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Groklaw's 'Grokline' To Document *nix History 88

Posted by timothy from the would-make-a-great-poster-but-an-awful-postcard dept.
trick-knee writes "Grokline hopes to fill in the ownership aspect of the history of UNIX. According to the announcement on Groklaw.net, Pamela Jones intends to flesh out Eric Levenez's UNIX timeline with ownership information. The idea is that this is an application of the open source model in the area of law: if enough eyes see this, someone might be able to anticipate a legal attack and the community may be able to forestall it somehow. We don't really want another SCO foodfight, I don't think."
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Groklaw's 'Grokline' To Document *nix History More

Groklaw's 'Grokline' To Document *nix History

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  • A good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:06PM (#9242711)
    Not just a legal convenience for linux supporters, but something that could someday be useful as a historical document.

    • Re:A good thing. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Be careful what you wish for. This study isn't going to change current copyright law. What would happen if a truly objective study resulted in evidence that would mean that SCO or one of the other parties claiming ownership could win their cases? Grokvolt?

      • "What would happen if a truly objective study resulted in evidence that would mean that SCO or one of the other parties claiming ownership could win their cases?"

        I don't think we'd be around to worry about it, as hell would have already frozen over.

      • Nah (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Open Source can only be strengthened by maximizing the propigation of information. In a worse case scenario there's something in Linux that shouldn't be in there and needs to be removed and rewritten. But that stuff shouldn't be in there anyway and the linux community is better off with it gone.

        Anyway it's at least marginally better if the linux community uncovers evidence of infringement and deals with it themselves than if SCO or some other unfriendly third party uncovers evidence of infringement and run
    • Well as a Law student writing a 20,000 word honours thesis about copyright, software and the Internet, a document like this would be a big plus. Unfortunately it might finished a bit late for me. In think though that something like this will be valuable in the future, both for academic and practical reasons.
  • I think it'd be interesting to see the customized vendor kernels like the RedHat ones and the RT ones like lynuxworks, tymesys, montevista as well.

    • Re:can they add the Vendor(rhat, etc) kernels? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From: torvalds@yahoo.co.fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
      Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
      Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
      Summary: small poll for my new operating system
      Keywords: 386, preferences
      Message-ID:
      Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
      Organization: University of Helsinki
      Lines: 20

      Hello everybody out there using minix -

      I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
      professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
      since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd li

  • Unix Ownership in general... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TJ_Phazerhacki ( 520002 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:09PM (#9242738) Journal
    I think that although this sounds like a great idea simply for the historical and leagal precident, the issue becomes what will it really protect, or prevent? SCO has filed enough hair-brained and far fetched lawsuits, that if anything even resembling this happens in the future, the courts will (hopefully!!!) nip it in the bud of their own accord. If another Million dollar lawsuit about hot coffee hits the docket, the judge will (likely) toss it and hand a summary jugement for physical damage. The legal system is trying to fix itself, finally. But all in all, a good idea - where can I buy the Poster?

    • Re:Unix Ownership in general... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @07:00PM (#9243066) Journal
      True. Stuff like this will never stop guys like SCO.

      However, as we all know, SCO has managed to spread FUD and raise questions among people. Most people, including journalists are just too lazy to go check facts, like reading one of the books on Unix history.

      Being able to point out 'Here, look at this website. It has detailed info on who did what and when.' makes it easier to dispell the FUD. The more detail we have, the harder it is to 'spin'.

      The original Levenez diagram is a good example of this. SCO actually used this to show how Linux 'derived' from Unix. Not that there's anything wrong with the chart, but without the details, most people don't realize which lines are actually shared code, and which are just inspiration; i.e. what parts actually have any legal relevance.

      • Re:Unix Ownership in general... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        However, as we all know, SCO has managed to spread FUD and raise questions among people. Most people, including journalists are just too lazy to go check facts, like reading one of the books on Unix history.

