said this:

    1) He actually believes it.
    2) He is afraid of fraud charges if he says otherwise. Throw lawsuits into this as well.

    --
    Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
    1. Re:So if Novell Owns Unix... by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just because they work the same way doesn't make Linux a copy of UNIX ...

      Actually, it's pretty well documented that the original linux was an implementation of the POSIX standard. And POSIX was openly based on Sys/V. So they should work the same way. But is this what "copy" means? If I use a published government standard doc, can I really be charged with "copying" whatever that standard was based on?

      Darl's claim does raise an interesting question: Is he claiming that SCO owns everything based on POSIX? If the court supports this, then he has successfully destroyed much of the US system of government standards. Every standard based on previous industrial usage is in immediate danger of being proprietary, and anything based on a US standard can lead to huge royalty payments, if his claim is upheld.

      So is it legally safe to use the POSIX standard? Can any actual IP lawyer assure us that we can safely base our work on this or any other US government standard, without fear of retroactive royalties in the future?

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  2. The awesome part about this by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Interesting

    is that McBride really COULD go to prison over this for perjury. And if done right, a deal could be offered to him (1 month or year, instead of 20 years), if he will spill the beans about it. That would have to include MS's and Sun's participation in this. I would guess that McBride is enough of a gutless wonder that he would take the deal. But if he confirms that (Gates and/or Balmer) and McNealy were participants to fleece the companies, what could happen to them? I am guessing nothing.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  3. Re:I figured they would do this by mlwmohawk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    people seem to think that even trying to work with MS in any shape or form is a pact with Satan himself.

    I would like to see an example where a "big" company did business with Microsoft and did not end up selling out or going out of business. Even DEC caved into Microsoft,

  4. Re:Dear Mr. McBride, by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    GNU/Linux, unlike products released by Microsoft (Such as OPENXML), tend to have names which are not doublespeak. This practice of not praciticing doublespeak is also adopted by the Free Software Foundation.

    What a load. You tell me which products tell you what they do:

    Internet Explorer
    SQL Server Management Studio
    Photoshop
    Windows Mail
    Windows Live Messenger
    Remote Desktop Connection
    Adobe Acrobat Reader

    or their FOSS equiv's..

    Firefox / Konqueror / IceWeasel...
    pgAdmin III / FlameRobin ...
    gimp
    Thunderbird / Evolution
    Pidgin / Gaim
    TightVNC / FreeNX
    Evince ...

    I could go on all day. Sure there are plenty of bad proprietary names, and lots of descriptive OSS names, but suggesting that a characteristic of open source projects is good names is utterly laughable.