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Linus Corrects McKusick
Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:38 AM EST

Kirk McKusick is quoted as saying some odd things on Newsforge. I say he is quoted as saying them, because I have noted that reporters sometimes write whatever they want to, regardless of what you told them. It has happened to me. Nevertheless, McKusick appears to be wrong on his facts, judging from the quotations, and therefore his reported conclusions must also be wrong.

First, what he said, and then what Linus told Groklaw in reply.

McKusick said, in part:

"Linus Torvolds [sic] says that he typed in these files from scratch and I believe that he did. Unfortunately that does not get him out of the ABI argument, because, by necessity, he had to use the same names and values."

But Linus didn't use the same names and values. He used the Minix names and values.

How do I know? I asked Linus.

Duh. Strange the Newsforge reporter didn't seem to think of that.

Anyway, here is what Linus had to say about McKusick's remarks:

"The names are standardized. I used the values in Minix for the original ones, the rest of the numbers are just from whatever random ordering of the names was in libc at the time (they don't match anything that I know of)

"Btw, somebody pointed out that if SCO thinks they own the numbering sequence of 'errno' (never mind that the x86 numbering isn't even the same they use), then by the same logic I own the copyright on the numbering sequence of the Linux system calls, which SCO uses in their linux kernel module stuff.

"Just showing how absurd the claim is..

"(Now, it's entirely possible that their Linux kernel module stuff actually contains copied code too, but that's a different issue)."

McKusick goes on to "guess" that Linux can use the files in dispute, but only with the copyright notices.

First of all, whatever is in the secret agreement between BSDi and USL is a secret of their own choice. Linus was not a party to whatever secret deal the parties to that lawsuit made. Whatever they agreed to do, they didn't tell the rest of the world the details. It wasn't a court-ordered opinion they implemented. It was a private deal.

But as to the GPL and whether or not SCO or any of its predecessors released ABI code with authorization under the GPL, McKusick might be interested in some material that Groklaw published back in the early days, back in July. Perhaps he missed it. SCO may have missed it too, what with their current claim that they never released their ABI files under the GPL with proper authorization.

Groklaw recently published evidence, including a statement by Tigran Aivazian himself, that while employed by SCO he made contributions to the kernel with authorization from his boss. Cf. also this page. But let's take another look at Christoph Hellwig's work as well, shall we? Because he didn't just work on the Linux kernel, he worked on the Linux-ABI project. I believe you will find it on point, although one of the links is no longer working, from Groklaw's archives on Groklaw.

I contacted Hellwig back in July, and I wrote to him that to a nonprogrammer like myself, the materials I found seemed to indicate that he "had corporate backing for your work and it also indicates that Caldera was well aware back then of IBM's JFS contribution to the kernel and was helping work on it." He replied that he couldn't comment beyond saying, "it seems you spotted some obvious facts."

Here is what Ransom Love had to say in September of this year about the ABIs and what Caldera was working to achieve. See if it matches SCO's account:

"We took the Linux code that was available and learned to cleanly match it with the Unix APIs. The idea was to adopt Linux APIs and mechanisms to function on top of a scalable Unix code designed for SMP [symmetric multiprocessing]. At the time, Linux was moving to clustering to make Linux more scalable. We wanted to combine Unix's improved symmetric multiprocessing with Linux so that it would have both excellent clustering and SMP.

"Indeed, at first we wanted to open-source all of Unix's code, but we quickly found that even though we owned it, it was, and still is, full of other companies' copyrights. . . .

"We didn't want to spend years clearing out the old copyright issues in the face of corporate opposition. So, instead we worked on Linux Kernel Personalities to bring Linux application compatibility to SCO Unix (formerly UnixWare) and OpenServer."

Then there is this Blake Stowell answer from a February interview in MozillaQuest Magazine:

"Q: Regarding binfmt_coff, abi-util, lcall7, abi-svr4, abi-sco; are any of these modules SCO IP?

"Blake Stowell: No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP. This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces. We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules."

And now to the BSDi lawsuit and SCO's claims that there were 91 files affected, here is Marshall Kirk McKusick, who was a participant in that litigation, on the way it really was from his perspective:

"At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products. . . .

"In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system.

"The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. . . .The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. . . .Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed.

