SCO Complaint Filed -- Including Code Samples 663
btempleton writes "The folks at Groklaw have posted a story including a preliminary copy of Caldera/SCO's amended complaint, including lines of code they allege were improperly included in Linux. The PDF can be found at this story The file lists unix filenames with line numbers and filenames and line numbers from the Linux 2.2 and 2.4 kernels, so folks can now go into real depth."
So look forward to the next patch (Score:2, Interesting)
2.2 Kernel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since SCO has still not actually complied with previous discovery motions, submitted millions of lines of code to IBM in paper form (real class act, they are) and keeps changing their case, my guess is we will see the end of this case, perhaps this year.
UNLESS, of course, the Novell vs. SCO suit sidetracks the IBM suit until we can figure out who actually owns Unix...
I predict (Score:5, Interesting)
And it will include commented lines "*uck you, SCO"
At the very least (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sending anyone a check for $699.
Say what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps the current versions don't but in the 90s, it DID run on RISC processors, WinNT 3.1, 3.5 and I think even 4.0 ran on MIPS. Since there point was relating to computing "in the 1990s" I would take their point as misleading, at the very least. What they also do not make clear is that the OLD SCO (not Caldera/SCO) was the only proprietary game for x86/unix, but even then Linux and BSD ran x86. Minor, but misleading.
It's long, but interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
- Linux is derived from System V. (75)
- IBM has endeavored to control the open source community. (76)
- IBM plans to destroy UNIX. (77)
- Linus Torvalds can't say who contributed what to Linux. (78)
- A significant amount of UNIX source code is present in Linux 2.4-2.6 kernels. (79)
- Linux developers are incapable of developing enterprise-grade software without stealing from SCO. (80, 81)
- Only IBM's involvement in Linux made Linux viable for enterprise use, and because IBM had access to System V (82), if follows that
- if follows that Linux is a clone of UNIX. (83)
The claimed code (Score:5, Interesting)
MOD PARENT DOWN! NOT AT ALL FUNNY!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Rest Assured... it's all ok (Score:5, Interesting)
Any code in common is probably easily found in the OS/2 sources.
The above text was blatently stolen from a groklaw comment.
Which version will this be? (Score:3, Interesting)
BTW, Is BSD suceptible to this SCO complaint?
Re:At the very least (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't worry, you couldn't even if you wanted to [lwn.net].
Jay (=
heh. Check out #87 (Score:5, Interesting)
87. By making the Linux operating system free to end users, IBM could undermine and destroy the ability of any of its competitors to charge a fee for distribution of UNIX software in the enterprise market. Thus, IBM, with its army of Global Services integrators who earn money by selling services, would gain a tremendous advantage over all its competitors who earn money by selling UNIX licenses.
Seems like someone's sore because IBM has a better business model.
Re:2.2 Kernel? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have read quite a bit of the filing, and it appears contract claims are not fully disappearing.
Quoting Groklaw:
5. This case is not about the debate about the relative merits of proprietary versus open source software. Nor is this case about IBM's right to develop and promote open source software if it decides to do so in furtherance of its independent business objectives, so long as it does so without SCO's proprietary information. This case is, and is only, about the right os SCO not to have its proprietary software misappropriated and misused in violation of its written agreements and well-settled law.
And its not over until its over. I don't know if you live in America, but as someone who worked in a law office doing paralegal and investigation, I can promise you this COULD still last a while, as far as the courts are concerned.
The judge *CAN* decide to wait until it is decided who owns the code (to potentially dismiss with prejudice). The judge can also decide to address that issue in his own court first. This is yet another contract dispute.
I agree that it doesn't look good for SCO, but it never did. They were not trying to win, they were trying to pump and dump, to inflate the stock price, and fight their way toward the door so they can take the money and run. But with the quirkiness of the courts, it still ain't over. I was being optimistic when I said this year...
It is still full of false and fraudulent clames. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if we ignore what the term IBM PC means, even if we ignore iRMS, even if we ignore OS2 this still leaves AIX/386 which as far as I recall used to run a considerable part of NATO radar infrastructure. OK, IBM insisted on it being useable only on boards with 1M L2 cache, but I it happily ran on much less then that.
