http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,84819 ,00.html

QUOTE What is your best possible scenario to come out of the letter?

It would be to have our intellectual property [IP] that we feel has been misappropriated into Linux getting valued, and we're then able to move forward. We're recognizing the clout that Linux is developing, the fact that it's a worldwide phenomenon and the fact that this can really be a new standard for computing in the business environment. To the extent that we're able to get recognition for what we feel is a significant amount of contribution ... we move forward together, and Linux is able to live and we're able to get recognition for our IP.

END QUOTE

It almost feel like a parasite trying to worm itself into a healthy host. Makes my skin crawl. McBride even states that "we move forward together" as if that was even a possibility. The only way for them to move foward with Linux is for them to somehow prove that the IP exists yet still keep it a secret from everyone. Surely he has to be aware that as soon as the so called infringing IP is known to everyone, it will be ripped out, excreted, and flushed down the toilet like it deserves.

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BTW, does anyone know if it's possible for SCO to try to prove that their IP may exist in Linux but at the same time not become public record?

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I would like SCO and Microsoft and all those proprietary dudes to get the message: please respect Linux kernel coders' copyright rights. Please respect the license that the Linux kernel coders have chosen to use, the GPL. </QUOTE>

I think a slightly modified version of this absolutely has to be in the response to Darl. This is darn near perfect anti-FUD.

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This poor Mohammed Kateeb has, I think, picked a bigger fight than he might wish to have done. I know some people in his part of the world - Jamil Khatib springs to mind; he's contactable through http://www.handasarabia.org/ - who are interested in Free/Open Source Software because it protects the rights of the individual to innovate and develop in harmony with others. And because it is open and free, it can be used to raise others to the same level as yourself.

In this case, I know Jamil Khatib's opinion because I corresponded with him in early 2001 - he's an electrical engineer and one of the founders of the Open Hardware/Open Collector community and worked for Siemens ICT. He's got a start-up to his name now - Exalt Technologies Ltd - which sounds a lot more than what Mohammed Kateeb has ever done.

About Handasa Arabia, why listen to me blathering on, when you can let them speak for themselves - to quote:

"Although the site is focused at present on chip design, the organization said the Web site is intended to provide an outlet for all engineers-including those from biomedical, chemical, aeronautic and other disciplines-to leverage open-source solutions for their designs.One reason to launch the Handasa Arabia Organization, said the founders, is the fact that there are many skilled and educated engineers in the Arab world but few commercial opportunities." [...] "Open source provides an easy and cheap platform to start our own projects and discover our abilities," said Khatib. "It enables us to communicate with engineers and students from all over the world and keeps us up to date with the latest technologies." Openness, said Salem, is "the most effective methodology to bridge the technological, educational and cultural gaps between developing and developed countries."

http://www.eedesign.com/st ory/OEG20030822S0011 http://www.eetimes.com/stor y/OEG20030825S0049

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Is David Boies stupid? No. Is David Boies a IP lawyer? No.

To quote GROKLAW August the 30th.

“The post-Enron world has given rise to a trendy legal specialty: the defense of companies accused of suspect accounting and insider self-dealing. At the top of the field is hot-shot New York attorney David Boies. . . .

I have believed from day one Bores was there because he was needed, not because they needed his name for the FUD campaign. And if the issue was really IP, the name there would not have been Boras.

PJ has pointed out that Law is about words, and the way she expressed her view leaves one with the impression the words are what she loves.

Business is a game, money, after you have satisfied your personal needs, is nothing more than the tokens needed to play. In some games the Laws are the rules that limit the playing field The limits need to be tested. Some people love to play that game.

Is Bill Gates a serious player? Yes. Is Linux on Bill Gates Radar? Yes

A few more questions we know the answer to.

Was SCO a failing company? Yes Did SCO have some claim on Unix? Yes What put BSD back by years? The AT&T court case.

Is Bill bright enough to connect the dots? Yes.

The first unanswered question is. Did Microsoft approach SCO, or did SCO approach Microsoft?

Lets leave that line of argument. What are SCO risks.

1)The sec will drag them to court. 2)A shareholder class action when things fall in a heap. 3)The corporate vial will fail.

Problem one is only a problem if insiders sell. Insiders are selling but at a disclosed planned rate, I think this is very important, this was not suck and see, this was planned.

The solution to problem 2) is hinted at in another of PJ discoveries. Strange people are buying SCO shares. If no shares are held by people that will run a class action when the game ends, there is no class action.

Now 3 is why the SCO people playing the game have to be compensated. They are compensated if the share price remains high and if they can sell the shares in a legal manner.

Back to Bores. SCO would need Bores if Microsoft approached SCO and if SCO wanted to make sure issues 1,2 and 3 were well covered.

If you take the view that this was well planned, and the “product” was a repeat of the BSD legal delay then what has happened all starts to make sense and intelligent people start to look as if the acted in an intelligent manner.

If you take this view I think prediction of future actions become possible.

Will there be invoices? I ask what are the risks? Fines only, yes there will be invoices. Jail no there won't.

Do they expect people to buy the licence. NO NO and NO, don't pretend otherwise look at the price and look at what the licence say's. They are just part of the game, the product is the dalay.

Will there be a SCO when this is finished. No. And I think all players accept that. Which will get paid first IMB's damages or the charges held over SCO by the holding company? That is an interesting question.

Will the IBM case go to court. What are SCO risking? Nothing, the companies shot anyway. So unless IBM can really threaten the corporate vial, and if others are willing to foot the bill you would have to say yes, with a fight to the end. The product is the delay not a win.

I believe it will all stop if SCO are considered no more than a Joke. The product is another BSD style delay. If the product isn't delivered the money will dry up.

Anyway; that is my view.

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With Linux the infringing code and the development process are in the open. I think it is possible to get some code discretely removed from Linux when going through the proper channels. (Send a private e-mail to the maintainer, with a request to remove some code and why.) I think McBride likes the spotlights so much that he will continue his show "the infringements are in this big envelope", without showing anything substantial.

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I would respectfully like to respond to certain statements made by Mr. Mohammed Kateeb
in the article by Mr. Manoj Nair.

