Did SCO even have those features in the early '80s? I don't know for sure, but I somehow doubt it
No. They don't have NUMA to this day. UnixWare got SMP in '97, after Linux ('96.) They still support only 4 processors btw, although you'd never guess that from reading their complaint.
They just fed the poor woman whatever they could come up with to bamboozle her, obviously.
There are areas that have the same comments but different source (perhaps this is common code that was replaced?)
I would say most likely explanation is POSIX. I'm told it's been a common practice to cut and paste the relevant sections of the POSIX specs as comments for code implementing them.
This could be crucial. Please, a better translation from a bilingual. If this says what I think it does it could be quite important, but I don't trust my interpretation of an automatic translation so much...
There is no way more certain to cripple a budding programmers capability than to get them involved with BASIC in any of its variants. It's evil, brain damage inducing stuff.
There are plenty of good languages for beginners that won't rot their minds. Delphi. Python. Smalltalk. Just please, please, please, no BASIC.
Those Tadpoles are definately cool, but they suck power like a thirsty horse so battery life is really sucky. And that's an important thing for a notebook. Nice as they are, I'd still rather have my Powerbook getting nearly 3 hours on a battery.
Granted, if someone has a file up on a public server with plenty of bandwidth, there's no need.
But bandwidth isn't free, and not everyone can afford to pay for the privilege of giving away their code.
With P2P everyone interested in the file can contribute a little of their bandwidth to aggregate, and make fast distribution possible without shelling out for a fast server on a big pipe. So why not use it?
...and even though much of what he says is correct (most virus writers, particularly nowadays, are just script-kiddies and not particularly good programmers) I can't agree with his main point. There are very valid reasons to write viruses as learning experiments. And not just for people interested in working in security either - as pure CS there is a lot to be said for it.
He gives the impression that all viruses are harmful, but that's simply not true and he must know that. Many viruses, including all the early ones, were pure CS experiments in artificial life. They had no 'payload', no destructive nature, they just try to survive and reproduce, the basics of biological life transplanted to the digital realm.
Now writing a virus with a destructive payload and spreading it to other people's computers - that is clearly unethical, but I really doubt that's what they have planned in this class.
If you're not stealing a physical object, you're "stealing" the value of something by diminishing it.
So by that logic, the inventor of the automobile stole the livelihood of all the buggy makers, horseshoe making blacksmiths, and so forth.
This is the logic of those that think that just because they found something useful to do and are making money off it now, everyone else therefore has an obligation to avoid doing anything that will make what they're doing less useful, and therefore less lucrative, in the future. It's the logic of entitlement, of protectionism, of the Luddites and all their kin.
The record companies once performed a valuable service. They got paid for it. When technology changes so that service isn't so valuable anymore, they should adapt and change so they continue to offer value and earn money. Instead, they try to turn back the progress of technology via legislation. They seem to believe that, having once provided value, they are now entitled to be paid in perpetuity, without earning it.
I think that the original intent of copyright was to safeguard initial profits of a trademark or intellectual property, but then eventually safeguard the data so everyone can be enriched by it.
Exactly. The original rules for copyright in the US were clearly designed with just that in mind. The term was IIRC 14 years, and it was not like today, with everything automatically copyrighted in accord with the Berne convention - if you wanted a copyright you had to send a copy to the capital for safe-keeping, to ensure that your work would be available after the term expired.
One really insightful point that the RIAA shill managed to make, perhaps unintentionally, is that much of our present situation is the result of Congress not wanting to fall behind Europe. That's where we get our 'everything is automatically copyrighted' crap for instance. Now I love Europe, there are a lot of good things we could learn from them, but this isn't one of them. Unfortunately we've reached the point where our congresscritters don't even understand our own law, and mindlessly parrot the worst ideas to come from Europe, even while raging endlessly against the actual decent ones... but I'm wandering off-topic, enough of that.
Oh, you're completely right of course. But it doesn't seem like their leadership has the capacity to understand that sort of potential. I think Ray Noorda had a glimmering... btw is he still involved with them at all? As I remember he was the major guy behind Canopy group back when, but I sure haven't heard his name associated lately, I don't know if he got out or what though...
