The SCO Group on Friday once again reiterated that it is the only rightful owner of the Unix System V source code and all related copyrights.
SCO Presents ‘Proof’ of Unix Copyright Claims
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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HAHAHAH! Oh I guess AIX won’t be a UNIX anymore–sorry New York Stock Exchange, better go to a different OS! If this isn’t a sure sign that they want to get bought out, I dunno what is.
What, exactly, is McBride referring to, there? Amendment 2? Someone clarify this, please.
When I think of SCO trying to put the genie back in the bottle, I can’t help but think of the old English laws about sheep stealing and even far lesser crimes like just being poor & in the way. The punishment far beyond unfair and often barbaric. I can only hope SCO suffers the full consequences of their actions.
In another article, so it looks like 80 lines of commented source lines here and there are identical. Now that I know that, I must be executed. Quite rediculous!
The only good sign is that the lawyer for SCO David Bois pretty much lost his last 2 cases, hope he makes that a hatrick!!
The copyrights to Unix System V purchased by SCO from Novell are subject to the settlement between AT&T/Novell and BSD of the lawsuit brought by AT&T against BSD. One reason AT&T/Novell settled the suit was because, reportedly, a substantial amount of BSD code had been copied into System V in violation of the BSD license at that time (specifically of the advertising clause).
Also, see cnet tech news for an explanation of Amendment 2. Apparently the original asset purchase agreement provided that copyrights and patents are not transferred to SCO. Amendment 2 reportedly says that copyrights are transferred to SCO.
and McBride had better cash out his stock options while he can. If they try to revoke IBM`s AIX license, I`m betting they`ll be history in a year.
What is the source of the code? Hopefully, the lineage of all code in question can be determined and found to lead to non AT&T/SCO copyrighted System V code. It could have been donated by someone besides AT&T, copied without copyright inclusions from BSD, or it could have even been copied fron Linux to SCO.
For that matter, what version of Unix is SCO showing? Is it showing the latest copy where much of the code is reportedly from other sources? Or are they comparing code from a version when the code was almost all written by AT&T?
Is IBM in any way responsible? Considering IBM’s efforts to avoid legal complications to the extent of requiring their Linux developers to meet with IBM lawyers before even working on the project, I’d be extremely surprised if IBM had anything to do with an infringement.
For that matter, from Exhibit C of SCO’s lawsuit, it seems that IBM is free to use anything they learn from UNIX to develop other products as long as they do not directly copy the code and as long as they do not directly reference AT&T/SCO proprietary manuals to develop the code. It seems to me that a developer could work on AIX in the mornings and on Linux in the afternoons as long as he didn’t copy the code or reference the proprietary manuals.
Since SCO continues to allow Lindows to distribute code licensed from SCO under GPL, does that not mean that SCO has in effect GPLed all the code in question? It would seem to me that to protect their interests, if any, they would be required to put an immediate halt to all unlicensed distribution of their code upon learning of the problem.
Finally, when did SCO learn of the so-called infrintements. One earlier quote from SCO in a news story made it sound like SCO has long believed Linux to be infringing on their code, but there was noone with deep enough pockets to sue.
I think that in law, you are required to mitigate damages when possible. In this case, wouldn’t that mean that if SCO did not take steps upon learning of the alleged infringement to have the infringements stop, they cannot collect any damages resulting from the continued infringements?
it remains that they GPLed the whole thing by offering their own Linux distribution on their servers..?!
Once SCO does show the code in question, will it be possible for the Linux community to write new code to replace the SCO owned code?
Can a court declair Linux as being too much like SCO’s Unix and make all Linux have to come under license to them in order to exist?
Does this spell the end of Linux?
Has all the work that has gone into creating a free OS (Linux) just gone up in smoke, and can we expect to have to pay for Linux like we have to pay for Windows soon?
I don’t know if these questions even make sense. Can some one explain what this all really means to us simple ordinary Linux users?
My main concern is, will linux still be free to download, and use, and improve, and play with, or has all that independant work done by thousands over the years just been gobbled up by one greedy company so they can have the whole banana and profit from everyone elses work?
Will some one please give us ordinary non-legal mined sorts some kind of idea as to what this all really means and what SCO can really do to Linux?
Do we need to start looking at giving up on freedom from the money grubing Corps and figure on spending a couple hundred every two years to keep up with changing OSs?
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Trust me, you’ll be OK. The code will be replaced within days, and if it isn’t there’ll still be a LinuxLite without the code (which I doubt is at all essential). SCO is not nearly influential enough to completely destroy Linux–it’ll just get bought out by IBM if it goes too far.
