FSF, GCC, and SCO Compiler Support 525
Ancipital was one of several who noted that a
special patch is going into GCC. The file is README.SCO, and it is a short writeup about the SCO situation written by the FSF. It stops short of demanding that GCC developers strip SCO support from the compiler, and says more will be announced before the next compiler release.
SCO support... (Score:5, Interesting)
Stripping SCO support from GCC will only harm SCO's old customers who don't have anything to do with SCO evil.
do it!! do it!! do it!! (Score:5, Interesting)
They should have gone ahead with it (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no reason not to defend the free software community against the illegal actions of SCO. This aggression will not stand.
SCO has profiteered off of the goodwill and charity of millions of programmers across the world. How are they repaying you? By suing you into oblivion and STEALING your code!
This is not the time to be benevolent and charitable. This is the time to be assertive and not let them bully you around.
I strongly urge the likes of the FSF and RedHat, who has already established a legal "defense" fund to also establish a legal "offense" fund and start fighing SCO for violating the GPL and the Copyrights of every developer that had their code distributed by SCO in violation of the GPL.
Everyone is so worried that the GPL won't hold water in court. If you're so worried, than it won't. The time to test the GPL is NOW, so that any weaknesses can be found and corrected.
SCO needs to be taken seriously no matter how irrational or stupid their claims become. Remember that the people they pack juries with are usually just as stupid and irrational.
Re:SCO support... (Score:2, Interesting)
Obvious response (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The output of this compiler (Score:1, Interesting)
Funny how the first definition is accurate, but the second definition is the complete opposite.
Re:-1 Troll (Score:2, Interesting)
The news here is that even the submitter doesn't understand what he's pouring out. Sic transit gloria slashdot.
Re:do it!! do it!! do it!! (Score:4, Interesting)
For a long time, Stallman strongly urged everyone not to develop to Apple's platform either, because of the GUI lawsuits against Microsoft. It was a pretty effective campagin IIRC; for a long time it was nigh unto impossible to find emacs for the Mac and I'm sure that discouraged a lot of developers from going to the platform.
Re:Pressure (Score:3, Interesting)
Business make money by pleasing customers, not muscling them into paying. All their doing is pissing people off.
most of the younger generation (myself included) have never had much experience with any unix, only linux. it's what we can run at home on a spare box. It's cheap and easy. When we finally get up the ladder in companies that are actually RUNNINIG SCO products, we're gonna be trying our hardest to get it replace with something- ANYTHING.
come to think of it, what I'd like to see would be IBM offer a "SCO tradein".... trade your licence of unixware or whatever for an AIX or Redhat license with X days of support.
Re:SCO support... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should say that. The company I work for has a number of SCO servers, and we are now looking to replace them with Linux boxes because of all this nonsense. (We already have a number of new servers running Linux - it's the legacy ones that are still running SCO).
SCO's 'support' costs an arm and a leg, and is pretty lousy. They do not fix problems in a timely manner, and many software packages that run on their OS are usually old and obsolete.
Ever try running Java code on SCO?
When battling with a polar bear... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a life and death battle. If you don't fight, there's a slim chance that some moron judge will side the wrong way.
SCO has the audacity to attack linux, and hence, Free Software. How many GCC developers run linux? How many of us do?
I'm completely looking forward to the linux revolution that's creeping in. This is our chance to prove how strong free sofware really is. We can't seem meek, because if we do, and just barely squeak by SCO, microsoft or someone else with a bag of cash is gonna crush us. We gotta give everything we got.
It's sorta like a prison movie. Either kick someone's ass the first day or become someone's bitch.
We need to pull out all the stops. No survivors. lay them of them to the man. cut up their credit cards. Throw the board of directors in the electric chair. If we hold back, there will be dire concequences.
Unfortunately all of my software [morgajel.com] is pretty simple, and there's no way of removing support for SCO since there's none to begin with.
Yes, This will hurt SCO users, but then again, they can always complain to SCO and notice that SCO doesn't give a damn about them. Perhaps they'll consider moving to another platform.
Re:Don't do it! (Score:5, Interesting)
They *SAY* they would continue support, but throws a FUD effort to the game. It won't affect SCO users a bit, except to make them ponder whether or not to continue to use SCO, *exactly* like what SCO is doing to Linux users.
I think, if SCO has any future plan for SCO Unix, this move is important: it forces current SCO users to migrate to another OS, or SCO to develop on gcc (impossible, they don't employ any developers anymore, plus they won't release anything in GPL from now on)
Also, it'll lower the worth of the Unixware, if SCO plans to sell the Unixware IP to another company, it would certainly be bad news.
