Why does the OSS community not simply try and take business from SCO and ALL the other Canopy group companies [they all seem to be in each other's pockets anyway]? Is there any reason why this is not feasible or legal?
By this, I mean:
1. Write free clean-room work-a-like but better versions of all their stuff (as well as applications than run on their OS and drive their OS sales). Make sure the switching cost is low (same APIs, same data formats, migration tools, etc.).
2. Make sure your stuff does not work on their platform, integrate with their code easily etc. I didn't see OSS authors are any obligation to make their stuff with SCO or other Canopy software.
3. If you have a legitimate reason to sue them, do it. If you are in a position to help others (e.g. you work for some mega corp with a Linux interest), help others who have a legit reason to sue them.
So again: Is there any reason why this is not feasible or legal?
Without commenting specifically on SCOX, McBride, etc., as I take no position on this.
If anybody has information about any securities law violations, by any person or company, and wishes to report them to the government (SEC). Go to www.sec.gov (click Enforcement Division) - and there is a form to report online.
1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0393.html Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0394.html IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
Read, Copy, Update (RCU):
1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0393.html
Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/ netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5442758.WKU.& OS=PN/5442758&RS=PN/5442758
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0394.html
IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
3. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0505.html
Andrea Arcangeli confirms that an IBM patent grant letter has been sent to both Linus and him.
The preprocessor is no good - included headers will get reviewed more than once - comments make up part of SCO's claims of "proof". We need to find matches and find out why there are matches.
I am a developer, writing this program is not especially hard (adding a nice front end would be where the work is). Better to do it right, even if takes marginally more coding effort.
In any case, the real effort will come later, investigating the reasons for any possible matches.
Comments are part of SCO's claims and "evidence". We want to find matches so we can track down why there are matches.
Also preprocessor does the includes, so the same headers get counted again and again.
I am a developer and don't believe a program like this is very hard to write (of course would be harder if somebody wants to add graphical front end etc). Better to do it right and find all the significant matches, comments or not, even if it takes marginally more coding effort than doing it quick.
In any case, the coding effort is likely to be small, as compared to tracking down the reasons for any possible matches.
I still think the raw MD5 algorithm is not good enough, as if there are identical code except for line breaks or spacing, we want to know about it, so we can investigate the reasons why.
No but IBM and others do
Actually a more serious problem, is that SCO seems to be claiming stuff that was never in the original source. For example if IBM added something to their copy of SCO's source, SCO seems to think they own it.
3. My point is Sun is golden - and are revealing the trade secret to at least the same extent as any other Linux distro. So if Sun can do that, SCO presumably implicitly ALREADY accept it is no longer a trade secret.
Last paragraph, I agree with, I'm trying to point out that the Trade Secrets are already revealed by SCO themselves and their golden boy Sun.
The MD5 idea is a good idea, but I think it needs some refining. - You want to get EVERY example, for potential manual review - You want to avoid any problems with white space leading to different MD5s for "identical" code - Doing a 5 line compare seems flawed as what if you compare lines 1-5 in A and B, but lines 1-5 in A match lines 2-6 in B
I therefore propose that:
1. before calculating any check sums, both files should be massaged into some common "base" format. - Remove all white space inc. tabs and spaces - Concatenate on one long line, but line break immediately after any semi-colon (;) or end-comment (*/) or immediately before begin comment (/* or//) [obviously additional rules for script files, maybe #] - With comments, line break at least every (say) 20 characters or if there was a line break in original file. - Maintain some kind of map back from massaged file to Linux source (line 237 in massaged = line 40-42 in Linux source) - In the massaged file, mark any line less than say 20 characters in a non-comment section as being potentially and probably too small to be copyrightable. This would eliminate stuff like i++; or #include . Matches for these should still show up in the overall results, but be considered as less important unless there are also lots of "more important" matches in the same source file as well.
2. Run both sets of sources thru this algorithm, and calculate two or more hashes for each line, say MD5 and some kind of CRC. If both sets of sources match for all the hashes, a match is found. This is to reduce number of false positives.
I am not a lawyer. This is just my opinion, but I can't see how claims of IBM breaking SCO's trade secrets can fly even if SCO's other claims (like they have some rights on RCU etc) did:
1. If IBM patented something (RCU I understand on the basis of previous Slashdot posts), it is available for everybody to see at USPTO, so how can it be a trade secret?
2. SCO's claim seems to include stuff they didn't create themselves put other companies put into both Sys V and Linux. If the other company who put it into Sys V didn't keep it a trade secret themselves, it would be public knowledge, so how can it become a SCO trade secret - as the secret would have already been revealed.
3. Sun is golden in SCO's book. Sun have a Linux. So isn't the trade secret revealed anyway by Sun publishing Linux. Same applies for Lindows.
