Why Does SCO Focus On A Minix-to-Linux Link? 227
ansak writes "In the latest scoop from Groklaw, Groklaw user talks_to_birds pointed out an error in SCO's version of the famous Levenez Unix Timeline. The important error is the green dotted line which shows Minix to be a derivative of Unix. If this were accepted, and if Linux was shown to be a derivative of Minix, then SCO's lawsuits would be more likely to have merit. As it turned out, even MS called Samizdat unhelpful, but at least now there may be a plausible reason why someone would try to make the link between Minix and Linux in the first place."
Long live geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
UNICS was released nearly 40 years ago...and it's legacy still lives on. It'll take more than the likes of SCO (and a dotted green line) to tear down the Open-Source community. Long live geeks.
It doen't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
Arrg!
-Daniel
Re:It does matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't release what they don't own. Since it appears that Novell owns the copyrights, SCO may be elligible for a lawsuit for unlawful disclosure of copyrighted material to the public. This is yet another can of worms, and we would have to hope that since Novell just bought SuSe (with the help of IBM) that this would not cause other problems with code SCO contributed before it became evil.
Re:Long live geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It doen't matter. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Diagram Is Not Measuring Source Dependancy (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphasis is not mine.
Thus is, an arrow does not imply that Linux's source code is derived from Minix. It only implies that, in some way, the functionality may be compatible with Minix. Source code is not the only criteria for an arrow.
Minux had no unix code (Score:5, Insightful)
I read in the Linux journal a few years ago that Minux was formed because AT&T wanted to charge $30,000 per cpu for sysV!
Talk about extortion!
Minux was formed as a result but was never updated when Bell labs lowered the price and allowed other people to make versions of Unix like Sun and SGI.
Unless I am wrong?
Minix became outdated after Unix went down in price and instead became used in the academia environment to teach students how an OS works. It never really was finished and the internet really did not exist like today without a WWW. Mainly just a few newsgroup and a tiny number of FTP sites which made working on Minix difficult.
BSD on the other hand has plenty of more merit.
It is a direction descendant of SysIII with some bits of SysV unixware code added in.
All the offending code has been removed today but FreeBSD 1.x and early builds of NetBSD had the Unix in it. THis is why FreeBSD compatiblity only goes back to 2.x and not the 1.x series based on NET/2.
They are a descendant of SysIII from the late 70's since this was used for early BSD development.
Since the deal was sealed we dont really know what happened or what the terms were with the current BSD's. IBM wants to find out.
Someone please feel free to correct me if I am wrong since I may be ingorant in this subject area. I want to know.
Remember it's pump and dump (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Long live geeks (Score:4, Insightful)
Too late. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, they certainly were aware of the violation at the time they filed their lawsuit against IBM. And they knowingly and consciously continued to distribute Linux as a product for some time, and from their website for at least eight months, after this. Any protections they might have potentially had they simply threw away by doing this.
Re:It doen't matter. (Score:4, Insightful)
As a software company that created a Linux distribution for them to say they did not know what was in it is for them to admit that they were not doing there job as a distribution.
The reason to by a distribution like RH, Caldera, or Lindows is to have someone bring the product together and make sure it works. As well as provide support and other services.
It would be one thing if it was a distribution by an non-software company, or by a private group or individual. Then maybe I could imagen that they did not know what they were selling, but Caldera's pitch was buy our product because we know what we are doing.
anything prior to 1991 (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess it really depends on what you call a Unix timeline, and what you call SCO intellectual property. Of course it wasn't their intellectual property at the time, but it is now since they changed the contracts on everyone. IBM didn't think that they could change the contracts, and see what happened.
They sued Daimler Chrysler for not giving them the serial numbers of processors that used to run UNICOS 1.0 or something similar (UNICOS 1.0 apparently always shipped with source)- for Cray supercomputers that vary in processing power from approximately 0.25 gigaflops to 1 gigaflop. No one keeps museum pieces that old around, there is no point in doing so, especially when the point of having those computers in the first place was for their supercomputing abilities.
It's not a Unix timeline if they use it like that; they are basically saying that "Linux" has its "roots" in stuff prior to 1991, but that "SCO Linux", whatever that is supposed to mean, is anything from 1991 forward.
The whole point is this: whatever it is that SCO are doing, they are doing things that will more than likely fail. Expecting an organization to keep records of a multi-million dollar supercomputer from the mid-eighties that has approximately 1/60th the floating-point processing power of a single-processor G5 at 2.0 Ghz and the equivalent of 64 megs of ram is a little bit on the funny side, I seriously doubt that any organization would have the floor space to keep a computer like that around just for the sake of licensing purposes. How many of us wrote legal documents to Microsoft cancelling our EULAs when we stopped using Windows 3.0, or say, for instance, how many universities wrote documents to Sun Microsystems every time they retired an IPX or a Sparcstation 1+ or perhaps something even older than that? It's just so you can say "We are suing this prominent company for something that, when you look more closely at it, is never going to fly, but we realize that most people won't look at it that closely or understand it that thoroughly, so it will, in the end, have the desired effect.
