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Thinking Small
Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:22 AM EST

Richard P. Feynman, in his 1959 speech "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom - An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics," said that "in every theorem, there are assumptions".

But assumptions are not always accurate, which is one good reason for the scientific method of sharing ideas, of course. SCO, once again, appears to be suffering from a legal theory based upon flawed assumptions. I gather this from a comment left on Groklaw earlier today.

Here is the comment, from Trevor G. Marchall, Contributing Editor, BYTE.com (who added "BYTE is not associated with this post") and note that I don't know if it really is from him or not but for the purposes of our theoretical discussion, it doesn't actually matter:

When I interviewed Mr Stowell he mentioned Linus

I interviewed Mr Blake Stowell on 13 June 2003. I recall him specifically mentioning that Linus' university had a Unix Source license. Helsinki, if I recall correctly... I recall him speaking to this very issue - that Linus had been tainted by his University's Unix source license.

Trevor G Marshall
Contributing Editor, BYTE.com (BYTE is not associated with this post)

This brought this question:

What do you mean by "tainted" ?????????"

Marshall clarified with two responses:

I recall this part of the discussion centered on students at universities, worldwide, who have seen Unix source code at their universities, and may have used some of that "IP" in later projects, so that those projects might therefore be "tainted" by the "IP"

Now I am not saying I agree with this line of argument, I am reporting my interpretation of what is in the notes I took during the discussion with Mr Chris Sontag

..Trevor..

Actually, I just noticed my notes say that Mr Chris Sontag raised this point, note Mr Stowell.

..Trevor..

The exchange inspired pfusco to become creative and explain what SCO means by "tainted":

I believe that he is referring to something that a SCO employee would say. Tainted... as in Linus saw the Unix code while in university and for some strange and bizaar reason it stayed in his head and cried out during the night "put me in linuxxxxxx.... put meeeeeeeeee in Linux...." over and over again untill one day Linus succumbed and inserted the code.

This burst of creativity elicited from a rational soul the point that tainting is generally a trade secret or NDA concept:

Interesting, but only if Linus saw the code and agreed to an NDA

Linus never saw such code to my knowledge. And even if he did they can't say he's in breech of contract if he never agreed to the license, which I don't believe he did. That would leave them with trying to claim that his knowledge obtained from reading the Unix source (assuming he did) somehow leaked into the Linux source. "Tainting" is usually something mentioned with trade secrets and non-compete agreements where it is significantly uglier and more difficult to avoid liability when working on two similar products.

This brought out the cynic in PolR, who pointed out how nonsensical it is to think of trade secrets being taught in university classrooms:

Yeah! Trade secrets are taught in university classrooms.

See the title. You think they can expect students to study and never use what they are taught? Would a judge really believe the student is at fault if he uses what he learns?

Now, I haven't seen Trevor's notes, so I am just putting forth my own theory, using assumptions of my own, which may be as flawed as SCO's.

Well. Not *that* flawed, probably.

Let me be sequentially creative, cynical, and then rational. Let's say, putting on my creative hat first, that SCO's theorem is that all students who took a class in Unix are now tainted. Anything they do is now a derivative work of Unix, because the students saw the precious (and highly viral, I must say) Unix code in a class at the University of Helsinki or MIT or NYU back in the 80s. By this ka-ching, GPL-yang theory of SCO's, combined with their creative definition of derivative works, every operating system in the world is now their derivative work, is it not?

Now, I put on my cynical hat and ask myself, what would the consequences be? -- The whole world owes them money.

Silly, you say? Impossible? Not if you think big, and we have seen that whatever SCO's faults -- and they are legion -- thinking big is not a SCO problem. Note this BYTE article by Marshall from June.

Let's assume that this is the plan, long enough to see if it could float. My rational hat, please. My first rational question must be: did Linus study Unix in school as alleged? How to know? Well, I could ask him. So, Rational Me did, and here is his response when I sent him Trevor's comments:

I can pretty much guarantee that that isn't the case. The University of Helsinki was a big VAX/VMS user, and as far as I know only started using unix after I had already started there - I started in 87, I think (with a year off in the army, so my second year would have been 89-90).

And I believe that the 'UNIX and C' course I took in that second year (might even have been the third year, I forget) at university was the first time they ever taught Unix. And that was an introductory course in _using_ UNIX and C, not in internals.

And they used the Andrew Tanenbaum book in the Operating System class, which again has no UNIX internals, it uses Minix as an example.

So I not only never saw any UNIX sources lying around - I'd be very _very_ surprised if the University of Helsinki ever had a source license. It just wasn't their thing. The university didn't do any OS research at that time (Linux kind of re-stimulated some of it, and they have since done some stuff), and hadn't done OS research since the 60's, I think. That's how they got into Burroughs and then later VAX/VMS.

Sounds like our dear SCO people are just making things up again.

Well, that is if Trevor is who he says he is and his notes are accurate, etc. Assumptions. If all those assumptions are accurate, then SCO's problem, or one of them, would be that while they posit creative theorem, they don't bother to check them against reality before running with them. If Linus never saw Unix at school, and he says he didn't, their concept goes poof. Although everything else in this article may be assumptions, this is a solid fact. There goes that legal theory.

You can't just figure a thing must have happened, and then go sue somebody, using discovery to find out if it did or did not happen. Not liking the scientific method, which is based on sharing information, can definitely lead to black hole dropouts in your reality base. That can gum up your legal works, no doubt about it.

Speaking of reality, more or less, you might enjoy looking at something one of the lawyers I do work for sent me tonight. I was, appropriately enough, in the middle of reading Feynman's "think small" speech when I got his email. How would you like to look at the universe smaller and smaller, from the Milky Way down to quarks on a leaf? If you like such things, or you just need a break from SCO's small and crass universe, go here and enjoy the view while traveling from the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then zooming in toward Earth in powers of ten to finally reach the leaf, and then zoom in to the level of the quarks viewed at 100 attometers. That's assuming I understood it and am accurately describing it.

Sometimes when SCO is getting to me, it helps to think about infinity -- how magnificently infinite the Universe is, both macroscopically and at the microscopic level. Which is another way of saying that tonight, my antidote to small thinking was to think exquisitely small.


  


Thinking Small | 363 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Thinking Small
Authored by: trevmar on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:12 AM EST

PJ,
OK, I spent the time to register an account this time :-)

The article I wrote for BYTE.com is at this URL

Most of the interview was conducted with Mr Chris Sontag, and my notes tend to be fairly sketchy, as it was hard to listen to what I was being told, keep a straight face, and write all at the same time. I will call your attention to one, passage, hoever, (quoting from BYTE.com)

"So
you want royalties from FreeBSD as well?" I asked. Sontag responded that "there
may or may not be issues. We believe that UNIX System V provided the basic
building blocks for all subsequent computer operating systems, and that they all
tend to be derived from UNIX System V (and therefore are claimed as SCO's
intellectual property)."

"So is anybody clean? What about Apple and Microsoft?"
I wondered. "Sun is clean," he said—but he gave no answer in regards to Apple
and Microsoft.