Mr. Kateeb claims in the article that "Linux people don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights".
This is completely false. If one examines the GNU General Public License, one finds that it is
based entirely on existing copyright law and principles. Linux developers, by placing their
works under the GPL, depend on copyright law to protect their rights in their code. As for
the rights of other coders whose projects are not under the GPL, if one were to discount
the protection they are afforded by simple honesty of other coders, they are protected by the
simple fact that, since the Linux source code is easily obtainable and is open to all for inspection,
it is practically impossible to "lift" code from somewhere else and not be caught. In the
particular case of the Linux kernel, development may be traced back through the Linux
Kernel Developers' mailing list, which is archived on the Internet, so there are complete
and accurate records available as to which code was placed in the kernel, by whom, and
when. Mr. Kateeb's statement, made without foundation and made in such a general,
sweeping fashion to include all "Linux people", comes very close to being slanderous,
and is in any case offensive.

Further, if one examines the facts in the matter, one finds that SCO, contrary to Mr. Kateeb's
statement, is not "suing every single Linux user". They have filed one and only one lawsuit,
that suit being against IBM. This suit, which according to publicly available records alleges
breach of contract rather than any copyright-based issues, will not be heard until at least
April 2005 in an American court of law. Further, SCO, despite repeated requests from the
open-source community, has yet to point out which code in the Linux kernel is the code that
they claim infringes on their rights, so that (assuming such code were proven to exist, an
assumption that is repeatedly denied by the Linux community), it could be removed as soon
as possible and replaced with code that does not infringe. The one exception to SCO's
pattern of refusal was in a presentation made by Mr. Darl McBride of SCO at their annual
SCOForum in Las Vegas. The two examples Mr. McBride showed at that event were analyzed by the
open-source community and were rapidly shown to be originating from code that SCO
has no legal claim over. These facts taken together show that SCO has no legal basis for
any claim against any Linux user, coder, or distributor, yet they continue to make vague,
threatening statements promising such lawsuits as Mr. Kateeb alluded to. Such threats
are inappropriate at best until and unless SCO proves their allegations in a court of law.

Finally, I find it quite hypocritical that Mr. Kateeb indicates that the GNU development model
(the model and the license under which Linux is developed) is "basically broken". If that is
so, I must wonder why Microsoft themselves ship GNU products (specifically, the GNU
gcc, g++, and g77 compilers) with their Services for UNIX offering. (This fact may be
confirmed by looking at the information for Unix Services for Windows from the Web site
at htt p://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/productinfo/overview/default.asp.)

Thank you for your attention.

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--Shaun

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Microsoft lost the case where it was accused of violating Eolas' patent on embedded applications in the Internet Explorer browser. They have been fined $521 million in damages.

I have one thing to say "Hypocrite".

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A better example of Microsoft's behaviour is the case with Burst.com Did Microsoft 'steal' Media Player 9 technology?.

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Here's mine: Editor - Your newspaper has been used as a platform by Microsoft's Mr. Kateeb to attack a global community of dedicated programmers, the Linux and other open source developers, and I want to make some points in rebuttal:

Mr. Kateeb says: "Microsoft operates on the shared source principle where we show our source code to governments all around the world including the Middle East. Universities across the globe have programmes that are doing research on our software. So being able to see the source code is not a unique factor as far as Linux is concerned. We need to understand what openness is all about."

Being able to freely CHANGE the source code, to adapt it, extend it, fix the bugs in it, and re-distribute it without running afoul of licensing restrictions is what "openess is all about", and that is only available with Open Source Software. See http://www.opensourc e.org/advocacy/shared_source.php for the implications of signing a shared-source agreement with Microsoft:

"The Microsoft shared-source programs most applicable to commercial and government organizations forbid modification of the code; thus, you cannot actually use your access to solve your problems. Because you are not allowed to build, experiment with, or deploy modified versions, your "read-only" access cannot help you field fixes to Microsoft's bugs any more quickly. At best, your engineering staff will become free labor for Microsoft, which will release fixed versions on its schedule and not yours. " "Shared source licenses include a requirement that the licensor agree to treat Microsoft's code as confidential proprietary data. It follows that any developer, once he has seen shared source code, can be enjoined under trade-secrecy law from any activity that Microsoft considers to be competitive with its code."

So having been allowed to see Microsoft's proprietary code, and having signed non-disclosure agreements, programmers and students working on shared-source projects become tainted by their knowledge ... they cannot be hired to work on other programming projects without risking an accusation that they have stolen the code from Microsoft, and entangling their employer in a nasty, expensive lawsuit. This is nothing more than intellectual colonialism, disguised as benevolent sharing.

"Linux people don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights." That is a lie. The Linux development team have repeatedly asked SCO to identify what bits of their "intellectual property" (that in itself is a term which is legally vague: US law recognizes patents, copyrights or trade secrets are in Linux so they can be removed. SCO has refused to do so, preferring to make vague public attacks on the character and ethics an dlegality of the open source community, much as Mr. Kateeb is doing here. The few lines they showed at their forum were quickly identified as being from non-SCO sources.

"How can one be sure that the code of software that has been contributed by programmers across the world to create this Linux software is unique and is not lifted from somewhere else?" How can one be sure that some of the code in Microsoft's products has not been lifted from somewhere else? The code archives for Linux and other Open-Source software are public, which increases the chances that code can be recoignized. And the submission of code is a well-controlled process, not the anarchy Mr. Kateeb implies.

In closing: I would like to remind your readers that Microsoft has just lost a patent suit in the USA - Mr. Kaleeb's employer has been found guilty of stealing the intellectual property of another company.

Tsu Dho Nimh

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As i understand things, SCO is alleging that companies such as IBM have contributed code to Linux that is not theirs to contribute.

Now, the claim that the GPL is actually part of the problem here is nonesense. Of course, the fact that IBM released the code under the GPL (and hence to a very wide audience) means that should SCO prove them to have given away code that they had no right to, it might make them liable for bigger damages. However, this is in no way an inherent problem in the GPL.

Sure, companies need to be very careful when releasing stuff under the GPL -- they need to make sure it is theirs to release, but the same applies regardless of the licence that they use.

In fact, the only real 'problem' with the GPL here is that it makes it very easy for IP holders to verify their suspicions that someone has leaked their code -- something they would find very difficult to do under a closed source licence.

