Settling SCOres

Israel Pattison writes "The Inquirer is reporting that someone in Germany is claiming to have viewed the SCO-alleged infringing Linux source code without having to sign a NDA. The person gives details about the code that was presented, but the translation-by-software is difficult to follow." The story also includes a link to a human translation; maybe some Slashdot reader can do better. Also in the news is a story about a kernel developer getting uppity with SCO, as well he might.

There isn't much left of this dead horse

[ObviousGuy]

Incidents and accidents. Hints and allegations.

And yet we have NO NEW INFORMATION ABOUT ANYTHING PERTINENT.

I'm getting sick of this SCO BS...

[xactoguy]

... and I think everyone is too. But, seeing as it's not going to go away that quickly, or at least until IBM puts their foot down ;), could we at least lighten up on the puns for the sake of our collective sanity?

Linus' stuff?

[jabbadabbadoo]

"The crunch, however, is a function of the scheduler, which is, over a length of about 60 lines, indeed identical except for slight differences. In this section, there is also a whole lot of corresponding comments. Comparable similarity can only be found in one routine of the memory management, which is, however, only in the Linux version accompanied by comments."

I'm pretty sure that Linus "wrote" this; this is kernel stuff, right?

what code?

[tijnbraun]

But it still doesn't mention which part of the linux code is copied (either way). I would like to know... give me some function/variable names. Then we could at least estimate the date the code was submitted and incorporated. Furthermore we could know which functional parts of the linux kernel was copied.

Why play by their rules?

[pen]

Why bother trying to prove that the code was acquired "legally" when they have not even shown publicly what the actual code is?

please

[dh003i]

Unless SCO patented the methodology, then coding a replacement and having seen SCO's original code does not mean you can't make an equivalent original. SCO has to prove that the person didn't create an original. Also, people are not computers. They will not remember lines and lines of code with any precision, so the entire argument that they can't create a functional original is BS. If the SCO code was patented, all they need do is use a different methodology, unless it was something generic (generic "only solutions" or "common solutions" or "obvious solutions" are not patentable, as there's nothing unique about them).

Who cares if IBM is in violation of SCO's license? That has nothing to do with IBM contributing to FOSS.

SCO fsck yourself.

[Tokerat]

Did I read in that English translation that all date and time info was removed from the code that was shown, and that the Linux code presented was taken from MAILING LIST POSTINGS? Assumng this isn't some hoax, I smell the very, very pungant odor of bullshit...

clueless or caseless

[73939133]

The fact that SCO presented this without dates or source control log entries strongly suggests that either they either are completely naive about how to establish that code was copied, or that they simply don't have a case and are just playing a huge bluff.

Re:Nice turnabout for SCO, but...

[arkhan_jg]

Of course, using closed source apps in you business doesn't mean you are safe from lawsuits.

Whether it's BSA nastygrams for potential licence violations, or microsoft trying to enforce the 'no critism' part of their EULA, or apple suing because you because your program uses their aqua interface, or a company suing you because they think you've used their obscure software patent (GIF, JPEG etc), it all demonstrates that no matter what you use, you are always under threat from legal action in the US.

It would make more sense for small companies to lobby for reform in tort law, or even the copyright/patent/trademark laws than to try and pick a 'safe' IT infrastructure.

Re:mirror

[rusty spoon]

It only takes one unusual comment to be identical and the game is up.

The code now, or as submitted, is unimportant. The fact that the work derived from (else why would the original and seemingly unique comments be there) copyright material is enough.

I haven't seen the SCO code, nor do I care to. But, I have first hand seen a similar case that was won based on the comments in the code.

From the case; "It is the resemblances in inessentials, the small, redundant, even mistaken elements of the copyright work which carry the greatest weight. This is because they are the least likely to have been the result of independent design."

And; "Trivial items may well provide the most eloquent testimony"

And finally; "Both suites of programs
contained the same spelling mistakes in the comment lines and the same redundant code. The
judge did not accept the argument that this was due to programming style."

Re:Line numbers please?

[ender's_shadow]

Unlike you, I've actually followed this story for a while. It's obvious to me that there are thousands of people being ripped off by SCO (who is redistributing GPLed works absent the GPL). It doesn't matter which lines of code this coder wrote.