Re:Reading the pdf... Like this line... (Score:4, Interesting)
Connections.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, very dangerous move (Score:5, Interesting)
Such a move wouldn't be very smart, even if it was technically possible. SCO could easily argue that "those evil linux people removed it because they knew it was infringing code".
It's much better to leave it in, and show a little patience for the legal system. Believe it or not, the Linux community really isn't getting hurt all that much in the corporate marketplace according to surveys I've seen...and the non-corporate linux user base certainly couldn't give a hoot.
I still say this would be a whole lot easier if kernel developers stood up for their work and reputations by doing whatever they can in their respective legal systems(imagine, lawsuits in 30 countries. The RIAA would be proud). So far, all we've seen is a lot of (amusing, but pointless in a court of law) hot air from Linus.
As I AC'd on Groklaw: SCO cannot count (Score:4, Interesting)
Dynix Line #s Linux Line #s
kernel/i386/trap.c 2054 init/main.c 30-33,609-616
How could a single line from Dynix (number 2054) occur at lines 30-33 and
609-616?
I thought if you were cutting and pasting lines from one file to another you
would get the same number of lines.
A damp squib, again (Score:5, Interesting)
The first set (Table A) is JVS code. As we all know JFS is an IBM/AIX creation, so with this SCO will be focussing on their "derived work" argument.
The second set (Table B) is EVMS code. Again, this is a less-mentioned contribution from IBM AIX into Linux. Again, this will be SCO's "derived work" according to their skewed worldview.
The third and fourth sets are the most interesting (Table C and D). They identify stuff allegedly lifted from Dynix (Sequent) code. I could not find the rclock.* or the kmemdef.* files in 2.4.18 or in 2.4.1 (the version they've named), I presume they were removed at some point - Torvalds or someone else could probably identify when.
In Table D, the code they've highlighted in the 2.4.1 apic.c file consists of #include lines, some comments, and a very basic "if" statement in the middle of some SMP related code for handling timer interrupts, it seems. It's the same in timer.c, they're also complaining about lines which refer to Alpha or IA64, rather odd since they never wrote code concerning those CPUs.
The entry.S reference they've made, going by the code comments, refers to code which switches an i386 back into user mode following a system call. (guess mode - the set of assembly mnemonics to put an i386 into user mode is likely to be very standard; the default code was probably provided free of charge by Intel years and years ago, and probably found it's way into every i386 memory-protected OS written!).
The same seems true of traps.c. The main.c lines are just some includes and some static declarations.
I also did some casual Google searches to see if any of the alleged infringing lines of code showed up anywhere. In all the cases I checked, the lines show only in Linux kernels, and not anywhere else. If this code did appear elsewhere then it isn't immediately obvious where it came from.
So I really don't think that SCO has much of a leg to stand on here
How it works... (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM Develops some technology for OS/2
IBM adds it to AIX
SCO (claiming to own copyrights to Un*x) says anything derivative of Unix (AIX in this case) becomes their IP
SCO Sues IBM for copyright infringement
IBM demonstrates this technology existed prior and was given to both operatings systems as an add-on
SCO loses
So what exactly "IS" kernel 2.4.1-01? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a thought and comment on this whole issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
So let me get this right IBM gave code from their expensive product to a free product...
Hmmm.... why???
SCO should be made to demonstrate what motivation IBM had in acting this way -- other than IBM knowing they could sell services better than OS's...
Dont be foolish linux-heads! Remove the code! (Score:2, Interesting)
"Customers" want to know the community is looking out for their best interests, and that means limiting liability in the event that SCO wins their case. And they can win: this is the law, not logic.
Re:Remove the code! What Code? (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest "chunk" was around a function that closed STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and then opened the
Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite my sympathies, I have never actually installed Linux for use on my home computer (sorry). I'm about half way through this document of SCO's and my read is that they are saying "UNIX kicks ass so much that it is used for everything important, but Linux is better and is going to destroy our business."
Of course they are establishing this only to claim that it could not be so good without stealing code from UNIX. Once that is disproven (I hope), all that will be left is a powerful arguement that Linux will and should replace UNIX and is more reliable than Windows.
Nice job SCO!