4. Linus is supposedly guilty of not filtering out SCO's properietary trade secrets. But how could he? If he knows it shouldn't go in because it's a SCO trade secret - then unless he works for SCO or has agreed to keep it secret (neither of which is true) - then how could he know a certain piece of code is somebody's trade secret.
And 5. SCO give out their Linux distro with source, so presumably this no longer makes it a trade secret.
I am not a lawyer, but isn't there a huge hole in SCO's trade secret theory.
SCO seems to be claiming rights in anything vaguely associated (added by IBM or others) to a Sys V like code base. Their complaint against IBM is a trade secret complaint, so they are claiming these items are SCO's trade secrets? While I do not buy this, let's assume for a moment it held up. I still can't see how it could work:
1. If IBM added say RCU this way, SCO's claim would be this makes it SCO's trade secret. However how can it be a trade secret if it was patented, and hence available for the public to read.
2. If IBM added something else, SCO's claim would be this makes it SCO's trade secret. However, I can not see how it could be a trade secret if it was public knowledge (i.e. not an IBM trade secret) in the first place.
3. Linus is blamed for not scrutinizing IP before adding to Linux. SCO want him to scrutinize for trade secrets (this is a trade secret complaint - remember). If it is truly a trade secret, then Linus could not know that, unless it was no longer a trade secret or he had agreed to keep it a trade secret.
SCO have amended their complaint against IBM:
- They now want $3bn
- Blames Linus for letting proprietary stuff into Linux
- Complains Open Source "can be used for encryption, scientific research and weapons research" in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya
- Says IBM copied RCU
- Sequent added to the complaint
It would probably break securities law, and the people would end up facing civil and/or criminal penalties.
I do not have any evidence or information about wrong-doing by SCO (or anybody else for that matter).
If you, or anybody else, has information/evidence about securities laws being broken by anybody, and you wish to report it, there is a form at www.sec.gov (go to Enforcement division) so you can report without even getting up from your computer.
My understanding is that SCO simply amended their complaint to ask IBM stopped from distributing AIX - if and when SCO prevail against IBM at the $1bn trial.
Everybody was looking to see if SCO filed for an immediate temporary injunction, to stop IBM distributing AIX *now* -- and this does NOT seem to have happened
One other thing, according to eweek.com McBride said he planned to audit IBM AIX customers (I;d ask - for what? how?), although I couldn't see the audit paragraph when I checked later [but it was still appearing the google news summary]. URL to the story is: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1126997,00.as p
Maybe because English is not his first language? Could you remember a joke in some code you read in a foreign language, while some lawyer is breathing down your neck?
Maybe because he is afraid SCO will sue him if he does this?
Maybe because nobody asked him?
Maybe he has already, and has just chosen not to disclose this part.
And a whole bunch more plausible reasons, we don't even know whether he has or hasn't
The comment that dates were removed is interesting.
I presume that it means, this German guy didn't see the "raw" SCO evidence, but he saw SCO's presentation/interpretation/summary of the "evidence"
My thoughts:
1. Perhaps, he doesn't give file names or line numbers: because he does NOT know what they are
2. Doesn't anybody find it the least bit odd, that a so-called expert, who is supposedly assessing the strength of SCO's evidence, is not shown the "raw" evidence, but some kind of presentation/summary/interpretation of it????
Re:Class Action - SCOX to 0.02, acquisition?
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 1
I'm not a lawyer, but I think you want to deal with each Linux contributor individually on a case by case basis, if you want to make it tough for SCO.
If you have 1 class action (or 1 per country), SCO has one case to fight (or 1 per country).
If you have seperate cases being filed all over the place, SCO need to turn up to all of them.
In any case, I'm not sure a Class action works for this case, as how much, when, where etc., each person contributed to Linux, varies from 1 line (or even part of one line) to inventing and managing it (Linus)
Slashdot Mirror
This is a question, not a plan.
Why does the OSS community not simply try and take business from SCO and ALL the other Canopy group companies [they all seem to be in each other's pockets anyway]? Is there any reason why this is not feasible or legal?
By this, I mean:
1. Write free clean-room work-a-like but better versions of all their stuff (as well as applications than run on their OS and drive their OS sales). Make sure the switching cost is low (same APIs, same data formats, migration tools, etc.).
2. Make sure your stuff does not work on their platform, integrate with their code easily etc. I didn't see OSS authors are any obligation to make their stuff with SCO or other Canopy software.
3. If you have a legitimate reason to sue them, do it. If you are in a position to help others (e.g. you work for some mega corp with a Linux interest), help others who have a legit reason to sue them.
So again: Is there any reason why this is not feasible or legal?
Without commenting specifically on SCOX, McBride, etc., as I take no position on this.