"The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. . . . .Today, the open source software movement is gaining increased attention and respect. Although the Linux system is perhaps the most well-known, about half of the utilities that it comes packaged with are drawn from the BSD distribution. The Linux distributions are also heavily dependent on the complier, debuggers, and other development tools written by the Free Software Foundation. Collectively, the CSRG, the Free Software Foundation, and the Linux kernel developers have created the platform from which the Open Source software movement has been launched. I am proud to have had the opportunity to help pioneer the Open Source software movement. I look forward to the day when it becomes the preferred way to develop and buy software for users and companies everywhere."

This is from "Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix --From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable" by Marshall Kirk McKusick.

Dennis Ritchie has made many of the court documents from the USL v. BSDi lawsuit available. SCO mischaracterizes the BSDi case, to my reckoning, in their recent letters, making it sound like BSDI was at fault, whereas Judge Debevois' opinion indicated that he didn't think USL had a copyright in 32V:

"Consequently, I find that Plaintiff has failed to demonstrate a likelihood that it can successfully defend its copyright in 32V. Plaintiff's claims of copyright violations are not a basis for injunctive relief."

One reason the judge reached that conclusion was because AT&T had published so much of its code without copyright attributions, this being back before the revision in copyright law which now makes it unnecessary to do so to have a copyright. I encourage you to read the opinion and the other documents. There is a lot more to say about SCO's letters and the listed files, and we will, in a future installment. Meanwhile, here is the material on Hellwig:


Caldera Employee Was Key Linux Kernel Contributor

Christoph Hellwig has been, according to this web page, "in the top-ten list of commits to both the Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.5 tree". The page also mentions another fascinating piece of news, that he worked for Caldera for at least part of the time he was making those kernel contributions:

"After a number of smaller network administration and programming contracts he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution."

In 2002, he offered a paper on "Linux-ABI: Support for Non-native Applications" which is described like this:

"Linux-ABI: Support for Non-native Applications

"The Linux-ABI project is a modification to the Linux 2.4 kernel that allows Linux to support binaries compiled for non-Linux operating systems such as SCO OpenServer or Sun Solaris.

"Building upon the kernel's basic infrastructure to support multiple execution domains with different system call tables, signal and error numbers Linux-ABI provides a rich set of functionality that allows Linux to intercept foreign system calls. For some trivial syscalls the equivalent Linux call can be used directly after fixing up the calling conventions. Others only need flag remapping, but most of the code in Linux-ABI is used to handle the complex cases of functionality not implemented in Linux (e.g. STREAMS) or behaving very differently like many of the I/O controls (ioctls). In addition Linux-ABI provides remapping of filenames to shadow trees for allowing non-native binaries to find foreign support files instead of their native counterparts."

Back in 2002, he was described, in connection with his appearance at the Ottawa 2002 Linux Symposium, like this:

"Christoph Hellwig
"Reverse engineering an advanced filesystem
"Christoph Hellwig is employed by Caldera, working on the Linux-ABI binary emulation modules."

So, in short, he was contributing to the kernel and working for Caldera on Linux/UNIX integration at the same time. His work for Caldera was on the Linux kernel ("he worked for Caldera's German development subsidiary on various kernel and userlevel aspects of the OpenLinux distribution"). . . . Did Caldera know . . . ? What do you think? He used his hch@caldera.de email address when doing it. All contributions to the kernel are publicly available anyway. They certainly could have known. As for his job, his signature on his emails back in 2001 was:

"Christoph Hellwig
"Kernel Engineer Unix/Linux Integration
"Caldera Deutschland GmbH".

He used the email address hch@bsdonline.org sometimes too, and here you can see some of his Linux-abi contributions. Here are some of his contributions to JFS, Journaled File System. Yes, that JFS. Here he is credited as sysvfs maintainer, and he confirms it in this email, writing:

"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."

Here is a list of the operating systems that use or can handle the file system sysvfs:

"sysvfs: UNIX System V; SCO, Xenix, Coherent e21
"operating systems that can handle sysvfs: FreeBSD (rw), LINUX (R), SCO (NRWF)"

Here's a page listing by author (alphabetically by first name), with his emails to linux-kernel in June 2003, so he is still contributing.

Here he is listed on the Change log for patch v2.4.17. Here he tells Andrew Morton in 2002 that he will do sysvfs, using his hcd@infradead.org address. 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 year 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 page lists JFS as one of its features. . . .

They will be hard-pressed to explain how they had an employee contributing to the kernel a couple of years ago, which they apparently assigned him to do, and yet claim they didn't know or didn't approve. If they didn't approve, why didn't they do a thing to stop it back then? Stop it? It was his job, judging from his title and his job description. And for that matter, the announcement about JFS was public on IBM's part, as we've seen, and Caldera didn't bring a lawsuit to block it back when it happened. 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. All of this information is publicly available, so it was available to Caldera back when it happened.




