Consensus is that it's the obfuscation technique they've used to hide bits of code they didn't want to show. Heh, real-life rot-0 encryption:o)
The comments that have been obscured have been translated by numerous people, and the comments don't appear in any public source known to Google. Therefore, it seems to be genuine proprietary Unix that it comes from.
I wonder if anyone else took pictures of the presentation - apparently, there was a lot of 'obscured' code in the samples they were showing. It would be quite interesting to know what code was obscured: so far, none of the obscured code is in the Linux kernel, which is odd given that it was 'copied line-by-line'. If it was indeed copied, I would expect more than just the stuff which is already public domain.
Both snippets relate to the first function in that file - malloc(). It's a simple malloc implementation.
The second Heise picture is the body of the function, pretty much. There is now an SMP spinlock in there, and what appears to be some assertion on the size of the memory area (some kind of bigmem check?). Also, the for loop is initialised with a function, which is probably also something memory related, again possibly bigmem related.
So, it relates to the areas SCO said it did. I doubt very much they can claim the code was copied from SysV wholesale. I would be surprised they could even claim that the three changed lines from the ancient Unix are not obvious - e.g., for it to work in SMP you basically need a lock. Although, it would be surprising for the locking mechanism to be identical - so they perhaps have some point here. But, the majority of the function cannot be claimed as copied, surely....
This 'discussion' has been going on months. Bit by bit, BK is becoming more and more like some kind of SCM version of MS Office.
A while ago another pact with BM was made - that they would change the native BK file format from an open, documented one to a proprietary one (for reasons of extra features, apparently). The quid pro quo for this was a CVS gateway.
Sounds like they are now going to start revving the network protocol as well as the file format, and you know, probably at some point other stuff will stop working so well. IIRC, the BK->CVS gateway isn't 100% perfect, and I could well imagine certain things having to be dropped "because CVS just can't handle it".
It's against the BK EULA to reverse-engineer it, even though the right to do that is enshrined in many laws (like in Europe). This actively bars people - not just from interoperating, but *any* developers of rival SCM systems. SVN developers are completely unable to use the 'free' BK to participate in kernel development, because it's against the licence. Even if they aren't trying to reverse engineer BK itself; just working on a competing system is enough.
And that's also the reason why Linux can no longer have a versioned file system built into it - it's against the licence of the 'free' BK users, like Linus.
This is so storing up problems for later. It's true - it doesn't cause a huge problem at the moment. But it will do in years to come. More and more of a problem as Linux development is locked into BK. Personally, I think this is such an important issue, and I can't believe people are walking into this. But, that's their call I guess. Time will tell who is right.
That's the case, but politicians don't see it. Hence, we need to educate them. In the UK, there are some sites specifically about the situation: FFII have a UK page, and then there is softwarepatents.co.uk. I imagine at some point there will be some kind of co-ordinated campaign to educate people in time for the vote in the Autumn.
The 'best tool' term can always be used to fit whatever system you're trying to push. If you're talking about desktop systems, there's always a reason that Windows is the best tool.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in making a change and making people aware of the choice out there, then yes it probably needs to be mandated - what the Government is saying is that it is more important that we have control over our software than features, necessarily. That's 'best tool', but more of a long-term view..
The proposed directive was written in a Word file, and the original author information appeared in the metadata - that's how they know the BSA were involved.
I thought Arlene's response was more anti-Free/Libre/Open Source Software than anything I've seen in a long time, and it's bizarre because rms and Nick Hill didn't raise that issue at all. Her article wasn't factual in any way, shape or form - she said she was against business methods, for example, but offered no actual example of actions which back that up - in fact, her previous actions indicate she's in favour.
foreach (@list) {
$list[$i] = 'No jam today!'
if ($_ =~/jam/);
}
... where $i is an index into the array. Like a for() loop, but without the gatepost error possibility. Yes, you can do it yourself with my $i=0 and $i++ in the loop, but it's a mess, especially if you next or last anywhere in there - it means you have to put the $i++ at the top, and start at $i = -1, which is bizarre.
... so unlikely to be able to be whored for karma in it's entirety without a lot of work:o)
Perl6 is looking amazing, though. It's looking a lot less crufty than perl5 in a number of ways, and actually looks a very modern language now. Plus, it's still Perl. Woo!
