SCO's Linux "Expert" Contradicts Linus : Funniest Story of the Day - Groklaw blog

Groklaw ^ | Monday, December 22 2003 @ 11:29 PM EST | Pamela Jones

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Funniest Story of the Day: SCO's Linux "Expert" Contradicts Linus
 
Monday, December 22 2003 @ 11:29 PM EST  

Is this not the funniest story of the entire day?

The New York Times' Steve Lohr reports on Linus' reaction to SCO's claim that their list of files is code copied from UNIX:

"But Mr. Torvalds is also clearly angered by SCO's accusation that much of Linux was merely copied. 'In short,' Mr. Torvalds said, 'for the files where I personally checked the history, I can definitely say that those files were trivially written by me personally, with no copying from any Unix code, ever.

'I can show, and SCO should have been able to see, that the list they show clearly shows original work, not copied.'

"Darl C. McBride, the chief executive of SCO, said he stood by the company's assertions. He said that a Linux expert who will testify in the SCO suit against I.B.M., which was filed last March, went over the code closely. 'As a social revolutionary, Linus Torvalds is a genius,' Mr. McBride said. 'But at the speed the Linux project has gone forward something gets lost along the way in terms of care with intellectual property.'"

I can hardly see my computer screen because I am grinning so broadly my eyes are squinting and my cheeks hurt. Let's review their comical position. At trial, they plan to bring forward an "expert" who will testify that Linus didn't keep track of his own work. Then Linus will tell the jury what he remembers he wrote. Who's the expert in this picture, ladies and gentlemen?

SCO surely is the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. They probably had to pay that "expert" too from their dwindling BayStar millions. A couple of days ago, somebody interviewed me by email, and one of the questions was whether I thought SCO would prevail. I surely wish I could answer that question this exact minute. I'd have to be careful not to drink any milk at the same time, though.

In many trials, you do have two experts who each give an opposing opinion. Then the jury decides who it finds believable. But to put up an expert who knows more than Linus about Linux? It just can't be done. SCO might have convinced some Utah folks that Linus couldn't keep track of each and every contribution by others off the top of his head. But his own work? Their case depends on persuading a jury that Linus doesn't keep track of his own work? You don't have to be a genius to remember what you did yourself. Linus would seem to be indisputably the world's expert on himself.

Is this not the best day ever?

 

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Comments welcome to Pamela's observations.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Only1choice____Freedom]

But to put up an expert who knows more than Linus about Linux?

It must be his Mother-In-Law

[Prime Choice]

The more this progresses, the more it seems to me that SCO is doing little more than acting as a turbo-legal arm of Microsoft in its misguided attempt to destroy its up-and-coming competitor.

The whole thing just stinks. And it doesn't matter what comes out of it, I'll never use another piece of SCO software.

[FastCoyote]

even worse, I just saw a list of the files in question and at least half were error number definitions, in other words non-executable errorno.h files that have to conform to general standards like posix. It's looking a lot like a very nice Christmas

[The Electrician]

While I fully expect that SCO's bluff will be called and they will (deservedly) get their head handed to them in court, I would point out that Torvalds' rejoinder to SCO's latest claims is incomplete (so far), according to Torvalds' own admission. So, I'm interested in hearing more from Torvalds after he does a more thorough analysis of SCO's claims.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[ShadowAce]

Tech Ping

[ShadowAce]

heh

[Quix]

Have Shrillery and Billdo been giving idiot seminars?

Or are they cloning themselves?

Perhaps Billdo's rapes have been multiplying?

Maybe Shrillery's jilted Reno because Dean made her an offer she couldn't refuse?

In any case, clearly, idiots abound.

Father, God, please save us from the raining idiots! Cats and Dogs are quite entertaining enough.

[go star go]

all the files listed contain function prototypes, data structure definitions, error numbers, etc. no actual code should be in these header files. (*.h) SCO is grasping at straws. while it's possible to copyright actual source code it doesn't seem likely that you could copyright a function prototype. if you could, you or i could get charged with copyright violation by accidently naming a function and prototyping such as:

int GetKey();

now if we copied the code, (the implemenation), of someone's int GetKey() function then we'd have violated a copyright law. but the prototypes in these header files? i don't think they stand a chance...