"But I thought that Microsoft had signed a license agreement?"
"No," Sontag said. Microsoft merely licensed an "applications interface layer."
Upon reflection, it appears he was referring to the ABI, and even back in June it seems that Microsoft and SCO had been discussing issues of ABI licensing. ..Trevor..

[ Reply to This | # ]

Two Sides
Authored by: rgmoore on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:16 AM EST

I'm rather of two minds on this point. On the one hand, SCO has at least refrained from making this kind of vile accusation in public. The bozos at SCO have never shown any particular reluctance to think before popping off, so it's possible that this is something that they were looking at, blabbed about, and then discarded. Maybe they only thought about this stuff and then bothered to check their list of licensees to find out that Linus's university didn't have a source license at that time.

On the other hand, this is something that they haven't talked about in public but have talked about to people in the press. Maybe they're trying to insinuate things about Linus through the press without actually having to say them in public themselves. It would certainly be bad for Linux if some supposedly independent journalists started publishing articles suggesting that Linux couldn't separate itself from Unix because all the important programmers had seen Unix source before. Since it would be something that SCO hadn't talked about in public, it would seem like an idea that had been arrived at independently and thus have more credibility that a point first raised by SCO.

I'm not sure which way to think. Are the people at SCO a bunch of hopeless clowns who pop off with whatever happens to be on their minds whether it's sensible or not, or are they a bunch of schemers in the middle of a nefarious plot? I'm inclined to go with the first choice, if only because they haven't shown such cunning in other pursuits, but it bears thinking about.

---
Behind every sleazy lawyer, there's a sleazy client.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Two Sides - Authored by: Peter Smith on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:32 AM EST
  • Two Sides - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 07:04 AM EST
Clean room reverse-engineering.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:22 AM EST
Isn't the whole purpose of 'clean room' reverse-engineering to eliminate any
possibility of copying (and hence copyright infringement)? Isn't that how the
original IBM PC was cloned? Might this be what they're getting at when they
mention 'tainting'? That is, they think that Linux isn't a 'clean room'
re-engineered version of Unix, therefore, it's 'tainted'.

If you've seen or had access to the original, can that be considered, prima
facie, evidence of copying (thereby reversing the burden of proof)?

Of course, they do need to show copied code in the first place.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Peter Smith on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:26 AM EST
PJ, I just love the critical, analytical and insightful way you bore down
through the fluff to the essentials (and the way you question assumptions)

By the way, licensing one's precious source code, etc to a teaching university
would seem to be a very foolish thing to do if you really want to safeguard the
family jewels.

I understand the possible commercial advantages of doing this but surely you
then give up the right to cry 'foul' if by chance, some student, somewhere,
maybe produces a little code that is even remotely 'tainted', whatever that
might mean.

I am glad you questioned the meaning of the word 'tainted'. Inflamatory and
emotive use of langauage seems to be a SCO tactic.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:28 AM EST

I studied informatics at university level in the 80's.

I never saw any unix sourc code. So I believe Linus.
My university was running Unix, but it was running BSD Unix. My understanding is
that most universities were running BSD. And what I understood from discussions
here is that you also needed a SysV license then. So my university had probably
a SysV license but where teaching BSD Unix.

H@ns

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Thinking Small - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:37 AM EST
    • Thinking Small - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:38 PM EST
  • Thinking Small - Authored by: pooky on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 03:07 PM EST
  • Thinking Small - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:05 PM EST
Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:28 AM EST
To me, the SCO case itself seems to be magnificently infinite. It is a thing of
marvelous beauty; the truly bizarre; the truth that is stranger than all
possible fiction; the horror that is mesmerising in its fascination; a story
with more twists in the plot than the "1001 Arabian Nights" -
complete with a gang of thieves and a princess too :-)

Ah! What writer of mere novels would ever dare to make up such wonderful stuff?
No wonder we are all addicted.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small: PJ, my first post here
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 03:04 AM EST
is to tell you how exquisitely, ironically poetic I find the last line of this
essay. Wonderful summation.

Keep up the good work! I'll buy a copy of your book when this is all over and
SCO lives no more... :)

KR

[ Reply to This | # ]

Some Devil's Advocate argumentation
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 03:23 AM EST
Putting on the Thinking-like-SCO hat, at least the following counterstrike could be expected:

Linus: "And they used the Andrew Tanenbaum book in the Operating System class, which again has no UNIX internals, it uses Minix as an example."

SCO: "But we have proof (we can show it only under NDA, of course) that Minix is tainted by Unix code as well. We claim Tanenbaum saw Unix source code at his university, and he even mentions somewhere using PC-IX as development platform for Minix."

I emphasize the above SCO argument is (so far) fictional, but they might make it, so better prepare.

(PC-IX was an old Unix port to 16-bit IBM PCs, it is mentioned a few times in the OS design text book that Tanenbaum wrote and which introduced Minix to the world).

[ Reply to This | # ]

Giving away source code
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 03:29 AM EST
PJ - loved this write-up. I am enamored with your writing style.
...
Assuming they did license their code to University of Helsinki (UofH), wouldn't this be a foolish move? I mean, if you want to protect your IP, than licensing the code to a school with the purpose of exposing it to students is a damaging move.

It seems to me that claiming they licensed the code to UoH would not fare well in court, right? I mean, you literally gave away your ideas to students that are expected to learn (memorize/absorb) from the code.

I believe I saw a tag from a fellow GROKLAW'ster that quotes Justice O'Conner. Something about if IP is exposed to the public for some extended period, it is PD.

Can someone clarify? Please? Bueller? Bueller? :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:44 AM EST
This whole thing make me think its simular to when you walk onto a used car lot
and pick a car with a lot of miles on it, and after a few months of use, the
transmition goes or the rings need to be replaced, and going back to the dealer
demanding they fix it or replace it because they sold you a faulty car.

You bought the car, you knew it had a lot of miles, and if you didn't, then
caveat emptor...

SCO bought Unix, they knew it was taught in school, they knew it was well driven
and that intellectual property/trade secrets were well distributed and well
known in the world. They knew that their previous sucessors had a hard time
confirming they had ownership to all the IP. They bought the used car, now they
have to accept the problems with it.

I have to ask this question. Do you think it's possible that IBM could argue
to have Unixware System V put into public domain? Considering especially that
so much of the tecknowledgy is so well known and that if SCO were to go to far
with their lawsuits that it could have long and terrible consequenses for
computing in general, and US business relations and business compatiblity with
the rest of the world. Kinda like imminent domain. The public needs your
property more than you do, so hand it over Joe.

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO's "viral IP"
Authored by: atul on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 05:04 AM EST
It seems like SCO would have us believe that anyone even somewhat familiar with
Unix has been incurably infected with SCO IP, so that anything they do after
that is a derived work and belongs to SCO. And people say the *GPL* is viral.