I’m sure that somebody posted that link in a previous thread, but…
http://humorix.org/articles/may03/sco.shtml
It describe the current situation quite nicely.
Thanks Greg? Thanks for the reassurance.
It’s just that I invested a couple of years of my time teaching myself a tiny bit of Linux — just enough to be able to install and make my self little freedom machine. I am not a smart guy, just determined enough to stick with something until I can make it work for me. I know it’s not like I have really accomplished something, but for me it feels good, and I just don’t want that to be stepped on.
Thanks to everyone who has ever contributed to the freedom of Linux and open source computing.
What’s the game? Why doesn’t SCO reveal the offending code – now! It’s like they are playing a cat and mouse game dragging out this matter as long as possible while rattling with the sabre. Why the wait? Why non-disclosure agreements? Is it scare tactics? Is the wait to give time to ensure that the cow is milked in case the case is dismissed? Why can’t the customer just not wait and pay license fee if SCO wins in a court of law? I don’t understand.
>>What’s the game? Why doesn’t SCO reveal the offending code – now!
There are 2 distinct actions here. The lawsuit against IBM and the FUD against Linux. The FUD against Linux is completely baseless because SCO has been knowingly distributing it under the GPL for the last year and a half (You can still download it from their ftp site if you want). So the question is really, why is SCO trying to make headlines?
The theories to explain SCO’s behavior are:
1) They want to be purchased by IBM to stop the FUD.
2) Microsoft is flat out paying them to FUD Linux.
3) They want to spread rumours to manipulate the stock market.
Theory number 1 is reasonable. It might be cheaper for IBM to just buy them then to deal with the lawsuit. However, it doesn’t look like IBM is going to do that.
People say theory 2 is a crazy conspiracy theory. On the other hand, thanks to the deal with Microsoft, SCO is going to have it’s first profitable quarters ever. The deal was rumoured to be between 10 and 30 million dollars.
Theory number 3 is becoming more popular now that SCO stock has gone up. It helps that SCO executives aquired half a million dollars in shares in non open market transactions.
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SCOvsIBM#The_Case_in_N…
The actual trial will not happen for 2 years. Expect the fun to continue until then.
probably has very little left of Unix Sys VRx in it, and indeed was mostly a BSD variant, I’d say IBM could cobble together a workable AIX completely free of Sys VRx within a matter of hours, thus making SCO’s threat a completely vacuous declaration – Like me declaring I am the Effulgence of the … whatever!
I think SCO has given too much proof of its utter incompetence. I am getting bored.
This whole stuff is a genuine hoax propagated by SCO as a desesperate attempt to save their ass. Finding SCO code in Linux is like finding weapons of mass destruction in Irak these days.
“SCO Presents ‘Proof’ of Unix Copyright Claims”
No they do not. And it would be nice from you, Eugenia Loli-Queru, to avoid spreading FUD by replicating the exact SCO words. If you are not able to analyse properly information as “pretented by” SCO please avoid replicating and propagating FUD and bullshit spurt out by SCO. The mean level of OSNews is really going down and I’m getting rather fed up of your constant “let’s take news elsewhere, most we know fud or commercial propaganda and post it on osnews yipee”
You lost a reader.
“And it would be nice from you, Eugenia Loli-Queru, to avoid spreading FUD by replicating the exact SCO words.”
I note in the quote that offended you the the word “proof” is in quotes. Did SCO put “proof” in quotes. I doubt it. It is important for readers to read before they reply as I see it.
Is made public for all and sundry to see, SCO is still a company threatening all and sundry based on no evidence.
IBM PLEASE! buy out SCO and put this whole UNIX patent and copyright BS in the bin. What the IT industry needs is less suing and more researching. If companies spent as much energy and money on litigation we would have a space colony on Mars by now.
80 lines of code was all it took to change Linux from the “bicycle” it used to be, to the “luxury car” it is now? Whoa. Those SCO guys are geniuses! With that kind of efficiency, UNIXWare must be, like, only 1000 lines of code in all!
Did we really lose a reader? If you didn’t notice the quotes around the word proof, then perhaps you really didn’t read it after all.
{ 80 lines of code was all it took to change Linux from the “bicycle” it used to be, to the “luxury car” it is now? Whoa. Those SCO guys are geniuses! With that kind of efficiency, UNIXWare must be, like, only 1000 lines of code in all! }
UnixWare sucked. It always has it always will. Linux was more of an enterprise solution than UnixWare was a decade ago. UnixWare still relies on CDE for its interface UUGGGGH, Until 7.1.3 which was just released recently, it had no USB support, no hottswapping support NOTHING and it only supported the x86 it had no support for any other processor, The only thing UnixWare is good for is if you happen to have an old 386 you wish to use. OpenServer is a much worse solution. I say this, in order to make UnixWare enterprise ready SCO had to have stole code from Linux to put into UnixWare and OpenServer.
