The Sydney Morning Herald continues its mainstream coverage of the SCO vs IBM roadshow by posting an article where Dr Warren Toomey, a Unix historian, says that SCO may not know the origin of their own code.
Article text follows:
SCO may not know origin of code, says Australian UNIX historian
By Sam Varghese
September 9, 2003
More doubts have been cast on the heritage of System V Unix code, which the SCO Group claims as its own, by an Australian who runs the Unix Heritage Society.
Dr Warren Toomey, now a computer science lecturer at Bond University, said today: "I'd like to point out that SCO (the present SCO Group) probably doesn't have an idea where they got much of their code. The fact that I had to send SCO (the Santa Cruz Organisation or the old SCO) everything up to and including Sys III says an awful lot."
He said that even though SCO owned the copyright on Sys III, a few years ago it did not have a copy of the source code. "I was dealing with one of their people at the time, trying to get some code released under a reasonable licence. I sent them the code as a gesture because I knew they did not have a copy," he said with a chuckle.
Dr Toomey's statements come a few days after Greg Rose, an Australian Unix hacker from the 1970s, raised the possibility that there may be code contributed by people, including himself, which has made its way into System V Unix and is thus being used by companies like the SCO Group.
Dr Toomey said this was one reason why the code samples which the SCO Group had shown at its annual forum had turned out to be widely published code.
SCO was unaware of the origins of much of the code and this "explains how they could wheel out the old malloc() code and the BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) code, not realising that both were now under BSD licences - and in fact they hadn't even written the BPF code," Dr Toomey said.
He said that there was lots of code which had been developed at the University of New South Wales in the 70s which went to AT&T and was incorporated into UNIX without any copyright notices.
"At that time the development that was going on was similar to open source - the only difference was that the developers all had to have copies of the code licensed from AT&T," he said.
Dr Toomey, who served 12 years with the Australian Defence Force Academy, an offshoot of the University of New South Wales, before joining Bond University, said he had source code for Unices from the 3rd version of UNIX which came out in 1974 to the present day. "I don't have Sys V code but there are people with licences for that code who are members of the Unix Heritage Society. We can compare code samples any time," he said.
He agreed that the codebase of Sys V was a terribly tangled mess. "It is very difficult to trace origins now. There is an awful lot of non-AT&T and non-SCO code in Sys V. There is a lot of BSD code there," he said.
In March, the SCO Group filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM, for "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract."
SCO also claimed that Linux was an unauthorised derivative of Unix and warned commercial Linux users that they could be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright. SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to US$3 billion in June when it said it was withdrawing IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX.
IBM has counter-sued SCO while Red Hat Linux has sued SCO to stop it from making "unsubstantiated and untrue public statements attacking Red Hat Linux and the integrity of the Open Source software development process."
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Wordforge writing contest now open: deadline 2003-03-28
I'm surprised RFID hasn't made bigger (or perhaps more public) waves in the transport and logistics industry. Embedding RFID tags in con notes or container labels could potentially dramatically cut the cost of handling and tracking freight.
Further - being attached to something that's generally disposed after receipt - the technology doesn't raise the same level of privacy issues as it does when used for consumer/retail purposes.
Sure a gap in the middle of your screen is annoying - so why not treat it as two screens (assuming the resolution is decent enough)? Ie, a word processor/ebook reader on one side and a contact manager on the other. Etc.
SCO [...] seems to have become the DPRK of tech, a seemingly isolated, insular fringe player on the scene that is in a steep decline and has resorted to a twisted form of brinkmanship to keep in play, leaving the rest of the players somewhere between arggravated and bemused.
Interesting analogy, especially if you take it further. There's a genuine fear that the DPRK actually has a couple of doomsday devices up its sleeve that - while they won't guarantee their survival let alone victory - will cause a huge amount of destruction in a worst-case scenario.
However, if Oracle owns PeopleSoft they suddenly become SAP's largest competitor. As soon as that happens a major SAP infrastructure provider is now the enemy
Oracle is already a huge competitor to SAP in the ERP space.
Consider a client wavernig on whether or not to buy SCO or Linux support. They sign the NDA, SCO shows them they are the proper owners of the ultra-secret code, then they buy gobs of stuff from SCO.