  


Linus Corrects McKusick | 274 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: stevem on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 05:32 AM EST
As I understand it, do correct me, Berkley had to add the copyright to
distribute the headers post settlement, but as pointed out so many times - that
was between AT&T & Berkely, or their successors.

Logically, even if Linux did; and I'm not saying he did; even if he did copy
the file, if it was one "pre" copyright notice, then he's still in
the clear?


Or have I totally missunderstood all this???


It seems that McKusick is assuming that if Linux did copy, that he copied from a
post settlement "with" copyright notice.


????


- SteveM

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Twisted Logic
Authored by: badqat on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 07:05 AM EST

Linus said, quite appropriately, that "then by the same logic I own the copyright on the numbering sequence of the Linux system calls, which SCO uses in their linux kernel module stuff."

Who wants to bet that SCO, in it's, ahem, logic, insists that the whole idea of a numbering sequence in header files for OS calls is somehow part of their vast "stuff SCO makes up" IP portfolio, and that Linux infringes regardless of the fact that some Linux calls are nothing like within Unix?

Wouldn't SCO have to make such an argument? Otherwise, at best, they would have unclean hands due to willful infringement of Linus' copyrighted work?

In other words - if it's the "concept" that is SCO "IP", then they can utilize other work that is derivitive. But if it is the actual numbers and names that are SCO "IP", then they are engaging in very same activity (via LKP) they accuse Linux of.

[ Reply to This | # ]

McKusick says ... what?
Authored by: theswede on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 07:54 AM EST
According the article quoted, McKusick essentially says "Since Berkeley
needs to include a copyright notice to distribute the file, Linus (and thus
Linux) has to do so as well, even though it's not the same file, even though
Linus is not Berkeley, even though he isn't party to the agreement; in fact,
even though the contents are not the same but the values are from another
OS".

I agree, McKusick is probably badly misquoted. The only other alternative is he
doesn't know what he's talking about, and I seriously doubt that.

Thanks for the niece piece of digging, PJ.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Caldera facilitated multiprocessor versions
Authored by: IMANAL on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 08:13 AM EST
Reading an old Caldera FAQ from 1996 stored at WebArchive, I found the following gem at point 3.5:

"3.5 What free projects has Caldera supported?

Portions of the IPX protocol stack have been contributed back to the Linux community by Caldera. Other small contributions have been made in other areas of Linux such as the Wabi/Wine support, the DOSEMU project. Caldera has purchased some hardware to facilitate the multiprocessor version of Linux that is under development".


Italics in bold added later by me.

[ Reply to This | # ]

All "infringers"
Authored by: kberrien on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 08:14 AM EST
>McKusick goes on to "guess" that Linux can use the files in
>dispute, but only with the copyright notices.


Lets not forget that Microsoft, Borland, and others were/are just as "guilty" at the time they released the headers as well. Microsoft's examples even carry a Microsoft copyright notice!

Am I right in this statement...?

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Puts Error Names and Values into Public Domain
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 08:39 AM EST
This history of errno.h is so convoluted that even if Linus copied Minix, Linus would only be in the clear if Minix was in the clear, and I have no idea where Minix got its error codes. There is certainly the possibility of improper copying somewhere along the line...

...until I saw this web page: SCO Open Desktop Product Family Release 3.0 Scroll down to the section labeled Error values, where all the error symbols and their codes are listed. You might also want to look at the section labeled Error descriptions, where the error symbols are listed again, but this time with the same descriptive text as appears in the comments of most versions of errno.h.

IANAL, but if SCO ever had a claim to these error names, codes and descriptions, it certainly looks to me like it doesn't any more. I don't see any copyrights on this page. Hasn't SCO, therefore, put all of these into the public domain (if it hadn't done so already)?

This certainly puts McKusick's comments about missing copyright attributions into question.

[ Reply to This | # ]

BSD and copyright
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 08:45 AM EST
This from the group which established the noble tradition of applying their
copyright notice to "the one true true"? Spare me. System V true as
of 1984 _is_ an "UNPUBLISHED PROPRIEARY SOURCE CODE" 'copyright'
header as a shell script. Novelty wears off well before expiration of copyright
and there may be limits to the tolerance of trivialities in reductio by the
courts.

