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Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Sunday, November 30 2003 @ 09:03 PM EST

In its Supplemental Responses to IBM's Second Interrogatories and Second Requests for Documents, SCO gave this answer:

Insofar as this interrogatory seeks information as to whether plaintiff has ever distributed the code in question or otherwise made it available to the public, SCO has never authorized, approved or knowingly released any part of the subject code that contains or may contain its confidential and proprietary information and/or trade secrets for inclusion in any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution.

Cross your heart and hope to die, SCO? Or cross your fingers behind your back? Let's see what the evidence shows.

SCO has specifically mentioned the following four as being code at issue in this case: JFS, NUMA, RCU, and SMP, and while it is conceivable that the "subject code" they are talking about in this response to IBM's interrogatory is referring to some other code, it seems reasonable to look at the code they have mentioned publicly. Actually, it's more than reasonable. It's our only choice, until they tell us exactly what code they are complaining about with specificity. Is it true that they never "authorized, approved or knowingly released" any of this code for inclusion in any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution?

Let's start with JFS.

In the case of JFS, they not only distributed Linux with JFS, one of Caldera's employees, Christoph Hellwig, contributed code to JFS, as Groklaw reported on July 18. Here is a snip from that article:

Here is an email in which he tells an inquirer how to contribute to JFS, including this tidbit: "I've run native sysvfs tools under linux, but as now that I'm Linux sysvfs maintainer I'm looking into implementing free versions of it. . . . The JFS/Linux core team has setup a CVS commitinfo, but currently I'm the only one who receives it."

And here he encourages someone to donate to the main JFS repository at IBM and talks about his role:

"I'm one of the main commiters to JFS outside IBM and I'm really happy to see more people involved :)

"First I'd like to encourage you to contribute your userspace changes to the main JFS repository at IBM. For the 1.0.11 release I have added autoconf/automake support to easify portability and a bunch of portablity patches (mostly getting rid of linuxisms) is under way to the Core team."

He also posts to the freebsd list as freebsd-fs at freebsd.org.

Here is the press release when SCO in 2002 released "SCO Linux Server 4.0 for the Itanium (R) Processor Family" and which mentions that the product is based on United Linux. This SCO pagelists JFS as one of its features. . . .

They are complaining that IBM contributed JFS to Linux, but their own employee, from this evidence, was involved in helping out. On the day IBM announced JFS was being given to Linux, Hellwig is listed as making five contributions to the kernel.

And he is listed on this page of JFS contributors. Here is IBM's page on Who Is Using JFS? and it lists United Linux. So they not only released a distro with JFS in it under the GPL, their employee helped make it happen. Here is a page listing the Skunkworks team, and you will note that the first entry is Ronald Joe Record, a SCO employee (rr@sco.com), and JFS is listed for him. But in case you aren't yet convinced, here is a handy list for you of some other pages that mention JFS, collected by Rand McNatt and nw:
http://uk.sco.com/events/Partner_Briefings/March_2003/sco_os_update.ppt (mentions NUMA also)

http://caldera.com/developers/training/unitedlinux/Developer_web_2B-3.ppt

http://www.caldera.com/unitedlinux/info/unitedlinuxwhitepaper.pdf (JFS chapter on page 15-16.)

http://www.caldera.com/images/pdf/scooffice/SettingUpSCOofficeMailServeronSCOLinux.pdf (P. 8: "SCO Linux gives you a choice of four journaling filesystems, EXT3, Reiser, XFS and JFS.")

http://www.caldera.com/skunkware/COMPONENTS.html

http://www.caldera.com/images/pdf/scolinux/UnitedLinux_whitepaper.pdf(p. 13-15: "“The Journaled File System (JFS) is a full 64-bit file system. All of the appropriate file system structure fields are 64-bits in size. This allows JFS to support both large files and partitions. JFS was developed by IBM under the GPL license and is ported from its AIX systems. JFS provides a log-based, byte-level file system that was developed for transaction-oriented,  high performance systems. Scalable and robust, its advantage over non-journaled file systems is its quick restart capability. JFS can restore a file system to a consistent state in a matter of seconds or minutes.”)

http://www.caldera.com/products/scolinuxserveripf/features.html ("Journaling file systems add a higher level of reliability and faster recovery time. JFS, ReiserFS, XFS and Ext3 journaling file systems are included with SCO Linux Server. Each of these file systems has been tested and optimised for the best performance and stability.")

Here is another one, which mentions both JFS and XFS:

SCO Linux Server 4.0 (Powered by UnitedLinux 1.0) . . . . The SCO Linux Server 4.0 has many advanced enterprise filesystems, including ext2, ext3, reiserfs, jfs, and xfs, which of these have support for ACLs on SCO Linux 4.0?
What about SMP?

Hellwig worked on SMP also. Alex Roston has researched Hellwig and SMP and contributes this:

Christoph Hellwig is also a contributor to Linux's SMP systems. Here he proposes a patch that fixes the booting of an "SMP-compiled i386 kernel on a SMP-capable motherboard with" a CPU which is not SMP.

Linus replies to him with this note.

So Hellwig patches his patch.

Later, a SCO employee, Senior Programmer Torsten Duwe, (duwe@caldera.de) acknowledges Hellwig's code. He also discusses the issues around binding a process to a CPU. (Process affinity) This is obviously only an issue on machines with more than one CPU, otherwise the process is already bound to the single CPU on the system. Here he posts a piece of code by Nick Pollit from SGI which allows the 2.4 kernel to perform something called "process pinning." Later on in the same discussion he discusses a Red Hat patch for the SMP code.

On another occasion he discusses SMP support for Pentium-3 chips and suggests that given the number of different architectures Linux supports that SMP should be either per-architecture or a configuration option. I've found several other references to SMP and Christoph Hellwig, but only one other seems significant. In this exchange he proposes a change to Linux's gendisk handling.

Red Hat's Arjan van de Ven notes that the patch is SMP unsafe and Hellwig agrees that he will fix SMP problem if the patch is accepted, and if you follow the thread, it goes on a little longer with a discussion of whether Hellwig's code was inspired by someone else, and Hellwig acknowleges that he's rewriting another programmer's contribution.

In addition to his email address hch at ns.caldera.de, Christoph Hellwig also has another email address which he frequently uses for his Linux work. This address is hch at infradead.org. Here we see him making a reply to this post which discusses an SMP machine with problems, with a suggestion for either clearing up or diagnosing the problem.

In a thread called "Re: Longstanding networking / SMP issue?" Hellwig acknowledges some buggy code. In this post he makes a suggestion for someone having trouble with XFS on an SMP machine.

Looking at all this, we see that Hellwig didn't just post a patch because he was having a problem with SMP. He's performing a large number of programming tasks involving this issue. He's creating SMP code, forwarding SMP code written by others, rewriting code belonging to others that impinges on SMP, and acknowledging buggy SMP code. In addition, he's interacting with other people at SCO. Hellwig's own SMP patch is acknowleged by another SCO programmer and a former SCO employee, Tigran A. Aivazian, who is acknowleged as a contributor to the Linux SMP HOWTO, although whether Mr. Aivazian was involved in the HOWTO while employed by SCO is unknown.