NT running on RISC processors: YEP!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
1) dave cutler's VAX/VMS team gets bored (funding cut)
2) microsoft hires dave and his team (6 people).
3) they code 200,000 lines per year EACH for 5 years, exclusively in c.
4) paul leach (of apollo and NCS 1.0 which became DCE/RPC fame) recommends DCE/RPC for NT Domain services.
5) bill gates orders from-on-high that NT must have a windows interface.
6) dave's team add a windows subsystem to placate bill: they have to port the win16 subsystem to 32-bit (hence the win32 subsystem).
[7) ibm somehow gets involved: nt also has an OS/2 subsystem. someone gets terribly embarrassed that NT uses ibm's OS/2 "HPFS" and orders that NT must have its own file system (esp. because HPFS doesn't support VAX/VMS security model) hence NTFS.]
8) DEC cottons on to what dave cutler is up to, especially when the VAX/VMS security model's interface turns up pretty much function-for-function in NT, and gets integrated properly into the NT Domain Services.
9) DEC gets paid $50m and mysteriously NT 3.51 gets ported to the DEC Alpha.
that's why NT runs on those lovely RISC processors: it was written in c and so was dead-easy to add other OSes.
not bad doing 2 weeks work and getting paid $50m.
What ever happened to David Boies? (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, I now this is not 100% on-topic. However I think the disappearance of a key figure is noteworthy (I would argue more so that SCO claiming ownership of IBMs work, as they are here).
Re:Will Groklaw play a direct role? (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah, they're definately getting direct credit, and due
A rant of a Summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Daryl you suck. Not one line of SCO code is held up in evidence. Everything comes from AIX and Sequent code, and there's not much of it either. It seems that SCO thinks they own AIX as well as Linux. The free software revolution of GNU, Linux and BSD was not a plot to keep SCO from being able to sell an operating system. Microsoft proves every day that you can sell inferior code to the ignorant so long as you market it and provide anything at all. SCO is dying because it has been taken over by a bunch of morons that and the fact that free software is much much better at doing the job.
Re:code references in case groklaw get /.ed (Score:5, Interesting)
You can find the code in these patches provided by IBM:
EVMS evms_aix.h [sf.net]
JFS ref/jfs_inode.h [ibm.com]
RCU-2.4.1-01 [sourceforge.net]
Something remotely similar to the rcu patch was eventually merged into 2.5.43 and into United Linux. The EVMS header is used by the compatibility module for AIX partitions and is also in United Linux but nowhere in an official linux. The jfs inode header is not used anywhere, because it is the OS/2 file and was provided only for reference.
Good summary from a GrokLaw AC poster (Score:5, Interesting)
However, they have thereby limited their current claims to these sections. And five beeeellion dollars.
Re:A damp squib, again (Score:5, Interesting)
a quick comparison. (Score:5, Interesting)
sco claim:
dynix kernel/os/kern_clock.c 2028-2059
linux 2.4.1 arch/i386/kernel/apic.c 25-28, 662-664, 676-684
25-28:
#include <asm/smp.h>
#include <asm/mtrr.h>
#include <asm/mpspec.h>
662-664:
* useful with a profiling multiplier != 1
*/
if (!user)
676-684:
prof_counter[cpu] = prof_multiplier[cpu];
if (prof_counter[cpu] != prof_old_multiplier[cpu]) {
__setup_APIC_LVTT(calibration_result/prof_counter
prof_old_multiplier[cpu] = prof_counter[cpu];
}
#ifdef CONFIG_SMP
update_process_times(user);
#endif
Re:It's long, but interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, very interesting indeed. Perhaps they should take a look at arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c file of any recent kernel:
Original development of Linux SMP code supported by Caldera. Damn those Linux hippies are outrageous people! First they steal from you and then they have the nerve to thank you. Bastards. Also repeated in an old SMP page by Alan Cox [linux.org.uk].
Re:Oh... and no more "millions of lines" claims (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno; SCOX buyers seem to have their heads in an invincible reality-distortion field. The next Slashdot poll should be "What will SCOX close at on Monday?":
* $31.89
* $13.75
* $10.00
* $5.00
* $1.00
* -$666.00
The commenter closest without going over wins 30 karma points.
