Have you ever tried to take notes in a math heavy lecture, using a notebook? Unless you're a TeX-wizard you'll have a hard time. With a Tablet PC I could enter the text on the Keyboard, and fill in the formulae with the pen. Very much like people did with typewriters in the pre-TeX days, when preparing books BTW.
No doubt. I just visited a friend who studies physics at Columbia in New York. One day we walked over to the bookstore, and I was struck by the prizes of some of the required textbooks. One telling example: Ashcroft Mermin - Solid State Physics (don't remember the exact numbers, so I searched amazon) prize at amazon.com : $121 prize at amazon.co.uk : $61 (36 pounds)
What is the reason for the two-fold increase in prize? No doubt, in the UK they usually have well-equipped libraries for the students to use.
The article uses FORTRAN 77, not the modern Fortran 95 which has a concise loop syntax, which allows the compiler to generate the best code with no reliance on the compiler understanding correctly what the templates are meant to achieve.
(by default array dimensions have lower bound 1 in Fortran, instead of setting the lower bound to 0, as in the C++ example, I chose to adapt the code to the Fortran convention; instead of choosing the real data type on the requested precision I could have used DOUBLE PRECISION, of course; I used uppercase out of tradition, against popular belief, Fortran understands lowercase)
For expressions like this it would be nice if one could deal with index ranges as in the C++ code, but this can also be achieved by means of a preprocessor.
The article claims that SCO didn't know that the code shown was copyrighted by SGI. It then concludes from this that SCO don't know _their_ code's history. This is not a valid conclusion, the valid conclusions are that SCO doesn't know the history of Linux' code, and that they didn't even go as far as looking at the copyrights to find out.
From ESR's README: Besides the production C code, the distribution also includes working Python versions. These were used to prototype the concept. So the answer to your question is yes and no.
If they did that, they would certainly have a better case than they have now. Intellectual Property covers (in the fuzzy buzzword sense) trademarks, it doesn't cover code which doesn't exist.
1. I had missed the spelling difference 2. I didn't post his details, maybe you missed the obfuscation 3. I simply looked up Finklestein's homepage in whois, as everybody could, so I don't see much baddoing 4. I supposed the author of the grandparent post would would be threatening the person most easily associated with his parent post, so the point remains the same
From the whois entry for sethf.com: person: Seth Finkelstein nic-hdl: SF49-GANDI address: PO Box 425XXX address: 02142-0XXX address: Cambridge address: Massachusetts address: United States of America phone: 617-864-XXXX e-mail: XXXX@XXX.XXX
That's great, except that they forgot to tell us how much money half the profit actually is. Prepare for the lame "Uhm, sorry, but actually we made zero profit with that coffee." excuses.
I think, what they mean when they say the GPL is invalid is the following (I'm referring to the published examples, there may be others with IBM replacing SGI):
1. SGI obtained the UNIX source code 2. SGI put UNIX code into Linux, putting only an SGI copyright on top 3. SGI has no rights to do so. at least SCO thinks so 4. hence SGI can't put this code under the GPL 5. hence this part of Linux is not GPL'd, copyright preempts the GPL
Now why does their distribution not put this code under the GPL?
6. because there was no appropriate copyright on this code and at that time Caldera didn't have access to the Unix sources, Caldera/SCO couldn't find this copyright violation. So they distributed this in good faith, thus not giving up their rights, since they couldn't have known any better then 7. now they have the problem of supporting their past customers, hence they distribute updates from their FTP servers only to former customers (without verifying, of course),to keep the damage low for them
So far their behavior seems justifiable if not reasonable. Now comes the stupid parts:
8. not saying which code is infringing 9. threatening everybody 10. sueing IBM
And because this is slashdot:
11. ??? 12. federal prison, get pounded in the ass, look like this guy.
Maybe I'll get killed for telling you, but there are truths more important than my life: The slashdot effect has now officially become a means of ensuring national security. In fact, the submitter works for the Department of Internet and airspace security.
So they claim Linux violates an open-source license, which by their claims is invalid (by the same argument that renders the GPL invalid)? Now that's a great strategy.
I also doubt that this malloc code is copyrightable, given that it's supposedly in any book which contains the UNIX source.