Further, we also see Hellwig involving himself in technical discussions revolving around SMP, and he also makes diagnoses and suggests workarounds for SMP code. Lastly, he also shows an awareness that his code needs to take SMP issues into account. He's also listed as the active maintainer of two other file systems under Linux, the FREEVXFS and SYSV filesystems.

So it should come as no surprise that he's made many contributions to another important Linux filesystem, the XFS filesystem contributed the the Linux kernel by those nice folks at SGI. While he's not listed as the filesystem's maintainer, he's so important to this effort that SGI has given him two more email addresses, "hch at sgi dot com," and "hch at lab343.munich.sgi dot com." He also has the authority to merge code into this subsystem, as you can see here. The document at this URL is full of emails that read like this example:

Date: Tue Jan 14 07:19:17 PST 2003
Workarea: lab343.munich.sgi.com:/home/hch/repo/slinx/2.5.x-xfs
Author: cattelan
Merged by: hch
Merged mods: 2.4.x-xfs:slinx:136126a
The following file(s) were checked into:
bonnie.engr.sgi.com:/isms/slinx/2.5.x-xfs

In other words, on January 14th of 2003, Christoph Hellwig merged an XFS patch by Russell Cattelan into the "lab343.munich.sgi.com:/home/hch/repo/slinx/2.5.x-xfs" work area. You'll also note that he's merging kernel 2.4 code into the 2.5 kernel.

Here's another document where he's working with the XFS code. Here he writes about checking files into "bonnie.engr.sgi.com:/isms/slinx/2.4.x-xfs" .

He also acts like a teacher/boss. Note his comments in the following documents. Here he replies to Andrew Morton with a suggestion for making his XFS patch better, and Mr. Morton replies.

Here are more URLs listing XFS commits. In the first URL he commits filesystem code from three different email addresses:

http://source.mvista.com/pipermail/linuxppc-commit/ 2002-October/002793.html

http://ftp.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/linux/kernel/ v2.5/snapshots/patch-2.5.58-bk1.log

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.5/ snapshots/old/patch-2.5.63-bk2.log

http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/linux/kernel/v2.5/testing/cset/cset-1.1039.1.1.txt

His work rates frequent mention in the 2.5.* kernel release notes. Once again, it happens under three different email addresses. Note how much of this work involves the XFS filesystem, here and here.

Here Hellwig deals with an XFS bug. And here he's listed in connection with several XFS bugs. See number 452, 835, 840, 861, and 870. In other words, he was deeply involved with porting the XFS file system from SGI into Linux, and he performed all of a chief programmer's usual functions - coding, debugging, merging patches and codebases, supervising, and instructing.

Worse for SCO, in addition to Hellwig's work on XFS and SMP, we also see from this post that Hellwig's supervisors, in this case Ralf Flaxa, (rf@caldera.de) are aware that he is online and making changes to the Linux kernel:

Reading this thread and previous requests I see a need by ISVs and applications to determine at runtime certain processor related features. They can roughly be grouped into:
1. number-crunching power in general
  • number of CPUs
  • CPU family and type
  • BogoMips (per CPU and/or overall)
  • SMP capabilities (here kernel scalability could be an item)
2. features specific to a processor
  • for x86 e.g. the "flags" and *_bug fields
  • info about FPU, MMU and the like
"I have asked Christoph to work on a proposal and present it to this list. I think we agree that there is a need and demand for a standard way to gather this info and that /proc/cpuinfo was just a bad start - so I would like to give it another chance. This is Ralf speaking as director of Linux development at Caldera and as technical lead for the LSB sample implementation."
You might also notice the kernel version numbers. Where SMP is concerned, he's not just talking about code in 2.2. He (or his code) discusses 2.4 (though I'm not sure which release he's discussing) and 2.4.10. Lastly, most of the posts are dated after the January 5th, 2001 release of the 2.4 kernel, so Hellwig not only contributed to SMP, his contributions involved 2.4. One of them is even dated July 13, 2003, long after SCO filed suit against IBM. The XFS code is much the same, though most of it deals with the 2.5 codebase.

Mr. Hellwig has been at the heart of three important initiatives aimed at making Linux 'enterprise ready,' JFS, SMP, and XFS.

So not only was Hellwig making contributions while a Caldera employee, his supervisor is on the record that he was supposed to be doing so. Here Hellwig discusses RCU with a SuSE guy. Aside from Hellwig, there is a great deal of other proof of SCO's distributing SMP in their Linux distributions, again largely from Rand. Here is a SCO support page on OpenLinux, "How to enable SMP (multiple processor)support" with detailed instructions on how to do it.

Here is the support page for "What is patch 4924, the SCO Linux 4.0 SMP Kernel Oracle update?"

Here is the page for "What is patch 3364, the SCO Linux 4.0 SMP kernel security update?"

And here is the page that tells us that "By default our kernel is compiled for SMP support."

Well, there is so much, how about we just list all the references to SMP?

http://www.caldera.com/support/docs/scolinux/README-SP1.html#sp1apt
Another of their employees, Tigran Aivazian, is listed here and given credit because he "fixed '0.00 in /proc/uptime on SMP' bug."

http://www.caldera.com/support/docs/scolinux/ sp2/relnotes-sp2.html

http://www.caldera.com/products/ workstation/datasheet.html ("Linux 2.4 Kernel – The new Linux 2.4 kernel is a key component of the OpenLinux Workstation product. The Linux 2.4 kernel provides significantly improved hardware support for new hardware devices, improved SMP scalability, greater memory support, faster I/O performance, and many other performance boosting enhancements.")

http://www.caldera.com/products/preview/ errata.html

http://www.practical-tech.com/ infrastructure/i01092003.htm("UnitedLinux is an attempt to create a standard business server Linux with common file directory conventions, command options, installation routines and high-end options like clustering and shared memory multiprocessing (SMP).")

http://www.caldera.com/images/pdf/partners/ BCLP_LinuxWhitepaper.pdf (P. 6.)

What about NUMA?

As it happens, SCO Linux 4 lists it as one of its features, along with JFS and SMP:

Features of SCO Linux 4 include:

Linux 2.4.19 Kernel – The core of SCO Linux Server 4.0 is the 2.4.19 Linux kernel. New features include broadened USB support, Logical Volume Manager, improved journaling file system support, POSIX-ACLS, new O(1) scheduler (improves SMP support), Asynchronous I/O, Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS), PCI Hot Plug Support on supported hardware, NUMA support, and many other performance enhancing capabilities.

And this white paper lists NUMA on page 10. Caldera should have known about NUMA in Linux: here is a description of ccNUMA in Caldera's OpenLinux Documentation.

Well, that's three down and only one to go, RCU.