“IBM PLEASE! buy out SCO ”
If they did that, there would be an endless procession of small trouble-making companies trying the same tactic.
>>
IBM PLEASE! buy out SCO and put this whole UNIX patent and copyright BS in the bin.
>>
That’s sensible, except that it will set a very bad precedent. No, this case will be around for a long time. And by the time it is settled, the issues would be completely irrelevant.
Why is SCO playing hide and seek? Its a FUD war, and the only way it can be sustained is by playing mysterious. SCO is playing the game like it should. As long as they don’t show any proof, you are never going to be sure about the merits of the case, one or the other. For all we know, they are just bluffing. And then again, who knows, maybe they do have a solid case. That’s the point, you don’t know for sure, and that guarantees that interest in the case will continue.
>> 2) Microsoft is flat out
>> paying them to FUD Linux.
Actually, this is not as crazy a conspiracy theory as it sounds. MS might not have initiated this, but now that the case is here, Microsoft is quite happy about it, and will do whatever they can to help SCO, openly or secretively. Can’t say I blaim them either, its the nature of competition.
But, assuming the Bush gang doesn’t step in to protect Microsoft, like they’ve been doing recently, the SCO case will come to naught. The good news is that IBM is the one being sued, so, no matter who helps SCO, this case will not be a cake-walk.
does it take to destroy the work of a thousand open-source software developers? Apearantly only a few, but they probably gobble up more the the world’s resources that all of the developers combinined 🙁 Clearly, we need to have software developers follow the law, but the US’s adversarial legal system is once again proving that is should not be trusted with something as valuable as ensuring civil interactions. If SCO would list exactly what code it claims to has been illegally copied, it could quickly be determined
1) how the code entered the Linux code base
and
2) non-infringing code could be developed to replace the ofensive code.
But we are not given that oportunity because the instigators do not resolution, they want to exploit the confilict for profit. This will be elevated to a long running legal issue that will financially benefit the attornies on both sides, and may allow some SCO execs to sell stock to investors dreaming of a IBM buyout.
How does this prove that Linux folk copied the code from SCO?
What if SCO did it themselves.Remember “Unifying Unix with Linux for Business”
SCO is just carrying on the long line of legal abuses over US copyright and patent law. Theoretically copyrights allow authors of creative works to publish their works to the public but still retain legal ownship of their product. It was never intended to allow people to copyright AND patent and then STILL keep the source code from public view. With full copyright ownership legal ramifications become the same as simply enforcing a plagarism case over a novel. Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible to do with the present legal system. All software can be copyrighted and still be closed, which really prevents ANY copyrights from being pursued due to NDA nonsense. This leads us to SCO’s crap about not releasing any of the evidence in the case without an NDA which effectively prevents ANYONE else to bring an infringement case against THEM over any code that they might have stolen from other authors. Convenient, yes?
The only way to fix this mess and keep it from occuring again in the future is to fix the US copyright and patent system. Require ALL copyrighted material to be open to public scrutiny, but enforce ownership rights appropriately when they are infringed. Less infringement, everything becomes above board and it keeps corporations honest as far as creative works go. Corporate propaganda that open-to-scrutiny software doesn’t sell is bogus. There are many companies that publish their copyrighted source code when asked without an NDA and still turn profits.
SCO would be up the creek in such an environment and would actually have to create decent products to survive!
Unfortunately, none of that is going to happen in the current political environment with the billions that corporate America (and Japan) can pour into the legal, political, and politition’s coffers.
RE: on Unix/ware’s supposed “enterprise readiness” at the core of SCO’s complaint: NOTHING that SCO has ever produced has ever been “enterprise quality”. Unixware, Openserver, and the legacy SysV are primitive and are only good for small workgroup type servers with small loads and no real clustering capabilities. AIX and it’s kin are no more like the legacy SysV than Windows NT is like MSDOS. It would be of no problem for mega giants like IBM and Sun Microsystems to remove all SysV derived code, insert BSD licensed code and tell SCO they will no longer take contracts. (Makes one wonder if that’s not exactly what IBM was about to do, and SCO brought on the lawsuit to muddy the waters.) Afterall, SCO doesn’t own the Unix name, you can have a Unix certified OS that is not in anyway related to SysV legacy code and not pay a single dime to SCO.