If anybody has information about any securities law violations, by any person or company, and wishes to report them to the government (SEC). Go to www.sec.gov (click Enforcement Division) - and there is a form to report online.
Sorry, forgot to set post style to text:
- 36/0393.html
= PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/ netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5442758.WKU.& OS=PN/5442758&RS=PN/5442758
- 36/0394.html
- 36/0505.html
Read, Copy, Update (RCU):
1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
3. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001
Andrea Arcangeli confirms that an IBM patent grant letter has been sent to both Linus and him.
Read, Copy, Update (RCU): 1. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0393.html
Andrea Arcangeli rejecting submission of RCU to Linux because the technology is covered by US Patent, in particular, this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/ netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5442758.WKU.& OS=PN/5442758&RS=PN/5442758
2. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0394.html
IBM employee Dipankar Sarma states that IBM owns this patent, having purchased the inventor Sequent, and that IBM legal has reviewed it and approved its release under GPL.
3. http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2001- 36/0505.html
Andrea Arcangeli confirms that an IBM patent grant letter has been sent to both Linus and him.
The preprocessor is no good
- included headers will get reviewed more than once
- comments make up part of SCO's claims of "proof". We need to find matches and find out why there are matches.
I am a developer, writing this program is not especially hard (adding a nice front end would be where the work is). Better to do it right, even if takes marginally more coding effort.
In any case, the real effort will come later, investigating the reasons for any possible matches.
Comments are part of SCO's claims and "evidence". We want to find matches so we can track down why there are matches. Also preprocessor does the includes, so the same headers get counted again and again. I am a developer and don't believe a program like this is very hard to write (of course would be harder if somebody wants to add graphical front end etc). Better to do it right and find all the significant matches, comments or not, even if it takes marginally more coding effort than doing it quick. In any case, the coding effort is likely to be small, as compared to tracking down the reasons for any possible matches.
Missed that as others seem to have too.
I still think the raw MD5 algorithm is not good enough, as if there are identical code except for line breaks or spacing, we want to know about it, so we can investigate the reasons why.
No but IBM and others do Actually a more serious problem, is that SCO seems to be claiming stuff that was never in the original source. For example if IBM added something to their copy of SCO's source, SCO seems to think they own it.
3. My point is Sun is golden - and are revealing the trade secret to at least the same extent as any other Linux distro. So if Sun can do that, SCO presumably implicitly ALREADY accept it is no longer a trade secret. Last paragraph, I agree with, I'm trying to point out that the Trade Secrets are already revealed by SCO themselves and their golden boy Sun.
The MD5 idea is a good idea, but I think it needs some refining.
//) [obviously additional rules for script files, maybe #]
- You want to get EVERY example, for potential manual review
- You want to avoid any problems with white space leading to different MD5s for "identical" code
- Doing a 5 line compare seems flawed as what if you compare lines 1-5 in A and B, but lines 1-5 in A match lines 2-6 in B
I therefore propose that:
1. before calculating any check sums, both files should be massaged into some common "base" format.
- Remove all white space inc. tabs and spaces
- Concatenate on one long line, but line break immediately after any semi-colon (;) or end-comment (*/) or immediately before begin comment (/* or
- With comments, line break at least every (say) 20 characters or if there was a line break in original file.
- Maintain some kind of map back from massaged file to Linux source (line 237 in massaged = line 40-42 in Linux source)
- In the massaged file, mark any line less than say 20 characters in a non-comment section as being potentially and probably too small to be copyrightable. This would eliminate stuff like i++; or #include . Matches for these should still show up in the overall results, but be considered as less important unless there are also lots of "more important" matches in the same source file as well.
2. Run both sets of sources thru this algorithm, and calculate two or more hashes for each line, say MD5 and some kind of CRC. If both sets of sources match for all the hashes, a match is found. This is to reduce number of false positives.
I am not a lawyer. This is just my opinion, but I can't see how claims of IBM breaking SCO's trade secrets can fly even if SCO's other claims (like they have some rights on RCU etc) did:
1. If IBM patented something (RCU I understand on the basis of previous Slashdot posts), it is available for everybody to see at USPTO, so how can it be a trade secret?
2. SCO's claim seems to include stuff they didn't create themselves put other companies put into both Sys V and Linux. If the other company who put it into Sys V didn't keep it a trade secret themselves, it would be public knowledge, so how can it become a SCO trade secret - as the secret would have already been revealed.
3. Sun is golden in SCO's book. Sun have a Linux. So isn't the trade secret revealed anyway by Sun publishing Linux. Same applies for Lindows.
4. Linus is supposedly guilty of not filtering out SCO's properietary trade secrets. But how could he? If he knows it shouldn't go in because it's a SCO trade secret - then unless he works for SCO or has agreed to keep it secret (neither of which is true) - then how could he know a certain piece of code is somebody's trade secret.