I had more trouble finding proof that SCO distributed a kernel with RCU. But, thanks to the Groklaw community, and especially nw, we got that one done eventually. Here's a guy who reports on downloading the 2.4.19 kernel from SCO's ftp site and finding RCU patches:

The SCO RPMs for the 2.4.19 kernels do not contain the generic 2.4.19 GPL kernel source code (linux-2.4.19.tar.bz2). These RPMs contain the SCO GPL patches (some are which RCU patches to the kernel) and "specfiles" to create the SCO 2.4.19 GPL kernels from the generic 2.4.19 kernel source code. The reason the SCO RPMs do not contain the generic 2.4.19 GPL kernel source code (linux-2.4.19.tar.bz2) can be found in an email from a UnitedLinux developer at: http:// marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104218778023663&w=4

The generic 2.4.19 GPL kernel source code (linux-2.4.19.tar.bz2) can be found at: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/ kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.19.tar.bz2 - Copy this file to the RPM source directory before building the SCO 2.4.19 GPL kernels.

Then, I couldn't seem to find any more on RCU, so I put out the call for folks to try to find a bit more, knowing there could be some skeptics in the crowd. Dr. Stupid, as always, came through with skill and charm. Here is his email:
Here's an article about SCO Linux 4, showing it's based on UL and thus SuSE.

Here's a SCO page talking about how to update SCO Linux 4, note that it gives the explicit kernel version - "k_deflt-2.4.19-246.i586.rpm" Date is Feb 2003.

Google cache of above just in case.

Note that SCO did distribute the kernel updates themselves. Allegedly it's rather harder to get the kernel from them these days. But they talk of the "United Linux SP1 CD" which SuSE could send you if you ask them nicely. Here is a page which verifies that SCO was using the SuSE kernel (though he's referring to the pre-service pack 1 version)

And while this may have been posted before on Groklaw, it bears repeating in this context: Christoph Hellwig, nodding approvingly about RCU and helping out.

Also check here. That "k_deflt-2.4.19-246.i586.rpm" was made available on many sites, such as here. Search on google for "k_deflt-2.4.19-246.i586.rpm" for more)

Note that this mirror site has the kernel built for various processors (athlon, SMP etc) but they are all built from the same source RPM which is at the bottom... kernel-source-2.4.19.SuSE-152.i586.rpm . Yes folks, remember that all the United Linux chaps were shipping the exact same kernel: SuSE's kernel. But that kernel isn't the plain 2.4.19 kernel, it's patched (with 152 patches to be exact!)

So, I downloaded the source RPM and unpacked it, to see just what SCO was shipping, under the GPL, in its SCO Linux 4 product.

Well, well... in the "kernel" folder of the source package there is a file which isn't in the vanilla 2.4.19 kernel. That file is called rcupdate.c and I'll give you a short excerpt:

/*
* Read-Copy Update mechanism for mutual exclusion
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
* the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
* (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307,
USA.
*
* Copyright (c) International Business Machines Corp., 2001
* Copyright (C) Andrea Arcangeli SuSE, 2001
*
* Author: Dipankar Sarma ,
* Andrea Arcangeli B^!

*
* Based on the original work by Paul McKenney
* and inputs from Andrea Arcangeli, Rusty Russell, Andi Kleen etc.
* Papers:
* http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/paper/rclockpdcsproof.pdf
* http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking/rclock_OLS.2001.05.01c.sc.pdf
(OLS2001)
*
* For detailed explanation of Read-Copy Update mechanism see -
* http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking/rcupdate.html
*
*/

Leans back, lights cigar.... B^!

Oh, and btw, SCO could hardly have been ignorant about the enterprise level features going into UnitedLinux, as they crowed about them.

P.S. Moreover, the changelog for the kernel mentions rcu patches back in 2001, so the original kernel that SCO Linux 4 shipped with would have had RCU too.

So, there we have it. All four. And just in time for December 5, too. I do hope Judge Wells enjoys detail. While no one can yet know for sure what SCO meant in its response to the interrogatory, I think we can safely say that they cannot claim that the were unaware that they had released, and even were contributing toward, these enterprise-enabling features of Linux.

  


Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? | 327 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: Budgreen on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:04 AM EST
all I can say is WOW!

that is a lot of digging, as far as I can follow (and not an expert) it looks to
be good to put out.



---
no! no! Don't listen to the IBM lawyers! look at the wookie!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Errata
Authored by: Dark on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:10 AM EST
I found some grammar errors: "employeed by", "important and
Linux filesystem", and "Hellwig discusses RCU with SuSE guy".

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Errata - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 12:12 PM EST
BUSTED !!!!
Authored by: brenda banks on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:12 AM EST
awesome collection
this will just blast them out of the water
IBM can sure blast them out of the seat with this


---
br3n

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: Alex on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:13 AM EST
This URL:

http://www.linux-sxs.org/pipermail/linux-users/200%203-June/017827.html
has gone 404.

Also, note that Thorsten Duwe's job title is "Senior Programmer."

Alex

---
Destroying SCO one bozon at a time

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: shaun on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:14 AM EST
PJ you are simply amazing. This is your best work yet. I don't even want to
know how long you worked on this but I hope the lawyers for IBM get this by
Friday.

I'll be spending some time going through all these links but believe me I
will.

May I cut and paste this article to my Yahoo group?

--Shaun

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: cybervegan on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:16 AM EST
I'm doing a 'straw poll' on the links: this one didn't work:

"In a thread called 'Re: Longstanding networking / SMP issue?' Hellwig
->acknowledges<- some buggy code. In this post he makes a suggestion for
someone having trouble with XFS on an SMP machine."

->..<- marks the link: it points to http://tinyurl/qr7v, which dispays a
SQL error, so this may mean that the target host is down or broken.

I'll continue checking when I get home from work (it's now 1515 localtime, and
I'll be home about 1800).

-cybervegan


---
Stand and fight we do consider
Reminded of an inner pact between us
That's seen as we go
And ride there
In motion
To fields in debts of honor
Defending

[ Reply to This | # ]

Very interesting to see it all in one place
Authored by: freeio on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:17 AM EST
Congrats on this one. I plan go over it in detail after work today.

What is amazing here is the brazenness and sheer volume of the lies that TSG is
attempting to pass off. All of this has been done out in the open, and yet
their Goebels strategy continues unabated.

Their statements in this regard are stright from the mouth of Bart Simpson:

I didn't do it!
Nobody saw me!
You can't prove it!

---
73 de w4ti

[ Reply to This | # ]

This article permits SCO two answers...
Authored by: webster on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:19 AM EST
Since this conclusively shows they have distributed some of their code and
business secrets and methods under the GPL, there are only two possibilities
that make their discovery response correct:

1. They did not "knowingly" do this. SCO officers did not know
what their "rogue" or misguided employees were doing. This is weak
and hardly likely.

2. They have some entirely different areas of code in mind other than the areas
discussed here. This means they knew about the code discussed above (numa, rcu
jfs...), but IBM slipped in other code that they did not know about.

They obviously don't want to disclose what it is. It might disappear like all
other suggested evidence has.

[ Reply to This | # ]

has anyone asked Christoph Hellwig
Authored by: phrostie on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:19 AM EST
i've read quite a few references to Christoph Hellwig. it seems he is in
between the pervierbial rock and a hard place.
has anyone asked his side of the story?

---
=====
phrostie
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/cad-linux

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:23 AM EST
Great work by everybody involved. There can be no question that SCO released, and contributed to, versions of Linux with the Four Horsemen of the Infringecalypse.