How can they make statements such as: By selling Linux itself, SCO has not assigned all of its copyright ownership to the GNU General Public License. "SCO did not put a copyright into the GPL and authorized the usage of that code in Linux," Heise said.
when a quick search through the kernel reveals this: $ find -name *.[ch] | xargs grep Caldera ./abi/sco/mmap.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./abi/sco/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./abi/sco/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./abi/svr4/misc.c: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH ./abi/svr4/socksys.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH ./abi/svr4/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./abi/svr4/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./arch/i386/kernel/lcall7.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c: * Original development of Linux SMP code supported by Caldera. ./drivers/net/tlan.c: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc. ./drivers/net/tlan.h: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc. ./drivers/scsi/advansys.c: AdvanSys driver in the Caldera releases. ./include/abi/sco/mman.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./include/abi/sco/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./include/abi/svr4/sockio.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./include/abi/svr4/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./include/abi/ioctl.h: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH ./include/asm-i386/abi_machdep.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH. ./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc. <greg@caldera.com> ./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Neither Greg Page nor Caldera, Inc. admit liability nor provide ./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: KERN_INFO "IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.\n" \
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever tried to take notes in a math heavy lecture, using a notebook? Unless you're a TeX-wizard you'll have a hard time. With a Tablet PC I could enter the text on the Keyboard, and fill in the formulae with the pen. Very much like people did with typewriters in the pre-TeX days, when preparing books BTW.
Plus, the college textbook market is a racket.
No doubt. I just visited a friend who studies physics at Columbia in New York. One day we walked over to the bookstore, and I was struck by the prizes of some of the required textbooks. One telling example: Ashcroft Mermin - Solid State Physics (don't remember the exact numbers, so I searched amazon)
prize at amazon.com : $121
prize at amazon.co.uk : $61 (36 pounds)
What is the reason for the two-fold increase in prize? No doubt, in the UK they usually have well-equipped libraries for the students to use.
3 Seeders, 6 Leechers. It looks like kernel.org wins the pipe size competition.
actually, it's one of those cases where the 'pong' reply makes sense.
Alas, I didn't think of the FORALL statement. I need some sleep. A more concise and readable version with the typo corrected follows.
:: N = 64 :: DBL = SELECTED_REAL_KIND(15,364) :: A(N,N,N), B(N,N,N)
INTEGER, PARAMETER
INTEGER, PARAMETER
REAL(DBL)
FORALL(I=2,N-1, J=2,N-1, K=2,N-1)
A(I,J,K) = (B(I,J,K) + B(I+1,J,K) + B(I-1,J,K) + B(I,J+1,K) + B(I,J,K-1) + B(I,J,K-1) + B(I,J,K+1))/7.
But so what? I'm following up on an old story anyway...
The article uses FORTRAN 77, not the modern Fortran 95 which has a concise loop syntax, which allows the compiler to generate the best code with no reliance on the compiler understanding correctly what the templates are meant to achieve.
:: N = 64 :: DBL = SELECTED_REAL_KIND(15,364) :: A(N,N,N), B(N,N,N)
Equivalent Fortran 95 code:
INTEGER, PARAMETER
INTEGER, PARAMETER
REAL(DBL)
A(2:N-1,2:N-1,2:N-1) = (B(2:N-1,2:N-1,2:N-1) + B(3:N,2:N-1,2:N-1) + B(2:N-1,2:N-1,2:N-1) + B(2:N-1,1:N-2,2:N-1) + B(2:N-1,3:N,2:N-1) + B(2:N-1,2:N-1,1:N-2) + B(2:N-1,2:N-1,3:N)) / 7.0
(by default array dimensions have lower bound 1 in Fortran, instead of setting the lower bound to 0, as in the C++ example, I chose to adapt the code to the Fortran convention; instead of choosing the real data type on the requested precision I could have used DOUBLE PRECISION, of course; I used uppercase out of tradition, against popular belief, Fortran understands lowercase)
For expressions like this it would be nice if one could deal with index ranges as in the C++ code, but this can also be achieved by means of a preprocessor.
The article claims that SCO didn't know that the code shown was copyrighted by SGI. It then concludes from this that SCO don't know _their_ code's history. This is not a valid conclusion, the valid conclusions are that SCO doesn't know the history of Linux' code, and that they didn't even go as far as looking at the copyrights to find out.
Are you aiming towards a career as slashdot editor?
From ESR's README:
Besides the production C code, the distribution also includes working Python versions. These were used to prototype the concept.
So the answer to your question is yes and no.