You have nothing against SCO. Hmmm. You don't have a problem with this company, whom Microsoft has a huge interest in now, spreading lies like "The GPL will kill your business! See what these Linux people are doing to us? They'll do it to you too!" You don't have a problem with them "trying on" an argument (fallacious at best - they do have lawyers, you know. probably more lawyers than coders), and in the process costing other companies money and time, and slowing down our already struggling economy, especially the IT sector, with frivolous claims and threats? Maybe you do need to see this guy's code. Straight logic certainly isn't working for you.

SCO vs. IBM vs. [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]

[oaf357]

ftp://ftp.sco.com/pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Work station/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS/linux-2.4.13-21D.src .rpm

Even after a cease and desist letter that file is still available. I wonder if SCO will take him seriously. If they don't I hope that the guy sues the ever living shit out of SCO. I don't know about the international barriers but the DMCA could come into play here.

As for the guy who said he saw the evidence against IBM without signing the NDA. I find it very unusual that SCO used excerpts from a mailing list. They have to have more than that, right? The validity of his claims have to be proven, sorry The Inquirer's news sometimes doesn't pan out to be the truth.

But, it looks like some people are taking my advice (see subject).

Can you remember 5 lines of code?

[Nucleon500]

I wonder if this guy, or anyone else who's seen the code, can remember any of it. If it were me, I'd wait until I saw the big function, commit to memory 5 lines of it, and as soon as I got home, I'd have grepped the source for it. I couldn't legally tell anyone else what code it was, but in about 5 minutes I could determine whether or not SCO was full of shit.

Once I'd found the real author of the code, I'd notify him, and watch the fun as he tries to sign the NDA. It'd get real entertaining real fast.

Why doesn't someone look through the CVS logs?

[mveloso]

If someone checked in code that supposedly belonged to SCO, why not just walk the CVS logs to figure out who did it?

In that case, they could sue the author of the checked-in code chunks for violation of copyright.

Has anyone plowed through the CVS logs to take a quick peek if any sco.com minions are embedded there?

Re:Gutsfull

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Frankly OSS is the only point of sanity and some morality left to the industry (I can't quite believe that the IBM of the 70s and 80s is suddenly transposed itself to that touchstone).

They haven't, not one bit. It is just business for IBM. They made a business decision that making the OS a commodity would be good for them. They see it as a way to knock Microsoft off their revenue base and to similarly make the hundreds of millions if not billions invested in Solaris, HPUX, IRIX and even SCO as moot. Yeah, it hurts them in short run with the waste of their AIX development dollars, but AIX was always an also-ran in the unix space and IBM is a hardware and services company and Linux is the perfect complement to that business model.

But don't ever forget that IBM is first and foremost a ruthless, amoral business just as it has always been, Microsoft is, HP has become and Sun wants to be. If management decided that fighting linux instead of supporting it would benefit their corporate coffers, you can bet that IBM would turn on OSS in an instant.

Re:mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

At least give us a pointer to the court docs. They are public information, you know.

Re:As previously seen on Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiedmann's translation is substantially better than that of Ms. Adaktylos, especially when it comes to the technical part of the article, the differences in the inner workings of functions. However Wiedmann did not at the time have the opportunity to complete his translation, and hoped someone else would. So here is the final part of the article, picking up where Wiedmann stopped.

As to the discussion of the piece of Linux sold by SCO/Caldera itself under the GPL, one has to take into account that no Court has yet had to decide as to the enforcability of the GPL. Should this validity be established, however â" and this is far from certain --, SCO can adduce for the purposes of comparison only those parts of Linux which it has not already itself published and in the development, or further development, of which it was not involved. This too I consider to be a difficulty in the forthcoming trial.
Since, however, the original, unpatched Linux sources have not been attacked, but rather only modifications added by very different distributors, it is in any case necessary to clarify whether these might perhaps own the rights to the sections which are the subject of the legal action, whether directly or indirectly, e.g. by way of company mergers, take-overs, "all-inclusive"-deals and the like.
The odds of an actual trial beginning are not particularly good, as in most previous comparable cases a settlement has been reached out of court. Of course this is merely my personal opinion; only the decision of the lawyers on both sides or of the court eventually holding jurisdiction will be binding.