        Being able to point out 'Here, look at this website. It has detailed info on who did what and when.' makes it easier to dispell the FUD. The more detail we have, the harder it is to 'spin'.

        Problem is, your second paragraph is undone by your first - lazy people won't bother reading the details on a Gr

        • Problem is, your second paragraph is undone by your first - lazy people won't bother reading the details on a Grokline-like site anymore than they read one of those Unix history books. Too much work either way, and the soundbite prevails.

          I disagree, actually. Books are thick. You have to go to a bookstore, or library. Information can be hard to find in a book if it doesn't have a good index. Et cetera.
          An easily-navigated web page does not have these drawbacks, and is instantly available to everyone.

          Natur

    • Don't Fight the Last War (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Markus Registrada ( 642224 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @07:42PM (#9243307)
      The most important lesson they teach in what used to be the War College is, "Don't fight the last war". The next attack will be over something else entirely, because IBM has already shown that attacking the Linux kernel via copyright is too hard. The smart money is on patent attacks, most likely on some key non-kernel component (e.g. GNOME).
    • Actually, the famous hot coffee case had merit, but must believe choose to believe the myth instead. Here's a link with info.

      http://lawandhelp.com/q298-2.htm [lawandhelp.com]

  • They got it all wrong (Score:5, Funny)

    by Roland Piquepaille ( 780675 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:09PM (#9242744)
    Here's the true History of Unix [bgu.ac.il].

  • codifying history (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:10PM (#9242747)
    This cuts both ways -- if there are abiguities or arguments about the history, it could provide an opportunity for the lawyers to get involved again. It's the first rule for organizations in the public eye: never argue in public.

    Not to mention that some GPL advocates I know are going to go ballistic at the idea of the UNIX community calmly and objectively discussing who owns what. I'm not sure that this is going to really help.

    • first rule for organizations in the public eye: never argue in public

      Good point! The internet is hurting open source! lkml, the debian mailing lists, usenet... I always say, we'd be much better off if those arguments were conducted privately!

    • Ownership is central to open source. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Open Source is all about sharing and you can't share something that you don't own. Who owns what is an important foundational detail of OSS.

      If you read the GPL, the GPL is actually based entirely on copyright law... it works within the existing system, not against it.

  • Do you think that will work? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cculianu ( 183926 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:10PM (#9242749) Homepage
    I presume you mean this should be done to somehow defend Linux. However, Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, and the code is owned by the people that wrote it. Having a UNIX timeline contain annotations on who owned what when has nothing to do with Linux -- really.

    You can't prevent some crazy FUD company like SCO suing using baseless claims with such a timeline.

    Basically, I am not sure how the existance of this timeline does anything to prevent SCO II: The Wrath of McBride, or SCO III: The Search for a Clue...

  • Food fight? (Score:3, Funny)

    by crawdaddy ( 344241 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:16PM (#9242795)
    Don't you have to actually have something to throw in a food fight? Besides insults, I mean.

  • Avoid, or cause... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:17PM (#9242822)
    Would this project scare away SCO-monsters, or possibly create one by calling them and asking if they realized that their forefather company contributed code to Linux years ago....
    • What you're recommending is the same "security through obscurity" that the open source community is completely against in software design. Just as open source software lets people find the bugs and fix them, a timeline like this would let us see where the potential issues are (assuming that there are any) and resolve them.

      It seems to have worked with software, so let's give it a try with IP.

  • Don't do it..... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 )
    Sco will find a way to use this history to further 'prove' that source code was acquired from commercial software at specific times from specific companies, using nothing more than the fact that some feature was added to linux on a specific date. This aids insane companies like SCO who want to find relationships and infringement where there really was none... go back far enough, and no one from the time/company/developer will be able to defend their IP...