Negotiated settlements are not judgements under the law but contracts negotiated
between parties in dispute to avoid the burden of further litigation and the
potential consequenses of a ruling under the law. Both parties in the cases
referred to had their reasons to arrive at such a contract, but it remains just
that, a contract. Both parties are as open to mistaken form and execution of
agreement in this case as with any other contract, either in one or all of its
terms, and the sealing of the exact nature of the agreement is in keeping with
the other grand tradition of USL's "super secret stuff".

In retrospect and by inferrence of the statements of the parties, this contract
includes terms which ascribed copyright status to listings of operational codes
and their mnemonics which, in the case of signal.h and errno.h are the
publically exported symbols comprising the method by which the functioning
kernel may be communicated with and its responses may be interpreted. In that
these symbols are the embodiment of these methods of communication it would be
difficult to sucessfully argue any such copyright status.

In sum, they'll have to pry my Coherent 4.2 from my cold dead hands, and I
further claim protection against vexatious litigation by the doctrines of
latches and by implied waiver. My best defense I'll reserve in secret
(penury!).

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: photocrimes on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 09:40 AM EST

How interesting. It does appear that SCOx will have to start going after everyone if this is their claim of infringement. This becomes so messy that I am having trouble following the paper trail. It seems to me that Microsoft has some explaining to do. Well, if SCOx is listening, I guess they could fabricate some obscure license deal that protects Microsoft from their wrath.


Here is what I have found.


As you can see, the “errno.h” file from Microsoft VisualStudio.Net 2003 does indeed carry SCOx's copyrighted(snicker) IP! But Microsoft seems to think it belongs to them? Go figure:


/***

*errno.h - system wide error numbers (set by system calls)

*

* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

*

*Purpose:

* This file defines the system-wide error numbers (set by

* system calls). Conforms to the XENIX standard. Extended

* for compatibility with Uniforum standard.

* [System V]

*

* [Public]

*

****/


and some of the values:


/* Error Codes */


#define EPERM 1

#define ENOENT 2

#define ESRCH 3

#define EINTR 4

#define EIO 5

#define ENXIO 6

#define E2BIG 7

#define ENOEXEC 8

#define EBADF 9

#define ECHILD 10


Now I also have the “errno.h” file from the Cygwin environment available from RedHat. Note it carries no copyright notice, but it also contains a heck of a lot more info than the Microsoft file. In fact, they even do a smash up job of documenting their file(I hesitate to call it “code”)


/* errno is not a global variable, because that would make using it

non-reentrant. Instead, its address is returned by the function

__errno. */


and some error codes:


#define EPERM 1 /* Not super-user */

#define ENOENT 2 /* No such file or directory */

#define ESRCH 3 /* No such process */

#define EINTR 4 /* Interrupted system call */

#define EIO 5 /* I/O error */

#define ENXIO 6 /* No such device or address */

#define E2BIG 7 /* Arg list too long */

#define ENOEXEC 8 /* Exec format error */

#define EBADF 9 /* Bad file number */

#define ECHILD 10 /* No children */


I think SCO is not only going to have an impossible time proving they own any of this, they'll have an even harder time proving they didn't barrow from others with the code in UnixWare or OpenServer.


[ Reply to This | # ]

I think theres an echo in here
Authored by: Baldy on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:02 AM EST
Among the documents posted by Denis Ritchie is an Amiscus
Brief from the university in the original case.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930107.amicus.txt

OK obviously the university had it's own bias in the
matter
but the arguments are virtually identical to those we are
going through here.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Its the same case - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:08 PM EST
#defines [OT]
Authored by: maroberts on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:08 AM EST
Why does errno.h et al still use #defines?
I would've thought that enums would have replaced them by now.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • #defines [OT] - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:22 AM EST
  • #defines [OT] - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:44 AM EST
  • #defines [OT] - Authored by: Ed Freesmeyer on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:57 AM EST
    • #defines [OT] - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 05:57 PM EST
Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: zjimward on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:09 AM EST

SCO's claim is simple. They own the car, the engine and they also want to own
the gasoline to drive it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: pooky on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:26 AM EST
I think the main point here is that it will be difficult for SCO to prove the
origin of the code Linus wrote is actually from UNIX Sys V. Linus said publicly
he copied the values from Minix which was written from scratch (and I believe
that, I worked on a small part of Minix back in college OS design class). That
was about 91/92 timeframe, right before Linux came out originally (we all
remember slackware 1.0 don’t we? :-)

SCO has to make two arguments in front of the court as far as I can tell. They
need to prove the files are verbatim copies or reasonably close to the original
to indicate they were copied and also that Linus could not have gotten them from
another legally available source. There’s a HUGE hurdle of reasonable doubt to
get over here because:

1) The specifications are published not only on SCO’s website but some as part
of the posix standard.
2) The values in the original files can likely be traced back to a Minix
source.
3) There’s no real way to prove the files were directly copied if they are not
identical.
4) Linus Torvalds has made a specific claim as to the origin of the values in
those files, which is they didn't come from UNIX Sys V.