And 5. SCO give out their Linux distro with source, so presumably this no longer makes it a trade secret.
Don't Sun already have a Linux for their Cobalt products?
As SCO says Sun is in the clear, get Linux from them, and users are in the clear?
I am not a lawyer, but isn't there a huge hole in SCO's trade secret theory.
SCO seems to be claiming rights in anything vaguely associated (added by IBM or others) to a Sys V like code base. Their complaint against IBM is a trade secret complaint, so they are claiming these items are SCO's trade secrets? While I do not buy this, let's assume for a moment it held up. I still can't see how it could work:
1. If IBM added say RCU this way, SCO's claim would be this makes it SCO's trade secret. However how can it be a trade secret if it was patented, and hence available for the public to read.
2. If IBM added something else, SCO's claim would be this makes it SCO's trade secret. However, I can not see how it could be a trade secret if it was public knowledge (i.e. not an IBM trade secret) in the first place.
3. Linus is blamed for not scrutinizing IP before adding to Linux. SCO want him to scrutinize for trade secrets (this is a trade secret complaint - remember). If it is truly a trade secret, then Linus could not know that, unless it was no longer a trade secret or he had agreed to keep it a trade secret.
From what I understand: you can download Linux from SCO's FTP site
I think: wouldn't that mean SCO themselves are also breaking any export restrictions if IBM were?
I recommend Ashcroft look over SCO's FTP logs for binladen@cave.com and shussein@iraq.com
SCO combining Linux and UNIX features?
SCO working on Linux SMP in 2000?
SCO contributing code to Linux in 2000?
SCO have amended their complaint against IBM: - They now want $3bn
- Blames Linus for letting proprietary stuff into Linux
- Complains Open Source "can be used for encryption, scientific research and weapons research" in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya
- Says IBM copied RCU
- Sequent added to the complaint
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html
SCO did seem to make some kind of effort to to merge Linux and SCO Unix
And they also contributed stuff to Linux (there was/is a list on their site, but in case that disappears): Link 1 Link 2
No, SCO isn't showing anyone the code because there is no code.
OR
Maybe it was part of SCO's effort to merge Linux and Unix
OR
Maybe their programmers wrote it into Linux: Link 1 Link 2
It would probably break securities law, and the people would end up facing civil and/or criminal penalties.
I do not have any evidence or information about wrong-doing by SCO (or anybody else for that matter).
If you, or anybody else, has information/evidence about securities laws being broken by anybody, and you wish to report it, there is a form at www.sec.gov (go to Enforcement division) so you can report without even getting up from your computer.
Uncanny similarities between SCO and Linux:
Here appears to be another reason why, according to SCO's previous CEO (note the date):
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5406
My understanding is that SCO simply amended their complaint to ask IBM stopped from distributing AIX - if and when SCO prevail against IBM at the $1bn trial.
s p
Everybody was looking to see if SCO filed for an immediate temporary injunction, to stop IBM distributing AIX *now* -- and this does NOT seem to have happened
One other thing, according to eweek.com McBride said he planned to audit IBM AIX customers (I;d ask - for what? how?), although I couldn't see the audit paragraph when I checked later [but it was still appearing the google news summary]. URL to the story is: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1126997,00.a
Nobody seems to be discussing what happens next?
SCO have said they will have an announcement before the market opens. What do you think it will be?
Maybe because English is not his first language? Could you remember a joke in some code you read in a foreign language, while some lawyer is breathing down your neck?
Maybe because he is afraid SCO will sue him if he does this?
Maybe because nobody asked him?
Maybe he has already, and has just chosen not to disclose this part.
And a whole bunch more plausible reasons, we don't even know whether he has or hasn't
The comment that dates were removed is interesting.
I presume that it means, this German guy didn't see the "raw" SCO evidence, but he saw SCO's presentation/interpretation/summary of the "evidence"
My thoughts:
1. Perhaps, he doesn't give file names or line numbers: because he does NOT know what they are
2. Doesn't anybody find it the least bit odd, that a so-called expert, who is supposedly assessing the strength of SCO's evidence, is not shown the "raw" evidence, but some kind of presentation/summary/interpretation of it????
I'm not a lawyer, but I think you want to deal with each Linux contributor individually on a case by case basis, if you want to make it tough for SCO.
If you have 1 class action (or 1 per country), SCO has one case to fight (or 1 per country).
If you have seperate cases being filed all over the place, SCO need to turn up to all of them.
In any case, I'm not sure a Class action works for this case, as how much, when, where etc., each person contributed to Linux, varies from 1 line (or even part of one line) to inventing and managing it (Linus)