Anything prior to approximately 1991 is not Linux, so again, it's not relevant.
It does explain what \\\\{_hybrid-source_\\\\}, is though, - \\\\{_hybrid-source_\\\\} would be Linux (post-1991).
Anything prior to that is not Linux, so it's not \\\\{_hybrid-source_\\\\}.
SCO is basically saying that because they distributed Linux at some point under the GPL, and because the GPL is not valid in their opinion, that because they contributed to it, and because they hold some sort of UNIX rights, that they own Linux. That's really what they are saying, it has nothing to do with Minix, that's just a coincidence.
Of course, they won't get away with it. They know that, the lawyers know that, we know that. The real question is WHY are they doing it? That's the question. The answer to that question is known by those who need to know.
Minux Linux SCO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:simple... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux a derivitive of Minix? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, you need to go MUCH farther back in time. When Linux came out, you needed a MINIMUM of a 286 AT machine to run BSD. Minix ran on an 8086. Linux attempted to copy the small footprint of Minix instead of the large footprint of BSD.
The reason for BSD's poor performance was that it was originally written for Mini-Computers (a serious step up from Micro-Computers) like VAXes and PDPs. PCs of the era lacked many of the computing features that made BSD and Unix possible. As a result, OSes had to simulate those features in software at a cost of CPU and memory.
Once PCs reached the stage of 386s, they were finally able to run Unixes without issue. Given BSD's 10+ years of development, it was obviously more advanced than Linux. It also helped that BSD was were all the "modern Unix technology" was developed. (e.g. TCP/IP, Fast File System, strong Multiuser support, etc.)
Re:Long live FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)
THerefore I think they realise that to go after *BSD is to kill the goose that's laid them plenty of golden eggs.
why the minix link? (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO, Baystar, RBC, Microsoft, EV1, Laura Dildo - all of them have been paid, hired, pimped or coherced into making some kind of statement to obfuscate the SCO plight as a whole for the past year and a whatever. The latest round with Ken brown and his alleged minix issues are just more of the same "Paid Advertising" bullshit that SCO and their Redmond investor buddies have been purchasing to try and confuse everyone.
The tree (Score:4, Insightful)
derives from what, in terms of code. Unix has clearly inspired
Minix, as Tanenbaum has said many times, so one might draw links.
There is no code sharing though.
Linus wrote Linux on Minix, and because he wanted a free Minix,
first versions were to some degree inspired by minix. So again
a link can certanly be drawn. No code sharing even here, as stated by
Tanenbaum and Linus though.
Re:maybe not so simple... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not the only criterea for settling cases though. Frequently the judge(s) will decide the case based on which political party you belong to. The judges that were nominated by your political party will vote for you and the ones nominated by the opposing party will vote against you. This is especially true in higher courts. In the supreme court the judges will vote exlusively along party lines.
Finally a case may be decided based on your race. This is especially true in jury cases. For example if you are white cop and you just emptied bullets into a black man because you confused his wallet for a gun you will be found not guilty if the jury is mostly white. OTOH if you are a black person and you just murdered your wife and her friend you will walk if the jury is mostly black.
In any case ff you are ever arrested you are guaranteed the following things.
1) The trial will take at least two years usually more like 5.
2) You will be bankrupted by the process even if you are eventually aquitted.
3) You will lose your job.
4) You will in all likehood lose your wife and family.
5) You might end up in jail or even put to death even if you are innocent.
6) While you sit in jail waiting for your trial to run it's course you will be repeatedly raped and beaten by the general prison population. If you are found guilty you will continue to be raped and beaten during your encarseration.
Oh one last thing. The US has the best justice system in the world.
Re:simple... (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright law governs hows you attribute things, and what mayu legally be derived. So, you can't take a table of somebody else's data and pass it off as your own. However, you can take the table, perform your own analysis, and attibute it to yourself.
An obvious example from the real world would be the AMI bios; it was "derived", "inspired", or even "based on" the IBM bios - yet a judge said it was OK.
The same is clearly true here; SCO will have no luck arguing that Minix looks like Unix, and Linus saw Minix source code. The judge would just throw it out of court.
Re:It doen't matter. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you distribute a mixed proprietary/GPL'd product, you haven't GPL'd you stuff. All you have done is distributed (copyrighted!) GPL'd code, without being allowed to.