    • Re:Don't do it..... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DugzDC ( 671410 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:16PM (#9243482)
      crud. we're truthful and honest. so there will be no problems there. remember that obfuscation doesn't work, so there's no point in trying to hide things. a scientist doesn't fear what he'll find at the end, only the ramblings of the fools that don't understand once he's done.
      And just suppose there were problems, would you not want to know about them now? Say, for example, we find that we need to get rid of some piece of code. surely better that we find out now, and do it ourselves?
      I don't believe that's the case however. Speaking of cases, where's my next beer?

    • Re:Don't do it..... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by criscooil ( 653395 )
      Amen, brother.

      Look, this is well-intensioned but misguided, in my view. It will play directly into the hands of the corporate "intellectual property" bean-counters.
      It will quickly degenerate into a series of arguments along the lines of "who invented the for-loop". I wouldn't be surprised to see flame-wars errupt which won't end until someone finally compares the opposition to Nazis.

      It would probably be more productive in the long run to dedicate a new web site to the debunking of all the "intellectual p

  • It doesn't matter how many eyes look at it. Who owns what is not up to the "community" to decide.
    • whether that be the original authors in the case of copyright, public knowledge in the case of trade secrets, or prior art in the case of patents. The latter is more tenuous since we don't know what bogus patents may be laying in wait. Any of the non trivial parts of Linux should be documented. If you invented it, say so. If you got it from a textbook or paper, say so.

  • The groklaw folk should look at... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:44PM (#9242978)
    The Bell System Technical Journal, July-August 1978, Vol. 57, No. 6, Part 2, for articles on the "UNIX TIME-SHARING SYSTEM". I find the article on page 2087 particularly interesting ;-). Also look at CP/IX ("Carrier Products Interactive Executive"). It was developed at Case Western Reserve University for IBM's Series/1. IIRC Rice University researchers did a port of BSD to the 80286 (not the 80386, the 286) in the late eighties, too. Also check ISBN 0-13-939845-7, THE UNIX(R) SYSTEM, for accurate history.

  • The Problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaveAtFraud ( 460127 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @06:47PM (#9242995) Homepage Journal
    The problem Grokline sets out to address is that Eric Levenez's original Unix timeline didn't quantify or qualify exactly what sort of "contribution" an existing product made to a newer product. As an example, it might show that Linux was somehow descended from Minix in spite of Andy Tanenbaum's recent disclaimer. Another way of looking at the problem is that the original timeline didn't really differentiate between an actual inclusion of code vs. inspiration and a platform to work on.

    Hopefully, Grokline will help sort this out for at least the open source world and the people like Ken Brown at AdTI will have to find a different dumpster to go diving in to find dirt on FOSS and FOSS contributors. Alternatively, he could seek employment at the National Enquirer since his idea of research seems to be more at home in a supermarket tabloid.

    • Re:The Problem (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:00PM (#9243399) Journal
      Yeah, I imagine the history will look something like this:

      1983 -- BSD UNIX 3
      1984-2003 -- AT&T, Novell, and Sun spend 15 years adding tens of millions of lines of proprietary sourcecode
      2004 -- Solaris 9 !

      If you back to when the code was open enough to track, you are really talking about ancient, obsolete crap that's not relevant anymore. Levenez's chart is interesting as an overview, but trying to nail down exactly which code went where seems to be overkill.

      Instead of the History of Unix on a byte level, it would be a lot more interesting to have a place where oldtimers could reminisce and submit their stories. But that would be a lot like alt.folklore.computer.

    • Re:The Problem (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The problem Grokline sets out to address is that Eric Levenez's original Unix timeline didn't quantify or qualify exactly what sort of "contribution" an existing product made to a newer product. As an example, it might show that Linux was somehow descended from Minix in spite of Andy Tanenbaum's recent disclaimer. Another way of looking at the problem is that the original timeline didn't really differentiate between an actual inclusion of code vs. inspiration and a platform to work on.

      Another problem i

      • That's why it's an open, peer-reviewed process.