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Probably not: patents and copyrights are notdamaged by being divulged so they can't refuse to show the copyrighted code they claim is infringed upon. They have no patents.

Trade secrets can be sealed if they are not widely distributed, and often are sealed in cases of industrial espionage. However, SCO is are suing IBM for divulging trade secrets by putting them in the widely distributed Linux kernel ... those are definitely out of the "can be sealed" category.

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The essence of the great SCO debate is clear and simple ... "no infringing code". With "no infringing code" there is no lawsuit. Which part of "no infringing code" are people failing to understand?

1) No means no. Not much debate here.

2) Infringing means use without permission by incorporation into the linux kernel. This is the debate.

3) Code means "computer source code written primarily in the C programming language. Not much debate here either.

If SCO refuses to identify infringing code, the way to answer the infringing code question is to compare SCO's code with the Linux kernel. Without question legal MD5 hashes of every line of SCO's alleged proprietary code have been circulated widely within the linux community. Let's use ESR's comparator program and find the common code. Code in common is not necessarily infringing code. The program reduces millions of lines of code to thousands of lines in an "scf" file. This "common code" scf file can then very quickly be compared to all available verifiable "open source" code. Any thing left would be suspect as infringing code. In the minds of Linus and the kernel developer community exhaustive independent review reveals "no infringing code".

Linus Torvalds has said there is "no infringing code". Linus is in contact with a large percentage of the best programmers on this planet. Eric Raymond has said there is "no infringing code". Eric is probably in contact with the percentage of programmers that Linus isn't(in contact with). Anybody out there know more than these guys? I sure don't. Who you gonna believe?

Here's my point. Darl's letters are aimed at the lay public out there. "No infringing code" is a short easily understood catch phrase. The wide open public will go to sleep after the first paragraph. We know from political science studies about the attention span of the general public. Any open letter in reply to Darl must in the opening paragraph establish the declaration, clearly and forcefully, there is "NO INFRINGING CODE". All other topics are ancillary to the SCO claims. It's OK in the following paragraphs to debate business models, morals, ethics, philosophy and stock market manipulation but "no infringing code" means Darl is DOA in the public's eye. Period. Any open letter that first and formost declares there is "no infringing code" removes all credibility to SCO's FUD claims.

SCO, Microsoft, Sun and company want a great debate on "IP" theories, "IT" business models etc. They love the FUD controversy. They just don't want to hear the phrase "no infringing code".

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This is an excellent suggestion. IMHO, the DOS attack is what everyone is interested in, and it is also somethinbg that tends to put Darl/SCO in a sympathetic light. Anything that can be done to disprove this allegation- and that can be verified- should be used. I agree with the other poster that was worried about the consequences if we made a statement that the DOS attack never occurred, and then SCO came out with evidence. Bad scene.

But using Shaun's suggestion (if this indeed can be verified), and including a link to the proposed web page that is going to put up to question SCO's allegations, would certainly be helpful.

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The California law allows citizens to sue companies that conduct "false and misleading" advertising. The First Amendment gives broad protections to political or artistic expression based on the legal doctrine that, except in cases of "actual malice," even false statements should be permitted in the interest of robust debate. But commercial speech, including but not limited to advertising, has traditionally been accorded less protection in the interest of fighting consumer fraud.

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I don't know how you would go about suing this bozo, unless you had a ton of cash. And since I don't know any cream-pie throwers in that region, maybe the best response would be to respond to his allegation in the Gulf News Online Edition. A short response, to the point, that shreds what this dope has to say.

Throughout the Middle East, people are worried about the US/British presence. The more radical ones call it "neo-colonialism." Maybe someone should point out in the response the benefits of Open Source in terms of the freedom it offers them; if they become Windows-only flunkies, the iron-tipped boot of Gates-Ballmer is on their back, extracting all the cash it can. Open Source means freedom- and the Germans and Asians certainly know this.

This entire premise of Kateeb's shopuld be attacked with machine-gun logic and left shredded and full of holes. How absurd- where exactly does one steal the code to put into Linux? From closed, proprietary sources? Ridiculous. It is far more likely for open source code to be stolen and to be hidden in a closed source program. Open Source developers work in the open- everyone can see what they write. Everyone has access to their code. Not so with the closed source developers.....

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Also, would sure be nice if this article were distributed to Slashdot, Newsforge, Linuxworld and the like. To further mobilize the "penguinistas."

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I'm not sure the DOS is what everyone is interested in. I don't condone DOS done by anyone but I'd guess microsoft.com goes through SCO-sized DOS attacks several times a day. SCO claims to have improved its handling of them and they aren't taking the site down any more.

It was big news in late August but SCO.com is back up and I'm personally not concerned with it any more.

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Regarding MSFT, the stock, I know a number of non-technical people who hold it. When I ask them why the usual response is along the lines of "they can crush anyone who gets in their way and buy their way out of anything. The government couldn't touch them, and now it doesn't want to." Never any mention of quality products or innovation.

"59. SCO's illicit strategy is transparent - make loud public claims about alleged intellectual property rights, provide no detail(since it does not exist), and hope to use the time honored technique of creating fear, uncertainy, and doubt to slow the growth and use of LINUX, damage the business of LINUX providers such as Red Hat, coerce unwarranted fees from LINUX users by threats of litigation, and, upon information and belief, even create enough nuisance value to be aquired while running up the price of SCO's stock in the short term, thereby creating various financial opportunities to wrongfully enrich the originators of this scheme."

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The DDos Prophecy: As for the alleged DDoS attack, it was my initial gut feeling when people here started sniffing the traceroutes that something wasn't right. When the talk of a potential DDoS spread amongst the community I wanted to say "SHHHH! You're making this a self-fulfilling prophecy!" as I figured the doubt and rumormongering would be a perfect opportunity for SCO to leap on -- and apparently they did. Maybe there was a DDoS attack, maybe not... but my gut says we handed them a nice shiny hammer to smack us upside the head with.

ESR's comments on this poured gasoline on potential dynamite. Maybe he was unprepared for SCO to fight dirty by using him to validate an attack that never really happened but hopefully he is now all the more wary of how readily he offers information before verifying it til it bleeds. His only real fault is assuming the enemy has even the vaguest hint of morality, ethics or humanity.