Millions of lines to 456 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No "real depth" here... (Score:3, Interesting)
The block device driver interface (used by the LVM) was documented publicly multiple times (Egan & Texeira in the mid-80s, Sun Device Driver books, the System V docs themselves, etc)
It seems that unless the contracts specifically state that these are considered "modifications" of the original AT&T code and not new works that interact with the AT&T code, then the LVM claim is junk.
The JFS claims are a little murkier. It was not possible to create a UNIX filesystem circa 1990 without the source code to UNIX.
And my recollection of AIX 3 and JFS was that it didn't just "plug in" to a well-defined interface, it needed lots of intimacy with the VM system and other bits of the kernel.
While the LVM was big, I don't think it got close to weighing in at a million lines...
Re:Spoken like a troll. (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, changing the code in question is not an admission of guilt.
You mean a Forbes "reporter" (e.g. Daniel Lyons) (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, were I his editor, I would have fired him after that. Investigative journalism it was not. This gives me very serious misgivings about trusting anything Forbes says, because I cannot imagine how that story could have slipped past even the most minimal editorial review...
It seemed rather apropos, yet disturbing, that that article was meant to be an attack on the credibility of Groklaw, after PJ of Groklaw chided him for accepting SCO's statements without any apparent research, as he had not done even the most minimal fact-checking.
I would be willing to bet that he is glad that I am not his boss... To anyone from Forbes reading this: I value research more than oppinion. And yes, I do mention your failures to anyone I know who might even think of subscribing.
Worst reporter ever. [google.com] (Maybe seeing his face on Google image search for that would make his day?)
False claims to prop up stock price? (Score:4, Interesting)
Martha Stewart's case is based exactly on this (that she made false claims that she didn't engage in insider trading so that her own company's stock, Martha Stewart, wouldn't go down).
Re:2.2 Kernel? (Score:1, Interesting)
Watch the insiders exercising their options and selling their shares [yahoo.com]. These folks don't have any confidence in the future of their company. I don't know why only a handful of insiders are selling. It is possible that they are the ones for whom exercising recently vested options is the only way to get their money out. I suspect that Darl's compensation has some clauses in it concerning performance over several quarters. If he sells a pile of shares right now, he opens himself up to allegations of insider trading and the possibility that the share price will nose dive. He probably can't get all his money out by unloading shares a few at a time, so he's not even trying that approach.
Mostly in SCO-distributed 2.4.13 kernel (Score:3, Interesting)
2.2.12, 2.4.1-01, and "2.4.x". So the
2.2.12 and 2.4.1-01 sections are covered by the GPL because they distributed it that way, and "2.4.x" might be, depending on which values of X are 13.
Re:Will Groklaw play a direct role? (Score:2, Interesting)
You're wrong. (IAAL - I am a lawyer) (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are trying to argue to a judge that your code does not contain any stolen code, then SCO points out the alleged lines of stolen code and then as a result, you go changing it, you will have some serious explaining to do to the judge.
I don't mean to be arrogant here, but I'm a lawyer and you do not appear to be, so please don't go around giving legal advice to people who might think its correct.
Re:That's an easy one (Score:2, Interesting)
And, due to the nature of open-source, if they try to do anything funky later, it's pretty easy for a competitor to arise and take their place.
In short, it might just be enough to keep them honest.
Re:Good summary from a GrokLaw AC poster (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay, I'm too lazy here on saturday nite. Has anybody done the math to figure out how much the entire linux kernel would be worth in SCO's ridiculous view?
They want $699 for these x number of lines of 'stolen' code. If linux kernel has y lines of code total, then the kernel should be worth (y/x)*699 dollars. What are x and y?
Maybe we can use this to our advantage. For example, with MSFT, pay $300 for a kernel worth $300. With linux, pay nothing for a kernel worth $$$$$.