Anyone else get the feeling that going after other UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems via what appear to be tenuous legal arguments is SCO's new business model?
I guess SCO thinks that calling in the lawyers beats actually trying to compete on the merits of its products and services.
Well if you had their assets you might think that too. What do they have? A couple of proprietary Unices that suck real bad compared to the Free competition (BSD and Linux), and a Linux distro that has never sold very well. Unlike their Unices, their Linux distro actually doesn't suck too hard, but it's been hampered by bad publicity engendered by their constant efforts to try and evade their license obligations, and doesn't have much to distinguish it from Redhat or SUSE who have always had a lot bigger market share.
They were on the short road to bankruptcy already, I'm afraid, whether their executives really think they have a small chance of getting a big settlement this way or they're just trying to pump the stock so they can dump it before the bottom falls out, either option may well be better than what would have happened to them if they'd played nice with what little they have.
I thought that apple paid the Open Group to certify themselves as a Unix, around the time that OS X came out.
What am I missing here?
One simple thing. They didn't. Their OS is based on Unix code for certain, it's pretty close to BSD compatible, but it's not Unix(tm) and, as your post shows, they've been marketing it in a way that can be argued to be misleading in that sense.
There's a big difference between Unix-like (Linux), genetic-unix (BSD) and branded Unix(tm) that's been thoroughly tested and certified by the Open Group. The trademark can't stop people from using the word unix in association with the first two, but it is illegal to use it in a way that implies or misleads that something is in the third category when it's not.
I don't know all the details here, but it's entirely possible that Apple has crossed that legal line.
If you get the files via a GPL license then you have them under GPL. If you get them via BSD license, then they're under BSD, and if under a proprietary license then under that. The thing is the BSD license allows you to redistribute under whatever license you want. You can just pull stock FreeBSD and compile it and call it WoohooOS and sell it for a million bucks under an MS style EULA if you want, and if you can find anyone dumb enough to be your customer.
Now in your example, all three files are legally under GPL if you received it under GPL with the modified func2.c. If you want it under BSD, you can get that, you just have to get the original version that's under BSD. Technically, if you don't, it's all under GPL still. Just as, if you buy say BSDI, you have no rights to the code, even though much of it is freely available under the BSD license elsewhere.
So, if code and comments are identical and in chunks, then aren't we presented with the same condition? I think so, especially when a 'chunk' so happens to be a complete subroutine. You infer that in your paragraph, but I think comments, routine names and variable names make the chunk of code identifiable and can substantiate a claim of copyright violation. Please clarify my misunderstanding.
Even if we're talking about, say, a novel, it's not true that simply having matching text automatically means copyright infringement. In the case of a novel, however, if it's very extensive it's a pretty good bet. But there are still at least conceivable non-infringing reasons to find matching sections. There are cases of functional text is likely to match (dedications, copyright notices, directions or instructions) where it isn't unusual or sinister for there to be some overlap for instance. There is also the possibility that two novels both use passages from an earlier work, that is in the public domain. For instance, my novel and your novel might contain extensive matching text because we're both using the Bible as source material, or we could both have written cookbooks with similar recipes because there are only so many ways to cook certain dishes that taste good. So no, matching text doesn't always mean copyright infringement.
In this particular case, there are plenty of good reasons the codebases in question should be expected to have extensive matching sections, even without any copyright infringement being involved. There is the BSD codebase, genetically related to SysV, but under a GPL compatible license. Think about this for a second. There is a huge overlap between BSD and SysV, and any code that they share is effectively not covered by the SysV copyrights, that protection was forfeited long ago. If Linux or for that matter any other project, free or proprietary, borrows code from BSD it's perfectly legal to do so and it also means that it's probably going to share code with SysV.
There is also the fact that a large portion of the comments in any *nix system can be expected to be cut and pasted from the POSIX documents, and of course code is also functional speech - so even if they both have the same cut and paste comment from the POSIX documents and the same code below it, that may just be because it's the obvious way to implement the standard within a *nix context.
