More Damning SCO Evidence At Groklaw 404
An anonymous reader writes "There's a very interesting story up at Groklaw right now. PJ reports on new evidence that Chris Hellwig, a SCO employee, contributed code to SMP, XFS, and JFS and did so with the knowledge of his supervisor." Groklaw is thorough, and this is another good example of just quite how thorough.
Old news (Score:1, Informative)
Mr Hellwig (Score:5, Informative)
He is in the top-ten list of commits to both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 tree according to the Bitkeeper statistics (which he hasn't faked himself but still should be taken with care).
After a number of smaller network administration and programming contracts he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution. Last year he joined the fileystem and storage group at SGI and is focussing on XFS for Linux now.
http://www.ukuug.org/bios+profiles/CHellwig.sht
We still have problems people.... (Score:1, Informative)
So? You would think that since Caldera itself sold GPL'ed stuff, that would stop SCO from suing, period. But it hasn't.
They could simply say that Hellwig was doing this in his spare time, or that he and his boss were coding for Linux in their spare time. The problem here is, Hellwig is a peon. Just another worker bee. Doesn't matter what employees do, it's a question of whether the top executive know. Did they know what Hellwig was doing? Did they realize all the implications? Those are the real questions. And here we enter the realm of plausible deniability (lawyers can jump in to correct me anytime now). Did the executives know what one worker bee was doing? Hell no! Why do they care what one of their workers was doing in his free time?
Wake me up when Hellwig's boss's boss's boss's boss knew about the problem, understood the implications, wrote a letter, and forwarded it to his boss, who then fired it up through management to the upper echelons.
ibmlawsuit.com [ibmlawsuit.com], googlesuit.com [googlesuit.com]
Full article text, properly formatted, no troll (Score:5, Informative)
Cross your heart and hope to die, SCO? Or cross your fingers behind your back? Let's see what the evidence shows.
SCO has specifically mentioned the following four as being code at issue in this case: JFS, NUMA, RCU, and SMP, and while it is conceivable that the "subject code" they are talking about in this response to IBM's interrogatory is referring to some other code, it seems reasonable to look at the code they have mentioned publicly. Actually, it's more than reasonable. It's our only choice, until they tell us exactly what code they are complaining about with specificity. Is it true that they never "authorized, approved or knowingly released" any of this code for inclusion in any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution?
Let's start with JFS. In the case of JFS, they not only distributed Linux with JFS, one of Caldera's employees, Christoph Hellwig, contributed code to JFS, as Groklaw reported [groklaw.net] on July 18. Here is a snip from that article:
And he is listed on this page [ibm.com] of JFS contributors. Here [ibm.com] is IBM's page on Who Is Using JFS? and it lists United Linux. So they not only released a distro with JFS in it under the GPL, their employee helped make it h
Re:Conspiricy theory (Score:3, Informative)
I believe you are thinking of Hanlon's razor, Occam's razor is more general.
Re:Leave SCO alone you communists. (Score:5, Informative)
Kleedrac
Re:Pamela Jones and Groklaw is a huge asset (Score:5, Informative)
If you appreciate what she's doing, and the incredible amount of time and precision and effort behind it, take a minute and make a donation.
I finally got off my behind today and dropped her a few dollars.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old news (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if the programmer had the OK to release this from a higher-up, or if he did so with a reasonable understanding that it was OK, he was acting within the scope of authority. At that point, SCO knew because he *was* SCO in terms of that transaction.
Re:We still have problems people.... (Score:1, Informative)
Hellwig's supervisors, in this case Ralf Flaxa, (rf@caldera.de) are aware that he is online and making changes to the Linux kernel:
'Reading this thread and previous requests I see a need by ISVs and applications to determine at runtime certain processor related features. They can roughly be grouped into:
1. number-crunching power in general
o number of CPUs
o CPU family and type
o BogoMips (per CPU and/or overall)
o SMP capabilities (here kernel scalability could be an item)
2. features specific to a processor
o for x86 e.g. the "flags" and *_bug fields
o info about FPU, MMU and the like
'I have asked Christoph to work on a proposal and present it to this list. I think we agree that there is a need and demand for a standard way to gather this info and that
So it's pretty clear that at least the first level of software development managers at Caldera/SCO made conscious decisions to put their developers to work on these allegedly stolen sections of code. Which means that SCO should be suing it's own lower-level managers, not other companies or Linux users. After all, you can only recover damages (legally) from someone who actually caused you harm.
No so surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Plausible, but is it true? (Score:3, Informative)
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/linux/archives/00019
16% may be a big number or a small number, depending on your point of view, but it's not what I'd call a palpable blow to Linux.
Re:quotes from Chris.. (Score:5, Informative)
"It might be more interesting to look for stolen Linux code in Unixware,
I'd suggest with the support for a very well known Linux fileystem in
the Linux compat addon product for UnixWare.." (sic)
hint hint...
hint hint hint..
HINT HINT HINT HINT HINT!
Re:Supervisor = permission? (Score:5, Informative)
Now, go back and read the article(s). SCO was advertising (on their own or via UnitedLinux) many of the features they are now suing over. They knew what was going on. They condoned it. They are engaging in barratry.
IANAL; clearly, neither are you.
