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The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Mar 16, 2007 08:57 AM
from the that's-some-impressive-evidence dept.
from the that's-some-impressive-evidence dept.
The Peanut Gallery writes "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's 'mountain of code' is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren't owned by SCO in any event. Above and beyond that, IBM has at least five separate licenses for these elements, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it repudiated the GPL."
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Someone stop me...Can't help myself... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Someone stop me...Can't help myself... (Score:5, Funny)
What really is happening:
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copyrighted code! (Score:5, Funny)
If (x){
Now that you have seen my copyrighted code, anyone who uses the above code in their programs must pay me a nickel!!!
Hold on, I just got a whisper from my patent lawyer, apparently some firm has trademarked the bracket ({) and my copyright is invalid. Carry on.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Damn font (Score:3, Funny)
Bad for SCO ok for MS (Score:3, Insightful)
While this maybe bad for SCO, those paying the the dance have more than got their money's worth.
They got some really big FUD going, plus the value of major distraction slowing down anyone following the play by play.
Clearly the long term play of MS is to get part or all of there free OS to be illegal. Illegal because they are TOOLS for ripping off copyright(s), or because they don't support legally mandated DRM, or because they they allow DRM to be by-passed, etc, etc., etc.
The only way around this is if more and more people use it and if the big box companies like Dell and Gateway ship boxes with Linux, etc.
Re:Bad for SCO ok for MS (Score:4, Insightful)
It's already known McBride tried to, um persuade Novell to join this little legal foray and they told SCO to get lost. It's already known SCO was told this is not a can of worms you want to open, again IIRC by Mr. Love of Novell. There is at least one of their own employees that have said SCO KNOWINGLY contributed code to Linux and the list goes on. So either McBride is a complete boob to ignore some really sound advise or he had other motivations.
So yeah, I know it's a bit tinfoilish to think Microsoft is simply manipulating another company via proxy but to me, right now it's the only thing that really makes much sense.
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Sorry, no, this is bad news for MS (Score:4, Informative)
They funded this and it backfired. In essence this is a trial by fire for linux and the GPL and so far it seems to have stood up with flying colors.
FUD stands for Fear, uncertainty and denial. What MS absolutly does NOT want is for uncertainty about the legit nature of Linux to go away. Anymore then they want it to be made certain that the GPL is a legal license that can hold its own in court.
In the Netherlands by a place called Oudewater was a "waag" a large scale, a person acused of witchcraft could be weighed there and if the measured weight was in correspondce with their build they would be a given a certificate that they were not a witch. The unique thing about this one is that it was not fixed. Hence nobody ever was denied a certificate for obvious reasons.
Witchhunters HATED it, they rely on FUD since the facts offcourse are that witches do not exist. A unbiased scale that ALWAYS reports the persons true weight therefore is the enemy of their FUD.
And the same with SCO now, they called Linux a witch and Linux has been weighed and been given a certificate. Anyone else who now calls linux a witch is going to look extremely silly and some people might well start to ask how it comes that not a single person who has been accused and weighed has been found guilty and start to question NOT the people accused but the accusers as to their true motives.
But things don't happen fast, sucks if you are about to be burned to the stake but nowadays we don't just round up people because somebody with dubious motives tells us too. Right US of A? Right EU countries that gave the CIA free access? Right?
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Here are some of the lines: (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like SCO has the upper hand on IBM...
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perl -e 'while(<>){++$l{$_}} map { print "$l{$_}:\t$_" } sort {$l{$a}<=>$l{$b}} keys %l' *.h *.cc | tail
59: #endif
77: private:
95: }
98: public:
105: };
105:
178: }
289: }
346: }
2075:
Funny if it were fiction (Score:4, Funny)
1) Admitting an IBM model-M keyboard as evidence to the case.
2) Calling a monkey to the stand.
3) Yelling "objection" at random moments, even during recess.
4) Showing the court on the doll where IBM touched them.
Can we just throw out the case and stop with the wasting of money already?