In fact, if you look at the supposed piracy rates over the last few years (from the article's graphic):
1995 - 46%
1996 - 43%
1997 - 40%
1998 - 38%
1999 - 36%
2000 - 37%
2001 - 40%
2002 - 39%
They're all 41% plus or minus 5%. Given the inherent difficulties in measuring something like this (which would lead to a large margin of error), could argue there hasn't been any substantive movement in piracy rates at all in the last eight years.
The argument becomes even more compelling if you only look at the numbers from 1997 onwards: 38% +/- 2%.
The article points out that the cost of priacy is approaching $0. How do you make a multi-million dollar picture if you can't sell it for much more than $0? The entertainment industry should NOT have to change their prices to combat piracy. That is an endorsement of piracy as a legitimate means of obtaining media. That's like saying Nike should reduce the price of shoes to prevent people from mugging their customers to obtain them.
Unfortunately the article was/.ed when I posted my reply so I didn't see that it pointed out the declining cost of piracy. Note though that the dollar cost is not the only cost involved - the aforementioned time, hassle, lack of support (for software), not to mention a desire by many pirates to do the right thing if only the price were reasonable or access were immediate all come into play as well. Still, it's a fair point.
Re Nike - given their outrageous profit margins and well-documented propensity to use cheap labour it's not exactly the best analogy to use I'm afraid!:)
To thwart piracy the entertainment industry must keep distribution costs high, reduce the size of distribution networks, and (if possible) raise the cost of extracting content.
How about: To thwart piracy the entertainment industry must lower prices and decrease access times (eg movie and TV international release dates) to the point where the costs of piracy (time, hassle, lower quality, fake product, no support) isn't worth it for most people.
In Australia the Australia Post Postal Address File (PAF) contains randomly allocated unique codes (DPID or delivery point identifier) for something like 9 million addresses - almost every single delivery point in the country, including not just street names (1 Smith St) but also floors (Level 23/1 Smith Street).
It's important to know that DPIDs are not meant to be used for consumer-to-consumer mail, ie there is no need for you to remember your 8 digit code when writing a letter to your grandma.
Instead, the target are business-to-consumer or business-to-business mailing and only where the number of envelopes per mailing are large, say over 300. DPIDs are printed as barcodes (not alphanumerics) which are much easier for the sorting machines to scan. All mailing houses and many organisations in the country have invested in the necessary AMAS infrastructure.
Australia Post grants discounts for the use of DPID barcodes on such B2B/B2C mail which constitutes, IIRC, the bulk of all snailmail delivered these days. I can't remember the exact figures but think it's something like 2/3 of all snailmail these days is business originated.
There are also benefits to the business using the PAF - eg it's easier to affiliate customers with correct addresses.
The universal postal code proposed in the article could have a similarly restricted, but none-the-less useful, application.
Slashdot Mirror
Article text follows:
SCO may not know origin of code, says Australian UNIX historian
By Sam Varghese
September 9, 2003
More doubts have been cast on the heritage of System V Unix code, which the SCO Group claims as its own, by an Australian who runs the Unix Heritage Society.
Dr Warren Toomey, now a computer science lecturer at Bond University, said today: "I'd like to point out that SCO (the present SCO Group) probably doesn't have an idea where they got much of their code. The fact that I had to send SCO (the Santa Cruz Organisation or the old SCO) everything up to and including Sys III says an awful lot."
He said that even though SCO owned the copyright on Sys III, a few years ago it did not have a copy of the source code. "I was dealing with one of their people at the time, trying to get some code released under a reasonable licence. I sent them the code as a gesture because I knew they did not have a copy," he said with a chuckle.
Dr Toomey's statements come a few days after Greg Rose, an Australian Unix hacker from the 1970s, raised the possibility that there may be code contributed by people, including himself, which has made its way into System V Unix and is thus being used by companies like the SCO Group.
Dr Toomey said this was one reason why the code samples which the SCO Group had shown at its annual forum had turned out to be widely published code.
SCO was unaware of the origins of much of the code and this "explains how they could wheel out the old malloc() code and the BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) code, not realising that both were now under BSD licences - and in fact they hadn't even written the BPF code," Dr Toomey said.
He said that there was lots of code which had been developed at the University of New South Wales in the 70s which went to AT&T and was incorporated into UNIX without any copyright notices.
"At that time the development that was going on was similar to open source - the only difference was that the developers all had to have copies of the code licensed from AT&T," he said.