To prove a case of copyright infringement SCO would at minimum have to declare exactly what lines they're talking about and let the plaintiff have a chance to rebut the claim of infringement. And there are so many ways that can be done in this case. To prove their case, the matching lines need not just to exist, they need to not match with BSD, they need to not be plausibly explained by POSIX compliance or anything similar, and they need to be documentable in SysV at an earlier date than they show up in the Linux tree.
This is why you don't see anyone with any credibility that thinks SCO has a case. Sure, there are matching lines. SCO is acting like that's a huge surprise. It's not. It's almost certainly code shared with BSD, POSIX implementation stuff, and stuff that Linux had first however. That's why SCO won't tell anyone what the offending code is. Their tactics aren't the tactics that would be rational if they had any real beef, they're the tactics instead of someone hoping if they can be enough of a pain in the ass IBM will buy them out.
if the code examples Sco are showing are identical... how do they prove who had it first
You can assign a date for when a line entered linux pretty easily, you just search the kernel list archives. Since they're public and mirrored sufficiently they can be considered reliable - even if someone wanted to fake them it would be impossible to get away with it. You can set a date on calderas end but less easily, because you must have a check - they can fake anything they want since it's proprietary code. Essentially you would need to take the code they claimed came from a certain date, compile it, and compare it with a properly attested binary that actually matches the claimed date.
Note also that this method isn't perfect - they can change the comments all they want and there's no way you could possibly prove that, since it doesn't affect the compiled code.
1) Out of curiosity, how does FreeBSD handle Linux binaries? Is it Linux kernel code included under the GPL somehow or did they implement it themselves? If the latter, isn't this accusation against SCO the same as SCO's argument of "Well, they must have misappropriated our code because, well, they must have!"?
No, they had to reimplement it because while you can make BSD code GPL you can't take it the other way, at least without copyright holders permission. They were free, of course, to look at the linux code while doing it, making it a relatively easy task. Probably if you looked there are sizeable chunks of identical code and comments there too. I bet the header files are a real treasure trove for those.
Identical chunks of code and comments do not prove copying or copyright infringement. It takes more, in a case like this, because there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for it to occur. To determine if something illegal happened, whether we're talking about Caldera copying from Linux or vice versa, you've got to do a much more fine-grained analysis than just counting lines that match.
Sounds like about what I figured - a bit saner than RH, but still in my mind inferior to Slack.
Admittedly, it would rarely come up on either system because both have great package collections, but it's important to have the freedom to compile without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Whether it's because something just isn't in wide enough use to have a package out, or because you want a version with non-standard compile options, or because you need to change a few lines of source for one reason or another. The whole idea of relying on packages exclusively is, IMOP, quite antithetical to Free software. It's a nice thing they are there, and they save a lot of time and are a great thing, but only as long as you aren't locked into them, only as long as you can still go grab the source and do things that way too whenever you want. When the package system interferes with that, is when it's gone too far, in my opinion.
weapon. If you can smuggle an EM device onto a plane, you can probably smuggle a bomb or gun on.
Nope. An EM weapon could be effectively disguised and the normal tests that are looking for a bomb wouldn't pick it up. Just disguise it as something electronic...
If you can hit a plane with a ground-based EM weapon, you can hit it with a ground-based missile or anti-aircraft gun.
Gunfire and missile launches are attention getters, especially around an airport. Someone could hit an airplane with an EM weapon during takeoff or landing and it would be many minutes, if not hours, before anyone had a clue what had happened - giving the perpetrators plenty of time to escape. It would also be much easier to fabricate without drawing attention. Assuming, of course, that the planes are so poorly insulated as this cellphone flap implies.
As hostile threats to airplanes go, EM is simply a non-issue for any but paranoid fear-mongers.
Just because no one's done it yet doesn't mean it can't happen.
That said, I think you may be right, but if you are, it's because the planes are not actually so poorly shielded after all. The reports on this study weren't very detailed, and there's a long history of studies using designs guaranteed to get the result the study sponsor desires, rather than the truth.