I suppose I should have raised all of this and voiced my concerns when it was happening but its over and done now and I missed my chance. At least now I won't make the mistake of staying silent the next time I think "I've gotta baaaaaad feeling about this."

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Random Guy 1: They say it was a DoS attack. Random Guy 2: You think it was a DoS attack? Random Gal 1: I'm checking the traceroutes. Random Guy 1: Doesn't look like a DoS attack. I'm uncertain, fearful and doubting. Random Gal 1: ESR was contacted by some guy saying it was DoS attack and that his buddy did it. Random Guy 2: I called SCO and they said it was down for maintenance. Random Guy 3: DoS DoS? Random Guys 4 - 5000: DoS Dos, DoS DoS DoS? DoS? Z (Thought): This does not look good. SCO could use this confusion to claim that there really was an attack, blame it on us and and we can't prove him wrong because of all this... FUD.

Press: So... was it a DoS attack? McBride (Spoken): Uhhh... Yep. Sure was. You bet. McBride (Thought): Suckers! Thanks for the bullets! BANG BANG!

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Even though he is a Microsoft employee, Mohammed Kateeb could be an extreme example of what can happen when corporate end users choose to listen to a fellow suit rather than us, even though the suit happens to be a Darl McBride who is not only victimizing us by trying to steal the IP of thousands of individual Linux contributors but the IP of a whole bunch of the SCO Group's UNIX licensees as well - IBM, SGI, Hitachi, NEC and I don't expect the list to end there. I find it strange that some in the corporate world feel more affinity with a known predator like Darl McBride than with us who are fighting to keep the Darl McBrides of the world from extorting them. But we are probably too wise in the ways of the world to expect any gratitude: we do the right thing, and that's good enough for us.In the case of the SCO Group, doing the right thing is doing our share to put the SCO Group out of business and six feet into the ground, and send the Canopy Group crashing down on top of them.

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Look up your old textbook on the "Logic and Rhetoric of Exposition". Somewhere within, the conundrum of "proving non-existence" should be discussed. This involves postulating the existance of something then challenging someone to prove that it doesn't.

I say little green men exist. Without demonstrating that the total volume of the knowable Universe doesn't contain a little green man you can't prove otherwise... Therefore little green men exist.

Darl claims, "Our property is infringed, without identifying the "property". Repeat this enough times and it becomes established fact. If you rise to the bait and try to prove that the unidentified property is not infringed you are attempting to prove non-existence. Your protests only bolster his claims.

Every public response to Darl must be prefaced with the clear assertion "there exists no infringement", without some argument to support it (in the context of that preface). Non infringement cannot be proven, only forcefully proclaimed. Adding a supporting argument against his claim only gives it more appearance of credibility. "By you're arguing you're just trying to wiggle from under responsibility for my (bogus) claims.", says Darl.

Publicly and unambiguously repeated a sufficient number of times "there is no infringement" starts to become an established fact and shifts the burden back to Darl in the public eye to identify the infringed property. FUD wars must be fought with FUD techniques.

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SCO has copied parts of the Linux kernel into Unixware, and this is the reason for the pre-emptive attack on open source.

How do we stop SCO from the use of open source code (millions of lines?) in their new (unreleased?) closed source?

I wonder can anyone stop this, or prove it?

Can the Linux developers get SCO's code audited?

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1) It is pretty clear they have grounds for a suit, and motivation.

2) What I hope for is they would get an immediate injunction against SCO. Something like the German case, where the judge said "Stop making accusations against Linux and threats to sue linux users, unless and until you show some proof of IP infringement" It would be so great to not have to listen anymore to Darl's Daily Lie. Plus if SCO were so enjoined, then that would be the end of their pressure campaign against IBM, and so they likely would quickly settle and we would be done with the whole thing.

All you Groklaw legal eagles: under US law, can the developers file for such an immediate injunction? What would be their odds of getting it?

3) It has been about 6 months since SCO started making accusations and threats, which is plenty of time to prepare to file a lawsuit, so why haven't the kernel developers done so yet? The only reason I can think of is that the kernel developers are coordinating their legal strategy with IBM and RedHat (which only makes sense), and those two for some reason have asked the developers to wait, like maybe IBM wants to get done with discovery. Anybody got some ideas here?

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I hope, too, that our letter will address the false idea that stealing code is a common practice in our community. Everyone (our community, my employer, IBM, Microsoft, etc.) needs to be concerned that thay have legal right to the code that is in their products. It is not just an open source issue. Is it reasonable to think that there is more illegal code in proprietary sotware than in open source projects?

From what I've heard, Linus has a good track record of rejecting code based on these issues. I'm sure that the code from IBM was cleared through their legal department. So if by some slim chance there is infringing code in Linux, it would be because of a mistake, and not because of disrespect or disregard for the work of others. And it will be removed. And we are eager to fix the problem, but we can't because we don't know what the problem is, or even if there is one.

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Linus and Linux have been an OS duo since 1991. Neither have ever been sued by a partner or competitor for theft of any IP, or breach of a confidential relationship involving any IP. I assume that means: that if any misappropriation ever actually has occured, the matter was quickly and quietly settled to the satisfaction of all concerned. Just as importantly, Linus has never asked any government anywhere to perform any audits or raids. That's another great way of showing the proper respect for other people's property in my book. Frankly if you don't respect other people's tangible property, I don't care what your opinion is of intangible things like "IP" that can't really be stolen anyway.

It's quite impossible to say the same nice things about AT&T/USL (includes Novell and SUN)/SCO or Microsoft. I dare say that: in the years since it was founded, Microsoft has been successfully sued by more partners for breach of contract and theft of IP than any other company on the planet - bar none. Microsoft and SCO have had a couple of spats over DR DOS and Xenix royalties that ended up in court didn't they? It was nothing a few hundred million couldn't patch up apparently. The current law suit is about Unix IP. This is a unique type of IP that was owned by a regulated monopoly that couldn't do ports, bug fixes, or even sell a working software product. All of those things were done by outsiders, who didn't work for AT&T. Their hard work and IP were simply stolen in 1984. That's what everybody was saying in 1993 during USL v BSDI, and that's what everybody is saying today about RCU, NUMA, and etc. Today Microsoft is a regulated monopoly. I see they have borrowed their ideas about IP from the old AT&T model and are calling them the "Shared Source Program". The more things change...;-)

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The problem with making absolute proclamations of something that you don't know to be true is that if you're even partially wrong you've ruined your credibility.