Dr Toomey, who served 12 years with the Australian Defence Force Academy, an offshoot of the University of New South Wales, before joining Bond University, said he had source code for Unices from the 3rd version of UNIX which came out in 1974 to the present day. "I don't have Sys V code but there are people with licences for that code who are members of the Unix Heritage Society. We can compare code samples any time," he said.
He agreed that the codebase of Sys V was a terribly tangled mess. "It is very difficult to trace origins now. There is an awful lot of non-AT&T and non-SCO code in Sys V. There is a lot of BSD code there," he said.
In March, the SCO Group filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM, for "misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition and breach of contract."
SCO also claimed that Linux was an unauthorised derivative of Unix and warned commercial Linux users that they could be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright. SCO later expanded its claims against IBM to US$3 billion in June when it said it was withdrawing IBM's licence for its own Unix, AIX.
IBM has counter-sued SCO while Red Hat Linux has sued SCO to stop it from making "unsubstantiated and untrue public statements attacking Red Hat Linux and the integrity of the Open Source software development process."
-----
Wordforge writing contest now open: deadline 2003-03-28
A) The point was that you'd forget your password if you didn't have the CD as a prompt.
B) It was supposed to be a joke.
Having failed to demonstrate neither insight nor humour I will now slink back quietly into karma obscurity...
PS: IANAC (comedian)
Great idea! Until you lend out your CD....
It was unintentional and caused by lack of sleep. How embarrassment. Must now flog and flay myself.
Or... I can blame the editors' lack of proof reading! Yeah, that's it... damn slashdot editors.
Okay, so it's probably a fake but since it was linked from her own blog it has a veneer of respectability... http://xrlq.com/MT-archives/001037.php
But it's damn disappointing she didn't answer the really important question: What happened to the "posture" pic and the "I asked Georgy out" t-shirt?
See, there's these pigeons...
I'm surprised RFID hasn't made bigger (or perhaps more public) waves in the transport and logistics industry. Embedding RFID tags in con notes or container labels could potentially dramatically cut the cost of handling and tracking freight.
Further - being attached to something that's generally disposed after receipt - the technology doesn't raise the same level of privacy issues as it does when used for consumer/retail purposes.
Patch and cover! Patch and cover!!
Everyone knows that hex sells.
Sure a gap in the middle of your screen is annoying - so why not treat it as two screens (assuming the resolution is decent enough)? Ie, a word processor/ebook reader on one side and a contact manager on the other. Etc.
What's SCO got up its sleeves?
MacGyver is alive and well and living in Paris.
But then, so's the entire lawsuit...
- 1995 - 46%
- 1996 - 43%
- 1997 - 40%
- 1998 - 38%
- 1999 - 36%
- 2000 - 37%
- 2001 - 40%
- 2002 - 39%
They're all 41% plus or minus 5%. Given the inherent difficulties in measuring something like this (which would lead to a large margin of error), could argue there hasn't been any substantive movement in piracy rates at all in the last eight years.The argument becomes even more compelling if you only look at the numbers from 1997 onwards: 38% +/- 2%.
Doesn't this make the order of things something like:
- Guys invent Palm Pilot
- US Robotics buy out guys - guys make money
- 3Com buys out US Robotics - guys make money
- 3Com spins off Palm as separate company - guys make money
- Guys leave Palm, undoubtedly with money, start up Handspring
- Palm buys Handspring - guys make money
BTW I'm using the term "guys" generically, I think at least one of the key people was female.Re Nike - given their outrageous profit margins and well-documented propensity to use cheap labour it's not exactly the best analogy to use I'm afraid! :)
It's important to know that DPIDs are not meant to be used for consumer-to-consumer mail, ie there is no need for you to remember your 8 digit code when writing a letter to your grandma. Instead, the target are business-to-consumer or business-to-business mailing and only where the number of envelopes per mailing are large, say over 300. DPIDs are printed as barcodes (not alphanumerics) which are much easier for the sorting machines to scan. All mailing houses and many organisations in the country have invested in the necessary AMAS infrastructure.
Australia Post grants discounts for the use of DPID barcodes on such B2B/B2C mail which constitutes, IIRC, the bulk of all snailmail delivered these days. I can't remember the exact figures but think it's something like 2/3 of all snailmail these days is business originated.
There are also benefits to the business using the PAF - eg it's easier to affiliate customers with correct addresses.
The universal postal code proposed in the article could have a similarly restricted, but none-the-less useful, application.
Or if anyone will care.