        Pamela Jones's whole idea is and has been to apply open-source methodology to the law. No matter how big the law firm or how rich the client, they can't dig up everything related to a subject or case. Groklaw/line is organized around the idea that the worldwide tech community can dig up more.

        Furthermore, the idea is to dig it up and present it in a way that's legally useful to any lawyers who need it.

        As in, "This flyer handed out at an obscure trade sho

  • We need Mel Brooks to do a movie. Just image...

    "The inquistion, SCO. The inquistion, here we go. We have a mission to convert the big Blue (blue, blue blue blue blue)

  • Busy busy busy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Monday May 24, 2004 @07:06PM (#9243102) Homepage Journal
    PJ never to ceases to amaze. There are usually 2-3 new articles everyday on Groklaw, posted around the clock. The are filled with tons of in-depth information. now she is doing this too. Does PJ ever sleep? Is "PJ" actually several people?

    • Re:Busy busy busy (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:33PM (#9243630) Journal
      1) She's just one person.

      2) This is practically her job now, that's why she does so much; she works for OSRM now, and they pay her to do this + Groklaw now.

      3) She does sleep, but she's been known to keep odd hours on occasion.

      Speaking of which, here's their how to help page [grokline.net], in case anyone reading this wants to help them out.

      [Why yes, I do read Groklaw regularly... :]

      • Re:Busy busy busy (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Almost. Groklaw is my personal, noncommercial site. No one pays me to do it.

        PJ
        • Okay, so they don't pay you to do it directly, but they give you time to do it... or something like that. I didn't mean to imply that it's somehow commercial; I know that it's always been something you do on your own.

          I think I just got confused by your last explanation of it, because you did say something about OSRM being generous to give you enough time to still do Groklaw.
    • Plus she's supposed to have a job. My guess is it's 3-4 people.
      • Well, she gets tons of research tips (I've sent various bits I've found, I'm by no means the only one) and whatnot, but it's all her there, piecing it together, SFAIK.

        Though I know that MathFox (admin of groklaw.net, runs the site while PJ posts everything) is in on the Grokline project (he did all the software, according to the grokline page). So I guess that there are other people involved, but PJ == Pamela Jones, who is just one person :]

        So these *are* collaborative efforts here, but it's all PJ posti
  • Unix was a program gone bad. Born into poverty, its parents, the phone company, couldn't afford more than a roll of teletype paper a year, so Unix never had decent documentation and its source files had to go without any comments whatsoever. Year after year, Papa Bell would humiliate itself asking for rate increases so that it could feed its child. Still, unix had to go to school with only two and three letter command names because the phone company just couldn't afford any better. At school, the other oper
    • ...huge chunk of plagiarized text snipped...

      Thank you for showing us your prodigious copy and paste skills! Please pick up your ID-TEN-T certificate at the door!

    • Re:History of UNIX (Score:4, Funny)

      by thogard ( 43403 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @10:57PM (#9244403) Homepage
      You seem to have left out some details. It turns out there isn't just one Unix, but several. It sort of like Unix and brother Unix and its other brother Unix. Some of them decided they didn't like their name and wanted to be called things like sunos but their birth certificates all claim their name is just Unix and its mother is Bell Lab or its alias AT&T. Few of the birht certs ever mention a father and even when one is mentioned a blood test will shed a different light on the parentage. No one has done a DNA test yet but I expect the result to look like a embryo fertilization gone horribly wrong.

      And that was just the 1st generation. Take a look at some of the offsping? You have the lucky ones like OsX which had Unix (the lsd junky from Berkeley) as a father and its mother was hatched and grew up at CMU. While thats messed up, its nothing compared to the offspring with the worst identity crisis which now wants to be known as Solaris but when pressed on the issue takes its fathers name "sunos". It even gets confused if its sunos jr or sunos XI. Its cousin (like anyone could figure out that DNA mess) was spliced together at an evil lab at IBM where they took several stillborn unix offspring with a bit of stem cells from something that might have been a real unix and mixed it all together. The result of that isn't going to win any cutest baby awards.