If I were FSF, I'd go further and announce that "while support for current SCO Unix is retained, for all future versions of SCO Unix it is dropped until further notice".
I tend to agree... (Score:4, Interesting)
What _may_ be affective (if its possible) is to, for the time being initially, revoke the GCC licence for use of SCO - so SCO cannot package it up on their systems (nor use it inside SCO to copmile products - i.e. stopping development at SCO until a new "GCC" style compiler has been written that _DOESN'T_ use FSF/GCC code), but allow individuals to do this.
Also, if SCO release ANY product, state that they _must_ be using copyrighted code illegally, and report them to the appropraite people and then, possibly, sue them!
Might have an effect.
JaJ
Re:Pull SCO support (Score:2, Interesting)
I see no reason the community should continue to support the company that is trying to destroy that community. Under the GPL SCO can continue to support a branch of GCC that works on SCO Unix; the difference is that they are doing the porting work instead of the community.
Agreed, this will affect users of SCO Unix. But only for code that is dependent on future releases of GCC, because all current GCC releases with SCO support will still be usable. That means nobody's software that is working today will suddenly stop working today. No planes will fall out of the sky, and the world won't implode. But if the next release of SCO SomethingWare needs GCC 3.(next release, whatever that is), then SCO are going to have to add compiler support in themselves, or make sure it works with GCC 3.(current release, with SCO support).
Re:Damn (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think the wording will actually cause "fear" in anyone. This just lets them know to be ready.
Re:... better yet (Score:3, Interesting)
Sco has demanded a fee from all Linux users for using their "IP". Of course copyright law gives them no right to do this, and they've yet to prove that any infringement has taken place. These facts cast their actions as extortion. They're commiting outright extortion against every Linux user. This is not just an attack on IBM, it's an attack on free software. Worse yet, it's an attempt at market manipulation to make a couple of their executives rich while the rest of the company will just be out of a job when the dust clears.
I think removing support from GCC is a good thing. It won't really harm most users, because SCO will maintain a patch, and ship their OS with GCC anyway. The only users affected will be those that want to upgrade GCC. This will discourage those that appreciate GCC and want to keep it up to date from choosing SCO as a platform. That's hitting SCO's bottom line, which is the right place to hit them. Let the executive stock options tank, then we'll see how much more they want to criminalize themselves.
A Better Idea (Score:0, Interesting)
1. Persuade the BIND developers to add a patch such that when someone looks up *.sco.com, it either returns "does not exist" or a random IP address.
2. Have SPAM Assasin bounce all +5 SPAM to sco.com.
3. Have SMTP not deliver email to sco.com Then claim this was done to helping sco out by preventing the SPAM from reaching them.
4. Squid redirects sco.com to random web page.
As other Fortune 500 companies support them through buying licenses, maybe they could be added to the list.
Things like this would send them back to the preInternet age. And also make the point of what the open source community has given them for free. What happens when it is taken away?
The point is that the Open Source community controls quite a bit of its own IP in a decentralized way which happens to be critical infrastructure of the Internet. Maybe if the community treats them as they are being treated, they would be willing to come to an agreement.
Why kick the village idiot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Political Reasons Is the source code an appropriate place to put a short, relevant political statement? My answer to that is YES. We're not talking about a manifesto here. This is a short relevant statement that becomes part of the "history" of GNU. Good place for it.
Discontinuing SCO support--Why do it?
Legal Does including SCO support in gcc undermine the legal position of the gcc developers and users w.r.t. the SCO situation? (My guess is NO). And even if that was true, would acknowledging the fact there MIGHT be a legal issue further undermine that position? (Again, my guess is NO). Legal Reason: No
Logistical Does continuing to include SCO support in gcc cost an unacceptable amount of resources--(developers time)? I know that after SCO has pissed everyone off, some would say that "One second of developer's time is unacceptable." That's a different issue. We'll get to that farther down. My guess here is SCO support does not delay gcc releases a whole lot, but the developers can answer better. Logistical Reason: Probably Not
Design Do developers sit around saying "Dammit, if we didn't have to support SCO, gcc could be twenty percent faster/smaller and we could add all these features people have been wanting." My guess no, but again, ask the developers. Design Reason" Probably Not
Retribution Did SCO offend the community who has worked so hard to develop the GNU they use and (used to) distribute? Yes. Does that community now have the opportunity to abandon SCO (and all the users unfortunate enough to be dependant on SCO)? Yes. Is Retribution against SCO a valid reason for the gcc project to modify their code? Ask the developers. Only the people doing the work can say what they want their role in this community to be.