I've had the same experience, and from what I've read a lot of anti-spammers have too. That said, the other reply linked a web-page I've never seen before that is certainly crafted to give the appearance that's changed. I'm now paying attention to my spam waiting for another batch of symantec spam, I'll find out soon enough if it's for real or just cosmetics.
Slashdot Mirror
No. They don't have NUMA to this day. UnixWare got SMP in '97, after Linux ('96.) They still support only 4 processors btw, although you'd never guess that from reading their complaint.
They just fed the poor woman whatever they could come up with to bamboozle her, obviously.
I would say most likely explanation is POSIX. I'm told it's been a common practice to cut and paste the relevant sections of the POSIX specs as comments for code implementing them.
This could be crucial. Please, a better translation from a bilingual. If this says what I think it does it could be quite important, but I don't trust my interpretation of an automatic translation so much...
Ahh the arrogance of the ignorant.
Pascal beats your silly VB toy in every way imaginable. Go get Delphi , buy a good book on it, and learn something.
Really, don't ever do this.
There is no way more certain to cripple a budding programmers capability than to get them involved with BASIC in any of its variants. It's evil, brain damage inducing stuff.
There are plenty of good languages for beginners that won't rot their minds. Delphi. Python. Smalltalk. Just please, please, please, no BASIC.
Those Tadpoles are definately cool, but they suck power like a thirsty horse so battery life is really sucky. And that's an important thing for a notebook. Nice as they are, I'd still rather have my Powerbook getting nearly 3 hours on a battery.
No he isn't.
Granted, if someone has a file up on a public server with plenty of bandwidth, there's no need.
But bandwidth isn't free, and not everyone can afford to pay for the privilege of giving away their code.
With P2P everyone interested in the file can contribute a little of their bandwidth to aggregate, and make fast distribution possible without shelling out for a fast server on a big pipe. So why not use it?
Sure it is. Which is why spreading viruses is unethical. That doesn't mean that simply writing them is unethical.
CS people writing viruses, running them on (their own) properly secured machines and observing them is not unethical by any sane standard.
...and even though much of what he says is correct (most virus writers, particularly nowadays, are just script-kiddies and not particularly good programmers) I can't agree with his main point. There are very valid reasons to write viruses as learning experiments. And not just for people interested in working in security either - as pure CS there is a lot to be said for it.
He gives the impression that all viruses are harmful, but that's simply not true and he must know that. Many viruses, including all the early ones, were pure CS experiments in artificial life. They had no 'payload', no destructive nature, they just try to survive and reproduce, the basics of biological life transplanted to the digital realm.
Now writing a virus with a destructive payload and spreading it to other people's computers - that is clearly unethical, but I really doubt that's what they have planned in this class.
So by that logic, the inventor of the automobile stole the livelihood of all the buggy makers, horseshoe making blacksmiths, and so forth.
This is the logic of those that think that just because they found something useful to do and are making money off it now, everyone else therefore has an obligation to avoid doing anything that will make what they're doing less useful, and therefore less lucrative, in the future. It's the logic of entitlement, of protectionism, of the Luddites and all their kin.
The record companies once performed a valuable service. They got paid for it. When technology changes so that service isn't so valuable anymore, they should adapt and change so they continue to offer value and earn money. Instead, they try to turn back the progress of technology via legislation. They seem to believe that, having once provided value, they are now entitled to be paid in perpetuity, without earning it.
Exactly. The original rules for copyright in the US were clearly designed with just that in mind. The term was IIRC 14 years, and it was not like today, with everything automatically copyrighted in accord with the Berne convention - if you wanted a copyright you had to send a copy to the capital for safe-keeping, to ensure that your work would be available after the term expired.
One really insightful point that the RIAA shill managed to make, perhaps unintentionally, is that much of our present situation is the result of Congress not wanting to fall behind Europe. That's where we get our 'everything is automatically copyrighted' crap for instance. Now I love Europe, there are a lot of good things we could learn from them, but this isn't one of them. Unfortunately we've reached the point where our congresscritters don't even understand our own law, and mindlessly parrot the worst ideas to come from Europe, even while raging endlessly against the actual decent ones... but I'm wandering off-topic, enough of that.