Darl, you are liable! (Score:3, Interesting)
At first it was innocent enough. I had heard the rumors and decided to try out Linux. This was during the heady, economically rewarding period of the mid 1990's. I has heard all the rumors. You know like "you invite the penguins over and they never leave." That kind of thing, but I thought I knew it all. I thought I was a big shot. With smug self-assuredness I turned the penguins loose. I set them free. My mighty Celeron screamed in anticipation of processor cycle efficiency and its dreams of speed increases were not denied. I became one with the Penguista and was instantly and effectively addicted. I tried to statisfy my addiction with new kernels. Upgrades. New flavours. Soon work suffered as did my sex life. Like an adle-brained heroine junkie my minds pleasure receptors were spoiled by the taste of the true good stuff. No longer satisfied by binaries and closed source I became a slave of the very thing that set me free. Lately insolent, addicited and enslaved, I realize that I am a shell of the man I once was. I have lost my freedom. The Penguista have commandeered my fate. Darl. Simply so you will understand. I want my soul back. I want my freedom back Darl. Darl, the Unix doesnt like you and the Penguista frankly think you are undeserving their respect. I need help Darl. I need help now Darl. Darl, for once do some good and plead with Penguista for mercy. They can offer judicialjurisprudence in certain situations as I am sure you know. But i will say one thing Mr. McBride, if you win and get your billions I am gonna sue you for the damages Linux has casued me!
Re:False claims to prop up stock price? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good summary from a GrokLaw AC poster (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Quick summary: nothing special (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No "real depth" here... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm loath to understand how OS/2 source code could ever be considered a derivative of SysV.
(That is, if SCOX even has a right to enforce the contract with IBM given their relationship with Novel)
Oh what a tangled web SCOX weaves...
Re:Ah, at last! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah yes, I think it was a company called "Caldera" who did that (http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/title.html). You know, they're called "SCO" now...
Lyon's prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
SCO Group will settle its lawsuit against IBM. Both sides will declare victory. The Linux community will turn on IBM.
The only surprise here is that someone (Forbes) pays Dan to write this stuff (apparently the New York Times's fantasy journalism team was all filled up). Dan goes on to point out that Linux and VoIP technologies are no different than Pets.com and other marketing fluff:
technologies like Linux and voiceover-IP still involves this crazy notion that companies can make money by giving things away.
This is like Dan calling electricity a "crazy notion" because he listened to some fly-by-night business scheme involving electrical current. Looks like Forbes is got some fat to trim.
*scoove*
Re:Visions of Jury Selection (Score:3, Interesting)
Forbes is a conservative scandal sheet (Score:2, Interesting)
All you that had your jobs shipped out from under you to India, Forbes thinks you're dead wood. Talk about kicking someone when they're down.
One lawyers perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
This crap borders on legal malpractice. It is certainly bad practice.
Well put I would say, who says lawyers are obtuse.
Re:How quickly code is replaced will deflate the c (Score:4, Interesting)
My Favorite Quote... (Score:3, Interesting)
So Darl, worried that IBM is going to put you out of business? I have news for you. The jounaling file system was developed at IBM, for IBM, for use in IBM products. I think you're still pissed off that IBM decided not to finish work on the Monteray project. They felt it would flop in the marketplace, which Itanium has, and decided to pursue more profitable interests that did not include you or your company. I wonder if you have/will go after SGI because they also have a type of journaling file system available on the x86 platform. What about Be, Inc.? Even though they're already a dead company, many of those guys were Unix guys and developed a JFS for both PPC and x86.
One of the main goals in business, even if its not always thought of initially, is to put the competition, you, out of business while trying to make a profit. (And there are far too many example to list.) In case you haven't noticed, business models are subject to change by these things called market forces. You must have fallen asleep that day in Marketing 101 and/or Economics 101. There are only two things in the US that are certain, and this sounds so cliche, death and taxes, but its true. Its unfortunate that under your leadership, your company has become a legal firm and not a computer company. I would wish you luck, but you are a great example of many wrongs in this world. So I hope your company goes belly up, then the Wall Street hounds are released upon you.
Amigori
Doing it with our proprietary code, so we are fine (Score:3, Interesting)
When we put source code into the Open Source community, the code we are putting in there, we have clearly patent clearence for in the sense we know what we put out in the Open Source community so we don't claim own patents on anyway. Our patents clearence process makes sure we are not infringing the patents of anybody else. We are doing it with our proprietary code, so we are fine.