Social(Don't Tread On Me)--Would discontinuing support for SCO send a message: "If you stand before the community and falsely accuse and harass us, you should not expect the community to continue to support you. You are now outcast." Why would the developers care how they are perceived?
Explicitly Removing SCO support--Why not do it? IF it is a good idea to discontinue SCO support, why not remove it altogether? What's the cost?
Functionality--What does removing SCO support break?
Logistics--How much time and effort do the developers want to commit to excising this code?
Collateral Damage--Who else would be hurt by the gcc project's retribution against SCO?
Social(...thine Enemies)--Would the gcc developers be perceived as vindictive for removing SCO support? Why would the developers care how they are perceived? How would this affect future collaboration?
Why even bother to support it? (Score:1, Interesting)
SCO UNIX is all but dead. There are a few places that still use it. But it is pretty much legacy. It was never a very good platform (tehcnically) to begin with.
So I'm all for it, reguardless of political issues. GCC shouldn't need to be chained to dead architectures forever.
Besides, I'm still miffed that ROMP is no longer officially supported.
Ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw (Score:2, Interesting)
The reality is that SCO is now a criminal company by violating the GPL and the copyright of the thousands of developers who have written GPL'd code. Whether or not any SCO intellectual property was infringed remains to be seen, but what is certain, is that SCO is now infringing the intellectual property of the other 99.9% of the IP included in their SCO linux distribution by adding this rediculous SCO license on top. That's prohibited under the GPL. This is really more akin to a software license audit by Debian or OpenBSD. If SCO is not free, it should not be supported anywhere, period. Take it all out.
Re:And another thing! :-) (Score:3, Interesting)
I would hardly call this approach "against making money." If I violate Microsoft's license for any of their products (e.g., install a single copy of Windows on multiple systems), I should not be surprised if they withold support from me. The gcc folks are simply issuing a similar warning to SCO that the sense of the community is that SCO is violating the GPL and as a consequence, continued support for SCO products may be discontinued if they continue violating the GPL. This is probably more slack than they would get from a commercial software vendor had the violated the terms of the license.
Finally, both Linux and gcc are distributed under the terms of the GPL. If SCO sees fit to violate the GPL with regard to Linux, what is to say that they won't at some point in the future decide to violate the GPL with regard to gcc? As some of the other other posts have pointed out, if FSF decides to no longer support SCO OSes, SCO is free to continue to maintain their own branch of gcc *so long as they observe the GPL* with regard to how they distribute it. If this were to happen, I would be very surprised if SCO wouldn't pull the same stunt with regard to an SCO specific version of gcc (i.e., have a license for undisclosed SCO IP embedded in their binary only version of gcc).
Re:And another thing! :-) (Score:3, Interesting)
This is all about perception, not about who is right and who is wrong. Do you honestly believe that SCO think they are right? They are not stupid, they know the game and they are playing it well, so far. Now they are in the "we are getting greedy" phase, and it will be their undoing - can you say "Enron"?
In the meantime, these actions and shenanigans are not going to show corporate purchasers and architects, let alone corporate senior management, anything about the stability and availability of open source software. Available as in "Can I use it in my business".
It also sets a very bad precedent. What if Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds get into a seriously major spat over Linus' continued use of Bitkeeper? Or Richard Stallman and the rest of the world for referring to Linux instead of GNU/Linux. When is the next time he will pick up his toys and leave the playground? After all is said and done, I think this will prove to be detrimental to the overall Free software movement. As soon as people start talking about "a little bit of harm to some members of the community to protect everybody", as it says in README.SCO, my skin starts to crawl, and a very visceral urge to run and keep running comes screaming at me with 200 mph. This is how the wich burnings started, the pogroms, the holocaust. Just about every other bit of evil in the world was preceded by words to that effect.
Bottom line is that victimising unsuspecting, innocent SCO users for a small and essentially meaningless political gain (what is the net effect gain in the scheme of things?) is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It is the SCO users that stand to be hurt by this protest (for that is how this whole thing is labelled), not SCO itself.
And that is a stupid, shortsighted, self-serving, egotistical action.
sco gcc still stuck on gcc 2 w/ dwarf-1 (Score:4, Interesting)
Some facts:
SCO pays at least one employee to maintain gcc and gdb for SCO operating systems.
SCO's supported version of gcc is gcc 2. They are working on upgrading to gcc 3 but are not planning to support gcc until gcc 3.4.
