Linus Blasts SCO's Header Claims 599
jonbryce writes "Linus has responded to the latest claims made by SCO in their letter to the Fortune 1000 companies. Basically, he wrote the code himself, and it has been there since Linux 0.0.1. No copying from BSD or any other source." You can also read his comment to the Linux kernel mailing list, which reads in part "I think we can totally _demolish_ the SCO claim that these
65 files were somehow 'copied.' They clearly are not."
Trifecta (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trifecta (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trifecta (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a fix. (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you see a journalist who is clueless, write a letter (to his editor if you can't figure out how to contact him)
- politely correcting him,
- linking to the most authoritative postings (i.e. Linus' letter) refuting SCO's claim that you can find, and
- pointing out sites (such as groklaw and slashdot) where a truth-squad is digging out and posting refutations as fast as SCO makes up another claim.
And don't sweat it if a lot of other people do it too. The more the merrier. (It creates an unspoken subtext: "If a LOT of people know this, Mr, Reporter, why don't you?")
Reporters don't like to be played for fools. It ruins their reputations and hurts their carreers. Some polite letters turning them on to new sources could get a couple of them posting our side of the story - if only for the appearance of balance. And once one or two do that, any of the rest that don't follow along look like idiots - so the herd stampeeds.
Imagine the whole establishment media looking at SCO's claims, through a microscope, skeptically.
Re:Trifecta (Score:5, Informative)
They seem to read LKML, at least.
Free registration, bla bla... (Score:5, Informative)
Interestingly enough, the URL google uses is the same! Hmmm. So if you have a browser that allows you to customize the Referer header, you'll probably be able to access the article by just setting it to google, without actually going to Google News before...
Yes, indeed, it works!:
> telnet www.nytimes.com 80 /2003/12/23/technology/23linux.html HTTP/1.0
...
...
Trying 199.239.136.200...
Connected to www.nytimes.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET
Host: www.nytimes.com
Referer: http://news.google.com
Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux computer operating system, defended his work yesterday as not always lovely but original - and certainly not copied, as a Utah company has contended.
Re:Trifecta (Score:5, Funny)
Dank! I guess I'll have to stop reading Slashdot and GrokLaw now.
Steven
Re:Trifecta (Score:5, Insightful)
wanted Director SEC compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine why the last guy quit! Any takers??!!?
Re:wanted Director SEC compliance (Score:5, Funny)
What about patches a bugfixes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about patches a bugfixes? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about patches and bugfixes? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about patches and bugfixes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about patches and bugfixes? (Score:5, Interesting)
No. They claim copyright violation so they have to prove it. Imagine if what you said was true then SCO simply would have to file lots of (bogus) complaints every year and the kernel-hackers would be tied up for the rest of their lives trying to counter the claims. The burden of proof is on SCOs side.
Besides, since the header files contain only facts, there is no copyright value to them.
Re:What about patches and bugfixes? (Score:5, Funny)
Not really. Do the math: On 32-bit machines, there are more than 4 billion possibilities for both upper and lower limits. That means that the odds of picking the same limits that SCO's innovators did are less than 1 in 10^19. Clearly, $3 Billion in damages wouldn't begin to make up for this kind of blatant copying; it's less than 1 billionth of one dollar for each non-infringing alternative set of limits.
A humble programmer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Torvalds, on the other hand, shows his value by his honesty:
- I wrote them [ctype.h] (and looking at the original ones, I'm a bit ashamed: the "toupper()" and "tolower()" macros are so horribly ugly that I wouldn't admit to writing them if it wasn't because somebody else claimed to have done so
It's like a doctor admitting a misdiagnosis to the patient... a wizard willing to work on Dorothy's side of the curtain. I hope that I'm as honest about my code as Linus -- and that my management continues to understand that you don't get good code by pretending you never make mistakes.
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Interesting)
Linus is setting SCO up for something similar
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
Linus is setting SCO up for something similar
Yeah, Linus foresaw this whole fiasco 12 years ago and deliberately wrote crappy, thread-unsafe, fragile macros just so he could point back to them now.