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"If Chewbacca lives on Endor, IBM must pay us lots of money!"
Holly crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
Pheew! Geez whiz, so as my blood pressure normalizes I just wanted to ask
I mean this is actually false information, they are knowingly lying to everyone with each breath they take.
Just read this:
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress.
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof.
This stance against intellectual property laws has been adopted by several companies in the software industry, most notably Red Hat. Red Hat's position is that current U.S. intellectual property law "impedes innovation in software development" and that "software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software." Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights. (see http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html [redhat.com] ).
I mean can't Red Hat for example sue them for libel? SCO is constantly insisting that GPL is anti-copyright, while GPL is only possible because of copyright law. They are misstating what GPL is about too by insisting that GPL does not allow any proprietary use (GPL requires that a distributor of GPLed code, follows GPL procedures, this is not about use.)
Msft and scox have already won (Score:4, Insightful)
Want to gloat about scox's share price being down, about scox not doing well financially? Fine, but remember this: scox's market cap is about twice as high now, as it was before the scam. And scox was as good as dead before the scam. Look at the financials, scox would have dead two years ago if not for this scam. Furthermore, darl and kevin mcbride are making out like bandits - each has made about two million since the scam started - not bad for small time Utah scammers. And remember, scox was a canopy company - not a real company. Canopy plays shell games with dozens of make-believe companies.
Msft financed the scam lawsuit, and msft got a great ROI out of the deal. The scam cost msft about as much as the cost to produce one TV commercial, and msft got a ton of grade-A FUD. The scox scam is nothing but about 1% of msft's continuing FUD campaign against Linux. Msft wants potential Linux users to know that Linux is a legal mine field. Msft also wants potential linux comtributers to know that they are risking a msft sponsered bogo-suit. Remember: just because the lawsuit is bogus doesn't mean the lawsuit won't cost over $50M in legal fees - and who wants that? Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just not contribute to linux?
Re:Msft and scox have already won (Score:4, Informative)
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I especially like this quote... (Score:4, Funny)
"THE COURT: Where does this illustration come from in 46? This cup with all this money?
MR. MARRIOTT: Someone on our team made that up, Your Honor."
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Linus says he wrote errno.h himself (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're obviously not a coder, are you? (Score:5, Informative)
POSIX.1, the specification, says you need to support X list of errors, and these are their names.
POSIX.1 compliance was a goal of Linux. If you RTFA carefully (or TFS) you'll note that Linus used different values for those same constants. Which, BTW, is a bone-headed move in terms of compatibility with UNIX but still within the letter of the specification. So clearly he wasn't using one as a crib sheet for the other.
This is basically like, Linus wanted to bake some cookies, so he looked at the recipe for his Mom's cookies and made a grocery list. Now his Aunt Martha has her panties in a knot because she thinks Linus stole her grocery list, because it has the same ingredients in it, because Linus' grandmother is the one who taught both his mom and his aunt how to bake chocolate chip cookies. And this is before Martha even bothers to notice that Linux is buying butterscotch chips and way too much baking soda.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, nice analogy. Three points:
Re:Linus says he wrote errno.h himself (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see anything here that implies Linus Torvald's credibility has been in the least bit impugned, and I think more people need to stand up and say that. This is exactly how rumors get started that can seriously impact an honest person's credibility, and all because of a poorly worded Slashdot description (that itself doesn't even question Linus' credibility).
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Re:Linus says he wrote errno.h himself (Score:5, Informative)
From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Mon Dec 22 2003 - 16:36:47 EST
[snip]
"errno.h/signal.h/ioctl.h (and they are apparently the 2.4.x versions, before we moved some common constants into "asm-generic/errno.h"), and while I haven't analyzed them, I know for a fact that
- the original errno.h used different error numbers than "original UNIX"
I know this because I cursed it later when it meant that doing things like binary emulation wasn't as trivial - you had to translate the error numbers.