What this will come down to ultimately is Linus’ word against SCO’s, and SCO has
the burden of proof. IMHO, it will be next to impossible to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that Linus (or someone else) directly copied UNIX Sys V files
based on what SCO has to-date offered as their evidence. I would also put forth
that if SCO wants businesses to purchase a license for something that SCO has
put into dispute of ownership, they better show something that they think will
reasonably stand up in court.

Boies is a technology lawyer, he cannot possibly be so stupid as to think what
has been show publicly so far will convince a jury much less a judge that the
case has merit.


---
IANAL, etc...

[ Reply to This | # ]

BSD Copywrite Notices
Authored by: maco on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:40 AM EST
I thought the BSD board of regents publicly stated that copywright info is no
longer needed on (header?) files. I know there is a letter to this effect
somewhere in Groklaw. Does this have a bearing here?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Novell nullifies SCO; only remaining question . . .
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:25 PM EST
Our habit of assuming SCO will be able to put forward any copyright claims dies
hard. It needs to come to an end. Novell's competing copyright claims to SCO
means there isn't a judge on the planet that will allow SCO to proceed with
this. SCO has to get past Novell first before anything else can happen.

Here is my only remaining question: Is it a criminal offense for SCO to proceed
with claiming license fees to property they know is in dispute? I'm very much
hoping that someone will be able to hang a criminal charge against SCO.

[ Reply to This | # ]

McKusick and McKusick
Authored by: RabidChipmunk on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:29 PM EST
What is the relationship between Kirk McKusick and Marshall Kirk McKusick?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: sef on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:41 PM EST

I haven't talked to Kirk about it, but I'm going to guess he was talking about more than just errno.h -- there were other files listed, of course. Things like signal.h and stat.h, which have not just manifest constants, but structure definitions.

Kirk also knows that a lot of effort was done for various compatibility on various platforms or plugins (e.g., the iBCS2 compatibility module for Linux), and he could have had that in mind.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 12:52 PM EST
And does anybody else find it humorous that SCO accuses IBM, one of the biggest
examples of American Capitalism, of being in league with the (supposedly)
socialistic/communistic open source anarchists?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Blake Stowell statement contradicts letter?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 01:19 PM EST
By Mike Angelo -- February 5, 2003 (C)

MozillaQuest Magazine: Regarding binfmt_coff, abi-util, lcall7, abi-svr4,
abi-sco; are any of these modules SCO IP?
....
Blake Stowell: No, none of the code in the Linux ABI modules contains SCO IP.
This code is under the GPL and it re-implements publicly documented interfaces.
We do not have an issue with the Linux ABI modules. The IP that we are licensing
is all in the shared libraries - these libraries are needed by many OpenServer
applications *in addition* to the Linux ABI.

From SCO's letter: -- December 19, 2003

“The ABI Code identified above is part of the UNIX Derived Files and, as such,
must carry USL / SCO copyright notices and may not be used in any GPL
distribution, inasmuch as the affirmative consent of the copyright holder has
not been obtained, and will not be obtained, for such a distribution under the
GPL.”
....
In addition, neither SCO nor any predecessor in interest has ever placed an
affirmative notice in Linux that the copyrighted code in question could be used
or distributed under the GPL.

NOTE: didn't SCO say that 2.2 kernels were not at issue? Some of these header
files predate the 2.2 kernel by many years (early 1990s), so how can they be a
problem in 2.4 but not 2.2...?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Statute of Limitations
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 01:42 PM EST
So in the United States the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is
three years. Does this mean that because AT&T never objected to Minix, that
Minix owns his copyright free and clear? Thus, if someone were to base their
work on Minix, it would not infringe on legacy AT&T Unix, right?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Could Novell Open Settlement?
Authored by: k12linux on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 02:18 PM EST
Since Novell purchased all the rights (and I assume legal baggage) to UNIX,
could Novell make the settlement agreement terms public? Of course this would
be assuming they even want to and that BSDi would agree as well.