Oh, you're completely right of course. But it doesn't seem like their leadership has the capacity to understand that sort of potential. I think Ray Noorda had a glimmering... btw is he still involved with them at all? As I remember he was the major guy behind Canopy group back when, but I sure haven't heard his name associated lately, I don't know if he got out or what though...
Genetic Unix and Unix(tm) are not the same thing though.
Also, although it's not relevant, OS/X is not exactly genetic Unix. The kernel is Mach, though there is a lot of genetic Unix lain on top of it.
Are you sure that doesn't refer to A/UX?
If I'm not mistaken it is Unix(tm).
Well if you had their assets you might think that too. What do they have? A couple of proprietary Unices that suck real bad compared to the Free competition (BSD and Linux), and a Linux distro that has never sold very well. Unlike their Unices, their Linux distro actually doesn't suck too hard, but it's been hampered by bad publicity engendered by their constant efforts to try and evade their license obligations, and doesn't have much to distinguish it from Redhat or SUSE who have always had a lot bigger market share.
They were on the short road to bankruptcy already, I'm afraid, whether their executives really think they have a small chance of getting a big settlement this way or they're just trying to pump the stock so they can dump it before the bottom falls out, either option may well be better than what would have happened to them if they'd played nice with what little they have.
One simple thing. They didn't. Their OS is based on Unix code for certain, it's pretty close to BSD compatible, but it's not Unix(tm) and, as your post shows, they've been marketing it in a way that can be argued to be misleading in that sense.
There's a big difference between Unix-like (Linux), genetic-unix (BSD) and branded Unix(tm) that's been thoroughly tested and certified by the Open Group. The trademark can't stop people from using the word unix in association with the first two, but it is illegal to use it in a way that implies or misleads that something is in the third category when it's not.
I don't know all the details here, but it's entirely possible that Apple has crossed that legal line.
If you get the files via a GPL license then you have them under GPL. If you get them via BSD license, then they're under BSD, and if under a proprietary license then under that. The thing is the BSD license allows you to redistribute under whatever license you want. You can just pull stock FreeBSD and compile it and call it WoohooOS and sell it for a million bucks under an MS style EULA if you want, and if you can find anyone dumb enough to be your customer.
Now in your example, all three files are legally under GPL if you received it under GPL with the modified func2.c. If you want it under BSD, you can get that, you just have to get the original version that's under BSD. Technically, if you don't, it's all under GPL still. Just as, if you buy say BSDI, you have no rights to the code, even though much of it is freely available under the BSD license elsewhere.
Even if we're talking about, say, a novel, it's not true that simply having matching text automatically means copyright infringement. In the case of a novel, however, if it's very extensive it's a pretty good bet. But there are still at least conceivable non-infringing reasons to find matching sections. There are cases of functional text is likely to match (dedications, copyright notices, directions or instructions) where it isn't unusual or sinister for there to be some overlap for instance. There is also the possibility that two novels both use passages from an earlier work, that is in the public domain. For instance, my novel and your novel might contain extensive matching text because we're both using the Bible as source material, or we could both have written cookbooks with similar recipes because there are only so many ways to cook certain dishes that taste good. So no, matching text doesn't always mean copyright infringement.
In this particular case, there are plenty of good reasons the codebases in question should be expected to have extensive matching sections, even without any copyright infringement being involved. There is the BSD codebase, genetically related to SysV, but under a GPL compatible license. Think about this for a second. There is a huge overlap between BSD and SysV, and any code that they share is effectively not covered by the SysV copyrights, that protection was forfeited long ago. If Linux or for that matter any other project, free or proprietary, borrows code from BSD it's perfectly legal to do so and it also means that it's probably going to share code with SysV.