Wow. That's a lot of infected people. For starters, anyone who watched
Jurassic Park saw the part where the genius kid finds a Unix box with a fancy 3D
file browser and uses it to save our heroes from the velociraptors. Even though
I've never seen a real file browser like that, the box *was* represented as
running Unix. I can see how SCO would argue that even having completely wrong
ideas about Unix still counts as a form of familiarity.

Even more damning: I recently saw an old episode of the "La Femme
Nikita" TV series where our heroine prevents the evildoers from crashing
two airliners together in midair by laying hold of the evildoers' Unix box, and
doing a ps -ef followed by a kill -9. Heck, the kill -9 command is giving away
the crucial line "#define SIGKILL 9" in the hotly disputed signal.h
file (one of SCO's infamous "65 files"). Heck, that's a major
copyright violation right there. Anyone who saw this episode (I know you're
out there) is irreparably tainted by SCO IP.

If you've seen any of the myriad TV shows where someone's using a PowerBook,
you may also be infected. Even if you can't see the machine's screen,
there's a good chance that it's running the BSD-derived Mac OS X, which tells
you that there's a form of Unix out there that has power management features,
even if it *is* a BSD. Hey, they're going to reopen that UC Berkeley case
sooner or later, so it still counts. So what if it's a real stretch for SCO,
it wouldn't be the first time.

The very first time I ever heard or saw the word "UNIX" was in the
late 70's or so, when I was at the mall and saw the word on a baseball cap. I
swear I am not making this up. The wearer was quite hippie-ish, if I remember
right. That right there tells you that UNIX is something that appealed to
70's hippies. It's not *useful* info, per se, but it was certainly *true*.
I had no idea what it was at that point. I was in grade school at the time and
remember thinking it was a funny word. Which is also true. On the other hand,
this probably means that I was slightly exposed to Unix IP from one of the
versions released under the "Ancient Unix" license, so msybe I'm
covered. But *now* this would be a different story. If someone walks around
the mall wearing, say, a t-shirt with some macros out of ctype.h on it -- my
friends in Milan say it's going to be the ultimate fashion statement next
summer -- they've infected everyone in sight, like some kind of bioterrorist.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Big
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 05:26 AM EST
It seems that SCOG's thinking is, that if you have ever seen any of the UNIX
code, under any circumstances, you are now tainted. That thinking would mean
that if a programmer even were to look at a book that had 1 snippet of UNIX code
in it, you could not work on any other OS as you might remember that code and
use it in the OS of your choice. Maybe they are looking for people they could
force to work for them. <grin> They seem to be losing programmers.
</grin>

As they have said that they are intending to sue a UNIX user if they don't
certify a clean use of it, MS would make a good first target. Get MS to fork
over a minimal amount ( for MS ), then try to charge all users of any MS
products and users of IBM's PCDOS and OS/2 also saying that MS tainted IBM's
code in both OSes. Banks would be alogical target along with insurance
companies. Places with money.

SCO therory = ( fill in blank ) is an OS. SCO's UNIX is an OS. Therefore ( fill
in the blank again )is SCO's. A = C, B = C, therefore A = B = Profit.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Irrelevant if Linux saw Unix source code
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 05:29 AM EST
IANAL but as I understand it there are different categories of what is now
called intellectual property.
There are trade secrets, these are only valid if they are secret or at least
reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy are taken. Nothing seen by Linux in a
university course can possibly be considered secret so this does not apply.

There are patents, patents are by definition in the public domain and apply even
if indpendantly discovered but I do not believe SCO have claimed patent
violations and in any case I did not think SW patents were allowed even in the
US that long ago (does anyone know the date?) so this does not apply.

Lastly there is copyright which prevents direct copying of materials but allows
the ideas concepts and techniques to be reused. If Linus or anyone else saw Unix
System V code and then used the ideas in new code written by them there is
no problem as long as they did not make a verbatim copy or something trivially
derived from a verbatim copy. Using ideas taught in a university class using
system V code in a new OS is as far as I understand it completely legal. If SW
engineers working for a company saw system V code and reused ideas and
techniques later in other code that is also completely legal from a copyright
point of view.

I do not see how SCO can make a legal case on this basis at all whatever the
facts about Linus education.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:08 AM EST
Hey, if this tainting took place all over the board, Microsoft and particularly Bill Gates may have eternal trouble getting rid of their Unix roots. For all I know, Bill Gates /developed/ MBASIC on a PDP-11 running UNIX System 6, quoth Computer Source Magazine: Under The Hood: Part 7:

"That same year, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Micro-Soft. Its first product was a ROM-based Beginner?s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) interpreter, MBASIC, which it sold to Micro Instrumentation & Telemetry Systems (MITS), who used it in its 8080-based Altair 8800 microcomputer. MBASIC was actually written on a UCB timeshared DEC PDP-11 running UNIX V6."

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Thinking Small - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 07:24 AM EST
  • DOS UNIX roots - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:58 PM EST
    • DOS UNIX roots - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 05:11 PM EST
      • DOS UNIX roots - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 08 2004 @ 01:18 PM EST
        • DOS UNIX roots - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 08 2004 @ 01:55 PM EST
          • DOS UNIX roots - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 08 2004 @ 09:11 PM EST
Thinking Small - Working Hypotheses
Authored by: rcorg on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 07:35 AM EST

Isn't SCO's claim to SVRX IP ownership still entirely "hypothetical?" The 1995 "SCO Novell Asset Purchase Agreement," does not explicitly transfer SVRX copyright ownership to SCO. I read the Agreement (IANAL) as granting SCO a sole franchise to the Unix, UnixWare, etc. business, rather than a sale of of SVRX copyright ownership. It seems likely that this is Novell's current position, given their SVRX copyright filing. As Feynman reminds us, whatever we assert as provable is based on our working hypotheses. SCO's working hypotheses clearly includes their claim to SVRX copyright ownership, and their entire argument is based on that claim, which is as yet only assumed, not proved.

Having participated in many technical contract negotiations (from the technical side) over the years, I get the sense that the SVRX copyright issue was never fully resolved by the parties, and the Agreement was written to leave room for further interpretation on this point. After all, IP was not necessarily uppermost in the minds of the parties in 1995 - the exchange of assets was certainly the primary intent of the Agreement. The terms of this asset exchange are spelled out in clear terms, but the disposition of SVRX copyright ownership is passed over in silence. I have trouble believing that this was an unintentional oversight. SVRX copyright ownership may will have been a deal breaker.

BTW, Feynman's 'room at the bottom' quote was the beginning of quantum computing, which will very likely revolutionize information technology in this century. Hopefully, we will all learn from lessons from the SCO matter that will strengthen and improve the GPL and protect future innovation from cynical exploitation.

For anyone interested in quantum computing, I invite you to visit my "Quantum Computing for Kids" web site, here. This course was successfully offered to gifted 4-6 and 7-8 graders in the spring of 2003.

"SCO for Kids" might be fun to teach also...

[ Reply to This | # ]

The point wasn't to make a legal argument...
Authored by: Mark Levitt on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:04 AM EST
Remember, SCO is not talking to the press about these things in order to win a
legal case. They are motivated to prop up their stock price.