If you keep saying loudly and without reservation that there are no little green men then it's very difficult to convincingly change that later to 'yeah, maybe there's one or two little green men, but that's all'.

It certainly looks as though SCO has nothing more convincing than their slideshow evidence, but they really could have one or two genuine examples that they've kept to themselves to bolster their case later. Much of what SCO claim is clearly ridiculous, and the rest they often use in a wildly misleading way, but that doesn't mean that copyright violations in the Linux kernel are actually impossible.

If you choose to keep saying 'there are no IP violations' then you may turn out to be wrong. The truth is that SCO have not provided any evidence of IP violations but that if they ever do then any issues will be addressed. There's no reason to claim to have more absolute knowledge than that.

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Your first two sentences above are Pulitzer winners!

You need have said no more. Let your statements be repeated over and over until your truths are established by rote and must be refuted by SCO. In FUD wars, he who proclaims his truths most often gets to establish the debate field.

This is exactly how the SCO-Microsoft-Sun FUD war will be won or lost.

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Good idea, but better is weekly releases. Maybe the letter could be just the first one. Maybe each could cover a different aspect of the issue.

Oh, and always build your foundation before you attack SCO. Iike if you do one on IP, have the title be something like How SCO is Undermining IP rights. Then have a short first paragraph where you say (but don't prove) that ip rights are vital, the oss movement and gpl protect ip rights, and sco is destroying ip rights. The have a paragraph or two on each of these points, in that order, and end with some sort of summary that repeats the above main points (if you want readers to remember main points, say each one at three separate places, as I am describing), and a wrap-up sentence about how SCO needs to be defeated and oss is going to succeed. Oh, that is a key thing, talk like you are going to win, that throws doubt on the other side's plans.

Also good would be to associate with some well-known institute or foundation, that way people listen to you more.

Hey, this is open source PR! Obviously a CVS system is needed. Run the operation out of SourceForge?

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Otherwise, the GPL is just not that readily available to the general public. Yes, sometimes you see a link to it in one of these threads, but who actually follows all the links? My suggestion is that PJ include both the GPL and the LGPL be in their entirety (not as hyperlinks) as appendices in her response. It may be the only opportunity a large number of non-Linux users will ever have to examine them for themselves, and could alleviate a great deal of confusion.

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I seriously doubt if there exists even De Minimus doctrine violations in the kernel code. "One or two" examples in a source tree containing 3.48 million lines doesn't buy anyone much credibility. You can proceed on the doctrine of "yes but there might be" and I guarantee you will lose the FUD war. Absolute truth can be debated in the courtroom two or three years from now. The FUD war is at this moment being waged on SCO's terms, which you would willingly accept.

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This portion addresses SCO's smear that the Open Source Software (OSS) community is unwilling to abide by intellectual property laws and needs a lecture on the importance of respecting copyright laws. The best way to gage the intentions of Linux supporters is to read their own words.

The link: <http://slashdot.org/s earch.pl?threshold=1&query=SCO> leads to a popular webboard showing all articles related to SCO. As an informal webboard, there are lots of angry diatrabes (particularly in recent weeks), humor with occassional poor taste, and posts which are naïve or just plain wrong. However, out of thousands of comments, there are no serious posts admitting to willfully violating SCO's copyrights, patents, or trade secrets.

The only post from slashdot that I will single out is one written on January 13th, 2003 when the controversy first started. It appears first in the chronoloical list of "Olive Branches" extended from the Open Source Community to McBride. Each entry has a date, the source, and a quote [often containing grammatical errors left intact]. These are sorted by date and I make no claim the list is comprehensive.

January 13th, 2003 Slashdot user juan2074 "So far, they [SCO] have produced no evidence that any of their intellectual property is being used in any Linux distribution. " [Still true 8 months later] <http://slashdot.org /comments.pl?sid=50531&cid=5074019>

March 4th, 2003 Mike Angelo, in a MozillaQuest editorial "So far, SCO-Caldera has offered no such proof [of infringement]. " <http://mq.moo.net/Lin ux03/ScoSource-02_Story01.html>

May 1st, 2003 !!! Darl McBride !!! intervied by Stephen Shankland for CNET News "The Linux community would have me publish it now, (so they can have it) laundered by the time we can get to a court hearing. " <http://news.com.com/2100-1016 _3-999371.html> Since past Linux versions are archived permanently at <www.kernel.org>, not to mention countless FTP sites and CD-ROMs, a "laundered" Linux would do absolutleyl nothing to help IBM defend against past damages. But this statement shows that McBride himself believes that Linux developers would quickly remove any infringing code if they only knew which code was in question. McBride later lectures this same group on the importance of respecting copyright law without ever trying to mitigate whatever damage is being caused by improperly distributing SCO code (if any at all).

May 1st, 2003 Bruce Perens, quoted by Stephen Shankland, CNet News "They should show us what code they have problems with. We'll take a look at it or we'll just replace it " <http://news.com.com/2100-1016 _3-999371.html>

May 16th, 2003 LWN user kunitz, in an article speculating about SCO's case "it would be very easy for SCO to resolve the issue by exactly declaring which source code is infringing their intellectual property. This source code would be removed from the Linux kernel in short time. " <http://lwn.net/Articles/32524/>

May 16th, 2003 Jeff Kintz, posting to a mailing list related to Linux kernel development "As soon as SCO reveals exactly which code segments "belong" to them the Linux development community will be engaged in a furious competition for the status to be attained by being the person who replaces that code with non-infringing code. " <http://zgp.o rg/pipermail/linux-elitists/2003-May/006256.html>

May 19th, 2003 Gary Barnett, Research Director of Ovum in "SCO: Stuff and nonsense" " If there is an ‘offending’ code within the Linux kernel, it will be fixed very quickly. [...] Indeed, the Linux community is already calling on SCO to identify the code that it claims to own so that it can get to work on replacing it. " <http://www.ovum.com/go/content/ 018380.htm>

May 21st, 2003 Mitch Anderson, posting to a different Linux mailing list "[...] once(if) the offending pieces have been disclosed. They will be removed "so fast that their heads will spin" " <http://ma ilman.plug.org/pipermail/pluglist/2003-May/002185.html>