Read what SCO says, though. They say that they never "knowingly released any part of the subject code that contains or may contain its confidential and proprietary information and/or trade secrets"...

This is consistent with SCO's current position and filings before the court. They still don't know if there is any confidential material in JFS, RCU, SMP, or NUMA components. They are waiting for IBM to reveal in discovery information that will prove that there were infringements of the contracts. While SCO may suspect that indeed, SCO might have released confidential information, they haven't knowingly released it -- because they still don't know.

So, my suggestion for the article is to leave it intact, except for the preamble. I would change that to a simple statement to the effect that "SCO has claimed that they haven't knowingly released yada yada, but they cannot claim that the were unaware that they had released, and even contributing toward, these enterprise-enabling features of Linux."

As always, I stand in awe of what a few committed people can do with time, Google, and passion. Way to go.

thad

[ Reply to This | # ]

Knockout!
Authored by: seeks2know on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:25 AM EST
PJ,

This is absolutely a knockout blow to SCO's case.

What a marvelous job. When do you sleep?

Thanks for this and all of your work.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: fjaffe on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:39 AM EST
Fabulous work, PJ. Now, if we could demonstrate that the RCU contributors were not contributing derivative or "confidential information", then it seems that SCO would have no legs to stand on whatsoever. I mention this because some of these key contributors (Paul McKenney, Rusty Russell, and Dipankar Sarma) are from IBM.

For example, this page shows published works that apparently are related to the topic of program locking techniques (IANAP) and analysis which are independent of operating system, and pre-date the submitted RCU code by 5 years or more.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: aug24 on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:43 AM EST
Very good work ;-)

I expect that SCO's lawyers and liers will say "while we knew CH and IBM
were developing XXXX we didn't realise that the code IBM was donating was the
code now in question which contains our trade secrets", ie anything that
once had been on the same file server as something of SCO's.

Of course, this is true because they didn't know they had any trade secrets at
the time, because under most people's definition of 'derivative', they
haven't!

No, I can't see how anyone with a brain is going to accept that argument.

Incidentally, given CH's contribution, and the public 'line-for-line copying'
claims by Darl, that's another hole in SCO's foot anyway.

Justin.

---
--
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: PolR on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:43 AM EST
There is another angle we should look into. How many of the nearly 600 files SCO
has identified were available in a SCO distributed version? How different the
identified files are from the SCO distributed version (in terms of line of code,
patches and functionality?) How many of these files contain Chris Hellwig
patches or have been publicly commented by him?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: rand on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 10:47 AM EST
I know you want proofreading, but here's something that specifically proves that Caldera should have known about NUMA in Linux: a description of ccNUMA in Caldera's OpenLinux Documentation.

The docservers were down this weekend, so I didn't have a chance to pick their brains. I'll check tham out and report later.

If anyone else wants to scour them, the ones I know about are
Openlinux
UnixWare 7
OpenServer
OpenUnix 8
UnixWare7.1.3

If I find any more I'll post those, too.

---
Dim gstrIANAL As String
(Oh, Lord, get me off this project...)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: Waterman on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:03 AM EST
This quote: 'I have asked Christoph to work on a proposal and present it to
this list. I think we agree that there is a need and demand for a standard way
to gather this info and that /proc/cpuinfo was just a bad start - so I would
like to give it another chance. This is Ralf speaking as director of Linux
development at Caldera and as technical lead for the LSB sample
implementation.' not only shows that persons inside Caldera knew that work on
SMP was being done, but that the managers were instructing employees such as
Christoph to do it and post it outside of Caldera's internal e-mail for others
to see.

Good find.

[ Reply to This | # ]

another way this is useful
Authored by: dulitz on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:11 AM EST
I didn't see any typos or thinkos that were different from those others have
already found.

Vis-a-vis IBM's Motion to Compel, while SCO will make their derivative works
argument, it seems to me that IBM has a very strong response based on this
information:

"SCO claims we released trade secrets and confidential information, which
they identify only by using these four acronyms. Either the acronyms are
sufficient to identify the infringing code, or they are not. If they are
sufficient, then SCO knowingly contributed to and distributed the infringing
code under the GPL, in which case SCO's sworn response is false and they must
be compelled to provide a truthful one. If they are not sufficient, then SCO
has failed to provide in discovery any specific evidence in support of its
claim, in which case SCO must be compelled to provide such, if it
exists."

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO are back to GPL == Public Domain (SCO still has Linux source on ftp site)
Authored by: smtnet1 on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:13 AM EST
This evidence blows their case out of the water because of the GPL, so I think
they will be back to the GPL == Public Domain nonsence. Of course they have
still told a lie in their court filings about not knowing they had distributed
this code.

One thing I have noticed in the SCO team is that they will not let facts get in
the way of what they are trying to do.

Soon they will realize that this case IS going to get to court (unless it is
dismissed) and SCO will have to explain their libel and slander. Of course they
will also have to face the IBM countersuit which is based on solid provable
claims.

Everyone does know that Linux Kernel Source is STILL available from the SCO ftp
site? right.

ftp://ftp.sco.com//pub/updates/OpenLinux/3.1.1/Workstation/CSSA-2003-020.0/SRPMS
/

[ Reply to This | # ]

Pj - you rule
Authored by: SaveDrury on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:14 AM EST
IANALBASOTI (by any stretch of the imagination) - but isn't there some kind of
"friend of the court" document process where the informed public can
send data to the court regarding a case? I think there's even a latin term for
it.

All that being said - if this process does exist, are you planning on
formalizing this in some form of legalease and getting it to IBM or the Court
directly?

That would be the best thing since .... i dunno.. iChat AV.

;-)

thanks again for such a remarkable website. i think i'm on Groklaw now more
than /. which is not good for me getting things done at work.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: jaynan on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:18 AM EST
Great work digging this out! It's more confirmation of what we already knew:
OldSCO/Caldera let the genie out of the bottle a long time ago, and
NewSCO/Canopy/Boies wants it back in, and they want everybody who talked
to/looked at the genie to pay them to do so. IBM should be able to nail their
coffin shut without this, but now they get to do what my dad likes: USE A BIGGER
HAMMER! Of course the fun part is that Red Hat can use it, and whomever else
they decide to drag into this fi$hing expedition. Novell.....are you reading
Groklaw yet?

jaynan

-carpe jugulum, baby, carpe jugulum.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: D. on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:26 AM EST
Perhaps it should be noted that Hellwig now works for SGI.

http://www.ukuug.org/bios+profiles/CHellwig.shtml

D.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: RichMan on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:33 AM EST
All this is great guts and details. Part of SCO's claim is based on the broad definition of base UNIX IP. So references should also be made to SCO's release of base UNIX IP. This shows that the code IP base on which all UNIX like OS's are based is not in any way a secret ingredient but rather public knowledge. SCO wants to claim that IBM built on the base, but SCO has released the base to everyone

Points

1) divergence of BSD from AT&T Unix

2) release of 16 and 32 bit Unix under BSD style license Caldera Release Statement

Summary of history with comments:

More interestingly, those of us that teach Unix will have a new code base that can be used in illustrating lectures. Given the availability of all of Unix up to V7, one can study its evolution; much of the later code is of fairly high quality.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: apessos on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:33 AM EST
With SCO's lack of divulging any specifics of the alledged infringing code, I
can't think of a better alternative than this. Great job to everyone involved
with this massive research effort.