So long as we get a foreach() mechanism with in-built index into the array it's looping over, I'll be happy. That's my biggest problem at the moment..
> I'd guess that anyone who submits a patch back to > Linus is de facto making him a copyright holder of > the code in the patch (well, assuming he is also > the holder of the original code... but I'm pretty > sure he has the copyright for the 0.01 kernel!).
No, this is not the case.
> IANAL, but I think it's a safe bet that sending > a patch (w/o an explicit license agreement) > constitutes a gift.
It doesn't constitute a gift. Authors have copyright over things they create; that is the law. The copyright of Linux is so widely spread that it is now unlikely that it could ever be relicensed.
Witness the problem when Mozilla relicenced - they had to go and find all the old hackers who used to work on the code to gain their permission to relicence.
Many slashdot posters seem to think Richard is just a voice crying out in the wilderness, but increasingly he seems to be a prophet.
Absolutely right. Lest we forget, EULA clauses not allowing people to develop competitive (esp. Free Software) products is something Microsoft does. And they were rightly derided for that. Are we saying just because Bitmover are giving away free stuff that we're not going to apply the same standards?
Yeah, for now. The problem is not about money - it is about BK being proprietary. There is no reason why Bitmover could decide to not licence to subversion developers at all, whether they pay or not - they're not forced to licence to anyone.
I'm sure people wouldn't mind paying if it was available as free software, without all this vendor lock-in.
What annoys me more is the insinuation that if you don't behave as if Microsoft would be welcome, then you're being childish. I don't see any reason why we should welcome the poster-child of proprietary software to a GNU/Linux show.
I think they're tossing around with the html code live:( They keep moving, and at least on my system (Galeon/Moz 0.9.8) they don't render at all correctly...
Um... read it again, Einstein. The subject is 'Hurd vs. Linux.... ' - i.e., the _kernels_.
Having different kernels doesn't prevent Debian from being vastly the same system on multiple architectures, for example. Different implementations of a kernel aren't going to make huge differences either. The only differences a user will see are some userland tools being different, hardware support being different, etc. - actually using the system will be vastly similar..
BTW - OT - WTF is up with slashdot and signatures? Someone, please, fix it....
The HURD is completely different from Linux - people will want to use it for the new features it brings. It's as different from Linux as from BSD as well - Linux & BSD are a lot closer than either of them are to the HURD.
Besides, if it looks and acts (for the most part) like your Debian GNU/Linux system, the entry bar is very low and people are more likely to try it.
If the services are Free Software (as opposed to open source), then of course the consumer has a choice: although you may have to pay to receive services, there is nothing stopping a competitor setting up a competitive service, and you can't lock each other out - you have to compete on something other than a monopoly market position.
It's a no-brainer - surely even Hemos understands it??
There is a way out of this - it's called the GPL. If InstantDB had been GPLd before it was sold to Lutris, they wouldn't have been able to shut off the old versions in the same way they have done here. Realising this, they may not have even closed sourced it in the first place.
echo != ping. Perhaps before flaming you ought to actually get your facts straight in future. And yes, it _is_ port 7. Duh...
Plus, I subscribe to the noun 'hacker'. Crackers are things you put cheese on. Trying to get people to call hackers 'crackers' is like trying to reclaim your virginity or something..
I don't get this. Where, in the description of the article, the press release or any other of the links is Open Source _even_ _mentioned_?
RMS doesn't argue for Open Source. He doesn't use the term Open Source, and doesn't claim to represent the Open Source movement. RMS speaks for Free Software. He claims the GPL as a 'subset' (if you want to call it that) of Free Software Licences - many other licences are also Free, the GPL is one of them. His argument is that companies wanting to Free their code ought to GPL it. Don't drag Open Source into this; this has _nothing_ to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Consensus is that it's the obfuscation technique they've used to hide bits of code they didn't want to show. Heh, real-life rot-0 encryption :o)
The comments that have been obscured have been translated by numerous people, and the comments don't appear in any public source known to Google. Therefore, it seems to be genuine proprietary Unix that it comes from.