There is also the fact that a large portion of the comments in any *nix system can be expected to be cut and pasted from the POSIX documents, and of course code is also functional speech - so even if they both have the same cut and paste comment from the POSIX documents and the same code below it, that may just be because it's the obvious way to implement the standard within a *nix context.
To prove a case of copyright infringement SCO would at minimum have to declare exactly what lines they're talking about and let the plaintiff have a chance to rebut the claim of infringement. And there are so many ways that can be done in this case. To prove their case, the matching lines need not just to exist, they need to not match with BSD, they need to not be plausibly explained by POSIX compliance or anything similar, and they need to be documentable in SysV at an earlier date than they show up in the Linux tree.
This is why you don't see anyone with any credibility that thinks SCO has a case. Sure, there are matching lines. SCO is acting like that's a huge surprise. It's not. It's almost certainly code shared with BSD, POSIX implementation stuff, and stuff that Linux had first however. That's why SCO won't tell anyone what the offending code is. Their tactics aren't the tactics that would be rational if they had any real beef, they're the tactics instead of someone hoping if they can be enough of a pain in the ass IBM will buy them out.
You can assign a date for when a line entered linux pretty easily, you just search the kernel list archives. Since they're public and mirrored sufficiently they can be considered reliable - even if someone wanted to fake them it would be impossible to get away with it. You can set a date on calderas end but less easily, because you must have a check - they can fake anything they want since it's proprietary code. Essentially you would need to take the code they claimed came from a certain date, compile it, and compare it with a properly attested binary that actually matches the claimed date.
Note also that this method isn't perfect - they can change the comments all they want and there's no way you could possibly prove that, since it doesn't affect the compiled code.
No, they had to reimplement it because while you can make BSD code GPL you can't take it the other way, at least without copyright holders permission. They were free, of course, to look at the linux code while doing it, making it a relatively easy task. Probably if you looked there are sizeable chunks of identical code and comments there too. I bet the header files are a real treasure trove for those.
Identical chunks of code and comments do not prove copying or copyright infringement. It takes more, in a case like this, because there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for it to occur. To determine if something illegal happened, whether we're talking about Caldera copying from Linux or vice versa, you've got to do a much more fine-grained analysis than just counting lines that match.
Hey, thanks for the reply.
Sounds like about what I figured - a bit saner than RH, but still in my mind inferior to Slack.
Admittedly, it would rarely come up on either system because both have great package collections, but it's important to have the freedom to compile without jumping through a bunch of hoops. Whether it's because something just isn't in wide enough use to have a package out, or because you want a version with non-standard compile options, or because you need to change a few lines of source for one reason or another. The whole idea of relying on packages exclusively is, IMOP, quite antithetical to Free software. It's a nice thing they are there, and they save a lot of time and are a great thing, but only as long as you aren't locked into them, only as long as you can still go grab the source and do things that way too whenever you want. When the package system interferes with that, is when it's gone too far, in my opinion.
Nope. An EM weapon could be effectively disguised and the normal tests that are looking for a bomb wouldn't pick it up. Just disguise it as something electronic...
Gunfire and missile launches are attention getters, especially around an airport. Someone could hit an airplane with an EM weapon during takeoff or landing and it would be many minutes, if not hours, before anyone had a clue what had happened - giving the perpetrators plenty of time to escape. It would also be much easier to fabricate without drawing attention. Assuming, of course, that the planes are so poorly insulated as this cellphone flap implies.
Just because no one's done it yet doesn't mean it can't happen.
That said, I think you may be right, but if you are, it's because the planes are not actually so poorly shielded after all. The reports on this study weren't very detailed, and there's a long history of studies using designs guaranteed to get the result the study sponsor desires, rather than the truth.
And I've seen hundreds of rars, without yet seeing one that's not solid.
The same thing is true of rar, but it's quite popular.
I've had the same experience, and from what I've read a lot of anti-spammers have too. That said, the other reply linked a web-page I've never seen before that is certainly crafted to give the appearance that's changed. I'm now paying attention to my spam waiting for another batch of symantec spam, I'll find out soon enough if it's for real or just cosmetics.