May 24th, 2003 Dave Leigh, posting on Usenet "Even their argument for not pointing to the code is invalid. They claim that their SOURCE code is being wrongly distributed under the GPL; yet they refuse to simply point to it, claiming it would violate their IP rights to identify the code you can already see. "

May 27th, 2003 Robert Fraces Group's soapbox: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt: SCO's New Business Plan "It seems likely that as soon as the infringements are made publicly known, they will be immediately rewritten to eliminate the infringements. If SCO were truly concerned only about its IP, a path exists for the elimination of any infringements in a very short period of time [...]." <htt p://www.analystviews.com/Pages/AnalystContent/RFG/RFG-20030526.htm>

May 28th, 2003 Mike Angelo, writing a guest editorial for MozillaQuest "Moreover, all McBride and SCO-Caldera need to do in order to get any SCO-owned code removed from the kernel.org Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux OS, or Linux distributions is simply to tell these people what SCO-owned code is in the Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux OS, or the Linux distributions. It would be removed immediately, if not sooner. However, McBride refuses to disclose what SCO-owned Unix code is in Linux ." <http://www. mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-14_Story05.html>

June 10th, 2003 Paula Rooney writes an article for ChannelWeb My Summary: Linux Trovolds asked SCO about viewing the code; they told him he could not see it without signing their highly restrictive NDA. <http://crn.channelsu persearch.com/news/crn/42539.asp>

June 21st, 2003 An anonymous Linux Journal reader asks a pointed question: "If SCO had a problem with IP, why don't they ask the Kernel mantainer to remove the code. " <http://www.linuxjournal. com/article.php?sid=6956>

June 25th, 2003 Tony Watts posts on Usenet "At any rate, as soon as their right to any code in linux is proved it will be removed and replaced, and they will have no more claims to linux. " <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bdbmrt%24d9%241%40nyytiset.pp.htv.fi>< p> June 29th, 2003 Khimenko Victor, in a letter to the editor of Linux Weekly News "Why every columnist is writing about how "Linux community doing nothing" when THE ONLY THING Linux community CAN DO is to remove offending code and it's not possible till SCO shows what code should be removed ?" <http://lwn.net/Articles/38672/>

July 2nd Rex Ballard, in a post to Usenet "Since SCO refuses to identify the offending code, it would be a legitimate defense for the Linux community to simply say, that because they didn't know which code was illegally copied, and since SCO knew, but wouldn't tell the Linux developer community, that SCO was guilty of contributory negligence, which would limit SCO's ability to enforce the copyrights to the period of time between when the court rules that the copyrights were violated, identifies publicly which code violates the copyrights, and the time that the Linux community removes the illegal code. " < http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3F033C1F.6090104%40open4success.com>

July 21st, 2003 Eirikur Hallgrimsson writes on yet another mailing list "Assuming that a court will actually find that code in the Linux kernel is owned by SCO, the week after the bits are revealed in court, Linux will be free of the code. " <http://www.mail-a rchive.com/fork@xent.com/msg11294.html>

July 23rd, 2003 Nucleon writes on Usenet "It would be different if anybody were willingly using SCO's IP, but everyone just wants it out (to the extent that it exists). " <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=pan.2003.07.23.19.39.38.62514%40mtco.c om>

July 24th, 2003 DBForum user bellyeye, debating whether or not SCO has a case "They should identify the code in question so it can be replaced if necessary. End of story. " <http://dbforums.com/t854858.html>

July 25th, 2003 Techimo member crouse, reacting to an article about SCO's liscensing scheme "Once this goes to court.....SCO will have to show EXACTLEY what their code is and it will be removed if it indeed is even THEIR code. " <http://www.techimo.com/newsapp/ i6135.html>

July 25th, 2003 Geoff Lane, posting on Usenet "As SCO refuses to identify the code , something that would be trivial and would make no difference to the case with IBM, a reasonable person might conclude that SCO have no creditable evidence and ignore them. " <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3f22262a%240%2456603%24b ed64819%40pubnews.gradwell.net>

July 30th, 2003 Joe Antkowiak, answering a user's concern about the Linux program Asterisk will continue to be supported: "What's your concern with it? If any of SCO code made it into GNU stuff, it will be removed and rewritten in a short time anyway... " <http://www.mail-archive.com/asterisk-users@lists.digium.com/msg06329.html>< p> August, 2003 [estimated] Roberto J. Dohnert's The SCO Threat: A professional Linux users perspective "If SCO was to win, the offending code will be revealed and it will be removed and replaced. " <http://www.geocities.c om/kane121975/scothreat.html>

August 6th Peter Jenson writes on Usenet "In the *very* unlikely case that they do have a leg to stand on, the offending code will be removed and rewritten from scratch in a matter of days, at most. " <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3f30eec8%240%2413266%24e dfadb0f%40dread15.news.tele.dk>

August 7th Flying Mice user dammy, defending OSS against FUD: "if SCO would identify the code, the kernel maintainers would chop out that code. " <htt p://flyingmice.com/cgi-bin/squidcgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/89391.shtml>

August 8th Peter, posting on Usenet "On the other point, if some unauthorised person has put some of SCO's code into Linux, then SCO may have a claim on them. But first they have to identify the code (which they have failed to do so far). Even in that case, SCO's claim is against whoever put the code in Linux. They don't have a claim on Linux users. " <http:// groups.google.com/groups?selm=3f346d65%40news.maxnet.co.nz>

Augst 15th Erik de Castro Lopo writes on Usenet "In the VERY unlikely case that SCO is actually correct, SCO's code will be removed and replaced with something better within a month. " <ht tp://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3F3CB5AC.27677FFB%40mega-nerd.com>

August 26th, 2003 LWN user ccchips, responding to an article about SCOs allegedly infringing code "I say we simply take the high moral ground:

1. We don't steal code. 2. Code thieves will not be welcome. 3. IF SCO has been wronged, we'll fix it. *IF*. [other items snipped] " <http://lwn.net/Articles/45801/>

September 1st, 2003 Nicolas Roard, reacting to a posted excerpt from a BBC article "if there is really some SCO's code, it will be removed, simply. Because legally you can't mix GPL code and proprietary code !" [later] "[...]the only position is then to ask SCO what's the code and to remove it " <http://www.osnews.com/comm ent.php?news_id=4386>

September 10th, 2003 Linus Trovolds, in an interview with Robert McMillian for IDG News Service "SCO has yet to show any infringing IP (intellectual property) in the open-source domain " [Please compare to the comment 8 months ago] <http://www .infoworld.com/article/03/09/10/HNtorvaldssco_1.html>

Conclusion? 28 separate cases [a few duplicated people] where Open Source advocates either promised to remove any infringing code, or pointed out they can do nothing until SCO reveals the code. Can you please explain how this is showing a lack of respect for copyright laws?

