Groklaw Traces Contribution of ABIs back to SCO.

Ptraci writes "Over at Groklaw they have been doing some digging and have found evidence that old SCO and Caldera did in fact contribute those files that they now want to charge us for."

Re:but of course

[WindBourne]

Not one of TSCOG claims has ever been proven

In fact, just about everything that they have claimed gets disproved rather quickly via groklaw. While there are a few things left, it only requires for SCO to submit the evidence so that groklaw can look at it.

Re:Their contribution...

[jrumney]

The brilliant thing is that Caldera PGP signed the files that they released. So it is going to be extremely hard for SCO to argue that someone else released them, or that they were released by a rogue employee without permission.

FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!!!

[Cronopios]

According to this article [enciclopediavirus.com], the FBI has visited SCO, seized a server and several workstations, and arrested several programmers and bosses.

Can anybody confirm this?

Re:Mirror please.

[inode_buddha]

I've put copies in html here [steigenlinux.org], postscript here [steigenlinux.org], and PDF is here. [steigenlinux.org]

Regarding Groklaw's Slashdotting

[santiag0]

There is a paypal link for those that wish to contribute a little something on the home page (once you can get it to load).

Maybe a few $ here and there from slashdot readers, and they can get a more robust setup, and survive the next slashdot link.

No pressure. Just a thought. I've given a little twice. Groklaw is a tremendous resource for those following the SCO/IBM/Redhat/Novell saga. PJ rocks!

Related Story

[ByteSlicer]

MozillaQuest is running a related story here [mozillaquest.com]

Groklaw is presenting all of the information

[TrentC]

Considering they covered both sides of the Novell's original "Wait, we own those Unix copyrights", SCO's "No you don't, here's an amendment to our agreement" response, and Novell's "Hmm, we don't have a copy of that, but it looks legitimate..." reply with equal weight, I have no worries about Groklaw's ability to give both sides fair treatment.

Remember, Groklaw (and everyone else watching the lawsuit) wants SCO to give us the evidence they claim(ed) to have. If there's an appearance of anti-SCO bias, then it's because SCO is giving information that can be quickly (and thoroughly) disproven.

Jay (=

Re:Their contribution...

[_|()|\|]

which IMHO is he kernel of the case

While Groklaw's research in this matter is comendable, the comparatively recent allegation of purloined header files was never central to the dispute. It started with RCU and JFS.

Most of the drama has been behind the scenes, as Novell has revealed how little of Unix SCO may actually own. Indeed, Novell may be entitled to 95% of the money from Microsoft and Sun that has funded this suit thusfar.

Assignment of copyrights and carefull vetting

[JohnQPublic]

This is exactly the reason why the FSF requires you to assign your copyright to them when you contribute code to GNU projects. Likewise the Apache Software Foundation and their projects. Someone should always have clear legal title to the entire project. Otherwise nobody may have legal status to defend it in court or to file suit against infringers.

The other side of this is that the ownership of all contributions need to be vetted by the person/group that receives ownership. Some groups ask new contributors for a written document asserting that they own what they're contributing, especially if the contributor works for a software company. That changes the legal situation - if The TDP Group sues the XYZ Foundation for stealing their code, the XYZ Foundation has a clear defense:

"Your Honor, we were told by Joe Coder that he had legal ownership of the code in question and he assigned that ownership to us. Naturally, if you determine otherwise, we'll comply with your order to remove it. However we believe that any damages

etc. are a matter between the plaintiff and Mr. Coder"

Now the last thing I want is for The TDP Group to sue me for code I put into XYZ, but if they find out I did it what will likely happen anyway.

Re:FBI investigates SCO as author of MyDoom virus!

[Anthony Boyd]

I don't buy it. The site says they got their information from IBM. That runs totally counter to IMB's don't-talk-to-the-press rule. It looks to me like an attempt to spread bad information, pin the blame on IBM, and tarnish them.