- same goes for "signal.h": while a lot of the standard signals are well documented (ie "SIGKILL is 9"), historically we had lots of confusion (ie I think "real UNIX" has SIGBUS at 10, while Linux didn't originally have any SIGBUS at all, and later put it at 7 which was originally SIGUNUSED.
So to me it looks like
- yes, Linux obviously has the same signal names and error number names that UNIX has (so the files certainly have a lot of the same identifiers)
- but equally clearly they weren't copied from any "real UNIX"."
[snip]
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Re:Linus says he wrote errno.h himself (Score:4, Informative)
1. errno.h/signal.h and so forth were different in earlier kernels than they are today.
2. The code in question in the suit is actually from the 2.2-series kernels and may some early 2.4-series kernels -- mostly because the suit started that long ago. These kernels have the OLD errno.h, not the current one.
3. Yes, Linus wrote the original errno.h. Some of errno.h, including comments, was copied from the Lions Book. But the numbers themselves were -- much to Linus' chagrin -- picked arbitrarily and the numbers were erroneous as compared to POSIX.1. Linux has since been re-written and restructured to use the POSIX.1-compliant errno.h, and the numbers now match (for the most part), the POSIX.1 document.
Basically, yes, Linus wrote errno.h, but no, he didn't write the current errno.h, which is mostly cut-and-paste from the Single UNIX Specification.
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Alphabetic order... (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly what most people would do in building such a list of #defines...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Funny)
It would be interesting to watch SCOs stock. If it starts rising, it means investors are seeing it from their side, and seeing them as the winner here. Investors are detached emotionally, and will probably make a better call than any slashbotter.
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Informative)
Surely you are kidding that SCOX might win. The 326 lines of codes:
#1 they dont hold Copyright on at ALL
#2 are in public domain
#3 are not even CODE!
Where as the 700,000 lines of code IBM is counter suing over ARE owned by IBM, ARE registered to them, and pretty much IBM has them by the short hairs.
As does Novell.
This is emotional to a lot of people yes. But we are also highly intelligent people who know quite a bit about this and how this came to be. While we may be emotional doesnt mean we are wrong!
Where as SCOX from day one has been wrong.
Go shill on the Yahoo board you will find no safe harbor here.
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Re:Forgot #4, #5 & #6 (Score:4, Informative)
#1 they dont hold Copyright on at ALL
#2 are in public domain
#3 are not even CODE!
#4 which IBM has 5 licenses to including redistribution of the code.
#5 the license from SCO to IBM includes warranty against lawsuit
SCO included all the lines in their GPL'ed Linux products
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Interesting)
They only win the suit if they can somehow convince the judge that none of IBM's licenses apply, including the GPL. And if they convince the judge that the GPL doesn't apply, then they are now liable for the 700,000 lines of IBM code that SCO has appropriated.
So, no, they can't win.
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Re:SCO stock (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad the people who invested most in this circus won't really sue them because they knew full well this was only an effort to smear the reputation of Linux and other free software. The fact they won't sue is enough evidence of a conspiracy.
As for Darl, I would offer him a deal to walk free if he could produce enough evidence for the government to go after Microsoft's top execs. There is little gain in making him pay, but having enough evidence to do a couple arrests the top ranks at MS would be well worth it.
We must only be careful not to hit him from too many directions, but hit him very hard from a few. Unless he has a hope of walking free, he won't lead us to his bosses. It must be possible to offer him a deal.
Things like these should never be repeated. The people behind this must be stopped.
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Re:SCO stock (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's talk about investor rationality and that "3% correction" you speak of.
What prompted that correction? Was it a well-reasoned analysis of market exposure, followed by an orderly transfer of assets from the stock market to another form of investment?
No. The stampede in Shanghai was caused by "a rumor about capital gains tax." [chinadaily.com.cn] Apparently, an unfounded rumor.
