They don't really need copies of every Unix source ever released. BSD circa '93, current BSD, and the "ancient Unixes" opened sourced by Caldera a couple years ago should be sufficient. Anything that didn't come from one of those sources is probably a special case that can be reseached and argued over later.
Throw in Linux kernel 2.2 if you're not concerned that SCO will change its mind about 2.2's "purity" later, but it's probably not necessary.
I know. I've been having the same problem. I sent my "Reponse" to Darl's letter to a couple of friends, and all but one friend, a fellow Linux user, said it was too long, then asked why I was wasting all this time on it. *sigh*
I didn't want to say anything either, because the thesis of the story is right: SCO doesn't know the provenance of its code. They simply assume everything in System V and ever developed to work with System V is owned by them.
However, SCO clearly knew that the malloc code snippet "emanated" from SGI, because SGI's copyrights were in it. SCO has been hinting at problems with SGI for months, so this isn't even really news. The story would have been better, and rested on a stronger foundation, had they used the BPF code to underlie their thesis. I think SCO was honestly shocked to find that the B in BPF stood for Berkely.
Yep. Let's all try to keep in mind that SCO has not filed *one* copyright claim yet. They keep talking about copyright in the press, but not in *court*. Not yet, anyway. We'll see what happens when they respond to Red Hat's claim and IBM's counter-claim at the end of the month.
The biggest obstacle to SCO charging copyright infringement in court, is that they must be aware of the preliminary ruling in the ATT-BSD case. The judge told ATT that they were unlikely to be able to defend their copyrights in court. And you know what happens to copyrights you can't defend? Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to public domain.
Yes, IBM has made it clear with the Canopy subpoena that they intend to "pierce the corporate veil" between Canopy and SCO. Ralph Yarrow may want to take the precaution of deeding his house over to a trusted family member, just to make sure he'll have a place to live when this is all over.
"Once again, for those of us without money to burn the smart buy is that $100-$200 card that cost $600 a few months ago, not the one that costs $600 now (and which will be down to $100-$200 just as fast)"
The smart buy, right now, is the Radeon 9600. At about $100-150, you get a card with all the 9800 features and 90% of the performance.
"Just because ATI cards appear to support DX 9 better (or, particularly, Valve's use of vertex/pixel shaders - which just happens to be one small part of DX 9), doesnt mean they are a better card." -- purple pixel
You're right. I'd say the Radeon 9800 is a better card than the 5900 because it costs $100 less, doesn't need an extra slot for the heat sink, doesn't sound like a jet engine taking off, seems to get equal to better results on benchmarks with less cheating than NVidia, and doesn't bitch all the time about needing special optimizations. Ditto the 9600, except that it's $250 less.
That said, I still think there's something wrong with these HL2 tests. The testing environment is too controlled by the vendor, and the 70% performance differences are a little high even given my biased expectations. I would have expected more like a 30%-40% frame rate advantage, and that only at high resolutions & 32 bit color.
"...I don't mind paying for the product, but also want to be able to install the free version for certain machines..."
As far as I know, Mandrake is still licensed under the GPL. This means you can buy *one* copy and install it as often and inn as many places as you'd like.
Doesn't matter where *you* are from, Knoppix is from Germany, where they pronounce the "K" at the beginning. It is named for Klaus Knopper, the creator of the distro, and his last name is also pronounced with the "K" at the beginning. This is a proper name, and doesn't follow the same rules as words like "psychology" where pronouncing the "p" at the beginning does vary depending on the language it is spoken in.
All of which is to say, that if you pronounce "Knoppix" without the "K" you are simply pronouncing it wrong.
Positive SCO Defending Material
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Back To SCO
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· Score: 1
"The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had."
This detail is *extremely* debatable, to the point of being moot for the purposes of my response.
A little comparison is in order here: when IBM took over Lotus, they maintained a corporate identity for it as a subsidiary company; when IBM took over Sequent, Sequent's corporate identity was dissolved into the IBM organizational structure.
One could quite reasonably argue that, even if SCO owns "derivative" control rights over Sequent's original work associated with Unix System V, those rights were *contractual*, did not *cede* ownership of the code base to SCO, and that those rights either dissolved with Sequent's corporate structure, or, having been purchased and now therefore "owned" by IBM, fall under IBM's contracts with SCO.
In other words, I doubt SCO's attempts to treat the Sequent obligations as separate and more restricted that IBM's will succeed.
Well, now that there's a new item for Open Letters, here's the extensively revised version of the one I posted a couple days ago. You can also see it on my journal page.
A Linux User's Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community By John Gabriel, NYC, 9/11/03
"What comes of litigation? Poverty and degradation to any community that will encourage it. Will it build cities, open farms, build railroads, erect telegraph lines and improve a country? It will not; but it will bring any community to ruin." -- Brigham Young, JD 11:259.