And in a related question, can IBM get their hands on the agreement to use in
court if they feel they need it?

---
- k12linux

[ Reply to This | # ]

Argumentum ad Logicam: Fallacy Fallacy
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 03:56 PM EST
"McKusick appears to be wrong on his facts, judging from the quotations,
and therefore his reported conclusions must also be wrong. "

Incorrect logic, you've commited a fallacy PJ, often called the "fallacy
fallacy". Just because someone's facts are wrong does not defacto mean
their conclusion "must" be wrong:

http://info-pollution.com/fallfall.htm

From the link above: "In the fallacy fallacy (or logical fallacy) it is
claimed that if a fallacy has been committed, then the conclusion must be
wrong."

Another useful link:

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT: Israel Stops Buying Microsoft Software
Authored by: Tim Ransom on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 04:31 PM EST
Apparently unfazed by the specter of terrorist Syrian coders raised by SCO in their Bizarro World proclamations (not just bordering on racism), the Israeli government has wisely chosen to get off the MS treadmill and go open source.

"On a policy level, the government is committed to expanding computer use. We want open source technology to spread, so more people will be able to afford computers,"

Here's the link

Thanks again,

[ Reply to This | # ]

blatent ploy [OT]
Authored by: entropy on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 05:46 PM EST
A not for profit's reaction to the debacle:

Open Letter to SCO

Dear Sirs:

It has come to my attention that you claim certain intellectual properties involved in the UNIX operating system and that you intend to prosecute those who violate those claims.

To be more specific you claim that Gnu/Linux is a derivative of your Unix IP and as such is your IP. After extensive research on my own part and reviewing the considered opinions of those in the field of IP litigation I have concluded to my own satisfaction that your position consists of bullpuckey.

As such I feel I should bring my company to your attention. My name is James Burgett and I am the executive director of a not for profit organization called Computer and Technology Resource Center (CATRC). We recycle unwanted equipment and give it to underprivileged people throughout the world.

What I feel should come to your attentions is this: We install Gnu/Linux on over 1200 machines a year and we fully intend to continue. We send said computers to schools, not for profits and underprivileged people throughout the world. We have been doing so for over 3 years and I can safely say that all of them could be classed as "servers". On the basis of your pricing (assuming that our inevitable litigation extends past your discount deadline), my organization owes you at least $ 5,036,400 (5+ million).

We also advocate the further distribution of your alleged IP by other agencies and governments at home and abroad and could quite possibly be held liable for a lot more. (I’m sure you can come up with a price for this.) We have also assembled many multi processor systems (By the way, what is your price for multiprocessor systems?)

So based on an assessment of our operations and your claims. I have concluded the following:

Your ownership of the IP is dubious at best (Novell copyrights, Unix system labs vs. UC Berkeley, distribution of all contested IP by you under the GPL while Caldera,…. etc.)

Your ability to enforce your claims is laughable at best (you would have to deal with Novell's copyrights before you can sue anybody, then demonstrate that you did not release said IP as your Linux distribution and last that you have the right to those copyrights at all as they seem to violate some of IBM's patents. This combined with the fact that your lead attorney seems to be under investigation in Florida that may lead to his disbarment leads me to the conclusion that you are not a credible threat.

Your only redeeming feature is your histrionic and ill-conceived rants, which admittedly have an enviable ability to generate press.

As you represent no threat and can only bring us press, I humbly request that you use us in your act of corporate self-destruction.

If you choose not to sue us I should inform you that I have been consulting with my attorneys about options for initiating lawsuits against you based on some of the fallacious claims made by you about operations such as ours that use Gnu/Linux. You have made direct accusations about Gnu/Linux and its users that could only be construed as accusations of theft.

As I am not a thief and find your accusations harmful from both a personal and corporate standpoint I demand that you immediately cease and desist from your unsubstantiated statements or face litigation.

In conclusion let me thank you for this wonderful opportunity to promote our message on your dime and fully expect to be giving away what you claim is your IP long after your company is dead and gone.

Yours sincerely:

James
Burgett
Executive Director
Computer and Technology Resource Center

Primary
website: www.accrc.org
email james@accrc.org

[ Reply to This | # ]

the code shown under NDA
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 06:19 PM EST
I stumbled on an old Groklaw article. PJ was not famous yet and didn't get any comments.