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
>macros just so he could point back to them now.
So *that's* why you're supposed to do that....
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
The bomb?
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
main(){
screen_turn(on)
"make --ur time.c" in
He was following open standards... (Score:5, Insightful)
'The SCO Group cannot expect to win any case based upon application interfaces which it's AT&T, USL and Novell predecessors relased in open standards specifically for the purpose of interoperability.
signal.h [opengroup.org], errorno.h [opengroup.org],and ioctl [opengroup.org] are all parts of many released standards including The Open Group and IEEE POSIX Base Specifications and the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 151-2 [nist.gov].
Note that The SCO Group does not own the copyrights on any of those standards and it does not own clear title to the copyrights on most of the AT&T Unix base [nist.gov].
From 1989, the then SCO activity pushed for the adoption of the iBCS Intel Binary Compatibility Specifications across *all* i386 Unix vendors [google.com]
'Even SCO admits, no requries [caldera.com] these definitions to be present in order to be standards compliant.
The second to last link is incorrect... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is SCO in violation of GPL??? (Score:5, Interesting)
oh please oh please
SCO's Linux Kernel Personality (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A humble programmer! (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh... That must explain why it is found under /usr/src/linux/include/linux/ctype.h
Wait for it....
DUMBASS.
Re:And for those SEC filings... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the new job listing [sco.com] in your link, for the "Director of Financial Reporting" position (posted 12/08/03), does seem to be missing one important detail under "Job Responsibilities".
I don't see "Serving as scapegoat [wikipedia.org] during inevitable corporate collapse." Do you think that's what they mean by "Additional special projects will be given on an 'as occurring' basis?"
Re:And for those SEC filings... (Score:5, Funny)
7+ years in Web technologies
Lemme see. Java servlets were introduced in 1998. That was a mere 5 years ago.
Back in '97 a programmer friend of mine looking for work showed me a job ad asking for people with at least 5 years experience with Windows 95.
Its a conspiracy I tell you, they're trying to catch careless time travellers...
Re:And for those SEC filings... (Score:5, Interesting)
They may have been under some pressure to book the Baystar and RBC investments as revenue, or some other similar "creative accounting" move, to make the 4th quarter look like a gain rather than a loss. And the finance guys said "No way do I want to share a cell with the Enron guys! I quit!".
Linus caught - confessing to be ashamed (Score:5, Informative)
The insanity continues..... (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you're curious about where to get shares to short SCOX, Vanguard has them.
Waste of *#$% time (Score:5, Insightful)
Like suing them? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, like, say, suing them?
The business world doesn't go by what people say on linux-kernel. Or what is said to various computer mags. No, it goes off of legal action. Linus and company need to recognize that they MUST DEFEND THEIR WORK LEGALLY. Given the sheer number of people whose work SCO has laid claim to, if they simply got off their asses and sued, SCO would be loosing the PR war and their lawyers would be tied up in litigation SCO doesn't want to be tied up in.
Everything else is just a whole lot of hot air, regardless of how true it is. You've GOT TO STAND UP FOR YOUR WORK.
End it already... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:End it already... (Score:5, Funny)
Self-deprecation by Linus (Score:5, Funny)
If SCO is big on claiming ugly code, I can only imagine what a convoluted mess UnixWarez actually is.
Since Linus wrote the headers himself... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could SCO, not the Linux community, be afoul of the copyright laws?
Code under the GPL is still covered by copyright law. In fact without the copyright, the owner of the code would not be able to license the code at all. If SCO is using Linus' code and not abiding by the license under which it was released then they are guilty of cival and possible criminal violations.
Re:Since Linus wrote the headers himself... (Score:5, Insightful)
And again, none of the files mentioned seem to have anything to do with what SCO is suing IBM for! NUMA, RCU, SMP, JFS-- where are you???
GPL in proprietary? (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally wonder, how many "close source" companies secretly and illegally include GNU-copyrighted code in their products, and sell it without source, violating GPL, but nobody knows they do, just because nobody ever sees the source.
So will this change anything? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see this blowing over until SCO is either acquired by IBM or countersued into oblivion...