"Contracts are what you use against those with whom you have relationships." -- Darl McBride
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the Deskpro didn't have enough memory to support the X Windows System. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems once more.
About a year ago, I again became interested in Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
Response to Paragraph 1 of your "Open Letter":
This is very difficult to respond to, because your analysis of the issues and of the reasons for the Open Source community's anger is, in the words of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, "so bad it's not even wrong."
For instance, your own lawsuit against IBM does not allege that "SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into L
Open Letter
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Back To SCO
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually, you're right, especially for the example asked about, the System V source. My bad.
I think it would depend on the extent of the changes. In any case, the public domain work incorporated into a derivative work would remain public domain.
Thanks. This wouldn't cause much bandwidth since the document is only 50k or so. Right now, I'm working with Groklaw on whether they want to use it as the basis of an open letter from the Groklaw community, so I think I'm going to hold off on your offer for now.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't really need copies of every Unix source ever released. BSD circa '93, current BSD, and the "ancient Unixes" opened sourced by Caldera a couple years ago should be sufficient. Anything that didn't come from one of those sources is probably a special case that can be reseached and argued over later.
Throw in Linux kernel 2.2 if you're not concerned that SCO will change its mind about 2.2's "purity" later, but it's probably not necessary.
Not until the probablity function collapses. And the odds make it highly unlikely that the function will collapse in the manner they desire.
I know. I've been having the same problem. I sent my "Reponse" to Darl's letter to a couple of friends, and all but one friend, a fellow Linux user, said it was too long, then asked why I was wasting all this time on it. *sigh*
I didn't want to say anything either, because the thesis of the story is right: SCO doesn't know the provenance of its code. They simply assume everything in System V and ever developed to work with System V is owned by them.
However, SCO clearly knew that the malloc code snippet "emanated" from SGI, because SGI's copyrights were in it. SCO has been hinting at problems with SGI for months, so this isn't even really news. The story would have been better, and rested on a stronger foundation, had they used the BPF code to underlie their thesis. I think SCO was honestly shocked to find that the B in BPF stood for Berkely.
Yep. Let's all try to keep in mind that SCO has not filed *one* copyright claim yet. They keep talking about copyright in the press, but not in *court*. Not yet, anyway. We'll see what happens when they respond to Red Hat's claim and IBM's counter-claim at the end of the month.
The biggest obstacle to SCO charging copyright infringement in court, is that they must be aware of the preliminary ruling in the ATT-BSD case. The judge told ATT that they were unlikely to be able to defend their copyrights in court. And you know what happens to copyrights you can't defend? Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to public domain.
Yes, IBM has made it clear with the Canopy subpoena that they intend to "pierce the corporate veil" between Canopy and SCO. Ralph Yarrow may want to take the precaution of deeding his house over to a trusted family member, just to make sure he'll have a place to live when this is all over.
Depends on whether they're English tons or metric tons. Metric tons cost about 10% more.
"Once again, for those of us without money to burn the smart buy is that $100-$200 card that cost $600 a few months ago, not the one that costs $600 now (and which will be down to $100-$200 just as fast)"
The smart buy, right now, is the Radeon 9600. At about $100-150, you get a card with all the 9800 features and 90% of the performance.
"Just because ATI cards appear to support DX 9 better (or, particularly, Valve's use of vertex/pixel shaders - which just happens to be one small part of DX 9), doesnt mean they are a better card." -- purple pixel
You're right. I'd say the Radeon 9800 is a better card than the 5900 because it costs $100 less, doesn't need an extra slot for the heat sink, doesn't sound like a jet engine taking off, seems to get equal to better results on benchmarks with less cheating than NVidia, and doesn't bitch all the time about needing special optimizations. Ditto the 9600, except that it's $250 less.
That said, I still think there's something wrong with these HL2 tests. The testing environment is too controlled by the vendor, and the 70% performance differences are a little high even given my biased expectations. I would have expected more like a 30%-40% frame rate advantage, and that only at high resolutions & 32 bit color.
"...I don't mind paying for the product, but also want to be able to install the free version for certain machines..."
As far as I know, Mandrake is still licensed under the GPL. This means you can buy *one* copy and install it as often and inn as many places as you'd like.
10:1? More like a billion to none.
Doesn't matter where *you* are from, Knoppix is from Germany, where they pronounce the "K" at the beginning. It is named for Klaus Knopper, the creator of the distro, and his last name is also pronounced with the "K" at the beginning. This is a proper name, and doesn't follow the same rules as words like "psychology" where pronouncing the "p" at the beginning does vary depending on the language it is spoken in.
All of which is to say, that if you pronounce "Knoppix" without the "K" you are simply pronouncing it wrong.
Positive SCO Defending Material:
Umm...