An analyst in Germany who looked at SCO's proof code and is talking, saying that their lawyer forgot to ask him to sign an NDA, says, I think (my high school German is a lot rusty), that he can't be sure if there is any substance to SCO's claim.

A translation of the German article can be found here .

H@ns

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Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: bumblebee on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 06:26 PM EST
We have not heard anything from Bruce Perens for quite a while. what his take on
the latest FUD campaign from SCO.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 07:30 PM EST
McKusick is quoted correctly. Verbatim, in fact.

If I had been reporting on what Torvalds thought of SCO's claims, I would have
asked Torvalds. But I was reporting on McKusick's views of the situation, not
Torvalds.

Torvalds' thoughts and comments on SCO's copyright claims have widely been
reported in the Linux press.

McKusick has the right to speak his own mind without getting the OK from PJ, or
Linus, or anyone else. If he is wrong, so be it.

PJ, your suggestion that McKusick was misquoted is personally offensive to me,
especially since it is completely wrong.

But your suggestion that it was stupid not to check McKusick's comments with
Linus is truly obnoxious.

Get some rest, because you don't seem to be thinking very clearly. And have a
happy new year.

Joe Barr

[ Reply to This | # ]

ABI : SCO didn't not know.
Authored by: dmomara on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 08:13 PM EST
SCO (The Santa Cruz Operation) collaborated with a number of entities in the
establishment of extensions of the System V ABI for the IA64 archeture. The most
recent revision of the documentation of which is available at:

ftp://download.intel.com/design/Itanium/Downloads/24537003.pdf

Section 1.1 of the document not only makes clear that SCO knew of and affirmed
of The Open Group's policies relative to the exact "IP" that they
place at issue, but that the members of the defining group for
"their" IA64 ABI extensions included Cygnus Systems and VA Linux.

The "scope, audience and purpose" of the Single UNIX* Specification,
IEEE Std. 1003.1 and correlatively ISO/IEC 9945:2003 are documented and
explained at:

http://www.opengroup.org/austin/papers/backgrounder.html

*(UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the united stated and
other countries.)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Minix defense isn't necessarily valid
Authored by: mflaster on Tuesday, December 30 2003 @ 10:37 PM EST
Just wanted to point out that yes, he based it on Minix originally. But for
errno.h, for example, the recent discussion on LKML talked about at some point
they stuck in lots of new errors and comments in errno.h. The text of many of
these are identical to System V, so there's some concern. Linus concluded he
took them directly from the output of a simple C program linked against GNU's
libc 2.2.2.

But in my opinion, SCO will claim that just shifts the blame to the FSF. Where
did H. Lu get that text from?

Mike

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Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: Wesley_Parish on Wednesday, December 31 2003 @ 05:25 AM EST
A few comments from the University of California at Berkeley on the Unix System Labs:

AT&T itself led the crusade to standardize interfaces when it published the System V Interface Definition ("SVID") in 1983. Id. at 17. These standard interfaces were published by AT&T so that "[d]evelopers can build programs that are *guaranteed to work on any machine running a SVID-compIiant version of the Unix System* [e.g., BSD or Xenix]." Id. Moreover, an independent effort by users and the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers has resulted in POSIX, "a family of standards that define the way applications interact with an operating system." Id. See also, Joint Decl., at Para. 28.3. POSIX has been endorsed in the United States by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and it declares standards for the operating system interface, system calls, libraries, etc. Id. *As a result of SVID. POSIX and related international standards. all variants of Unix have certain similarities which USL incorrectly has seized upon as "proof" of copyright infringement.*

Although page 31 of USL's brief states "Dr. Carson has found numerous instances of identity or substantial similarity between source code within the Net2 and Unix/32V kernels", nothing could be farther from the truth. As the Court may read for itself, Dr. Carson's affidavit makes no mention of any source code similarity between Net2 and 32V. Instead, he points to file names, function names and defined constants. See, Carson Affid., at Paras. 28, 32, 47. These alleged similarities are de minimis in number but, more importantly, they are not protected by any copyright USL may have in 32V because they are "dictated by external factors." Atari Games,supra; Computer Associates, supra; Brown Bag Software, supra.

"Any operating system wishing to offer kernel services in a compatible fashion with the Unix interface specifications has no choice but to have the exact same header file names and contents, and functional interfaces.... The header files have to exist, with the name used by the standard, and with the specific contents listed by the standard, for an operating system to be certified as complying with the standard."