Sontag and Stowel know that they have no hope of making a legal case in court,
but that also know they can pull the wool over most journalists.

Look at what they say: "tainted" by "IP". And,
"copied some of the IP".

Everyone here knows that is meaningless. "IP" is an acronym for
"intellectual property", a shorthand way of refering to a set of
related concepts.

It is meaningless to talk about "copying IP" without clarifying if
you mean patents, trade secrets, copyights, or trademarks.

However, SCO knows that most journalists don't understand that, so they use
ambigous language that reportes won't know to make them clarify.

If this reporter had actually followed up and said "what specificly do you
think Linus copied into Linux: patented methods, copyrighted code, trade
secrets, or a trademarks?" I suspect he would have seen some fast
back-peddling and may have realized he was being snowed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:08 AM EST
I really should look up my login details sometime soon, but I'm lazy. It's
one of the reasons I prod a machine daily to do things for me.

It's classic FUD. No court of law would accept the argument that someone in
the same building as an object would immediately know about that object, or
acquire intimate knowledge of that object. As far as I'm aware, they'd have
to prove the link, but Linus himself has already mentioned a more intimate
acquaintance with minix.

This is chinese whispers. A slightly more restrained version of their
'press-releases' that they can argue was mangled in translation if pulled up
on it. Playing to the peanut gallery again.

BTW, for a fairly hardline look at critical thinking, 'Demon Haunted World' by
Carl Sagan is the kind of book that should become required reading for anyone
that has to deal with humans in a social context, such as government or
business.

Draconis

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT: Media on Monday's Deadline
Authored by: Steve Martin on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:09 AM EST

From InternetWeek

---
"When I say something, I put my name next to it." -- Isaac Jaffee, "Sports Night"

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: vonbrand on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:13 AM EST
First off, IANAL. Just an interested bystander who has (tried) to grasp this whole area of law.

If Linus himself saw Unix code or not is pretty irrelevant. The real problem (if any) is that Linux has been developed by literally thousands of people, most of them with a strong interest in Unix and certainly there must be many that have or had access to Unix source code. So the fact that Linux developers had acess to Unix source must be taken as given. But as long as nobody copied code, there is no real problem. The SGI fishing expedition showed a few small snippets of similar code, that is all. which were promptly removed. So we are in the clear in this respect.

Now copying ABIs is another kettle of fish. The fact that stuff in errno.h is so similar can't really be a coinicidence. Plus several players admited they copied (or adjusted) the values precisely for the sake of (binary) compatibility makes a case for copying. Then the whole case hinges on if something like an ABI can be protected by copyright or whatever, and then if SCO does actually have the ownership of the relevant rights. An ABI is really a prescpription of how you should do things, the resulting stuff (what is in Linux, essentially, the contested header files are an expression of that ABI) has much the same relation to the ABI than a pie has to its recipe. My grandmother claimed absolute rights on her recipies, but shared the pies freely ;-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

What about MS-DOS?
Authored by: K5Guy on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:41 AM EST
If SCO is going to claim tainting, couldn't the same thing be said about Bill
Gates tainting MS-DOS with Unix? I don't think there is much doubt about the
similarity.

Unix: cd ../..
MS-DOS: cd ..\..

So, what's next? If SCO going to claim that MS-DOS is a derivative work based
on their current definition? Would SCO sue Microsoft, in light of them
licensing Unix code?


---
IANAL.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Tainting
Authored by: dsblank on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:47 AM EST
Thinking big and weird, what if SCO wanted to claim that Linus didn't have to
see the code, but maybe one of his teachers did? Therefore, they were tainted,
and then tainted Linus. Or one of their teachers tainted his teachers, which
tainted Linus.

It seems that there is no end to the ways that SCO could make wild assumptions,
stretch definitions to the max, dupe the investment community, make money, and
lose in court.

Maybe we as a cummunity need to shift gears. Instead of thinking about how to
negate all of SCO's wild claims, maybe we need to start thinking about how to
stop the next SCO.

What laws would you pass to stop this from happening in the future?

-Doug Blank
(assistant professor, computer science)

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Research
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:55 AM EST
Of course SCO carefully scrutinizes all aspects of its claims
before making them public. It has 4 MIT analysts painstakenly
compare SCO's delusions to reality before allowing those
delusions to go public.<br>

10 We know this because SCO says so, and SCO is always
right.<br>

20 We know this too because SCO says so.<br>

30 goto 10

[ Reply to This | # ]

SCO Group's assumptions
Authored by: the_flatlander on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:13 AM EST
I'd like to point out that Darl and his friends have repeatedly made statements
indicating that they believe, (or, cynically, that they wish to encourage me to
believe), that a contract between two parties is somehow binding on some third
party. As in:

IBM infringed, so Linux users owe us money.

Linus infringed, so Linux users owe us money.

Linus's University had a contract, so Linus infringed, so Linux users owe us
money.

Linux violates BSD's copyright, so Linux users owe us money.

I believe the fallacy can probably be traced to the desired result, in all these
cases.

TFL

Peace? Yes, we will have peace with SCO Group. We will have peace with SCO
Group when Darl and all his cronies are jailed, and their building in Lindon is
used to house peguins.
(With apologies to JRRT)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small - and the OS (flame) wars
Authored by: jesse on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:16 AM EST
Oh piffle.

If SCOx were to attempt this line of logic to this level, then IBM would
suddenly require payment for the "methods and procedures" used in
OS360, and whatever the OS was for the IBM 1620...

After all, UNIX had a command line interface, as did all of the IBM systems...
(the console DID have a typewriter interface).

And MS DOS is still DOS which is "Disk Operating System" as created
by IBM for the 1620.

So what if the commands changed... All your IP "derives" from
IBM......

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: whitehat on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:34 AM EST
I'd like to think BIG for a minute (or is it small?).

The world of computing didn't start with Unix. There were a couple of other interesting operating systems at Bell Labs.

Everybody knows, that Unix was coded in the "C Programming Language". Where did "C" come from? It evolved from the "B Programming Language". With C being the next letter of the alphabet, it was an obvious choice to name the new language "C".

Very early Unix systems apparently still included some B code. I believe the early C compilers were implemented in B, at least partially.

The "B" language originated on the GE mainframe computer (later to become Honeywell, GECOS operating system) and the DEC PDP-7's, then in use at Bell Labs. It was developed by Ritchie and Thompson, and was developed partly based on BCPL (The "B" was from Thompson's wife's first name, Bon. You may be disappointed to know, there was no "A Programming Language", and APL is unrelated).

Early Unix systems evolved in part from Multics technology. Multics was written in PL/1 and was a joint development between General Electric, Bell Labs, and MIT. The GE Multics machine was still at Bell Labs, when early development of BCPL, "B", "C", and Unix started. Apparently, some of the Multics architecture was carried forward into Unix.

GE sold their computer operations, including Multics, to Honeywell. Much later, Honeywell sold this portion of their business to Compagnie Bull in France. Today, Bull remains the owner of all Multics technologies. SCO does not own any part of Multics.