I'd love to be wrong, though. The idea of SCO writing a virus against itself for PR purposes is almost too funny. I'd imagine a company or two might sue SCO to cover wages spent doing MyDoom cleanup. Ha ha. That would make my heart feel soooo good.

ARTICLE TEXT, ripped from the fish

[macdaddy]

> Captured the culprit of the Mydoom? 30-01-2004
According to some agencies inform into the news, the FBI would have made some haltings that could be related to the presumed author of the worm of greater propagation of history, and for the surprise of all, it would be in the offices of one of his "victims".

The information, says that the FBI stopped several programmers and in charge of the company SCO, at the same time which other searches and investigations were made in the central offices of the same one, retiring of them a servant and several workstations.

The details of the operations of the special services were not revealed officially, nevertheless, are known by mouth of a representative of company IBM. According to its words, the operation would be connected directly with the judicial lawsuits between IBM and SCO by the code of Linux.

But most surprising, and in agreement with the existing information, it is that all the haltings also would be connected with the investigation lead by the FBI, in relation to the epidemic carried out by the new worm of Internet, Mydoom (also known like Novarg).

Supposedly, on the basis of the analysis of the map of expansion and the speed of the same one, the FBI would suspect that the origin of the infection has been the own SCO.

This is paradoxical, since the company was the target of the anticipated attacks of refusal on watch of the worm in its two versions. The other white one was Microsoft. Possibly, if this is confirmed, somebody of the personnel of the company would have thought (or it would have done it by indication of some superior one), that the action was a form ready to the public opinion in favor of the judgment of the company against Linux.

SCO takes ahead a irreconciliable legal war on the use of licenses of parts of the code of UNIX in Linux, which means thousands of million dollars.

The own SCO and Microsoft, have offered you compensate of 250,000 dollars each one, by information that take to the capture of the author of the Mydoom.

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it some hours ago, while the site still worked...

In a very short summary, they showed, as always with plenty of links and examples, that those files tehy previously claimed was infringing, was released by Caldera/SCO, signed with their PGP key.
They provides links to their webpage, where you can download the rpms, they show you how to verify for yourself, that the packages, containing errno.h and other files, was signed by Caldera, which therefore means that those packages was intentionally released and signed by someone with access to the private keys of Caldera.

They also show that those files, errno.h and others, contain NO copyright text, which was one of the points that SCO was bitching about.

So even if Linus wrote the files, used in Linux, himself, Caldera also released similar files, under the GPL.

All in all, I think it was a pretty good article, that refuted, or whatever the word is, the claims made by SCO.

Score:
Groklaw +2
SCO still 0

Full Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is the result of a group research project, compiled and primarily written by Frank Sorenson with Pamela Jones. The special footnoted article explaining some of the terms for nonprogrammers was written by Nick Richards. The research group was primarily composed of Frank Sorenson, Dr. Stupid, Harlan Wilkerson, Rand McNatt, Roland Buresund, and Pamela Jones, all of whom contributed both research and writing, with input from some Linux kernel contributors. Everyone worked on editing, including an invited group of Groklaw regulars. However, Frank carried the load more than anyone else, so his name is on the finished article.

We are now publishing the article and welcome Groklaw readers' further contributions, corrections, improvements, and comments. This is an ongoing project. This article is the first in a series where we'll discuss the System V UNIX ABI, or Application Binary Interface. We approached the research as, What if Linus Torvalds had not already claimed paternity [groklaw.net] of most of the header files? Then what?

The article will first explain what the ABI is and what it does, then discuss whether the code was released under the GPL and if so whether management at SCO knew and approved, and finally show how the Linux files that pertain to this do not appear to be infringing files that SCO can claim.

For those who are not programmers, such as myself, there is a footnoted section to explain in greater detail and in plain English what ABIs and APIs and shared libraries are and how they work. If you read it first, it will clarify the terminology for you and you will be able to follow the thread in the article more easily. At least, it helped me tremendously.

I think you will see from this article alone that if SCO is planning to sue anyone over the ABI files, unless there are facts we haven't unearthed, they seem to be leaning on a rickety bamboo reed.