SCO's gcc generates dwarf-1 debugging format (not dwarf-2). I've researched this, and the only dwarf-1 compilers I sighted were proprietary compilers from Diab and Absoft and the SCO version of gcc. All other versions of gcc in the field use other debugging formats now (dwarf-2 and stabs+, mostly).
My opinion: disengaging from SCO would hurt SCO's version of the gnu toolchain materially. Which would be good.
Will SCO respect the copyright assignment? (Score:4, Interesting)
From their filing of 2003-03-06:
"80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property."
SCO denies that any GPL software is the copyrighted property of anybody. This means that SCO denies that the Free Software Foundation owns the copyright to gcc.
That's SCO's interpretation of copyright law. You don't agree with it, and I don't agree with it, but in the hands of an expensive lawyer such as David Boies, it could cause a great deal of grief to the Free Software Foundation.
You think so, and I think so. SCO thinks that nobody holds this copyright. Which would leave the status of a copyright assignment in limbo.
Can you cite any recent public statement from a SCO officer that says otherwise?
As far as wanting help goes: my copyright assignment with the FSF says that I indemnify the FSF in case I contribute any code that contains other people's intellectual property.
Developer
I'm curious -- is that clause in your copyright assignment?
Which means, given SCO's litigious behavior, that I won't even be reading any contributions from any SCO employees in the future. I don't want to be the target of an SCO lawsuit.
Re:And another thing! :-) (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I see the free software community handling this in an open, responsible and reasonable manner as being good for the the image of free software. README.SCO strikes a good ballance between those saying "cut 'em off" or "insert bugs" and those saying "do nothing." Doing nothing weakens the GPL. Taking rash action that harms SCO users would do exactly what you are suggesting would happen. Warning that there are consequences to violating the GPL is a reasonable middle ground.
On a different note...
This has already happened; you aparently missed it.Re:SCO maintains GCC on their platforms (Score:5, Interesting)
For obvious reasons I cannot comment on this. I have an opinion but I cannot share it. All I can say is that from what I have read publically, SCO is not charging for other people's IP but what they believe to be their own. But this is off-topic. This thread was about my involvement with the GCC project.
I'm sure that as an individual, you're a person of enormous ability and integrity. However, you work for a company that has proven themselves time after time to be little better than whoremasters.
Since my brain was compiled with gcc -pedantic, I must point out that in effect, since they are my masters (at least at work) you are calling me a whore :) I'm just kidding trying to keep this light ... dont take offence :)
And can you, in all conscience, argue that open source coders are making a rational decision if they voluntarily allow any of their efforts to be used by SCO, their employees, their customers or their developers?
Well, yes I can. There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects out there. Unless I am missing something SCO is not suing, nor have they stated any intention to, nor do I believe they ever would, any of those projects. Please bare in mind that the scope of the lawsuit is confined to breach of contract with IBM, not against the entire community. The fact that the community has missed this point and taken that lawsuit as having a much broader scope than it does is unfortunate.
However, I would like to address your actual question. I understand that people are upset with SCO, I even understand why. However, GCC is a program, it is not a political platform. That program runs on multiple architectures, one of which is SCO OpenServer. Even though the majority of my contributions are aimed at improving support for that platforms, not all are. Even if all my contributions were SCO-centric, they still have value beyond the scope of the individual platform. Each platform has its quirks and nuances, and when those quirks and nuances exposes wekanesses in the overal design of the program, addressing those weaknesses helps improve the program for everybody. Even though my contributions are SCO-centric, this too is not unusual. Linux folks tend to submit Linux-centric patches, FreeBSD folks submit FreeBSD-centric patches etc. It is simply the nature of the beast. In order for the open source model to really work, you generally take code where it is offered.
I am a geek. I love writing code, and I do so at every opportunity I get. The fact that I work for a company that is in disfavour with the community does not (or should not) have any bearing on contributions to open source projects. But look at some of the history of this particular project. At one point, Microsoft was public enemy #1, yet people still worked really hard to get things like DJGPP and Cygwin working, all the while trying to rally support against Microsoft. If you (or others) are real geeks, then I am surprised you care so much. Its all about the code and the joy of coding. All this political stuff makes my head ache :)
Having said that ... I am off to do another make bootstrap on gcc 3.4 :) Have an absolutely fabulous timezone.
Kean
Re:SCO maintains GCC on their platforms (Score:1, Interesting)
I say no free software project should *ever* accept any code from anybody with any connection to SCO. You might be secretly putting some submarine patents in gcc them claiming you didn't really mean to so now gcc belongs to SCO.