Billy Harris

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As for other types of injunctions, our federal and state systems require that you post a bond in case you loose or your victory gets overturned on an appeal. If SCO had a few hundred million extra, just lying around that they weren't using for the next 10 years or so, they might have asked for a preliminary injunction against AIX shipments. The same holds true to a lesser extent for IBM's claims of patent infringement against Unixware and Open Unix.

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"If you wish to make a respectable case for contamination, show us the code." Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens http://lwn.net/Articles/48478/

Who do you believe in the infringing code claims? Want an absolute guarantee? Well I've two of 'em. Death. Taxes. You've got to hitch up your britches and take a stand on the rest of life. THERE IS NO INFRINGING CODE.

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Interesting commentary about SCO not knowing what they actually own or where it came from. Essence: they don't know that they don't know.

This certainly rings true.

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The reason I say this is that even in the recent articles, the alleged DOS attack seems to be mentioned. And it helps Darl's case.

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IMHO, Mickeysoft operating systems perform in similar fashion to terrorists- they self-destruct in spectacular fashion, causing all sort of mayhem. When is the last time YOUR M$ operating system blew itself up?

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gumout, I currently have no bandwidth costs. RadioUserland provides it with the software. Thank you though. That's really kind. If you have more money than brains, you must be fabulously wealthy.

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--Shaun

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- Andrew

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Charles, what is the payoff to SCO/Canopy? What more than the price of a MS license?

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When The Unix Historical Society petitioned SCO to allow non-commercial use of the PDP and VAX source code, it was a given that SCO wouldn't (and also implied that they couldn't) provide any copies of the sources themselves.

http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/pet ition.html

This was confirmed recently when Dr.Toomey claimed that he gave SCO copies of the ancient sources.

http://www.s mh.com.au/articles/2003/09/09/1062902037394.html

Given their proclivity for spotting substantial similarities in Linux where none exist, I doubt that they can actually tell difference between Darl McBride and a hole in the ground, or the substance they are using "for brains" and shinola.

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From the article: "Which brings me to the back to sitting at my desk staring at my monitor with amusement at the claim of Microsoft's products being cheaper. I just spent the morning scrambling to move all 10 of my company's mail servers to the new in-house GNU/Linux box. The issue with the Windows servers had become so bad that our company was almost at a complete halt. We lost thousands of dollars of business and were under pressure to find a solution immediately. GNU/Linux stepped up and saved the day, and I spent the rest of the afternoon comfortably coding while our new server handled the entire company's email without fault. ... I doubt I am the only person in the IT industry to have run across these types of problems with Microsoft technology. I don't know who Microsoft is trying to fool."

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"but this whole sco thing has made me more involved with the community than i was before"

It's quite ironic that SCO's attempt to hijack Linux, by monetizing it and destroying the GPL has actually strengthened the community and brought it to the attention of far more people than if SCO had quietly failed and declared bankruptcy. It brings to mind a couple of quotes:

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Friedrich Nietzsche

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke

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http://www.modelingscams.org/clas s.html (scroll to the bottom, and check out who the attorneys are)

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I loved kernel developer Dr. Richard Gooch's response, "They [SCO] can claim copyright to the complete works of William Shakespeare for all I care. It's all bollocks."

THERE IS NO INFRINGING CODE.

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I think you should leave politics and nationalism (and religion) out of this debate. Or shall we bring in visionary luminaries such has Bush or McVeigh to the side of Didio?

Who can blame Mohammed Kateeb after all? He is jumping on the bandwagon and repeating what some US "analysts" are saying. I hope that this debacle will hurt for good the reputation of these fortune tellers. This analyst business is a scam.

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Z. The job I believe Boies is doing is not a public one, and now the train is in motion I believe he has little more to do. I believe H was a side issue, someone to support a bit of FUD, relevant to the product but not the main game.

Clifton Hyatt. Thank you. Look at who sells shares and I believe you will see who got what out of the deal. I believe the Microsoft license was to put the money in SCO to fight the good FUD fight, nothing more. In business terms few million is not a lot of money, they will burn through that running the FUD campaign. I believe the payoff is the share sales, and having someone to soak them up, remember the share sales money can be placed in any bin desired. Obviously the soak needs to have his/her exposure limited, thus an agreement somewhere on what the holding company can sell. Within SCO the agreement is registered with the sec.

It is interesting that SUN put money into SCO for the good FUD fight and got shares in return.

This I believe is Microsofts last stand, and they know it. This will be well funded and the Game will be played over a long time and very hard.

David l. Anti FUD weekly sounds good. I believe what we saw last week was not a last stand but what we can expect for weeks and weeks and months.

I think GROKLAW is well in the way to becoming the respected institution, GROKLAW has remained calm.

Regards

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Never worked in control and distribution in AC power networks if that's what you mean.

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"[Microsoft] people don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights. This is the biggest problem in the [proprietary] world. How can one be sure that the code of software that has been [written in secret] by programmers across the world to create this [Microsoft] software is unique and is not lifted from somewhere else? This is a big legal concern.

"That is what the latest [Microsoft] lawsuit[s] [were] all about...This is a serious issue. The model is broken basically."

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#SCF-B 1.0

Hash-Method: MD5

Merge-Program: comparator 1.0

Normalization: remove_whitespace

Shred-Size: 3

%%

bsd/sys/alpha/alpha/alpha-gdbstub.c:2:32

bsd/sys/i386/i386/i386-gdbstub.c:1:31

linux-2.4.21/arch/ppc/kernel/ppc-stub.c:15:45

linux-2.4.21/arch/ppc64/kernel/ppc-stub.c:15:45

linux-2.4.21/arch/sparc/kernel/sparc-stub.c:11:41

%%

bsd/sys/alpha/alpha/alpha-gdbstub.c:34:36

bsd/sys/i386/i386/i386-gdbstub.c:33:35

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BigTex: if I did the math right, I read the figures like this:

As noted here between August and September there was a net gain of over 410671 servers of all types, of which about 77,700 (42% of 185,000)were Windows 2003 according to the article you found.