SCOs not as clean as they like to make themselves sound. I wonder if this is
deliberate or gleeful ignorance. How could they possible spin this?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: jdos on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:04 PM EST
This is great, but I'd like to suggest one addition. It now seems that SCO's case against IBM is devolving onto the contract terms. In particular what IBM was free to contribute to Linux. On the surface, their case seems at least coherent. We know that it is shot through with errors of fact, interpretation and law. But until proceedure allows, a judge cannot deal with those flaws. Meanwhile, SCO has the FUD machine going full blast. The value of an article like this is that journalists, who are supposed to be fair and even-handed, can see unsubstantiated claims on one side and facts backed up by citation on the other. And as most journalists are not stupid, they can appreciate that this article attacks the central basis of SCO's suit. The addition I suggest is to clarify that point.

Using the old principal of "tell them what your're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them" I think its worth stating right at the beginning of the article that the evidence shows SCO did knowingly contribute to and/or distribute the contested code. And that if they now claim they didn't, the facts show they are either lying or mistaken. It may also be worth mentioning that trade secrets are no longer trade secrets when they are not secret. If SCO knowingly contributed to and/or distributed code containing their trade secrets, they are no longer secret.

I'd be happy to contribute a draft paragraph, but don't want to push it on you. Please ask if you want to see one and I'll come up with something straightaway.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: PJP on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:18 PM EST
Excellent work!

I think previous posters have caught all the things I saw (and then some...), so
I don't have any constructive comments to add - but do wonder about the
implications of this information and how SCO could deal with them.

The first thought is that SCO can blame the release of the code on a maverick
employee. That argument becomes weaker when we see that his manager was aware of
the activities, and was actually directing the employee to continue with the
work.

Now we have two maverick employees ... not impossible, but much less plausible,
especially since we now have two layers of the company involved - development
and first-line management.

The argument gets even weaker when we look at the various SCO documents (support
tech. notes and marketing announcements) which talk about the incorporation of
these technologies into a Linux release under GPL.

How could they fight this? Well, they can stick to their guns and claim that
"the company", that is the executive level, which in legal terms is
the company, were not aware of this. That is terribly weak, and I can't see it
going anywhere.

They could fall back on "trade secrets" - but this has big problems
too. Firstly, they have to prove its their secret, and that depends upon their
novel interpretation of derived works. I wouldn't be surprised to see them
follow this path just to see how far they can push it. But it too is futile,
because the techniques and implementations are now broadly available, so its no
longer a secret. Assuming they could get a court to swallow their derived works
theories, the best they could hope for would be some compensation for having
lost their trade secret - who they would get that compensation from would be an
interesting question. I don't see this going anywhere either, because although
IBM may have had specific implementations (of for example RCU), it isn't the
implementation which defines a trade secret, its the idea behind it, which can
almost certainly be traced back well beyond the implentation of RCU in Dynix.

Their last response, and possibly the most probable (at least in the view of
those who subscribe to the conspiracy theory, where the conspiracy has as its
primay aim the destruction of Linux, and a secondary aim of the destruction of
the GPL) is to attack the GPL.

However, its difficult to see what this can buy SCO, unless of course, the whole
aim is not to actually win anything for SCO but to simply destroy the GPL as a
side effect. Even if the GPL is destroyed, they still have to sell their derived
works theory, then having won that, fight IBM for putting an IBM copyright on
their derived code, and finally explain what they meant by publishing
copyrighted code with an attached notice which may not longer be GPL, but
effectively saying "take this code and do what you will with it".

Unfortunately, the more I think about this, the less I am convinced that this
really is about what SCO says it is about. Just maybe rather than facing SCO
head-on and ripping their case to shreds, we should be paying at least a little
attention to see if there is a hidden agenda which is the real target of this
lunacy.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: jmc on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:18 PM EST

Insofar as this interrogatory seeks information as to whether plaintiff has ever distributed the code in question or otherwise made available to the public, SCO has never authorized, approved or knowingly released any part of the subject code that contains or may contain its confidential and proprietary information and/or trade secrets for inclusion in any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution.

Can I suggest you point your weary browsers at SCO's download area

It'll ask for a user name and password, but don't worry, it accepts blank for both.

There your eyes can feast on a complete source distribution of SCO Linux, with copies of source RPMS for jfsutils and xfsutils.

The kernels source modules have been removed in the past 2 weeks (but you can find bits about). What is in place of the kernels are a string of patches with huge hunks of code in with plenty of stuff about SMP, JFS, XFS, NUMA in.

Looking at the stuff I downloaded from the site on 19 November, I would suggest this comes to a complete source distribution.

Surely this is distribution, making available to the public or otherwise a release. in which case none of it can contain the infringing code if the above quotation holds good? (And we can all go home?)

Or have I missed something?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: Sten on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:22 PM EST

There is an article that just posted on Software Development Time with a quote from Blake Stowell:

SCO counters that it has already named what is infringing in Linux. “IBM has put the journal file system from AIX into Linux,” said Stowell. “They’ve put various programs from their Dynix operating system, which they got when they acquired Sequent,” he said, citing specific features such as non-uniform memory access (NUMA), Remote Copy Update (RCU) and “various schedulers and high-end symmetric multiprocessing technology [into Linux].”

Stowell added, “These are derivative works that they are contractually not able to contribute to Linux. I’m not sure we can be more specific than that. That’s pretty specific. We’ve also publicly said that all those programs make up over a million lines of code.”

Derivative works indeed! So this is where they came up with the million lines of infringing code.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: frk3 on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:30 PM EST

From the massive multi-user role playing game slang "Woot!". :)

Article looks fine with me, even the form it is in.

I knew, when I first saw the "Hellwig" mention that there was more to be uncovered here.

And, from what I see, this punches a large gaping hole in SCO's apparent "control rights" claim to JFS, NUMA, RCU and SMP.

And, not only did they "know" about these contributions, but even helped.

So, in summary, if SCO has a "problem" with the contributions "now", they certainly didn't "then". :)

And the timing on the article is great! I am sure IBM (and others) will be thankful for this information.

Regards,

Fredrick

[ Reply to This | # ]

Slight transcription error
Authored by: robinv on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:56 PM EST
In your quote from SCO's supplemental responses:
ever distributed the code or otherwise made available to the public
Should be:
ever distributed the code or otherwise made it available to the public
(there's an 'it' missing)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: dburns on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 12:58 PM EST
Many of the paragraphs are quoted and it is not clear to me
who or what is being quoted. Many of the quoted comments
quoted look to be PJ's.

---
db.

[ Reply to This | # ]

anyone going to the hearing dec 5?
Authored by: brenda banks on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 01:02 PM EST
is this open to public?
hope so


---
br3n

[ Reply to This | # ]

RCU info scarcity
Authored by: Tsu Dho Nimh on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 01:50 PM EST
PJ -
It looks good. Correct the few typos and release it!