It doesn't seem like much of a stretch (at least by SCO standards), to state that Unix technology is in part based on Multics, and is therefore partly the property of Bull in France. I suppose that Bull could request Bell Labs, AT&T, USL, Novell, or SCO to share the intended loot from IBM and Linux customers.

What became of Multics? I'm not entirely sure. I think Bull eventually tried to convince Multics customers to move on to Bull's Unix platform (now IBM AIX with Bull nameplate). I don't know how many customers actually moved. There never were very many Multics customers to begin with.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Assumtions....
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:39 AM EST
A colleague of mine recently imparted some wisdom on me, it would do good for
SCO to pay attention:

"....Never, assume anything..
Because when you do, you make an ASS out of yoU and ME!"

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Thomas Downing on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:44 AM EST

Interesting that you should mention Feynman and physics...

I had just read an article that was referenced by another reader in an earlier post. This listed some "Logical Conclusions" about open source. On the whole, I agree with almost everything the writer asserts.

So how does this relate to physics? Here is conclusion 4 from that article

GPL software offerings that enter immature markets will not gain significant market share until the target market shakes out - and one vendor emerges. Thus, GPL project leaders should and will avoid sexy, disruptive technology markets and focus instead on the largest and most mature markets dominated by one vendor in the space. New potentially lucrative markets addressed by venture-backed startups are by design hostile environments for open source offerings.

Modern string theory seems to hold great promise as the most accurate model of reality. But unlike general relativity, quantum electro-dynamics, etc. physicists don't know what the underlying 'geometrical foundation' of string theory is.

The quoted conclusion above shows that while the author has a valid picture of the FOSS phenominon, he does not have an understanding of the underlying 'geometry' of FOSS is

P.S. OT I know, but hey, it was Feynman who first turned me on to physics...

---
Thomas Downing
Principal Member Technical Staff
IPC Information Systems, Inc.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thanking PJ
Authored by: pfusco on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:59 AM EST
I want to thank you for using my quote in the above story, made me feel a bit more a part of the group here :) Im neither the programming guru or the in depth researchers that I see here every day and truly enjoy reading their comments/ feeback and ideas.

Whether I comment with creativity (as above) or with pure sarcasm as in my "Bloody Pirates" post awhile ago, or with reflection on the issue presented. Or even with pure and simple frustration at the whole situation, I know that my thoughts are looked at fairy and objectivly.

I believe in what Groklaw is all about and in OSS. I believe in what IBM and Novell are doing for the OSS and Linux. Yes their is a profit motive behind it, but is that really so bad? Though in IBMs case there is a bit insulted pride of how they do their buisness.

After the anti- trust "settlement" with M$ I do find it hard to believe in the American Corporate Jusdicial System. Yet, places such as this give me hope that people do care about what is right at a basic level.

There was a rerun of Law and Order last night wherein the judge said... "Its not about being right Mr. McCoy, it is about doing what is right." and I think Groklaw has that sentiment ingrained in its soul.

As always I will be watching and reading and throwing my 2 cents in where I can. Thank you PJ for bringing an honest and truly open forum for these issues to me and all the others here at Groklaw.

---
only the soul matters in the end

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: PhilTR on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 10:05 AM EST
God! We can't say we didn't see this coming. I bitched about this as far back
as August of '03. figuring SCO would try to define derivative as broadly as
possible, maintain that ownership never transferred (only the right to use) and
like the parasites they are claim "all your code are belong to us."
philtr

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 10:07 AM EST
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but SCO's reasoning seems to indicate that if an
author has ever read any books before writing one themself, then that author is
"tainted" by the copyrighted words they have previosly read and any
books they write must be considered "infringing" on the plot of all
previous books they have read. In SCO's world writers would not be allowed to
read, musicians would not be allowed to listen to music, and people trained in
computer programing would not be allowed to code.

This seems a silly way to run a world.

[ Reply to This | # ]

FUD Alert
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 10:58 AM EST
"...employees should be required to justify ..." using FOSS.

They seem to have left out the word "not"

http://www.internetweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17200450

[ Reply to This | # ]

Response to Microsoft's latest FUD
Authored by: Thomas Frayne on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 11:10 AM EST


Microsoft's latest FUD is its "Get the facts" campaign. Wheeler's definitive response, Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS), provides the facts, which show that Linux is equal to or superior to Windows from the point of view of someone deciding whether to switch from Windows to Linux, and OSS/FS software in general is equal to or superior to competing proprietary software.

My previous post here quotes his conclusions, with links to the major sections of the article.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: PeteS on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 11:15 AM EST
This is truly hilarious.

Taking this line of thinking into the hardware world, where I tend to live most
of the time, it's rather like saying "Bell labs invented the bipolar
transistor. As all bipolar integrated circuits use the bipolar transistor, Bell
labs has rights to all such integrated circuits".

Note that even in the patent world this would be seen as smoking <your choice
of mind altering artifact here>, and there have been some pretty broad cases
(such as the microcontroller brouhaha).

I know we are not talking about patents, but the analogy seems accurate.



---
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity

[ Reply to This | # ]

Woo hoo! My students will pay for my retirement!
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 12:01 PM EST
I just have to file the suit claiming they've profited for decades from my
intellectual property just before retiring from teaching!

[ Reply to This | # ]

The next major FUD attack
Authored by: tcranbrook on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 12:02 PM EST
And article in Internetweek titled Protecting Against Open Source Legal Risks, is perhaps a signal of the next MS attack.

To give a flavor of the article, here is a quote:

"In other words, you should be very concerned about the spread of open source, including Linux, in your company, as it may expose your business to considerable risks. Your company could become an unwitting victim to the fallout of the SCO/IBM intellectual-property dispute. This risk is exacerbated by the nature of the open-source culture, which freely modifies and distributes the software but without standard warranties, indemnities, and other contractual protections. And in another twist, numerous commercial applications come with embedded open-source software. However, the vendor often hasn't notified the licensee that open-source programs are part of its commercial application."

I'm sure that this will appear in MS's 'Fact Sheet' on Linux and other GPL evils.

Being curious about the source of this latest, I tracked the author, Michael Overly, down. He is listed as a partner in the Los Angeles law offices of Foley & Lardner. He is also the author of a complete book extolling the legal dangers of FLOSS, titled THE OPEN SOURCE HANDBOOK. He is also no stranger to the defense and promotion of monopolies. An interview with Mr Overly, , How to Market a Strategic Legal Service Monopoly, is quite revealing.