      Where does Linux fit into this nice neat family tree? It doesn't. It turns out it was born over the road from the unix family castle and always looked up to them. You could hear them say "when I grow up, I want to be just like them!" Like too many people who grow up on the wrong side of the tracks, linux went off and had several children with several mothers. There was the lady who worked on the corrner who always wore a red hat, you had some German backpacker who seemed to get knocked up and carry her baby suse to full term. Many of the 1st gen breed like rabbits too. Mandrake seemed to be left at an orphanage but the lady in red and sometimes looks like it may head back there or the poor house.

      Recently Linux has some problems that there is a growing battle over the babys name. While both parties claim GNU had nothing to do with the birth, we all know that it takes two to make a baby and Linux is covered hints that GNU was arround at the time of conception. So will Linux ever take on another sirname or is it just that hyphanted last names just aren't cool where it hangs out?

  • UNIX time line already exists? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jailbrekr ( 73837 ) <jailbrekr@digitaladdiction.net> on Monday May 24, 2004 @07:45PM (#9243331) Homepage
    Isnt this pretty complete:

    http://www.levenez.com/unix/
    http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline. html

    Now just follow the the copyrights and patents.

  • Very cool (Score:3, Informative)

    by rixstep ( 611236 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:05PM (#9243424) Homepage
    Levenez is very cool. He's the only person online with a substantial history of NeXT and NeXTSTEP, for example.

    http://www.levenez.com/NeXTSTEP/ [levenez.com]

  • What's to document? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:10PM (#9243445) Homepage Journal
    What's to document? Darl McBride wrote UNIX (The UNIplexed Information and Computing Service) while working for SCO (The Santa Cruz Operation Group, based in Tarantella, Utah) which was then stolen with the help of IBM by Linus Benedict Torvalds (who called it GNU/Freax and then renamed to GNU/Linux because William R. Della Croce, Jr had trademark on Freax) in his plot to undermine MINIX and the entire concept of microkernel design to slow down the HURD development, or otherwise Bitkeeper would never be able to take over RCS, CVS and Subversion. Even Andrew S. Tanenbaum says it would be impossible for Torvalds to write the entire operating system in 1991. Furthermore, the UNIX family tree and the bastardization thereof is clearly explained on the slides [wall.org] by Larry Wall. So, what's to document? I thought it is all clear now, is it not?
  • Is the name in reference to "Stranger in a Strange Land"? [amazon.com]

    Just curious. Didn't see an explanation for the name.
  • I can see this being a two-edged sword. The stated purpose is fine, but what if someone finds out some code they worked on being attributed to someone else, maybe someone they worked for at one time? If Groklaw can document the attribution, that gives ammunition to lawsuits that may not be obvious to everyone.

  • Hmmm. . . Sounds alot like this. [opennation.org]

    We can't change what we don't own.

  • the sharks behind SCO ever expected their attack to birth Groklaw?

  • Biggest Problem with Grokline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 24, 2004 @08:47PM (#9243724)
    It approaches the timeline as if UNIX were one single product with different brands (AIX, HP-UX, Tru-64, etc).

    But UNIX has never been just a single "thing". Important to the development of UNIX are the development of the utilities - grep, vi, emacs, awk, cc, csh, etc.

    I don't see any way to fit that information into the timeline as it is currently organized.

    • Re:Biggest Problem with Grokline (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That part of Grokline is coming. We don't have that page coded yet, but you are right. It is the heart of the matter.

      PJ

  • Timeline of GNU/Linux and Unix (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mind Booster Noori ( 772408 ) on Monday May 24, 2004 @09:58PM (#9244129) Homepage
    See this link, named Timeline of GNU/Linux and Unix [robotwisdom.com], as it has several info about the issue.

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