Tannenbaum was right! (Score:5, Funny)
Tannenbaum: Linus, you fail it! 'F' for you!
When does this become a criminal case? (Score:5, Insightful)
SCO, n: a concise example of everything that's wrong with IP laws. example: Want to see how the DMCA is broken, go look at the actions of a SCO. Also, a company who's only product is lawsuits. example: That SCO only showed a profit because they forced another company to settle out of court.
SCO, v: to lie about a technical issue in an effort to increase stock prices while the upper management sell their stock. example: That company is SCOing, lookout.
Re:When does this become a criminal case? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, if SCO could only manage to invoke the PATRIOT act, my disillusionment and contempt would be complete and warranted.
A serious mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Mind you, the mainstream press still doesn't know who to believe, since for them it's all greek. But anybody with even an inkling of an ability to read code can check these files out and follow Linus' discussion. And bits of information like this will make serious industry players fall squarely opposed to SCO (though the middle-manager types will still believe what they are spoon-fed by SCO, or rather be unable to analyze the argument sufficiently themselves to come to any conclusions). Bad SCO - very, very dumb.
Re:A serious mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
That this is the best he could come up with means that SCO is going to have to pull a series of fast moves to try and keep the ball rolling in advance of the "show and tell" session that the court has ordered. Keep your eyes peeled for more incredible tales from the world of Canopy/SCO...
Re:In Darl's place... (Score:5, Interesting)
The real problem is that SCO had to pick a part of the Linux system that actually was similar to their UNIXes. After all, any number of people have access to the code that SCO is saying IBM put into Linux. If they picked something that was obviously bogus then IBM (or Novell) could simply call their bluff. Since no such beast exists SCO simply had to pick a part of the Linux kernel that had to be similar to their UNIX (because there was no other way to write it).
SCO's lie does not have to be terribly convincing. After all, what they really are doing is trying to drive their stock price up, and almost no investors have a clue about UNIX history or copyright law. So SCO simply has to float a big lie and then rely on Microsoft and Sun (and the many analysts and journalists that have a vested interest in derailing Free Software) to act as if the lie was somewhat credible. SCO has said all sorts of crazy things in the press, and people that should know better are acting as if SCO actually has a point.
Since SCO isn't actually trying to win the case (instead they are simply trying to drag it out so that they can dump their shares without getting targetted by the SEC), they can say whatever they want in the press. IBM, Novell, and Red Hat, on the other hand are actually trying to win their respective cases and they know that things that they say in public can be used against them in court. These companies know that the proper place to do your talking is in court. Linus apparently doesn't care that his comments could run him into legal trouble down the road (well, he already had been subpoenaed).
Re:In Darl's place... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a question of whether his statements are legal or not. You can say whatever dumb thing you want, whenever you want. The problem is that Linus' words can now be considered "evidence," and they can be used against him in a court of law.
For example, he is now on the record stating that he wrote the original version of these files, but that these files are now different than the originals that he wrote. That may seem innocuous, but who knows what SCO might want to prove in a court of law. Any way you look at it he is making SCO's life easier by pointing out possible flaws in their case.
No, the trick when you have legal difficulties is to say as little as possible, and to never say anything without legal counsel going over the angles.
Groan.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's time that this nonsense stop...by all means, Linus should talk with the IBM and Novell legal team if he is so inclined, but this is only giving SCO publicity...SCO knows that if they can get their name in the news (even in a negative light), it's still better than fading away...
If news sites refuse to carry SCO's press releases, the whole thing would be moot...
What really need to happen is the courts need to put a gag order on everyone involved with the case...IBM knows where to go if they need more information, but keeping SCO from making any more claims regarding Linux would stop this whole thing in its tracks...I'm not even talking about the validity of their accusations, just that they shouldn't be allowed to keep attacking IBM and the Linux community until they win their case in court...
Re:Groan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, for some strange reason, there seems to be a perception that the GPL needs to be tested in court before it is enforceable. I don't know where this perception comes from (it certainly isn't true) but Redhat vs. SCO is probably the best test case we could possibly hope for. No doubt that the GPL will prevail.
Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, the trouncing that SCO gets will be a serious deterrent to other companies thinking that Linux is an easy target for litigation. No company in their right mind would want IBM's lawyers fighting them while IBM know that they are in the right. It gets even worse for litigants when they are attacked by other companies on other fronts - Redhat's GPL challenge, Novell's copyright entitlement challange. Basically, the message being sent out loud and clear is that despite the fact that Linux is seen as a hobbyists OS, there is serious commercial backing ready to defend it. And this backing is stronger because it comes from diverse organizations that do not even have to be consistent with each other in court. I really think that even cash-rich Microsoft would be concerned to be in SCO's position at the moment.
Re:Groan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
> put a gag order on everyone involved with the case
Gag orders are rare in US civil lawsuits for obvious reasons. Even if one were to be granted (IBM would have to ask for it) it would only cover statements having a direct bearing on the suit. Most of SCO's bloviations would therefor be exempt.
>
> IBM and the Linux community until they win their
> case in court...
Why do you believe that their bloviations will have any effect on the outcome of the case?
Lying is not illegal and is only a tort if it harms someone. If you believe that their lies are damaging you sue them for libel.
Re:Groan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true.
What would give credibility to their claims is letting them stand unopposed.
Especially after the pins we've put in each of their trial balloons up to now. Sudden silence would convince observers that the latest sh*t was actually shinola.
If news sites refuse to carry SCO's press releases, the whole thing would be moot
But the news sites DON'T refuse to carry SCO's press releases. Given that, quickly countering and ridiculing them is the best move.
*This* is copied... (Score:5, Funny)
SCO's Angle (Score:5, Interesting)
No one would come up with such a poor plan for promoting their product, intellectual property, lawsuit, or anything else.
So what is SCO doing? I think the answer is "Bad Marketing is better than No Marketing". In other words, SCO has nothing to lose.
In SCO's worst case, they end up with nothing. That's just about where they started. Just about every other case is better
Remember when Enron puked on America? What happened? Enron Corporate letterheads were being sold on eBay for a pretty penny! People wanted to BUY this crap because it was associated with the deplorable. And ya know what? SCO can do the same thing and make some serious money and fame.
I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at SCO were secretly selling those "SCO Sucks" t-shirts. It's a great market, and they sell like hotcakes.
Re:SCO's Angle (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SCO's Angle (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, from reading his press releases, I think he might be taking even more drugs than the Keith.
Too bad... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I wrote that right, I'm sorry.
Its been a heck of a lot of fun bashing SCO. Now that Linus himself is back-hand slapping the shit out of them in a most satisfyingly public style, I can only think- what about next month, next year? By then folks, we'll have no SCO. It'll only be Microsoft and IBM/SUN (on alternating Thursdays) to bash around.
SCO-y, we hardly knew ye
Hello, this is Linus Torvalds... (Score:5, Funny)
IBM presents the new letter in court (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. Boies: "I object!"
Judge: "And why is that, Mr. Boies?"
Mr. Boies: "Because it's devastating to my case, your honor!"
Re:IBM presents the new letter in court (Score:5, Funny)
Judge: "Objection overruled."
Mr. Boies: "Good call!" [imdb.com]
SEC complaint? (Score:5, Insightful)
AngryPeopleRule [angrypeoplerule.com]
Re:SEC complaint? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they actually demand money from anyone and actually accept it, that is fraud. However, that hasn't actually happened, much as they seem to suggest that it has. (Aside from getting money from Sun and MS, both of which are legitimate, as Sun and MS both actually license code that Novell owns.)
In any case, it's far more likely to be the FBI that goes after SCO when that section starts, since SCO has been meticulous about everything that the SEC cares about.
Speak softly.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark.
Fallacies (Score:5, Insightful)
2. The court case is against IBM and notably on some contractual issues. Again public opinion equates the two but this is wrong. IBM could lose and Linux could be unharmed in theory.
3. Groklaw and to a lesser degree Slashdot is part of an experiment. OpenSource lawsuit. The methodology of OpenSource is being used against SCO.