Also curious about the relationship between Foley & Lardner and Microsoft, a google search of the two terms returns 1250 hits. I didn't have the time to read through all of these, but indications are that they know each other very well.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Thomas Downing on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 12:25 PM EST
<p>Hi, not sure what you meant by your comment. Anyway, my point was that
'GPL project leaders' don't decide what contributors to FOSS will do. It's
the converse, FOSS developers decide what they will do. The author quoted seems
to still be viewing software development from the perspective that the only
structure that can produce a viable large scale product is a
commmand-and-control structure.</p>
<p>FOSS developers contribute to FOSS to scratch an itch. If your knee
itches, I can claim to be a 'Project Leader' and tell you to scratch your
elbow, because that will be more productive. But I bet that you will ignore me
and scratch your knee.</p>
<p>On the onther hand, if I am someone whose past record and current
guidance results in some of the most effective and <i>fun</i>
knee-scratching around, I may emerge as a project leader.</p>
<p>FOSS is (to varing extends from project to project) a meritocratic gift
culture. If one examines FOSS from any other point of view, one may acknowledge
its worth, and acurately describe its impact; but can never understand its
'underlying geometry'.</p>

---
Thomas Downing
Principal Member Technical Staff
IPC Information Systems, Inc.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Copyrights as defined by Numerical Recipes in C
Authored by: leguirerj on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:13 PM EST
This was my first exposure to a definition of copyrights as pertaining to
computer programs. It seems to me that SCO is pretty liberal in their idea of
what is a copyrighted work.

About Copyrights on Computer Programs

Like artistic or literary compositions, computer programs are protected by
copyright. Generally it is an infringement for you to copy into your computer a
program from a copyrighted source. (It is also not a friendly thing to do, since
it deprives the program's author of compensation for his or her creative
effort.) Under copyright law, all "derivative works"(modified
versions, or translations into another computer language) also come under
copyright as the original work.

Copyright does not protect ideas, but only the expression of those ideas in
a particular form. In the case of a computer program, the ideas consist of the
program's methodology and algorithm, including the necessary sequence of steps
adopted by the programmer. The expression of those ideas is the program source
code (particularly any arbitrary or stylistic choices embodied in it), its
derived object code, and any other derivative works.

If you analyze the ideas contained in a program, and then express those
ideas in your own completely different implementation, then that new program
implementation belongs to you. That is what we have done for those programs in
this book that are not entirely of our own devising. When programs in this book
are said to be "based" on programs published in copyrighted sources,
we mean that the ideas are the same. The expression of those ideas as source
code is our own. We believe that no material in this book inringes on any
existing copyright.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:16 PM EST
Fascinating thread. Is the next step for SCO to be an attempt to emulate Intel
and assert ownership to everything that contains the string "ix"?
That would be more straightforward than all this shuckin' and jivin' about
source code.

The SCO story reminds me more of a Mandelbot set. The closer you look, the more
iterations of the same basic pattern you are offered. Somehow I doubt that the
judge will have the interest or patience to explore the whole set no matter how
much SCO would like to.

Do you suppose that exposure to Multics source code constitutes an original
taint/sin for the origin of UNIX?

[ Reply to This | # ]

A little break...
Authored by: J.F. on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:18 PM EST
How about a little cosmology for a break? I took PJs link above to the site
showing the Milky Way Galaxy on down to quantum level. However, the first thing
to strike me was that their cosmology is inaccurate. The galaxy shown is not the
Milky Way. It appears to be the Great Whirlpool Galaxy. The Milky Way is a
bar-spiral galaxy with only two arms. Second, the Solar System is not located on
the rim of the galaxy. It's actually just a bit more than half way out from the
center. Third, the Solar System isn't in an arm of the Milky Way. The Solar
System passed out of an arm of the galaxy about 60 million years ago and isn't
due to enter the other arm for another 140 million years.

Yes, systems do not remain in the arms. The arms of a galaxy are actually just
slow spots on the freeway. Traffic gets heavy, so people slow down. Once they
leave the heavy traffic, the speed picks up again. That's a very rough analogy
for describing the arms of a galaxy. While in the arms, the extra density of gas
can cause problems, such as causing more comets than usual to leave the Oort
Cloud and approach to inner part of the system. Most major extinctions on the
Earth correspond to each time the Solar System passed through an arm of the
galaxy. You might have noticed the figure for when the Solar System left the
last arm. Yes, the extinction of the dinosaurs occured during the last passage
through an arm of the galaxy.

Hope you enjoyed this little science lesson. All work and no play and all
that...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:21 PM EST
Fascinating thread. Is the next step for SCO to be an attempt to emulate Intel
and assert ownership to everything that contains the string "ix"?
That would be more straightforward than all this shuckin' and jivin' about
source code.

The SCO story reminds me more of a Mandelbot set. The closer you look, the more
iterations of the same basic pattern you are offered. Somehow I doubt that the
judge will have the interest or patience to explore the whole set no matter how
much SCO would like to.

Do you suppose that exposure to Multics source code constitutes an original
taint/sin for the origin of UNIX?

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Thinking Small - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 08 2004 @ 09:59 PM EST
Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 01:22 PM EST
We need to slow down a little here and it will soon become clear *why* SCO are
doing this.

They have no choice in the matter!!!

*We* know that this entire charade is false. SCO had 2 strategies when they
entered this maelstrom of their own making.

1. Scare IBM into buying them out.
2. Talk up their own share price with publicity and then bale.

Put it like this - if you were a director or senior manager working for SCO
right now, would you consider backing down? Think about it. If the Securities
and Exchange Commission suspected that McBride & Co were generating this
publicity for no means other than to talk up their share price so that they
could dump stock, then McBride and Co would [I suspect, IANAL] be guilt of a
crime.

This means that they cannot back out now... The best they can do is see the
entire court case through to the bitter end, doing their best to make it look
like they are being serious. Meanwhile, they unload as much of their stock as
they can reasonably get away with. Then, when the Court find in favour of IBM,
as we know it will, SCO will turn around and say... "Well, Sorry about
that, but by the way, we're now officially bankrupt, and we don't have the
cash to pay your costs either...." and they walk away.

If my theory is correct, SCO will not [publicly] back down. They can't. To do
so would be to admit that this was a ruse from day one. They have to keep the
stock price high until they finish unloading. What's more, if they back down
now and the SEC investigates, life would get a bit interesting for them...

So... each time we agonize over the FUD that they spew, we are fueling their
fires, playing directly into their hands. This latest round of letters is just
the next step in their campaign.

I reckon that instead of dissecting and agonizing over some of this complete
tosh they spew, we should all line up and practice some mantras:

"Show us the code"
"Put up or shut up"
"So who broke the law?" etc

and not allow ourselves to get worked up into responding to some of this static
and white noise. [Side effect of doing so is that the noise *we* generate gives
the mainstream press something to report on - it plays directly to the SCO
strategy].

Silence is Golden folks...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Interface Publication
Authored by: RichMan on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:12 PM EST
So this all comes down to a case of what corresponds to "copying" and definitions of copyright. The common person is going to have a hard time dealing with this. Technology people that regularly deal with developing to interfaces and specifications are laughing their heads off.

We have two forms of publication of the underlying Unix fundamentals. 1) the actual code 2) the interface description

Here I consider 2) as the "include" files lately claimed by SCO and man pages and clear public information about Unix.

Standards bodies regularly publish copyright standards documents. These standards are the interfaces to the technology. Many companies then take these published standards and build devices/programs to meet the standards detailed in the copyright material. The owner of the standard does not then own any interest in the devices built to the standards.