That means that about 81% of the new servers were NOT win2003.

This article makes it plain that Linux IS gaining ground:

"FreeBSD... is the only other operating system (apart from Linux and Windows) that is gaining, rather than losing share of the active sites found by the (Netcraft) web server survey," the company said.

Now, does anyone have a link to the number of Windows sites moving to Linux?

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Is this a run that you did yourself for test purposes?

What are the integers after the filename, line number:line length?

Do filenames between the "%%" lines have the same MD5 signature?

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linux-2.4.21/arch/ppc/kernel/ppc-stub.c:15:45 is the path to "ppc-stb.c" in linux where lines 15-45 are the same as 2-32 above. Space constraints prohibit all 30 common lines being reproduced. Here are the beginnning lines:

/*

* Header: remcom.c,v 1.34 91/03/09 12:29:49 glenne Exp $

*

* Module name: remcom.c $

* Revision: 1.34 $

* Date: 91/03/09 12:29:49 $

* Contributor: Lake Stevens Instrument Division$

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Because both BSD and Linux are portable to a number of different computer architectures (processor types, for instance Intel 386 compatible, Sun Sparc or IBM Power PC), there will be files that have been modified to run each, taking advantage of and/or working around their differences.

On the bsd lines in gumout's example, note that their is a "sys" directory under which two of the lines show "alpha" and "i386"; these are two different processor (CPU) architectures; the comparator program is showing that both contain some identical lines of code.

On the Linux lines in that example, the directory "arch" indicates the architecture, so under it, you see "ppc" (IBM Power PC, older Apple McIntosh), "ppc64" (IBM Power PC workstations and Apple G5) and "sparc" (Sun systems).

I expect that all the files listed between the "%%" lines have the same lines of code in common. If that's true, it means that there is some BSD code in Linux, which is known to be true and is not a problem. The particular files shown here all originated with Hewlett-Packard and the lines indicated (if my assumptions are correct) are in a comment that says: "THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT COPYRIGHTED".

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Yes I ran the comparison myself using ESR's comparator program.

The integers after the filename are line numbers of code that are inclusive matches to other files and their respective line ranges. i.e. "alpha-gdbstub.c:2:32" is 30 lines between line 2 and line 32.

The listings between %% and %% are files that include a particular sequence of lines of code and have the same MD5.

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this same? thanks gumout also

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It's the [file] folders, not the lack of procedures or furniture, that Big Blue needs to worry about. Each folder contains a contract for one of SCO's 6,000 Unix licensees. Darl McBride, the 43-year-old CEO who joined the firm last summer, says it's possible that some of these companies are misusing Unix code by inserting it into other programs they're using, a privilege for which they need to pay SCO in the form of an additional license. He randomly grabs a handful of folders and reads the names: BMC, BMW, Ball State University. "To us this is a treasure trove, a gold mine," says McBride.

The blue folders ”kept in a public viewing room”are something of a publicity stunt, but they make for a menacing visual prop. Even if the licensees are using Unix properly, they're not necessarily safe. SCO says it's even more likely that they and thousands of other companies are using Linux code that someone” think IBM” provided them with portions of SCO's Unix code. That could make those companies liable to legal claims—and gives SCO leverage against Big Blue. "As long as this is seen just as a scuffle between SCO and IBM, that plays to IBM's advantage," says McBride, because IBM can use its size and staying power to wait out SCO in court. The more he can scare IBM's customers, he says, the better for SCO.

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McBride says: "[i]t's possible that some of these companies are misusing Unix code by inserting it into other programs".

gumout says: "It's possible that pigs will grow wings and fly... now show me the code." THERE IS NO INFRINGING CODE

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egan

[From a Slashdot posting....]

I just got off the phone with the FTC. If everyone calls and complains then the chances they will investigate SCO goes up. They look for patterns. In other words, if the majority of their calls are about SCO then they will investigate. It is time to take the Slashdot effect to the phones.

These are the key points to make:

-You did not purchase software from SCO -The company that "produced" your software did not purchase it from SCO -It was not marketed or packaged by SCO -Despite this SCO is asking for $199 from home users (You) and $699 from business for 1 CPU

They will ask for your name, phone number, address etc. That is mostly to verify your identity and citizenship I think.

Here is the number:

1-877-382-4357 option 4

They are nice and listen well. The lady I talked to even took the time to get a better understanding of what Linux is. The best quote from her "You didn't purchase it from them and they want you to pay them? That sounds crazy." -- Call FTC 1-877-382-4357 opt 4 -You didn't buy from SCO -Vendor didn't either -They want $199 ...

Here's some information that may help. They actually asked for this info:

The SCO Group 355 South 520 West Suite 100 Lindon, Utah 84042

801-765-4999 phone

The guy I spoke with was actually somewhat familiar with what Linux is. One of his first questions was how this company got involved with me, which my answer was "Well, that's the problem. They didn't."

He eventually asked if SCO has contacted me personally with regard to this situation, which they have not. Don't lie to them. Be completely truthful. At the end of the call I got a reference number, and he said that if SCO does contact me personally, I should call back and let them know.

It was very easy to do, and took about 5 minutes of my time. The recording while I wated for the counselor to pick up the phone did say that the FTC does track trends in complaints. If we get enough people to complain, something will happen. Please, take a few minutes and call!

----- End forwarded message --

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Do you have a link? I haven't found the story.

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http://tinyurl.com/nadi

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"Myself like others were irritated that a fellow member was behaving so questionably. That irritation went as far as thinking it is his own problem to reconsile his behavior and religious beliefs.

When a fellow Mormon is mentioned in the media I usually feel excitement for the accomplishments of that person. However Darl McBride's behavior is hardly something to feel pride over. I feel his business ethics are questionable and embarrassing to his religious community. I hope no further reference in the media will be made to Darl McBride and his religion for the sake of all Mormons. "

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