Joint Decl., at Para. 28.3. Four of the header file names cited by Dr. Carson are "nonsensical;" the remainder are required interfaces. Id., at Para. 28.6. Accordingly, the header file names fall squarely within the Federal Circuits' holding in Atari Games that "expression dictated by external factors (like the computer's mechanical specifications, *compatibility with other programs. and demands of the industry* ...)" are not protectible elements of a computer program and, therefore, provide no grounds for a finding that Net2 is an infringing work. See also, Apple Computer, supra, 799 F.Supp. at 1021 ("The functionality of a feature may deprive it of protection under the copyright laws.")[fn19] 2 4

[fn18] The Copyright Office's Regulation 325.02(c) states that mnemonics are not copyrightable elements of a work.

Net2 contains 12,529 symbols similar to those described in Para. 47 of Dr.Carson's affidavit. Joint Decl., at Para. 47. From that large universe, Dr. Carson has found 116 matches; he admits that 50 of those 116 matches are required by the POSIX standards, leaving only 66 "unexplained" matches (0.5% of the 12,529 symbols in Net2) which he claims indicate copyright infringement. Carson Affid., at Para. 47. But the "remaining 66 matches are also dictated by industry standards,compatibility, or common usage." Joint Decl., at Para. 47

"The similarity of such functional elements in products of like kind does not suggest unlawful copying, but standardization across competing products for functional considerations."

"The 'idea-expression identity' exception provides that *copyrighted language may be copied without infringing when there is but a limited number of ways to express a given idea.* This rule is the logical extension of the fundamental principle that copyright cannot protect ideas. *In the computer context this means that when specific instructions. even though previously copyrighted. are the only and essential means of accomplishing a given task. their later use by another will not amount to infringement....* [C]opyright protection for programs does not threaten to block the use of ideas or of program language previously developed by others *when that use is necessary to achieve a certain result."* (Emphasis added)

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/bsdisuit.html 930107.amicus.txt

And you then add the fact that McKusick himself copyrights the BSD archives he offers, and you can see that he has left a massive hole in his argument - if he is permitted to have a collective copyright on the BSD archive, then Linux Torvalds is permitted a copyright on the independent rewriting of the POSIX interface standard. I rest my case.

---
finagement: The Vampire's veins and Pacific torturers stretching back through his own season. Well, cutting like a child on one of these states of view, I duck

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: MattZN on Wednesday, December 31 2003 @ 02:43 PM EST
Sheesh. People are so stuck on whether the code was written by Linux or copied from BSD that they are missing three key points that make it all irrelevant. First, the BSD code (e.g. errno.h) does not have a USL copyright on it, it has a UCBerkeley copyright on it. SCO could sue UCBerkeley, I suppose, but SCO cannot sue end-users for removing a copyright that is *NOT* SCO's in the first place. Second, whether Linux copied the code or not (and I do believe Linus when he says he didn't), they still have a perfect right to use it. This isn't proprietary code here, the BSD version is publically distributed and available under an essentially free license. The absolute worst they would ever have to do is add the copyright notice back in, not pay SCO hundreds of dollars per cpu unit. Third, there are numerous court decisions, such as the Coherent and BSDI cases, which make SCO's ABI claims to errno.h completely ludicrous.

-Matt

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linus Corrects McKusick
Authored by: Curtman on Thursday, January 01 2004 @ 02:01 AM EST
That "reporter" has a reputation for bad reporting too.

[ Reply to This | # ]

McKusick a hired gun?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 01 2004 @ 04:38 PM EST

I just discovered this tidbit on McKusick's website.

Serve as an expert witness on software trade-secret and copyright matters, particularly those related to operating systems and filesystems.

I don't know who Marshall Kirk McKusick is apart from his position in the BSD community, but I find this kind of interesting in the light of all the litigation taking place.

[ Reply to This | # ]

MINIX uses *negative* errno values
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 02 2004 @ 10:02 AM EST
I just checked the MINIX source code and the Linux source code and somebody is
lying because MINIX uses negative numbers for EPERM, etc. and Linux uses classic
UNIX values for them.

Maybe Linus did originally use MINIX-style errno values in the past once but it
was changed.

Even if Linus admits to copying MINIX, that wasn't legal either since MINIX was
not licensed for public redistribution until long after Linux was being
distributed.

If Linux was using classic UNIX errno values before Caldera gave public
redistribution rights to the pre-Sys III UNIX code then those responsible for
the redistribution of the code are guilty of past violations.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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