Well...
Wait, I've got it!
Jill, in Accounts Receivable, is pretty cute.
"The ATT-IBM sideletter agreement does not apply to code that Sequent developed. The Sequent code is goverened by whatever license agreement that Sequent had."
This detail is *extremely* debatable, to the point of being moot for the purposes of my response.
A little comparison is in order here: when IBM took over Lotus, they maintained a corporate identity for it as a subsidiary company; when IBM took over Sequent, Sequent's corporate identity was dissolved into the IBM organizational structure.
One could quite reasonably argue that, even if SCO owns "derivative" control rights over Sequent's original work associated with Unix System V, those rights were *contractual*, did not *cede* ownership of the code base to SCO, and that those rights either dissolved with Sequent's corporate structure, or, having been purchased and now therefore "owned" by IBM, fall under IBM's contracts with SCO.
In other words, I doubt SCO's attempts to treat the Sequent obligations as separate and more restricted that IBM's will succeed.
Well, now that there's a new item for Open Letters, here's the extensively revised version of the one I posted a couple days ago. You can also see it on my journal page.
A Linux User's Open Response to Darl McBride's Open Letter to the Open Source Community
By John Gabriel, NYC, 9/11/03
"What comes of litigation? Poverty and degradation to any community that will encourage it. Will it build cities, open farms, build railroads, erect telegraph lines and improve a country? It will not; but it will bring any community to ruin." -- Brigham Young, JD 11:259.
"Contracts are what you use against those with whom you have relationships." -- Darl McBride
Dear Mr. McBride,
First, let me introduce myself. My name is John Gabriel. I have been working in the technical field for 15 years, as a Network Administrator, Applications Manager, Network Manager, Sr. Networking Engineer, and now, Freelance Consultant. And, yes, I'm an MCSE.
My first experiences with Unix occurred in the late 1970's, during school field trips to local colleges. I also did Unix technical support for students while taking a class in Pascal in the late 1980's. My first experience with Linux dates to 1994, when I downloaded whatever Linux kernel was available at that time.
While I did install it successfully, on a Compaq Deskpro 386/25, I quickly abandoned it as the Deskpro didn't have enough memory to support the X Windows System. Several years later, in 1998, I became a Caldera customer, with a purchase of Caldera OpenLinux Base ver. 1.22, with Linux kernel 2.0.33. I ran into similar problems once more.
About a year ago, I again became interested in Linux, and now run Linux on my home workstation in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP.
About 4-5 months ago, I began following the SCO v. IBM story. I was at first inclined to be open-minded towards SCO's claims. It wouldn't be the first time a small company has had its copyrights violated by a larger vendor, though the violator is usually, in my experience, Microsoft, as exemplified by Caldera's history with DR-DOS.
However, the more I researched the story and SCO's claims, the more convinced I became that SCO's claims were, well, baseless. Being the type that usually likes to "root for the underdog", I was surprised by my conclusions.
Anyway, that's enough introduction. What follows is an Open Response to your Open Letter to the Open Source Community. I grant everyone, including you, permission to re-publish it, or quote from it, without restriction, except that my comments be properly attributed to myself. Consider it under a "BSD-style" license if you like.
Open Letter to the Open Source Community
By Darl McBride, CEO, The SCO Group
1) The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
For anyone who is interested, my own Open Response, previously posted here, has been *extensively* revised.
You can view it on my journal page here.
Actually, you're right, especially for the example asked about, the System V source. My bad.
I think it would depend on the extent of the changes. In any case, the public domain work incorporated into a derivative work would remain public domain.
I may be wrong, but I think MS sold their ATT license to Old SCO when they got out of the Xenix business.
"...except that he'd have to foot the bill himself while McBride can use the corporate lawyers of SCO."
Just a thought: maybe he could sue on behalf of the OSI and get Red Hat to foot the bill through the Open Source Now! fund.
Correction: For dictation, it would libel. Primarily because the dictated work appears under the name of the dictator and not the dictated.
For dictation, it would libel. Primarily because the dictated work appears under the dictators under the name of the dictator and not the dictated.
For interview, it would be slander, because the interview is simply a report of the spoken record.
I'm not sure how it would be handled for an e-mail interview, though.
"Hey, he's got child porn on his workstation!"
Yes. That's the way it would usually be decided anyway. Your mileage may vary depending on the judge.
Thanks.
I'm going to hold off a bit, as Groklaw is considering using it as a template for a response there. If that doesn't work out I may take you up on it.
Thanks. This wouldn't cause much bandwidth since the document is only 50k or so. Right now, I'm working with Groklaw on whether they want to use it as the basis of an open letter from the Groklaw community, so I think I'm going to hold off on your offer for now.
BTW, *cool* handle. Thanks again for the offer.