Some standards specify the use of patented technology. These standards require the licenseing of the patented technology. Current standard bodies generally do not like any standard that is based on patented technology. (I should throw a reference to the IEEE standard bodies in here).

The UNIX interface as defined in Section 2 of the UNIX manual pages and in The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike are descriptions of the UNIX kernel interface. This is very public knowledge. The actual text is "copyright" by the various owners but the knowledge contained in the publications is very public knowledge.

Programming to meet the UNIX kernel interface from either the use side or the kernel side does not violate the copyright of the specifications. Specifications are published for the purpose of documenting the interface and allowing others to program to it. Simply put the publication of the specification is an invitation to program to the specification.

There are two sides to an interface 1) the user side. This is all the programs that run on the OS 2) the provider side. This is the OS.

It looks like SCO going to claim that through publication of the interface specifications that they claim everything developed on the provider side to meet that interface. This is dangerous as everything on the user side is pretty much fair game as well as being code programmed to the interface.

Also the specification is public knowledge and much of it is not copyright (BSD and publication without copyright notices) or the copyright is owned by others.

[ Reply to This | # ]

tainted ?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:26 PM EST
When I was about 6 years old I got a Philips P2000T computer with a basic
interpreter.
Not knowing one thing about programming I had to type in all the programs from a
book that came along with it.
( some really neat text based games, well, pretty much only text based games ).
These code snippets tought me how to write stuff myself, and pretty soon I could
make programs that,for example, asked me my name ,age and favorite food and
would then ( killer app!! ) tell me my name and age almost directly. Also it
could tell me that I like sausage very much.

But as I played with the thing some weird habits grew on me.
Sometimes mostly during a momentary lapse of reason I still write the same style
code line with the same variables and structures. ( very ugly ones too ).

These lines of pavlov-code emerge in a lot of quickly written testcode be it php
or c even shell scripts.

I write them with completely different ideas about programming and structures
then I did when I thought a name-age-fav_food reminder program would change the
world, But they still look very formiliar.

I feel i'm tainted. And hope the writer of xski.bas doesn't sue the pants of
of me.
( hey there is a X in xski.bas.. does SCO own that to ? )


Retep Vosnul.



[ Reply to This | # ]

  • tainted ? - Authored by: pooky on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 02:48 PM EST
    • tainted ? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:37 PM EST
Ouch check out this article
Authored by: jwrl on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:04 PM EST
href="http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1720053
8">http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17200538 a>

talk about thinking small!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Moot Point
Authored by: jerm on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:09 PM EST
If SCO were to make an issue out of this, the judge would not only laugh them
out of the courtroom but most likely issue stiff sanctions. No lawyer should
ever bring something like this before a judge unless his/her goal is to really
piss the judge off.

First, SCO, if they truly own what they claim they own (Novell is contesting
this assertion), bought it warts and all. It's called diligence, and if you
don't do it, you're a fool (or among the newly unemployed).

Second, to claim something as trade secret, it must be, well, secret. It
doesn't have to be completely secret, but the trade secret owner must make some
effort to guard the secret (through NDA, physical protection, etc...). Simply
not publishing the secret would probably be sufficient, but not only were the
secrets published, they were taught to a generation of programmers in school.


I bet Bill Gates and many of the legion of developers that work for him were
also exposed to the source. SCO should set its sights higher if they think this
is a valid claim, but I suspect they would have trouble finding reputable
counsel willing to bring the case.

---
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should
be hard to understand.

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT: But while we are Thinking Small
Authored by: PeteS on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:15 PM EST
Check out this Job Posting at Winamp

I guess this is what Darl & Co. think will happen when FOSS overtakes the market

---
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT : Microsoft is increasingly scared
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:18 PM EST
There is a very interesting article at
<http://www.it-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=11553>

Here is a very telling excerpt :
"Microsoft is, essentially, painting itself into a corner with this one
(we've said before that it's Linux obsession is deeply unhealthy), and is
shooting at the wrong target with the wrong ammunition. There is precious little
chance of reputable research companies permitting Microsoft to run their
material in support of what will be widely and increasingly seen as a
highly-partisan knocking campaign. The more Microsoft spends on publicising
"The Facts", the less independent facts it's going to be able to
get. Therefore the campaign will look even less convincing, Microsoft will
probably get even shriller and more obviously partisan, and the independent
outfits will get even more reluctant to let Microsoft use their work."

PJ, maybe you could start a thread specifically refute those M$
"Facts"

--Chris

[ Reply to This | # ]

Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:21 PM EST
I have said before and I will say it again: SCO has no legal theory.

The whole thing was a scam from the beginning. SCO never thought there was any
of their code in Linux (if they did, they would have shown some of it by now).
They thought the threat of a lawsuit would scare IBM into buying them out for a
big pile of cash.

But IBM didn't flinch, and so SCO is now in the impossible position of pursuing
a court case they know they can't win. Everything they done in the last 9
months was for the purpose of putting disaster off as long as possible. Part of
that strategy has been to throw out various legal theories, but they don't
actually believe any of them.

I think part of the problem is that it is so much fun to try to figure out what
SCO's legal theory is, and so much fun to debunk it, so people keep treating
what SCO says seriously. That is good, because it helps the press see through
SCO's FUD. However, I am still sure that I am right and SCO never had a legal
theory it actually believed, much less one that it thought it could sell to a
court.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Helsinki and licenses
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 04:38 PM EST
Here is a USENET post from 1989, where a HUT (Technical university of Helsinki) employee mentions that they have the Ultrix source code. Ultrix IS a distant UNIX variant, but I don't know if this really does imply a UNIX license. In any case not a SysV license.
On the opposite hand this post from a researcher at HUT does mention "those of us who do not have a u*x-source license need to wait for the GNU-multiserver OS"

So did they have a UNIX license? Maybe some kind. A SysV license? Doesn't seem like it.
Was Linus party to such a license? Doubt it. Had he even seen UNIX source? Doubt it.
The post here, by Nate Williams dated 10/27/1991 quotes the Linux (version 0.02) README.
Linus writes:
"Library very sketchy (only those functions needed by above programs yet implemented). Some of the include-files and library routines "on loan" from minix, will have to be rewritten before distribution."


Thus, the very, very first versions of some of the linux include files were based off Minix. This is widely known.

For those who are unaquainted with Minix, it was a UNIX-clone written by Andrew Tannenbaum due to the fact that AT&T had started charging for source licenses. The entire raison d'être of Minix was that it did not include a single line of code copyrighted by AT&T.

Claiming Linus (or anyone) would start working off Minix, and then introduce AT&T code is bizarre. If Linus indeed had access to UNIX sources and wanted to persue that path, why not 'borrow' the UNIX header files to begin with?

Linus' story is completely coherent: He borrowed parts of the open-source Minix to get started (and never distributed those versions) and ended up re-writing all the originally Minix-parts from scratch.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Knowledge Profiteering
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 05:24 PM EST
An interesting article on Knowledge Profiteering:

http://www.cio.com/archive/enterprise/061598_intellectual.html

If you re-cast what SCO is doing it goes beyond IP. They are saying the own all
UNIX like knowledge. This is a hideous power play perhaps even beyond the
dreams of Bill Gates. What could be more destructive to the advancement of
computer science than a victory for SCO. They must loose at all costs.