One reason you were having problems with RCU is that it's really old stuff. I
believe IBM had a patent on it that's already expired.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: burySCO on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 01:51 PM EST
PJ, you and everyone else who contributed to this are great. I hope the slashdot
effect that will take place when this article goes public subsides long enough
for everyone to have a good look before Friday ;-)

---
My jabber handle is burySCO@jabber.org

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO? --Members Only - PLEASE REVIEW
Authored by: egan on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 01:57 PM EST
It looks like you've got enough evidence to be more direct in your criticism of
SCO here. That's the only reason that you might want to delay posting it... in
order to write somewhat more forcefully, close off excuses that SCO might
attempt, and so on. What's it called when a party lies to a Federal Judge?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO is not Caldera?
Authored by: OK on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 02:49 PM EST
Looks like they say that CALDERA knew, but THEY didn't. Either they are trying
to say that THEY are SCO, not Caldera and knew nothing about it (honestly, I
don't understand how they can claim it in their right mind), or they simply
fool around.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: neilplatform1 on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:01 PM EST
Nice work, and the new magnifying glass logo's both sweet and apt.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Devil's advocate
Authored by: skidrash on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:06 PM EST
How much weight would this carry?
I think SCOG may be saying

"we did not realize that these things were violating our IP until we
re-read the contracts in early 2002."

"thus for all prior releases of Linux that included those things we were
unaware that we had been manouevered into the position of shipping our own IP
under GPL."

I think the truth is closer to this
"we didn't realize we were violating our own IP until we started casting
around in deperation for anything to make money from and latched onto this IP
angle. All since then has been extreme reinterpretations of the contracts, an
attempt to rationalizing/justify our actions and FUDDING."

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl speaks again, Oh Goody
Authored by: p0ssum on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:33 PM EST
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3114341

Best quote?:

We think the GPL is not going to make it. We think that it is so unfriendly to
businesses.

What a moron!

---
Never argue with an idiot.

They drag you to their level and then beat you with experience.

[ Reply to This | # ]

CrWhat time-frame did he worked in SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:34 PM EST
When did Hellwig worked with SCO German subsidiary? I think this will add more
insight to what is happening.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: pjcm on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:38 PM EST
You might want to add some information about other operating systems that have
been working on SMP Architectures. VMS AXP 1.5 1992 supported SMP and Clustering
on Alpha and Windows NT4 is 1996 so the argument that the knowledge about SMP
must have come from any Unix team doesn't even hold up.

Still working on the Non-Unix tree and as you can see some interesting bits are
turning up.

Paddy

[ Reply to This | # ]

Does this help?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:45 PM EST
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-271812.html?legacy=cnet
http://www.it-director.com/article.php?articleid=2364
Talks about combining Unix/Linux technologies.

What I was looking for is an article I KNOW I read a couple of years ago about
Caldera creating one unified Unix/Linux kernel. I am work now so I cannot search
forever. If someone has some time ...


Also Beowuld cluster project. SCO claims they own that too, in a way. History
page states they started in 1993.

http://www.beowulf.org/beowulf/history.html

Is this the kind of ammunition we good supply for a Groklaw Amicus brief?

I also read that Old SCO, at the time of the sale to Caldera, owned 28% of
Caldera. Is this still true? Is this how Darl is claiming they are one and the
same?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Whats the downside ??
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 03:55 PM EST
IANAL so, I need to ask whats sco's downside on this ?

Aside from the obvious, appearing like disreputable scalawags in front of the
judge. What is their actual downside. Is it enough to toss the case out ? Will
they incur a penalty ? Is it perjury ?

Does anyone have an idea ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Beware of SCO-speak
Authored by: nealywilly on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 04:07 PM EST
Note the several questionable/variable elements of SCO's response and what it
takes for them to claim they are right later.

"Insofar as this interrogatory seeks information as to whether plaintiff
has ever (1)DISTRIBUTED the code in question [i.e., "all source code and
other material in Linux (including but not limited to the Linux kernel, any
Linux operating sytem and any Linux distribution) to which plaintiff has
rights", from Interrogatory No. 12] or (2) OTHERWISE MADE AVAILABLE to the
public, SCO has never (3)AUTHORIZED, (4)APPROVED or (5)KNOWINGLY released any
part of the subject code that contains or may contain its (6) CONFIDENTIAL AND
PROPRIETARY INFORMATION AND/OR TRADE SECRETS ["IP"] (7) FOR
INCLUSION in any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution."
[questionable/variable elements numbered and CAPS added]

These questionable/variable elements can be combined to form logical statements.
For example, SCO is claiming the
following statement is true:
NOT ((1 OR 2) AND (3 OR 4 OR 5) AND (6) AND (7)).

But the elements can also be combined into 96 distinct sub-statements
(3*8*2*2=96, if you include the all the null/NOT states).

There are only 14 ways (2*7*1*1), by logic, to prove SCO's statement as FALSE,
which means there are 82 ways (96-14) their statement can be TRUE (again, we're
only talking mathmatical alternatives), for example, "NOT (1 AND 3 AND 6
AND 7)". BTW, I came up with the number of sub-statements mathmatically,
so forgive me for not writing them all out. Oh what the hell, I can elaborate a
little.

3 states of contribution
------------------------------
(1)Distributed
(2)Otherwise Made Available
Whazzunt Me, Who smelt it, dealt it.

times 8 states of complicity
----------------------
(3)Authorized
(4)Approved
(5)Knew
Authorized & Approved
Approved & Knew
Knew & Authorized
Authorized, Approved & Knew
Authorize no evil, Aprove no evil, Knew no evil

times 2 states of ownership
---------------------------
(IP are belong to SCO
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!

times 2 states of intent
------------------------
We meant it to be For Inclusion
I say "Would you like to dance", I said "You look fat in those
pants".

At this point it's important to point out that (7) "FOR INCLUSION"
is only included to catch the scenario where SCO claims that they AUTHORIZED the
DISTRIBUTION of their IP, but NOT FOR INCLUSION in Linux. This highlights the
slippery elements because it will be hard to prove (5)KNOWINGLY if that depends
on officers of the company having to admit to it. Likewise, (6)IP is a slippery
element because they can disclaim certain code because they have not
specifically entered into the record what their code is, so any code you prove
they knew about they can say "That's not what we're talking about, it's
this other code (which you haven't proven, but we'll let you know after IBM
answers our discovery questions).

I'm not trolling here, just pointing out that while everyone works on proving
just 1 of those 14 debunkers, SCO will have a bunch of ways to rebut, so let's
make sure our proof covers the slippery elements definitively.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: AdamBaker on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 04:10 PM EST
If the skunkware link had been to the same JFS it would have been a very
interesting development as skunkware is SCOs disk of GPL and other open source
addons for Unixware. Unfortunately that is actually a different JFS, the Java
File Server

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: zjimward on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 04:37 PM EST

Thanks for this excellent work.