The debunking of anything SCO claims in hours after they make it public or file it in court is something that is new and will be lethal to SCO in the end.
Re:Speak softly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that David Boise will be spending too much time searching Slashdot to prepare to counter claims in posts that begin IANAL. Perhaps Groklaw is more useful, but I still think that Boise and coworkers will spend thier valuable hours with experts from industry and acadamia. I think that the S/N ratio on Slashdot is just to low to be useful. We can have a lot of fun on Slashdot, and we can learn quite a bit on Groklaw. I say we go on learning and having fun. The lawyers will go on nicely without us.
everyone relax... (Score:5, Funny)
Linus is lying (Score:4, Interesting)
* ok, as I hadn't got any other source of information about
* possible error numbers, I was forced to use the same numbers
* as minix.
* Hopefully these are posix or something. I wouldn't know (and posix
* isn't telling me - they want $$$ for their f***ing standard).
*
* We don't use the _SIGN cludge of minix, so kernel returns must
* see to the sign by themselves.
*
* NOTE! Remember to change strerror() if you change this file!
*/
Now, Minix was also a homegrown Unix and written completely apart from the AT&T source, so if Linus copied Minix, that's fine.
You can read all 3 or 4 sentences of the Minix license, but I think it's summed up pretty well with: For all practical purposes, MINIX can be treated as if it were in the public domain..
And I haven't even looked at the other files yet.
Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linus is lying (Score:5, Informative)
From Linux 0.01 to Linux 1.0, errno.h got from 60 lines to 132, and the comment at the top of the file was removed. Also, each error number got a comment. Apart from that, they are mostly the same, listed from 1 to 39 (the last one in 0.0.1, 1.0 goes to 122, and has numbers 512-514 as well). In 2.6.0, the file has split into errno-base.h and errno.h, in include/asm-generic/, and errno-base.h is virtually identical to errno.h in 1.0 from 1 to 34 (the word 'arg' has been expanded to 'argument', and errno.h takes over from errno-generic.h in 2.6.0). In errno.h in 2.6.0, EDEADLOCK has been redefined from the number 58 to the letters EDEADLK, there are two new numbers, and 512-514 have been removed. That's from 1.0 to 2.6.0, virtually unchanged after almost 10 years in developement, and with a very clear resemblance to a file last modified 1991-09-17, that openly states that most of this is taken from Minix. Even my
SCO's claims are getting extremely strange lately. Yes, removing these files, if they were infringing on SCO's copyright, would be quite difficult. You can't live without error messages, can you? But proving the genealogy of these files is just so trivially easy, that SCO hardly can have checked at all. Other files they've mentioned, like include/linux/a.out.h, are also very much the same from 1.0 to 2.4.20 and 2.6.0 (there are some more changes in that file, so I'm not listing them. There are more similarities than differences, however.) I've looked a bit at include/linux/stat.h as well, and 2.6.0 still has plenty of stuff that was there already in Linux 1.0. Most of the files SCO has listed are old, and they are very much Linux.
Play by Play (Score:5, Funny)
I feel like I'm watching some sort of play by play here. As Linus enumerates the various header files, I'm poppin' 'em into vim or emacs (or pico.. whatever mood strikes) and walking through them.
Shit... a few more weeks of these ridiculous SCO claims and maybe I'll know enough about the kernel to become a Linux hacker. Laugh if you will, but I didn't know anymore about C than the data types and basic syntax before this crap started. I've learned all sorts of neat stuff since then!
Thanks SCO! You've taught me in 9 months what I wouldn't let 4 years of college education beat into my thick skull!
Darl McPuke (Score:5, Funny)
In more other news, SCO sues the Catholic Church for infringing SCO's copyrights and patents through unlawful reproduction and distribution of the Holy Bible. According to SCO CEO Darl McBride, the Bible contains over 1 million verses copied illegally from SCO intellectual property.
In yet more other news... oh I give up.
Diff it! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, as we know, SCO is claiming that 2.4.21 is the kernel that started with the problems. If that is the case, assuming that SCO actually has a case then we have a problem.