I wonder if anyone else took pictures of the presentation - apparently, there was a lot of 'obscured' code in the samples they were showing. It would be quite interesting to know what code was obscured: so far, none of the obscured code is in the Linux kernel, which is odd given that it was 'copied line-by-line'. If it was indeed copied, I would expect more than just the stuff which is already public domain.
Both snippets relate to the first function in that file - malloc(). It's a simple malloc implementation.
The second Heise picture is the body of the function, pretty much. There is now an SMP spinlock in there, and what appears to be some assertion on the size of the memory area (some kind of bigmem check?). Also, the for loop is initialised with a function, which is probably also something memory related, again possibly bigmem related.
So, it relates to the areas SCO said it did. I doubt very much they can claim the code was copied from SysV wholesale. I would be surprised they could even claim that the three changed lines from the ancient Unix are not obvious - e.g., for it to work in SMP you basically need a lock. Although, it would be surprising for the locking mechanism to be identical - so they perhaps have some point here. But, the majority of the function cannot be claimed as copied, surely....
This 'discussion' has been going on months. Bit by bit, BK is becoming more and more like some kind of SCM version of MS Office.
A while ago another pact with BM was made - that they would change the native BK file format from an open, documented one to a proprietary one (for reasons of extra features, apparently). The quid pro quo for this was a CVS gateway.
Sounds like they are now going to start revving the network protocol as well as the file format, and you know, probably at some point other stuff will stop working so well. IIRC, the BK->CVS gateway isn't 100% perfect, and I could well imagine certain things having to be dropped "because CVS just can't handle it".
It's against the BK EULA to reverse-engineer it, even though the right to do that is enshrined in many laws (like in Europe). This actively bars people - not just from interoperating, but *any* developers of rival SCM systems. SVN developers are completely unable to use the 'free' BK to participate in kernel development, because it's against the licence. Even if they aren't trying to reverse engineer BK itself; just working on a competing system is enough.
And that's also the reason why Linux can no longer have a versioned file system built into it - it's against the licence of the 'free' BK users, like Linus.
This is so storing up problems for later. It's true - it doesn't cause a huge problem at the moment. But it will do in years to come. More and more of a problem as Linux development is locked into BK. Personally, I think this is such an important issue, and I can't believe people are walking into this. But, that's their call I guess. Time will tell who is right.
So, the threat is now that BK will have a locked-down encrypted protocol if any Free Software gets anywhere close to talking the protocol nicely?
That sucks so hard. This is what you get for dancing with the Devil.
Bullshit. Stallman acknowledges BSD as a Free operating system.
Perhaps he answered nearly every question with the same kind of response because he realised you really weren't getting it.
That's the case, but politicians don't see it. Hence, we need to educate them. In the UK, there are some sites specifically about the situation: FFII have a UK page, and then there is softwarepatents.co.uk. I imagine at some point there will be some kind of co-ordinated campaign to educate people in time for the vote in the Autumn.
The 'best tool' term can always be used to fit whatever system you're trying to push. If you're talking about desktop systems, there's always a reason that Windows is the best tool.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in making a change and making people aware of the choice out there, then yes it probably needs to be mandated - what the Government is saying is that it is more important that we have control over our software than features, necessarily. That's 'best tool', but more of a long-term view..
The proposed directive was written in a Word file, and the original author information appeared in the metadata - that's how they know the BSA were involved.
I thought Arlene's response was more anti-Free/Libre/Open Source Software than anything I've seen in a long time, and it's bizarre because rms and Nick Hill didn't raise that issue at all. Her article wasn't factual in any way, shape or form - she said she was against business methods, for example, but offered no actual example of actions which back that up - in fact, her previous actions indicate she's in favour.
Useful URLs for people in the UK: FFII UK, More info on software patents. We can still stop them putting these things in place.
No no no no no. I know that :) I mean:
foreach (@list) { $list[$i] = 'No jam today!' if ($_ =~ /jam/);
}
... where $i is an index into the array. Like a for() loop, but without the gatepost error possibility. Yes, you can do it yourself with my $i=0 and $i++ in the loop, but it's a mess, especially if you next or last anywhere in there - it means you have to put the $i++ at the top, and start at $i = -1, which is bizarre.
... so unlikely to be able to be whored for karma in it's entirety without a lot of work :o)
Perl6 is looking amazing, though. It's looking a lot less crufty than perl5 in a number of ways, and actually looks a very modern language now. Plus, it's still Perl. Woo!