Re:SCO claiming another's kernel code

[budgenator]

chink in the armor, this is more like checkmate
consider this,
1. SCO distributed GPL'ed software, ie Linux
2. SCO claims that IBM Illegaly transfered IP into Linux.
3. SCO continues to distribute LINUX after allegedly discovery of non-GPLed code contamination Linux, a violation of the GPL and an infingement of the linux code copywrite owners rights.
4. the only possible defense against an infringement suit from the kernel developers would be to say they were mistake about IBM's inclusion of SCO's IP into Linux, and everything in their Linux distribution is properly GPL'ed to the best of their knowelge and belief.

Now the question becomes if the owners of system V unix found code in both Linux and SCO unix that were the same, where did the code code from?
possibilities
Linux copied SCO code into Linux
SCO copied Linux code into unix
both copied a third parties code into both (BSD maybe?)

Re:Line numbers please?

[MeanMF]

SCO would still have to prove that your code is derived from theirs and you'd have an opportunity to disprove

From what I've read, they only have to prove access and "substantial similarity" to the copyrighted code. Clearly IBM had access, so the question is if the code is "substantially similar" whatever that means. Algorithms aren't copyrightable (you'd need a patent), but you'd need a legal way to obtain the algorithm like clean-room reverse engineering. Code fragments, structure (function names, etc), and organization are all copyrightable. There are exceptions to this, like when a code has to be structured or named a certain way to ensure compatibility. Since Linux and Unix kernels aren't meant to be compatible, this exception would be a non-starter for IBM. If IBM did in fact copy and paste code (including comments) into Linux, I would guess that this would easily pass the "substantially similar" test.

Did you read the same link I did?

[roystgnr]

I found the second link (re: kernel developer getting uppity with SCO) to be much more interesting. He claims to be the author (or significant modifier) of code which SCO purports to be in violation.

This isn't the case. SCO hasn't even publically stated which parts of Linux are supposedly in violation, they have just stated that there's some violation(s) in the kernel. The developer in the second link doesn't claim to have authored code that SCO has claimed to be copied; he claims to be a co-author of the Linux kernel, which SCO is still distributing.

His remark in short is "The violation is yours, 'cause I wrote the code".

No, his remark is: "If you won't release every part of this binary I am coauthor of under the GPL, then you are redistributing my code without adhering to my license on it, and you are violating my copyright." This doesn't necessarily even mean that SCO's plagarism claims are false, only that if they pursue those claims then they have themselves been unknowingly violating Linux developers' copyrights for years and are knowingly doing so at this minute.

In a challenge to SCO, he's threatening to sue SCO unless they remove the paticular code sections from their list of copyright violations.

No, he's threatening to sue SCO unless they "retroactively" make their distribution of Linux compatible with the GPL (which, if any kernel code has been copied from SCO, would require SCO to license it under the GPL).

How could SCO prove anteriority ?

[file-exists-p]

From the beginning, I am missing an important point. Even if SCO shows 10,000 lines of code similar in the Linux Kernel and in their own sources, how could they prove they did not copy/paste ? Is there an organism in the US where they could have registered their code in something like 1992 ? We have this in France.

Re:SCO code =Bad chop job?

[TheRaven64]

I haven't seen the Linux code or the Sys V code, but I can categorically say that on the basis of my expert opinion that they are identical. Please go to my site now and click on all of the pretty banners.

That's all you need to get /.'ed now, right?

Re:Line numbers please?

[TheRaven64]

If anyone ever registered one of the kernels with the copyright office then they're also liable for punitive damages to thousands of plaintiffs.

Why would they need to register it? In the UK (and several other countries) you own copyright on anything you create and choose to claim copyright on. Quite a few kernel developers are UK residents (including Alan), and since UK copyright is also valid in the US due to treaties they can sue SCO with no effort.

Re:I Have To Agree With Some Points Made Here

[Per Cederberg]

2) He says some of the comments are identical but the code next to them ISN'T. This makes no sense unless SCO manipulated the comments.

Well it actually makes sense if the code has a common ancestor. Remember that he also said that the functions had the same name and performed the same task.

It is then to be expected that the Linux code gets modified (scrutinized) over time, whereas the SCO code would either stay more close to the original or get modified in other ways. Either way, most programmers wouldn't change the old comments out of courtesy (if they are funny) or lack of interest.