If they did that, they would certainly have a better case than they have now. Intellectual Property covers (in the fuzzy buzzword sense) trademarks, it doesn't cover code which doesn't exist.
1. I had missed the spelling difference
2. I didn't post his details, maybe you missed the obfuscation
3. I simply looked up Finklestein's homepage in whois, as everybody could, so I don't see much baddoing
4. I supposed the author of the grandparent post would would be threatening the person most easily associated with his parent post, so the point remains the same
Just to make that clear: of course I put he Xs in there myself.
From the whois entry for sethf.com:
person: Seth Finkelstein
nic-hdl: SF49-GANDI
address: PO Box 425XXX
address: 02142-0XXX
address: Cambridge
address: Massachusetts
address: United States of America
phone: 617-864-XXXX
e-mail: XXXX@XXX.XXX
That's 20 seconds of work.
How exactly doesn't he know who Seth is?
Remember how Stan Lee got nothing from the spiderman movies? ( /. story here) It's all a matter of creative accounting.
That's great, except that they forgot to tell us how much money half the profit actually is. Prepare for the lame "Uhm, sorry, but actually we made zero profit with that coffee." excuses.
If SGI's UNIX license allowed them to relicense the code, it would be no problem. So, time to dig out those contracts SGI.
I think, what they mean when they say the GPL is invalid is the following (I'm referring to the published examples, there may be others with IBM replacing SGI):
,to keep the damage low for them
1. SGI obtained the UNIX source code
2. SGI put UNIX code into Linux, putting only an SGI copyright on top
3. SGI has no rights to do so. at least SCO thinks so
4. hence SGI can't put this code under the GPL
5. hence this part of Linux is not GPL'd, copyright preempts the GPL
Now why does their distribution not put this code under the GPL?
6. because there was no appropriate copyright on this code and at that time Caldera didn't have access to the Unix sources, Caldera/SCO couldn't find this copyright violation. So they distributed this in good faith, thus not giving up their rights, since they couldn't have known any better then
7. now they have the problem of supporting their past customers, hence they distribute updates from their FTP servers only to former customers (without verifying, of course)
So far their behavior seems justifiable if not reasonable. Now comes the stupid parts:
8. not saying which code is infringing
9. threatening everybody
10. sueing IBM
And because this is slashdot:
11. ???
12. federal prison, get pounded in the ass, look like this guy.
I's read that as 'out of millions of customers, hundreds like our products'. Great advertising, Darly! way to go!
We hope those bigger mansions will be prisons.
Maybe I'll get killed for telling you, but there are truths more important than my life:
The slashdot effect has now officially become a means of ensuring national security. In fact, the submitter works for the Department of Internet and airspace security.
The license of the Unix archive (issued by Caldera) is BSD'ish. (See here to see to which files this license applies.)
So they claim Linux violates an open-source license, which by their claims is invalid (by the same argument that renders the GPL invalid)? Now that's a great strategy.
I also doubt that this malloc code is copyrightable, given that it's supposedly in any book which contains the UNIX source.
Say, why did you have to bring pornography in there?
How can they make statements such as:
./abi/sco/mmap.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/sco/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/sco/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/svr4/misc.c: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./abi/svr4/socksys.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./abi/svr4/stat.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./abi/svr4/statvfs.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./arch/i386/kernel/lcall7.c: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c: * Original development of Linux SMP code supported by Caldera.
./drivers/net/tlan.c: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
./drivers/net/tlan.h: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
./drivers/scsi/advansys.c: AdvanSys driver in the Caldera releases.
./include/abi/sco/mman.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/sco/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/svr4/sockio.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/svr4/types.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./include/abi/ioctl.h: * Copyright (C) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH
./include/asm-i386/abi_machdep.h: * Copyright (c) 2001 Caldera Deutschland GmbH.
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc. <greg@caldera.com>
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Neither Greg Page nor Caldera, Inc. admit liability nor provide
./net/ipx/af_ipx.c: KERN_INFO "IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.\n" \
By selling Linux itself, SCO has not assigned all of its copyright ownership to the GNU General Public License. "SCO did not put a copyright into the GPL and authorized the usage of that code in Linux," Heise said.
when a quick search through the kernel reveals this:
$ find -name *.[ch] | xargs grep Caldera
$
Now what was your argument? SCO!=Caldera?
I thought that's why this abbreviation pops up everytime somebody gets anal about something.