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OT: DiDio and Stowell fun double act
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:15 PM EST
These old stories that popped up in google news.

ATTENTION PJ - I think you need to see that SCO/Stowell blames IBM/SGI/Sequent for the Linux ABI, not Linus! I hope this comes to IBM's lawyers attention

Some excellent amusing quotes from our 2 friends (emphasis added). I won't comment, they are amusing enough not to be necessary...

http://www.enterprise-linux-it. com/story.xhtml?story_title=Another_Day__Another_DoS_Attack_Against_SCO&stor y_id=22846

"This upcoming year will be a real seesaw ride for SCO," Yankee Group research director Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. "Its stock price will fluctuate depending on the news of the day, whether it is a Web site attack or a seemingly adverse ruling."

DiDio was referring to last week's order that SCO produce evidence for its claims. On January 23rd, the date of the next hearing, "the judge could just as easily ask IBM to produce its evidence," she pointed out.

http://www.enterprise-linux-it.com/st ory.xhtml?story_title=SCO_Issues_New_Warning_to_Linux_Users&story_id=22903

In the new letter, which is being sent to a select number of enterprises, SCO identifies some 90 copyrighted application binary interface (ABI) files in Unix that must be removed from Linux, Stowell said.

"These are files that SCO has never contributed to Linux but have been put into Linux," he explained, citing IBM, Sequent and SGI as those who allegedly placed the ABI files in Linux without authorization.

...

"The message we are communicating is that companies waiting for a court ruling in the IBM case are mistaken," said Stowell. Whereas the IBM action focuses on a contract agreement, SCO is now targeting all Linux commercial end-users in a copyright case, he said.

...

In a development that some call a victory for IBM, a federal judge earlier this month gave SCO 30 days, beginning December 10th, to provide details of how the company believes IBM has infringed its intellectual-property rights.

That ruling, in large part, prompted the latest action by SCO, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "As the deadline approaches, they have to show what copyrights were violated. SCO is letting people know they are getting more serious about this issue and that they feel they have a strong position," she told NewsFactor.

At the same time, the moves by SCO are sure to draw further ire from the Linux community, as well as some hand-wringing by the businesses targeted that may be forced to remove the code in question and somehow replace it.

"Overall, though, what SCO is doing is not a bad thing. They are getting proof that users are abiding by the law," said DiDio. "The Linux community has to play by the rules." With 6,000 licensees there is a lot of money at stake for SCO, she added

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OT: DiDio and Stowell fun double act
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:16 PM EST
These old stories that popped up in google news.

ATTENTION PJ - I think you need to see that SCO/Stowell blames IBM/SGI/Sequent for the Linux ABI, not Linus! I hope this comes to IBM's lawyers attention

Some excellent amusing quotes from our 2 friends (emphasis added). I won't comment, they are amusing enough not to be necessary...

http://www.enterprise-linux-it. com/story.xhtml?story_title=Another_Day__Another_DoS_Attack_Against_SCO&stor y_id=22846

"This upcoming year will be a real seesaw ride for SCO," Yankee Group research director Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. "Its stock price will fluctuate depending on the news of the day, whether it is a Web site attack or a seemingly adverse ruling."

DiDio was referring to last week's order that SCO produce evidence for its claims. On January 23rd, the date of the next hearing, "the judge could just as easily ask IBM to produce its evidence," she pointed out.

http://www.enterprise-linux-it.com/st ory.xhtml?story_title=SCO_Issues_New_Warning_to_Linux_Users&story_id=22903

In the new letter, which is being sent to a select number of enterprises, SCO identifies some 90 copyrighted application binary interface (ABI) files in Unix that must be removed from Linux, Stowell said.

"These are files that SCO has never contributed to Linux but have been put into Linux," he explained, citing IBM, Sequent and SGI as those who allegedly placed the ABI files in Linux without authorization.

...

"The message we are communicating is that companies waiting for a court ruling in the IBM case are mistaken," said Stowell. Whereas the IBM action focuses on a contract agreement, SCO is now targeting all Linux commercial end-users in a copyright case, he said.

...

In a development that some call a victory for IBM, a federal judge earlier this month gave SCO 30 days, beginning December 10th, to provide details of how the company believes IBM has infringed its intellectual-property rights.

That ruling, in large part, prompted the latest action by SCO, said Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio. "As the deadline approaches, they have to show what copyrights were violated. SCO is letting people know they are getting more serious about this issue and that they feel they have a strong position," she told NewsFactor.

At the same time, the moves by SCO are sure to draw further ire from the Linux community, as well as some hand-wringing by the businesses targeted that may be forced to remove the code in question and somehow replace it.

"Overall, though, what SCO is doing is not a bad thing. They are getting proof that users are abiding by the law," said DiDio. "The Linux community has to play by the rules." With 6,000 licensees there is a lot of money at stake for SCO, she added

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Small Time Crooks
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 06:42 PM EST
I have a sense that in the end it will turn out hilariously funny. Like McBride
brothers had thought that they could make a few easy millions and get away with
it by bankrupting the company. And when it's over many will feel fooled into
taking them too seriously. They might simply be after remainder of SCO's cash,
not vanishing UNIX license fees.

dennis

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Thinking Small
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 07:00 PM EST
I read a book on the "life of Linus". The university in Helsinki had Unix, but they followed a book on Minix.

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Yep...Vax not Unix
Authored by: converted on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 08:50 PM EST
"Like many programmers of his generation, Torvalds had cut his teeth not on mainframe computers like the IBM 7094, but on a motley assortment of home-built computer systems. As university student, Torvalds had made the step up from C programming to Unix, using the university's MicroVAX. This ladder-like progression had given Torvalds a different perspective on the barriers to machine access. For Stallman, the chief barriers were bureaucracy and privilege. For Torvalds, the chief barriers were geography and the harsh Helsinki winter. Forced to trek across the University of Helsinki just to log in to his Unix account, Torvalds quickly began looking for a way to log in from the warm confines of his off-campus apartment."

Read it here

"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. "
-- C. Wright Mills:

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Off Topic (or ON Topic) a beauty by David Heath at The Age
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 07 2004 @ 09:09 PM EST
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437391747.html

The final paragraph:

"So, in the light of these Linux lawsuits, where does this leave the rest
of us? Probably a little safer than we thought we were. Novell is running long
and strong on detail, SCO just as long and strong on rhetoric! When one lawyer
quotes details and the other is doing little more than flapping his arms, I tend
to go with the details. We await the result of this week's code demonstration
with interest - you will recall early last month, a Utah judge ordered SCO to
show "within 30 days, the code from the Linux kernel to which it says it
has rights." Is there any offending code in the kernel? And more
importantly, does SCO have rights to the code at all?"

Still a little over generous to SCMAX, but getting there.

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