GROKLAW TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT THE ABI FILES
~by Frank Sorenson et al

Back in January 2003, word leaked out [linuxbusinessweek.com] that SCO was planning to charge Linux users for "System V Intellectual Property" in Linux. SCO created a new business division called SCOSource [sco.com] to come up with new ways to make money from this "intellectual property". The original SCOSource Presentation [caldera.com] (PowerPoint version [caldera.com]) talks of licensing SCO's shared UNIX Libraries from OpenServer and UnixWare for use in Linux.

A Little Background: What Are ABI Files? [1]

As background information, shared libraries are files containing information to be loaded when an application is run. They usually implement common routines, and their inclusion simplifies programming, reduces file size, and standardizes interfaces. A simple example of this would be the "copy file" and "move file" commands: both commands check file permissions and manipulate the file system. When applications have a great deal of functionality in common, this functionality is often placed into shared libraries.

Shared libraries are architecture, operating-system, and version specific. Executables for different systems follow various standard formats, such as a.out, ELF, and COFF. To load an application, the system must do several things: the system interprets the format of the executable (or binary), loads any shared libraries referenced, and begins executing the code found in the binary.

If the executable is in a different format from those the system supports, or if the library files are for the wrong architecture or operating system version, the binary normally will not run. In 1991, Intel announced [google.com] the availability of the iBCS-2 (Intel Binary Compatibility

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[MonkeyDluffy]

found technical reasons to remove the infringing code.

Actually, they couldn't find any reason to keep the code, since it was poorly written and not very useful.

-MDL

Re:But didn't Linus say he wrote those?

[spitzak]

No this is not errno.h and so on.

The ABI files being discussed here are some files that it was considered quite likely SCO owns, and were never included in Linux although they were added by some third parties to installations to port their software from SCO to Linux. They duplicate the SCO ABI which is different than the Linux ABI. It is a lot like Wine being used to run Windows programs, though a lot easier.

In fact these files probably contain code to patch over the differences between the Linux errno.h and the Unix one, so it certainly is not the Linus header files.

The header file stuff is a joke anyways, as Daryl clearly said many times that only Linux after 2.4 is infringing. The header files did not change between 2.2 and 2.4.

Re:Simple Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. The were obliged to not compete against the original SCO, that is all. That company is gone, and the contract did not go forward.

Groklaw /.'ed - Mirror of article here

[DDumitru]

This is an HTML w/o style tags mirror of the article itself (no posted comments).
Thanks Pamela et.al. Great Article
http://sd-mirror.dumitru.com/gl.htm [dumitru.com]

Re:Groklaw is biased against SCO already

[ComputerSlicer23]

Your kidding right? Tolkein's stories have been widely read, and been considered with high reguard for 40 years (they we're written and published between 1940-1955 if I remember correctly). Tolkein did one of the original translations of Beowulf, and is the one who published papers showing that it should be considered one of the great stories.

Tolkein's one of the most widely published books, and one of the more widely read books world wide. Tolkein wrote it to be a mythology for the British. That is to say, a mythology that the British could say was originally their own. Tolkein from what I've read was always searching for old original stories from Britain. That's how he turned up Beowulf. He wrote a child's story in "The Hobbit", and so many people requested more information about that world, about the time, that he expanded it to be one of the largest and most comprehensive stories of the time. Tolkein is the bench mark that any author would be happy to match.

I've got my original copy of LoTR's. It was one my brother read, that my sister read, that my other sister read. The one that I read, the one that I've loaned to lots of other people. My copy is from the mid 1970's, it's one my brother stole from the High School library, and it sure isn't a first printing. LoTR's was a major book the day it was published. If you didn't know about it in High School, that doesn't well known, or serious literature. Next I suppose you'll tell me about Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of relativity are "new theories", because they didn't teach them to you in your High School science class.