What abou Apple, Mac OS X uses FreeBSD, as its core, that is basicly linux. I don’t see them going after apple. What about Microsoft they did there own distro once didn’t they? Sue them, don’t they have Unix code in NT? If SCO wants te be aquired, this is a odd way to try to do it.
I was just about to take all that seriously *laughs*. Yeah, using SCO’s logic FreeBSD is basically linux – that’s a riot. And microsoft having a distro *laugh* yeah right. AFAIK nearly all of the big names have taken stuff from BSD. So watch, next for big bad SCO is BSD – I would laugh so hard at that. What a joke – too bad not everyone knows.
Lets see now – we are down to 80 lines of duplicated code. Hardly a massive match. Last week SCO said they had hundreds of lines the Week before they had thousands. But we still have no idea of which lines. Show us which lines in a copy of Linux that are duplicated. Then someone can investigate how they came to be in Linux. All of Linux is publicly available with the exception of some alpha and pre-alpha working codes and even those should be easy to find once we know who offered that code to the public. Code grows and changes over time and that can be traced back to the very beginning of that code. Stolen code will often pop-up ready to run or at the very minimum as large block of completed code (usually not well fitted to the code around it) that no other source can be found. Why wont SCO show us in a copy of Linux the lines in question. Because we can trace it back to its start. If SCO had the trace back to a clean SCO origin they would have shown it to these “annalists” as proof positive or if they had thousands or even hundreds of lines of infringing code that they would have shown it. It is also my understanding that these annalists were shown modern code not historic code.
What can we assume from SCOs actions, that this code is not clean. The small amount of common code suggests that both SCO and Linux used a common source for this code. My guess is that this code will trace back to Free BSD as many people have used it in the past as it is truly free to use. With GPL Linux now producing many times the code that SCO does and that Linux makes all the usability milestones ahead of SCO and that our code is far easier to get than theirs. If code is stolen its SCO that did the stealing. What may be truly ironic in this case is that management may be blissfully unaware of that theft by overworked or lazy programmers. Just because they are hiding it and making claims does not make the code theirs.
Let me be the first to say based on the evidence at hand
1 code may or may not be stolen – if it is stolen then
2 SCO is most likly the one steeling code.
A few corrections:
(1) FreeBSD is not “basically linux” — it has its own kernel and userland
(2) OS X does not use the FreeBSD kernel, it does use its userland
(3) Microsoft never did a distro — they did have SCO develop XENIX for them in the 80s which they later sold off to SCO
(4) Microsoft is more likely to have Unix code in DOS than in NT if at all
(5) I’m sure that SCO would like to be aquired as much as they like to appear the “original Unix people”. Both are unlikely though
For extra credit:
(6) Novell licenses SCO to the Unix IP and copyrights (not trademark) with the exclusive right to re-licence and they do so to IBM, Sun, MS. SCO pays rolyalties to Novell
(7) SCO also pays royalties to Veritas and I assume they also have some reseller’s role
(8) In 1999 SCO and IBM worked jointly on the Montery project. They broke up for some reason. The suggestion seems to be that during this episode the “code theft” ocurred. Possible fields include SMP and LVM
(9) Later Caldera bought SCO, first it was to be a Linux shop, then a Unix shop, and finally what they were doing all along, a reseller/gatekeeper/cashier/mob shop
(10) Caldera OpenLinux started as a RedHat ripoff (fork)
(11) Ransom Love must be LHAO now
Actually, Windows NT/2000/XP has some BSD code in it. This is proven. An example: it uses BSD’s IP Stack code.
google it for “proof”.
linux_baby:
>> 2) Microsoft is flat out
>> paying them to FUD Linux.
Actually, this is not as crazy a conspiracy theory as it sounds.
Actually, this is not a crazy conspiracy theory AT ALL
MS apologists, consider the following equation:
Microsft is licencing unnecessary SCO IP for untold sums, to “demonstrate its respect for the value of intellectual property” (to paraphrase Ballmer)
+
One of Microsoft’s very very very few -consistent- claims against Linux is that “Linux destroys the value of IP” (paraphrasing the Hallowe’en documents)
=
Microsoft is licencing unnecessary SCO IP for untold sums, to demonstrate its respect for the value of destroying Linux.
I fail to see where “conspiracy” and/or “theory” come into the fray. If someone claims that MS initiated this whole fiasco, THAT is the consipracy theory because there is no material to support this position. But the statement that MS is paying SCO to FUD Linux now that the proceedings are underway, is what we call a “fact”.