What is wrong about this distribution, is basically the millions of lines of code that we never have seen. We don't know if there are any patent infringments [in this code] with somebody we don't know. We don't want to take the risk of being sued for a patent infringement. That is why we don't do distributions, and that's why we have distributors. Because distributors are not so much exposed [to being sued] as we are. So that's the basic deal as I understand it.
Karl-Heinz Strassemeyer, IBM
Excerpt from an interview by SSLUG, Denmark [sslug.dk]
Re:Forbes is a conservative scandal sheet (Score:1, Interesting)
Forbes wants the guys doing the firing to be their subscribers; not the fired.
Anyone axed in those layoffs is _NOT_ the target audience of Forbes, nor of interest to a Forbes advertiser.
My favorite argument is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless of wether or not they develop for fun or profit (or both), it doesn't mean that they don't have access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities. Moreover, the millions of people who use Linux daily make for far better Quality Assurance teams than most commercial QA houses. And IBM didn't need to bring their people into the mix to jumpstart the industry. RedHat (a company with no exposure to proprietary SYS V UNIX code) had already started doing that.
If you consider how many people worked on Linux as a software development team, you have the worlds largest development team. If SCO is trying to make the claim that the world's largest development team can't produce enterprise quality code, then why was SCO selling it as enterprise quality code before they discovered that IBM had added features that IBM had given to AIX?
Warning: SCO can win. (Score:1, Interesting)
Judges and juries are not technical and therefore must listen to experts. SCO's experts will do their best because they have a bone to pick, IBMs may not simply because IBM is a huge emotionless corporation. The jury will makes its decision based on the passion and acting ability of the presenters, and so its a coin toss, not a shoe in.
My guess is that what will actually happen is: IBM will settle with SCO, possibly drop out of linux development, and the linux community will take a big black eye.
Is the linux community prepared for this eventuality?
Re:Say what? (Score:2, Interesting)
For very specialized (and optimized) machines, I prefer a non modular kernel, with everything built in the primary kernel rather than as a module. Module support is smart for a desktop, and fine for servers, but I prefer a tighter kernel for dedicated tasks. It is a bit overkill perhaps, but my experience with non modular kernels is better than with them.
First, you don't need the code for loading modules in the kernel, which reduces the size of the kernel by itself. Second, everything you need to run the system is loaded at first boot, and you never need to ask the kernel to load or unload anything else, which would seem to me to be a better security model. It is also faster to build the kernel since you don't build any modules for anything else. (not that big a deal, since kernels build relatively fast on a good box anyway).
Its just a preference. When I build a box to be ONLY for DNS, for instance, there is no reason to have modules for USB, sound cards, video cards, etc. All it needs is just enough kernel to recognize the existing hardware and tcp/ip networking. This IS more secure (less likely to be affected by a new kernel bug, so you patch less often). Same reason I don't install X on any server. Just more useless software to patch, more potential security problems. If you don't absolutely need a program/feature on a server, then its a potential security problem that serves no purpose.
Again, it is just a preference.
Re:2.2 Kernel? (Score:3, Interesting)
You're really only going to have problems if the code can't easily be re-written, and then, it's only going to affect more enterprise-level mulit-cpu boxes - You're probably still going to be fine.
Ok, to compare: Lets say I come and burn your house down, but I pay your cost for everything inside it. You are out nothing right? Wrong.
You are out the time it takes to recover, repurchase and deal with the problem. The same here. If I have to migrate over to another kernel, or another system, it costs alot of time and money. It is not free. I am not worried that I will not be able to use any OS, its just that it will require thousands of dollars in time to deal with it. So the costs are real.
My time has value. I charge a great deal for it. It is not free if I have to change to BSD, downgrade to kernel 2.2 (which is more than a simple rebuild, since some features require it) and its not free to have to spend time thinking about it either. Since my servers are not little game machines for Counter Strike, but rather are ecommerce and support machines for an enterprize, this costs the company money as well, since they have to spend resources to correct a problem, which also affects my profit sharing and override on sales.
So yes, it affects me quite directly, in spite of so many people trying to explain how it doesn't. Ironic coming from people who don't know me.
Re:Good summary from a GrokLaw AC poster (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My favorite argument is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quick summary: nothing special (Score:3, Interesting)
Effectivly what SCO are arguing is that proprietary Unix contains a licencing "virus" such that anything which has ever been linked to it becomes "infected" and is able to infect anything it is later linked to.