But the thing is that the errno.h and errno-base.h in 2.6.0 and the errno.h in 2.3.50 have only one difference other than being split up and the appropriate location indicators. The only difference is:
#define E2BIG 7
#define E2BIG 7
I obtained this by using diff. So a simple utility disproves SCO's claim on that ground. Also, you will notice that the Kernel v. 0.01 has only 39 error numbers. They are also included, with the same error numbers in the current 2.3.50 and the 2.6.0 files. A cursory look revealed that 2.4.23 has the same errno.h err codes.
So when Linus says that he wrote them there is proof. Further, since 2.4.21 is the infected one, what is the difference between 2.3.50 and 2.4.23 and the comments. Surely SCO can not be so stupid as to say that comments are a cause for action -- the end user does not even see nor are they accessable to the end user unless they have the source.
Somebody 'splain this to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Somebody 'splain this to me (Score:4, Informative)
Well, a pretrial judge pretty much did. SCO has to cough up their evidence, "with specificity", by January fifth. It's not exactly the next morning, but from what I gather, thirty days might as well be the next morning in the legal world. After this month of bullshit, I don't think they will get off easy come the fifth of January.
If, as SCO claims, they're being horrifically damaged, shouldn't they in fact be eager to get the offending code removed, which IBM could do, once it knows what the problem is?
And maybe I'll pull the next version of Windows out of my ass.
Either way, in two weeks, this case is finally going somewhere, either to trial, or into the dustbin of history. Of course, this does nothing to stop IBM's countersuit, or Red Hat's lawsuit, and if Novell weighs in, well, Darl might want to actually use those lawyers he just spent $9 million on last quarter.
Re:Somebody 'splain this to me (Score:5, Funny)
actually, that would explain a lot.
Maybe SCO is really trying to boost linux. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I can dream can't I?
Legal Tactic? (Score:5, Insightful)
This just made the New York Times (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like they won't fool everyone this time:
Creator of Linux Defends Its Originality [nytimes.com]
also:
Novell Registers Unix Copyrights [nytimes.com]
ctype in Linux and Unix: a comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Note: This is a repost of a comment that I sent to groklaw.
I do have a copy of the Unix source, circa 1988, and I can't see how anyone who knew any C could possibly think that the ctype implementation is copied.
The array has a similar name (_ctype in Linux, a variation on that in Unix). Some of the C macros used to perform each test (see the definition of _U, _L etc in include/linux/ctype.h) have the same names as they do in Unix. Some do not. For example, isdigit() uses _D (for digit) in Linux and but Unix uses a different capital letter. Similarly, _SP in the Linux version has a single-capital-letter name in Unix.
Notably, the order that the macros are defined (and hence their specific bit values) are different.
The implementations are also interestingly different. The specific isxxx() macros, for example, are written in a different way in Linux and in Unix. Unix doesn't use an __ismask()-like macro, preferring to access the array directly.
As Linus pointed out, there are only so many ways to write an ISO-compliant ctype implementation in C. I can see how anyone who didn't know this might think that the Linux code could be copied, but nobody who knew any C could possibly make this mistake.
The most telling difference for me is that the Unix ctype handles EOF, like the ANSI/ISO standard says it should, but the Linux version does not. Why someone would copy the Unix code AND go to the trouble of introducing an incompatibility with the ANSI/ISO standard is one for the lawyers to sort out.
they aren't claiming copyright on headers (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not clear that something that general is copyrightable--they seem to be fishing. But keep in mind that movie plots have been defended using copyright law, so it's possible.