[ Reply to This | # ]

A lie from Darl
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 05:25 PM EST
For months now McBride has been saying that it doesn't matter if SCO loses the
IBM trial. He says it can still go ahead and sue users. This is false.

McBride's reasoning is that the IBM trial is about a contractual violation.
Specifically, SCO claims that IBM gave Linux derivative code SCO has rights
over. If that turns out to not be true, then SCO says it could still sue users
because it claims that there is a lot of code illegally in Linux that came from
other sources than IBM. Lately it has been specifically mentioning SGI as a
source.

The trouble with this argument is that the case also includes IBM's
countersuit. As part of that IBM is claiming that SCO impaired its business by
making false accusations that Linux includes illegal code. What is going to
happen in the trial is that all of SCO's accusations will be investigated,
including its accusations that non-IBM code is illegally in Linux.

If the court finds that all the accusations are false, and we can be pretty sure
it will, then SCO will no longer have any ground for claiming that users are
violating its IP rights. So the end of the IBM trial will likely be the end of
everything for SCO.

In fact, I think it will be over a lot sooner than that. A lot of people think
that SCO never did the code analysis. If that it so, it is going to come out
really soon, and it will be all over for SCO.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hope to Die, SCO
Authored by: eggplant37 on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 05:37 PM EST
I must say this is about the most excellent piece of investigation I've seen
into this issue yet. I do hope this proves to be the knife in the heart of
SCO's case. GPL licensing notices, SCO blatantly aware of what's going on.
This is beautiful.

Ms Jones, Ms Jones, Ms Jones... we got a thing... goin' on...

Rich

[ Reply to This | # ]

Caldera first funds Linux SMP development in 1996 by Alan Cox
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 05:57 PM EST

Don't forget the one and only Alan Cox's SMP webpage from around 1996! It's located at:

http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/title.html

where he writes:

At the moment I am developing using a Caldera provided ASUS P54PNIP4 motherboard with 32Mb of RAM.

So back then they knew enough about it to care to buy a motherboard so that Alan could develop (no, not steal) this code.

I derive my my belief that this was written "around 1996" from the fact that the Wayback machine's first archive of this page is from the 11th December 1997, almost 6 years ago, and the document they archived contains a PICS rating of:

1996.04.16T08:15-0500

The Wayback machines archive of this document is at:

http://web.archive.org/web/19971211104421/http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/ti tle.html

Chris, taffie down under..

[ Reply to This | # ]

Aim Screenshot tool at SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 06:17 PM EST

Folks:

KDE has a screen shot tool called Ksnapshot. Click on the K at the lower left,
select "Multimedia", then "Graphics". Ksnapshot is
toward the bottom, with a green icon. At least, that's how it shows up in my
Mandrake 9.1.

So, if you see Linux or some other incriminating evidence at SCO's site, use
Ksnapshot to capture it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 06:59 PM EST
Great work, guys.

This is the kind of stuff that can make a real difference in the real world.

Its one leg of SCO's stool rendered unusable.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 07:06 PM EST
Maybe someone could start to find all the ex- sco, caldera, etc employees that
have put things into the Linux?
That could be real handy soon.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Your wish - Authored by: p0ssum on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 07:30 PM EST
SCO wants MORE more time
Authored by: lpletch on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 07:28 PM EST
TuxRocks has

83 - Plaintiff's Motion for Enlargement of Time to Respond to Defendant IBM's Third Set of Interrogatories and Third Request for Production of Documents (November 26, 2003)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking about attending Dec 5 court date
Authored by: slamsmith on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 07:33 PM EST
I was considering attending the court hearing on Dec. 5 and I was wondering if
it is actually open to the public and what would need to do to attend it. I
work in Provo Ut so I shouldn't be too far away.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Very Interesting.....
Authored by: p0ssum on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 07:38 PM EST
Here is an excerpt from LKML(Linux Kernel Mailing List):


On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Just remember, Caldera is a LINUX company -- they will
> take the best of both, and use it to improve Linux ....
>
> :-)

Hi Jeff,

Good stuff, but what I am still wondering is whethere is
indeed anything in UnixWare (or any other commercial
UNIX) that can be used to improve Linux. Pray do tell
us, what do you think such areas might be?
At the moment, I can't think of any, and I did work as a
UnixWare7 kernel escalations engineer for 2 years :)

Regards,
Tigran

The Tigran is Tigran Aivazian a former SCO(as you can tell from the UnixWare reference) stating that he doesn't believe that there is anything in SCO or other commercial Unices that could be useful to Linux. Here is the Link. Kicker is this was written in 2000 and he was working at Veritas at the time......

---
Never argue with an idiot.

They drag you to their level and then beat you with experience.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: kberrien on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 08:11 PM EST
Excellent details. This is exactly the kind of thing that CAN be done at this
point. Take the various obscure positions of SCO and put some beef behind a
counter argument.

What I find more neat, even scary is this. If this is what PJ and others can do
in their spare time, imagine what kind of digging and presentations IBM has now,
or in the works!

What do you think they have. Detailed code analysis (not to be confused with
SCO analysis, please), 3D CAD renderings of the Linux codebase in a visual
representation to help laymen, damning video from 5 year old trade shows shot by
a BBC documentary team?

From what I hear about IBM legal expertise I expect shock and awe during the
trial.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: tazer on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 08:36 PM EST
I think Caldera was well aware of the contributions its employees were making.
At least you would think that 6 of your employees contributing to an OSS project
would be difficult to not notice.

I'm not providing the actual email addresses for these individuals, but the
domain names associated with them are either caldera.com or caldera.de.

Stefan Probst was listed in 265 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-2.0.34
(06/04/1998) and the latest being linux-2.6.0-test11 (11/26/2003)

Ron Holt was listed in 123 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-2.0.32
(11/17/1997) and the latest being linux 2.3.22 (10/15/1999)

Jim Freeman was listed in 64 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-2.0.32
(11/17/1997) and the latest being linux-2.1.124 (10/04/1998)

James Banks was listed in 146 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-2.0.34
(06/04/1998) and the latest being linux-2.3.29 (11/24/1999)

Greg Page was listed in 367 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-1.1.85
(01/22/1995) and the latest being linux-2.3.31 (12/08/1999)

Cristoph Hellwig was listed in 19 CREDITS files, the earliest being linux-2.4.5
(05/25/2001) and the latest being linux-2.5.5 (02/19/2002)

[ Reply to This | # ]

How much can SCO disclaim?
Authored by: Khym Chanur on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 09:15 PM EST
How much of this can SCO disclaim? If they claim it was all done my lower
management and marketing, without approval from any executives, would that
stick? To what degree (legally) can SCO executives claim ignorance, so that
what their underlings did isn't legally binding?