Re:Conspiricy theory (Score:3, Informative)
The evidence that SCO was broadly aware of this work lies in the SCO Linux 4 ("powered by UnitedLinux") marketing materials.
There is an interview [desktoplinux.com] from August last year where Darl McBride not only says that SCO Linux would be "certified enterprise-ready by IBM", he also says that he understood what Open Source was in 1994, when he was first shown Linux.
I do not believe that Darl McBride can continue to pretend that he (i) didn't know what the GPL was about, or (ii) that he didn't know that Linux was going to the Enterprise.
Re:Old news (Score:2, Informative)
7
Authority is the power of the agent to affect the legal relations of the principal by acts done in accordance with the principal's manifestations of consent to him.
26
Except for the execution of instruments under seal or for the performance of transactions required by statute to be authorized in a particular way, authority to do an act can be created by written or spoken words or other conduct of the principal which, reasonably interpreted, causes the agent to believe that the principal desires him so to act on the principal's account.
Where the agent is the employee and the principal is the employer.
As to whether or not a given jurisdiction follows the Restatement, that's not a question I can answer. What, incidentally, is your jurisdiction?
Re:Old news (Score:5, Informative)
The statutory position (Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ss 128-30) codifies the common law and allows certain "good faith" assumptions to be made, including that a person held out as an officer or agent is properly exercising the power customarily given to a person in that position. As the person giving away the code is a senior figure in SCO's open source operations it may be held, under Australian law, that the outsiders were entitled to assume that he was authorized to give away code on his corporate employer's behalf.
Again I have no idea of the general US position.
Crap shoot (Score:3, Informative)
I realise some of those examples are criminal cases, but it doesnt matter: its symptomatic of the whole system. Im sure there are tons of other examples of cases with no merit at all still winning or having to be settled. Unfortunately, the facts have very little to do with our American "Justice" system.
Deutsche Bank bullish on SCO (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We still have problems people.... (Score:5, Informative)
What PJ & company have done is assemble the pieces to show that what was being contributed by Christoph Hellwig (and other peons at SCO) was well understood by both his immediate boss and by corporate management. There is no plausible deniability.
Probably the best thing to come out of all the GrokLaw digging is this quote:
The full thread is here [iu.edu].Re:Buying damage (Score:4, Informative)
Funny though, I'll bet most of the /. crowd was on the Caldera side of that one. How times change.
That's because MS did actually sabotage DR DOS. DR DOS was better than MS DOS but if you tried to run it underneath windows instead of MS DOS, you would get error messages about using an incompatible version of DOS. Everything still worked but it would pop up error messages anyway.
Re:Emmm.....is this fair? (Score:3, Informative)
1) IBM has more patents that M$
2) Meritless case has no affect on adoption according to gartner & the like. In fact, the opposite appears to be happening - more adoptions since lawsuit announced. CIO's aren't scared of this. I'll go dig up the graphs if I really have to, but I'm drunk and tired tonight, and tired of seeing them in the trade rags.
3) You have made it clear that you are worried about that which you should not be worried about.
I HAVE SPOKEN.
Not exactly barratry. (IANAL) (Score:3, Informative)
Just one.
They've said that they'd file more.
Lots more.
Maybe lots and lots more.
But they've only filed one so far.
Barratry means filing multiple cases to harass someone. Like if I drag you into court on some charge (real or not). Then I file another one against you. Then another one.
It would be VERY INTERESTING if SCO did file more claims and a judge ruled that SCO was attempting to harass "Linux".
Re:Old news (Score:1, Informative)
Your post is closer to the issue at hand, namely how 3rd parties are expected to deal with agents. And, in the US, the rule appears generally similar.
A transaction stands frim against the principle when a 3rd party accepts the agent's authority to commit the transaction as any reasonable person might. The transaction reamins frim even if said agent was not, in fact, authorized by the principal.
The 3rd party need only pass the resonable person test. Clearly any reasonable perosn would think SCO various employee's and supervisors were authorized to release the code they did. There were simply too many entities within SCO confirming this behavior as appropriate, in both word and deed.
Linus clearly reasonably accepted the agency in good faith. In the US, the courts would be loath to reverse any such transaction.
To be otherwise would void the entire concept of agency, as EVERY transaction would have to be vetted directly with the principle.
Now SCO could seek damages from those that acted outside the scope of their agency. But, I suspect they were suitably authorized (with Sr. Managment titles and all) even if they acted in error. (authorization to an agent to make a decision leaves the principle, utterly, with the fallout of the agent's bad decisions.)
Re:Legolas said it best (Score:3, Informative)
Front Page [groklaw.net], left side, vertically between the links and the login form.
Re:Supervisor = permission? (Score:2, Informative)
In this case, it's clear a "reasonable person" would believe that the head of Caldera/SCO's UnitedLinux department would have code release authority, and thus the most SCO could do is go after their own employees for violating trade secret laws and their employment agreements that siad they couldn't release.
Re:Old news (Score:2, Informative)
Look at the whole dotbomb crap, there were VC's everywhere that dumping Millions if not Billions into companies that did'nt even have a formal business plan.
Just because someone has some VC money, it does not grant them any amount of intelligence. In fact it appears to do quite the opposite.