[Liberal Classic]

A lot of talk about technology developed by Sequent (now owned by IBM) and what do they show? Standardized header files that have been in every version of commercial Unix and Unix-compatible software for thirty years.

In my junk closet I have a Colorado 250 MB tape drive that runs off of the floppy controller. I might try to extract my 0.99 pl13 Linux files from there to see how much, if any, these header files have changed.

[proxy_user]

Not only that, but you have to include all the .h files in your programs, or you can't call any Unix library functions.

If these files were really copyrighted, no Unix programs could be written.

[antiRepublicrat]

I wish Linux weren't just such a nice guy and sue the pants off of SCO for infringement on his copyright for having distributed Linux without license. Linus said in an interview he knows he can do it, but he's just not the lawsuit type.

[fishntex]

Why did you drag them into this? What are you talking about with the "rape tapes"?
You are correct in that it is raining idiots, and you are correct in your assessment of the former president and his wife’s intelligence, but this story is not even remotely related to Bill or Hillary. Let's be fair and separate ourselves from DU.

[glock rocks]

// LOL

#include billrape.h

[Liberal Classic]

SCO Group's Ryan Tibbetts wrote:

Use in Linux of any ABI Code or other UNIX Derived Files identified above constitutes a violation of the United States Copyright Act. Distribution of the copyrighted ABI Code, or binary code compiled using the ABI code, with copyright management information deleted or altered, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ('DMCA') codified by Congress at 17 U.S.C. §1202. DMCA liability extends to those who have reasonable grounds to know that a distribution (or re-distribution as required by the GPL) of the altered code or copyright information will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under the DMCA.

Does this mean that the DMCA prevents Linux developer, or other programmers for that matter, for writing code that uses a binary application interface? Does this not turn open standards on their head? The System V Interface Definition, POSIX, ANSI C, all these things are published application binary interfaces. All of a sudden it is against the DMCA to use these previously published routines without SCO's permission?

For example, the Open Group specifications for the errno.h file says it should contain system error codes:

Some of the functionality described on this reference page extends the ISO C standard. Any conflict between the requirements described here and the ISO C standard is unintentional. This volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 defers to the ISO C standard.

The ISO C standard only requires the symbols [EDOM], [EILSEQ], and [ERANGE] to be defined.

The header shall provide a declaration for errno and give positive values for the following symbolic constants. Their values shall be unique except as noted below.

Things such as:

[EPERM]
Operation not permitted.

[ENOENT]
No such file or directory.

[ESRCH]
No such process.

Here is the beginning of the i386 errno.h header file:

#ifndef _I386_ERRNO_H
#define _I386_ERRNO_H

#define EPERM            1      /* Operation not permitted */
#define ENOENT           2      /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH            3      /* No such process */

And here is the beginning of the Itanium errno.h file:

#ifndef _ASM_IA64_ERRNO_H
#define _ASM_IA64_ERRNO_H

/*
 * This is derived from the Linux/x86 version.
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1998, 1999 Hewlett-Packard Co
 * Copyright (C) 1998, 1999 David Mosberger-Tang 
 */

#define EPERM            1      /* Operation not permitted */
#define ENOENT           2      /* No such file or directory */
#define ESRCH            3      /* No such process */

How if these things are IEEE standards is it a crime for people to write software to the published specifications? Writing "No such process" or "Operation not permitted" is a copyright violation?

[Liberal Classic]

If these files were really copyrighted, no Unix programs could be written.

You'd have a hard time writing any C or C++ application without errno.h or string.h or stdio.h.

[The Electrician]

I agree that it would most likely have to be pretty blatant, for example a header file with all constants and/or macros with identical names as well as someone else's copyright statement. All that I am suggesting is that SCO provided a laundry list of files, and Torvalds has so far only debunked a few of SCO's latest claims.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I think the SCO lawyers are playing with us!