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT: The Dangers of the Corporate Media Alliance
Authored by: Gerry on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 09:28 PM EST
A good article to read:

http://www.orangecrate.com/article.php?sid=539

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT: More indemnity FUD
Authored by: Tim Ransom on Monday, December 01 2003 @ 11:46 PM EST
These people aren't even trying. This middling skid mark is called That Cloud of Uncertainty Over Linux.
Can't Cowboy Darl (some call him Shame) and his bowlegged IP posse find a better grade of FUDmeister?
These guys need some crack talent to get the taste of hacks like the under assistant flack who penned this drivel out of our mouths. Someone with a looming talent like high brow social critic Ed Anger who, in my opinion, is like a more fair and balanced Rob Enderle. At any rate, the mind boggles.
Thanks again,

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 12:13 AM EST
This is great expose of some of the publicly released FUD, and highlights the
fact that SCO has known all along *exactly* what has been going on with regards
to NUMA, SMP etc. This leads one to conclude that SCO were happy with what IBM
may have done whilst they thought it was in their own(SCOs) best interest, but
in the end find that they are not as successful as their peers and so revert to
the present litigation based on a contract dispute. IANEATVL (I am not even a TV
lawyer) but isnt there something in the law that stops this sort of thing. IE
when it can be proven that you have turned a blind eye to something because you
thought it was in your best interests, and then cry foul play when your play
doesnt work. So what I'm trying to say here is, even if IBM were found to be in
breach of a contract, is it possible that it could be ruled inconsequential
because SCO gave their approval (implied by their own actions)?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The GPL
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 09:02 AM EST
So unless SCO come up with some specific examples of code that are infringing
not related to anything that they have so far talked about, the only remaining
issue is the "Unconstitutionality" of the GPL.

1. Any experts on the constitution out there. Are there any possible ground to
claim the GPL is unconstitutional? How would you rebut these claims in legal
terms?

2. Is it worth producing a new draft "GPL type license"? I'm just
thinking of firing a shot across SCOs bows by pointing out that the current GPL
is only one way of doing OSS and that we can produce licenses more quickly than
they can defeat them in court.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Darl was right!
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 09:49 AM EST
Linux would not be the enterprise grade server OS it is today without SCO.

I am here to apologize to Darl, and the rest of SCO. If it weren't for their
knowhow, their hardware, and their programmer manhours, it's quite clear that
SMP on Linux would have taken much longer.

Thanks SCO.

bkd

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 12:42 PM EST
Keep in mind that SCO has essentially shot themselves in the foot with court
documents. They claim "SCO has never authorized, approved or knowingly
released any part of the subject code that contains or may contain its
confidential and proprietary information and/or trade secrets for inclusion in
any Linux kernel or as part of any Linux distribution."

IBM rightly points out that if this is true, then SCO's definition of what is
infringing cannot be limited to simple terms like "NUMA, JFS,
etc...". There are literally thousands of examples of these terms being
applied to Linux in SCO/Caldera documentation. SCO even promoted the OS based
on these features being included. Hard to imagine they didn't know.

IANAL, however I beleive this will be the lynch pin of the case. SCO will have
to provide IBM with their analysis or I think IBM may have grounds to get the
suit dismissed entirely. If SCO knew the code was in the Kernel and was
promoting their own distribution of Linux based on this knowledge/these
features, it's pretty hard for IBM to have unknowingly contributed it now
isn't it?!

The contribution is the entire complaint against IBM. With evidence that SCO
knew perfectly well the code was in the Linux kernel and sanctioned it's
inclusion (no matter who's programmers put it there) by promoting the their own
version of the product, I don't see how IBM can be in violation of their
license. SCO seems to have knowingly promoted their Linux product based on the
fact that it had enterprise level technology like this in it.

It's completely unfathomable that they could not look at the Kernal with NUMA,
JFS, etc.. included and not ask the simple question "Hey, SCO Unix has
these features with the same exact name, could that be our code?"

Idiots.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 09:32 PM EST
Because SCO distributed Linux containing their proprietary code, does NOT mean
the automatically donated the code to Linux. Show me a contract where they
signed off on the transfer of copyright for the code in question.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Buying time
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 02 2003 @ 10:23 PM EST
This is fabulous work. However (IMHO) believe that SCO knows that they don't
have a leg to stand upon. SCO first attacked the GPL and then several months
later they turned on the BSD License. Would it not make sense for SCO to
actually speed up their initiative on the BSD license and overturn (try) the
ruling so that they could go after the GPL? SCO announced that they will not
proceed after the BSD license till some time in the 1st or 2nd quarter of next
year. I firmly believe that this is an attempt to buy time. By using FUD this
in the end will delay the deployments of Linux in the corporate world.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Buying time - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 06:07 AM EST
Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 12:07 AM EST

quote:
"[When I came aboard at SCO I looked at this issue of code and asked:] 'Why don't you guys do this?' They said, 'Because the Linux community will get mad at us.'"

source

Didn't McBride just admit that they knew about the "infringements"?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Check facts and timeline....
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 01:10 AM EST
Please check the facts and especially the timeline.

Christoph stopped working at Caldera end of 2001 and
then moved to work with SGI in 2002 and 2003.

(Best would be to just mail and ask him yourself.)

- Marcus

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 02:52 AM EST
Has anyone filed this as an Amicus Brief to the court? Please do it!

[ Reply to This | # ]

To the GROKLAW
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 03:52 AM EST
Now the most important questions to Pamela Jones:
Who is/are to thank for this work ?
Where does the responsible want the donations/ presents/ compliments/
endowments/ Nobel prices to be piled ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 04:04 AM EST
And dont forget google most likly has ALL of this cached, as well as the
internet archive at http://www.archive.org ; There is not a single way this can
be hidden now, good work!

- D King http://www.pimpsoft.com

[ Reply to This | # ]

I worked at SCO
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 04:04 AM EST
Interesting article. I worked at SCO for a year around around 98 as a
programmer in the Watford office. I knew Tigran.

I personally knew people at SCO who coded for Linux in their spare time. This
wasn't done in secret and am sure the management knew.

Some of these people were contractors. It would be interesting to look at their
contract, and also if people are interested... I still have my SCO contract of
employment kicking around.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 04:45 AM EST
Ok, what does this mean ?
Regardless of wether they contributed code or not, will this really help ? If
there is unix code in linux does it matter who contributed it ? The wording of
the contract with IBM also comes to play. If the contract is as silly as
"all code developed on *nix are restricted by this
license/contract/whatever", it might not matter. Silly contract, silly of
IBM to sign it, but that doesn't matter to the law ;)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 05:24 AM EST

Whilst this is indeed a well researched article. A few words of caution are in order.

Many of the items above, specifically the items concerning development by Chris Hellwig are the actions of the entity formerly known as Caldera.

A lot of SCO current claims seem to rest on their interpretations of the rights to Unix that they inherited from OldSCO (now known as Tarantella). So when they talk about JFS/XFS etc. they aren't necessarily talking about contributions by chris hellwig anyway, in fact whilst he worked for Caldera he wasn't even in the position to 'slip code from SysVR4' from Sco to Linux, because Caldera at that point had not access to the Unix source tree.

-- ac

[ Reply to This | # ]

Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die, SCO?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 03 2003 @ 09:06 AM EST
Remind me, good sir, that, should I ever have need of a lawyer, to recommend to
said lawyer you as a research assistant.

You have too much time on your hands, and we appreciate what you've done with
it. :-)

Nicholas Eckert
vidstudent

[ Reply to This | # ]

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