But they don't own those headers... (Score:5, Informative)
Subj: AT&T donated rights
By: radicimo Date: 12/22/03 10:21 pm
from Groklaw thread on Linus' code
(h++p://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2003122
--
Standards
Authored by: meissner on Monday, December 22 2003 @ 09:10 PM EST
I was a member of the ANSI X3J11 C standards committee from its founding in 1983 until after the first ANSI and later ISO standards were released in 1989 and 1990 respecitively. As part of the process, AT&T through its official representive (Lawrence Rosler) specificially gave the rights to the C language and its library (including the ctype.h, signal.h, and errno.h header files) to the committe. I believe they did the same thing officially to the POSIX committee at the same time (which would cover ioctl.h and more of the errnos in errno.h, and more of the signals in signal.h). Unfortunately, I no longer retain paper documents from that period, but if it becomes important to establish a clear paper trail, I suspect Jim Brody (chair), Tom Plum (Vice char), and P. J. Plauger (secretary) probably do retain their copies.
Of course, as has been shown in the past, SCO really has no institutional memory of the past.
SCO claims Linus is incorrect! (Score:5, Funny)
So Darl McBride claims to have a Linux expert that can rebut the assertion that Linus has hard evidence that the disputed files were written by him in the form of those actual files, archived in a Linux tarball that is mirrored the world over.
Well, all I can say is, if SCO can do that, then they deserve to win this case; we can all celebrate their victory by building snowforts in Hell.
Jay (=
This Has Happened Before (Score:5, Insightful)
The Coherent episode suggests one approach to disproving the SCO case: if undocumented SCO/UNIX bugs (or features) are missing from Linux, that strongly suggests that the Linux code was not copied from UNIX. Documenting subtle differences in behavior between the two kernels could put the final nail into SCO's coffin.
If SCO thinks that it somehow has a copyright on the intellectual content of the code (e.g., that only it can publish a macro called "isdigit()"), well, AT&T long ago chose not to assert that claim.
Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start (Score:5, Informative)
Next!
Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WANTED: Linux supporter since the start (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Um, Who The FUCK is Linus? (Score:5, Funny)
He's Lucy's baby brother [unitedmedia.com], dumbass! You know, the one with the blanket?
Where have you *been* the last 50 years?
Re:Do you have to use 'cp' to violate copyright? (Score:5, Funny)
<Darl McBride>Not encrypted? Then why are they called codes? Any manager can see that. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must buy up my stock.</Darl McBride>
Re:Minor Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not exactly against the C standard (i.e. the program will still compile and behave predictably), but violates good programming practice.
That's one reasons why macros are frowned upon by modern programming languages.
Re:Minor Mistake (Score:5, Informative)
And what if the user of the original macro invokes it like this:
char * cp;
if (isdigit(cp++))
do_something();
What then, O wise one?
Re:Minor Mistake (Score:5, Informative)
It results in undefined behaviour. I admit it. I'm a tool.
Re:Minor Mistake (Score:4, Interesting)
#isdigit(x) ((charset[(x)] & DIGIT_MASK) ? 1 : 0)
where 'charset' is actually something that can be specified at boot time.
uhhm, no (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not going to dig through C standard, but this code is unsafe, so there is a perfectly good reason to disallow this (even though it will compile).
This macro is expanded in-line, so the code
isdigit('5')
is translated by C preprocessor to
(('5') >= '0' && ('5') = '9')
Now imagine what happens with isdigit(i++). If i == 9, i will be incremented twice and you will get the wrong answer.
Also consider what happens if x is a return value of a function, e.g. isdigit( foo(...) ). First, the function is called twice (which can be slow and certainly unneccessary). Second, the function may have side-effects (i.e. it may modify an external variable, write to a file, etc.), so doing it twice is equally bad.
Re:Minor Mistake (Score:4, Funny)
Point taken. I to think I went to all that trouble hauling out the ISO document to quote the relevent parts but ignored the obvious point that isdigit() is a macro
Re:SCOX (Score:5, Informative)
The "bid price" is the highest amount that any buyer is willing to pay for a stock at a particular time. Likewise, the "ask price" is the lowest amount that any seller is willing to sell the stock for.
So, one particular buyer is asking to buy 100 shares at 4 cents, while one seller is offering to sell 100 shares at $892 each.
Since you're looking at the closing quote, the bid and ask prices are not particularly meaningful. One way to read those numbers is that "all reasonable orders were filled by the end of the day, and the remaining unfilled orders were ridculous (4 cents and $892)."
Re:SCOX (Score:5, Insightful)