The dive in the Chinese market prompted a corresponding selloff in the U.S., the large volume of which prompted a technical "glitch" [ecommercetimes.com] in the NYSE's messaging system. That glitch caused an apparent instant freefall in the DJIA (apparently, backlogged trade messages from over an hour's worth of trading processed suddenly in 3 minutes)--which prompted panic selling.
So, no, I see very little to commend the cool nerves and clear thinking of the investing community.
The markets are fueled, first and foremost, on the tension between greed and fear. Never forget that.
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Your post is just silly (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO was flat out lying. If I run a file comparison utility over several million lines of code, and I find 326 identical lines (most of which are things like #include ) and then say that IBM stole thousands of lines of code, I'm lying my @$$ off. It's similar to me saying you owe me a million dollars because you borrowed $5 for lunch one day. Or calling you a gay prostitute because your wife dragged you to see Brokeback Mountain. Or saying I have proof Jedi are real after watching the 'Star Wars Kid' video. (Do I really need to continue? How is gross exaggeration NOT flat out lying?)
Point 2.
It is interesting to watch SCO stock. My bet is that it goes down a notch, and it seems to be doing that so far today (but just barely). Investors tend to be just as stupid and emotionally attached to things as anyone else. (Succesful investors are less so, just like some of the better
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Re:Your post is just silly (Score:4, Funny)
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The Better posts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell needs every penny they can get, and it wouldn't surprise me if they sell whatever rights they still have to their new bed partner, Microsoft, who is then free to go after anyone (except Novell) for allegedly copying code from both Unix and DOS/Windows to Linux.
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Interesting)
The internet version of severed head on a pike. I like it!
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Re:SCO stock (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been under a dollar a share for a few days now. If it continues, it could lead to delisting. Look for SCOX if you want to track it on a ticker. However, in the past SCO did a reverse split and they could always do another one and convert 2 or 3 shares to 1 and get back over a dollar a share to avoid delisting. Then again, Wall Street has frankly been insane in supporting this stock and I wouldn't be surprised at all by Monday or even today (early trends are actually up for the stock today) for it to be worth over a dollar a share again. I'm hoping for a delisting as that would hurt SCO immensely, but I'm not holding my breath. A stock market that has believed against all rational thought for years that SCO has some value is unlikely to be smart enough to realize by now that the game is almost over and start getting out while they can.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As you suspect there isn't much hope for delisting. The stock has to be under $1 for 30 trading
Re:SCO stock (Score:4, Insightful)
As to Wall Street's attitude, it's pretty clear that it has been wishful thinking all along. They despise open source, and Linux in particular, and despite every sign of a stock scam, they chose to back SCO on a course which can only lead to the bottom of the sewer. The investment community had been warned from the very start by the experts that SCO didn't have a case, and for Christ's sake, what kind of investment community backs a company whose sole business plan is extorting licensing fees based on highly dubious copyright claims that hadn't even be tested in court?
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Re:SCO stock (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Just 1 function..... (Score:4, Interesting)
RTFA. They are talking about function prototypes, not functions. Big difference. Without actually seeing what the beef is, SCO's claims could be as ridiculous as "int foo (void);"
> Just the fact that SCO has not been lying is vindication enough for me.
Where does it say SCO has not been lying? RBC, Microsoft, SCO and Baystar capital* have been in on this pump-n-dump since day one. As far as I'm concerned, they are all crooks and should be brought to court and tried as such. It's no different than Enron and the other MegaCorp swindlers.
[*] http://news.com.com/Fact+and+fiction+in+the+Micro
http://www.newsforge.com/comments.pl?cid=87796&si
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Obligatory "300" quote... (Score:5, Funny)
Because this... is... SLASHDOT!
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Search results (Score:5, Insightful)
["It doesn't matter if it is only"] returned 45 results.
Google
["Even a simple one"] returns 15400
Google
["is vindication enough for me"] returns 6 results.
I accuse you sir of copyright violation! Even if those are only fragments of your text. It doesn't matter if it is only a few lines, or one, even a simple one is vindication enough for me.
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