So long as we get a foreach() mechanism with in-built index into the array it's looping over, I'll be happy. That's my biggest problem at the moment..
> I'd guess that anyone who submits a patch back to ... but I'm pretty
> Linus is de facto making him a copyright holder of
> the code in the patch (well, assuming he is also
> the holder of the original code
> sure he has the copyright for the 0.01 kernel!).
No, this is not the case.
> IANAL, but I think it's a safe bet that sending
> a patch (w/o an explicit license agreement)
> constitutes a gift.
It doesn't constitute a gift. Authors have copyright over things they create; that is the law. The copyright of Linux is so widely spread that it is now unlikely that it could ever be relicensed.
Witness the problem when Mozilla relicenced - they had to go and find all the old hackers who used to work on the code to gain their permission to relicence.
Absolutely right. Lest we forget, EULA clauses not allowing people to develop competitive (esp. Free Software) products is something Microsoft does. And they were rightly derided for that. Are we saying just because Bitmover are giving away free stuff that we're not going to apply the same standards?
Yeah, for now. The problem is not about money - it is about BK being proprietary. There is no reason why Bitmover could decide to not licence to subversion developers at all, whether they pay or not - they're not forced to licence to anyone.
I'm sure people wouldn't mind paying if it was available as free software, without all this vendor lock-in.
Shurely, the Tigris project subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/)??
What annoys me more is the insinuation that if you don't behave as if Microsoft would be welcome, then you're being childish. I don't see any reason why we should welcome the poster-child of proprietary software to a GNU/Linux show.
Grammer?
Spelling!
I think they're tossing around with the html code live :( They keep moving, and at least on my system (Galeon/Moz 0.9.8) they don't render at all correctly...
Err, actually the GPL is a "General Public Licence". The common one is the GNU GPL, usually v2 or better....
You lose easily, don't you? Bloody hell.
Yes, speed = (distance / time).
Let's assume the measured the distance travelled for 5 seconds. Therefore:
speed = (0/5) = 0
Since speed = 0, the light has stopped. This really is very basic math, you know.
Um... read it again, Einstein. The subject is 'Hurd vs. Linux.... ' - i.e., the _kernels_.
Having different kernels doesn't prevent Debian from being vastly the same system on multiple architectures, for example. Different implementations of a kernel aren't going to make huge differences either. The only differences a user will see are some userland tools being different, hardware support being different, etc. - actually using the system will be vastly similar..
BTW - OT - WTF is up with slashdot and signatures? Someone, please, fix it....
The HURD is completely different from Linux - people will want to use it for the new features it brings. It's as different from Linux as from BSD as well - Linux & BSD are a lot closer than either of them are to the HURD.
Besides, if it looks and acts (for the most part) like your Debian GNU/Linux system, the entry bar is very low and people are more likely to try it.
If the services are Free Software (as opposed to open source), then of course the consumer has a choice: although you may have to pay to receive services, there is nothing stopping a competitor setting up a competitive service, and you can't lock each other out - you have to compete on something other than a monopoly market position.
It's a no-brainer - surely even Hemos understands it??
There is a way out of this - it's called the GPL. If InstantDB had been GPLd before it was sold to Lutris, they wouldn't have been able to shut off the old versions in the same way they have done here. Realising this, they may not have even closed sourced it in the first place.
me@here:~$ cat /etc/services | grep echo
echo 7/tcp
echo 7/udp
echo != ping. Perhaps before flaming you ought to actually get your facts straight in future. And yes, it _is_ port 7. Duh...
Plus, I subscribe to the noun 'hacker'. Crackers are things you put cheese on. Trying to get people to call hackers 'crackers' is like trying to reclaim your virginity or something..
I don't get this. Where, in the description of the article, the press release or any other of the links is Open Source _even_ _mentioned_?
RMS doesn't argue for Open Source. He doesn't use the term Open Source, and doesn't claim to represent the Open Source movement. RMS speaks for Free Software. He claims the GPL as a 'subset' (if you want to call it that) of Free Software Licences - many other licences are also Free, the GPL is one of them. His argument is that companies wanting to Free their code ought to GPL it. Don't drag Open Source into this; this has _nothing_ to do with it.