They don't make you read it in High School, but possibly that has something to do with the fact that it's 1500 pages long, and takes a great deal of time to read? Ever notice that most schools never require you to read novels longer then about 250 pages? It's a time commitment issue. No high school I know makes you read "Ulyesses" either (the book that is well over a thousand pages, that covers a single days events during the Civil War era). That doesn't mean it's not considered "serious literature" (as crappy as I hear it is to read).

Kirby

Re:Technology is Politics

[Krow10]

Their contribution was under GPL. They will have to disprove that first, which IMHO is he kernel of the case

After all these months and hot air, I'm *still* unclear on that point.

This particular point goes specifically to the claims made in this letter to Unix Licensees [lwn.net] that SCOX sent out a little over a month ago. If SCOX released those into linux under the GPL (and they did,) then they cannot go after *anyone* (including Unix licensees) for using a version of linux with those files without violating the GPL. Additionally, if *they* distribute a version of linux which contains those files (and they do) they are in violation of the copyright of every other contributer to any such linux distribution that they are distributing. Thus, pretty much any recipient of the above linked letter has a pretty good case for telling SCOX to pound sand (after consulting a lawyer to be sure) and IBM has a damned good case in their copyright countersuit. By pointing to the letter, and to the GPL ABI release by SCOX and then pointing to any linux distribution from SCOX's site in the recent past (and there have been plenty right up until 1/25 -- but oddly various locations keep disappearing with each DDoS) IBM can show good evidence that SCOX tried to sublicense linux (the letter) for containing something that they themselves released as GPL into linux (PGP signed files) and that, since they are in violation of the GPL terms, they do not have permission to distribute linux, which they are doing (get someone who's recently downloaded the kernel from the SCOX site to testify.) SCOX is SCOrewed. Cheers, Craig

Re:Their contribution...

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Actually you can. Quick google will bring up US makes digital signatures legally binding [silicon.com] from Silicon.com in November 1999. Even assuming that the judge is an utter bonehead over four years behind the law, this would be brought up in court.

Public thanks for Groklaw

[3Suns]

I'm not sure if it's been done, or if plans are in the works, but Groklaw has been a tremendous boon to the Open Source community. Everybody involved with making that site, especially Pamela Jones, has done an enormous amount of expensive work, pro bono, on our (the Open Source community's) behalf. The evidence is out there, and thanks to Groklaw it is being found and the world is being informed.

I'd like to point everybody to the little paypal button on the groklaw sidebar. They deserve credit for their work. Are there any plans for some kind of big party at a linux conference for Pam Jones et al.? Maybe after the case is settled.

(An FYI aside re: indian giver.)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Indian giver: a person who gives something to another and then takes it back or expects an equivalent in return.

The term "indian giver" is the result of a misunderstanding of the property law of an east-coast tribe, early in the settlement of former Europeans in North America.

Short form: The colonists thought they were buying the land. The Indians thought they were leasing it, with anual rent payments and lease renewals.

Needless to say, this led to considerable confusion and indignation when the indians came back for the next year's lease negotiations.

The colonists won. The winners get to write the history. The authors of the history get to embed their propaganda from the conflict (such as the term "indian giver") in future generation's language.

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

yes but then they would be open to further anti-trust actions

Re:If Microsoft bought SCO

[vidarh]

No, they would own licenses to resell and sublicense certain specific versions of the original Unix that is to a large extent irellevant outside SCO's fantasy world.

Re:Simple Answer

[vidarh]

It would be the FTC or the DOJ that would be looking at Microsoft, not the SEC. The SEC would be involved only if there were concerns about the reporting of either of the companies, or share price manipulation.

Re:ABI vs API

[Spinality]

In my experience, ABI is a relatively recent term.

In 'the olden days' the single term 'API' was used, and it covered the entire range of entry points, calling parameters, communication protocols, error handlers, return codes, and anything else a programmer would need to use the interface in question. This usage dates at least back to the early '70's and probably earlier.

While I like the precision of ABI and other neologisms, this does lead to confusion when we recast an old term like 'API' under a more restrictive definition.