SCO are using this kind of argument to claim that they have control of code with supercedes that of the copyright holder(s) of the code in question.
If SCO are not utterly destroyed the whole issue of copyrights on software will become an utter mess. With all sorts of third parties claiming control over pieces of software...
Re:No "real depth" here... (Score:3, Interesting)
While it is true that OS/2 was originally developed as a joint projects by MS and IBM, and it is also true that the Santa Cruz Operation's Xenix was originally a MS product... the two projects were over a decade apart at MS and Xenix was written under license from AT&T.
Unix System IV -- and later, System V (ultimately SVR4) -- and Xenix have completely separate lineage. You can check this history diagram [levenez.com] for yourself. Of course, there's no mention of OS/2 there.
The current SCO Group (ne Caldera) only has a fleeting and coincidental relationship with OS/2 (via MS and Xenix) through their purchase of the Santa Cruz Operation (which purchased something Unix related from Novell (who really bought Unix from USL (which was born out of AT&T))).
Now that I've clarified all of that... and looking at the mindless drivel that spouts from SCOX... I wouldn't put it past them to make some sort of twisted claim against the JFS from OS/2. But, if they did that... they might as well stake claim to NT and Win2K as well (following the same logic). Of course SCOX's puppet master [microsoft.com] would never let that happen... now would they.
Re:Oh... and no more "millions of lines" claims (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, Monday a week from now, if the court rules against SCO's new movements, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see SCO has dropped like a rock. SCO may end up with nothing more than a breech of contract case and that doesn't have nearly the sex appeal of Massive Trade Secret Claims Worth Billions!
Steven
Re:It is still full of false and fraudulent clames (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but they didn't make "Intel" processors. Obviously, that is by definition something that only Intel can do. Noticed how in the court filing wherever SCO means "x86" they wrote "Intel" instead?
Re:I predict (Score:1, Interesting)
Some developers may have used CVS, but Linus doesn't have access to any of that information, it's not "official", and it's probably tangental stuff anyway.
I dunno why this is shocking to you guys -- the "baazar" dev model of Linux is fairly well known. There's no record.
Re:No "real depth" here... (Score:4, Interesting)
SCO aquired the Xenix from MS
But this part is definately not (or at least confused and misleading):
and later Renamed it to SCO Unix System V
Xenix and System V are completely different beasts. Xenix (1980) is an offshoot of Unix V7 (1979). System V sprang from the USG fork (1977). There was an injection of SysV technology back into the Xenix fork around 1884 and SCO did release a Xenix System V (and later a SCO Unix System V) but these were still under license from AT&T.
The System V that's in question here (the only one that really matters with respect to intellectual property claims) is the true-blue reference System V that was directly owned by AT&T (who beget USL (which was sold to Novell (which made some sort of Unixy relationship with the Santa Cruz Operation (which sold their soul to Caldara (which assumed the identity of SCO (apparently to muddy the waters regarding their IP claims)))))).
When you claim that "SCO renamed it to System IV" [sic] (in reference to their Xenix product) you implied that this is the same as the System V which IBM is accused of infinging upon.
It is not.
IBM is accused of taking pieces of AIX (and also Sequent's Dynix) and contributing them to Linux. AIX is an offshoot of Unix System V Release 2 (forked after the injection of SysV into Xenix by the way) and the relationship between AIX and Xenix is trivial at best.
The fact that the true-blue Unix (System V) was allegedly purchased by SCO and that SCO once had a product which was licensed to use System V technology (Xenix)... is purely coincidental. Your post implied otherwise and was therefor, by definition, wrong.
The fact of the matter is that every unix-like operating system in existance (save a small handful (Linux, the contemporary BSDs, etc...)) are offshoots at one point or another from the real AT&T Unix and exist solely under license from AT&T or their sucessor in interrest (which The SCO Group claims to be). The Santa Cruz Operation's Xenix/Unix System V products owe their very existance to licensing agreements with the rightful owner of the original Unix copyrights.
Finally... since the original SCO Xenix/Unix products now belong to Tarantula and not The SCO Group (ne Caldera) they have zero bearing on the issues currently before the court.