This slide has some of the "System V" source code comments deliberately obfuscated using Greek characters in a Symbol font. You can remove the obfuscation by typing in the Greek text and changing back to a Latin font. The result is:Posted on 08/19/2003 11:00:12 AM PDT by shadowman99
On August 18 at their trade show in Las Vegas, SCO showed code that they claim was copied into Linux in violation of their copyright or trade secrets. The German publisher Heise photographed two slides of SCO's code show and made them public on their news ticker. Heise publishes c't, a popular German computer magazine. These are the slides:
This slide has some of the "System V" source code comments deliberately obfuscated using Greek characters in a Symbol font. You can remove the obfuscation by typing in the Greek text and changing back to a Latin font. The result is:
* As part of the kernel evolution toward modular naming, the * functions malloc and mfree are being renamed to rmalloc and rmfree. * Compatibility will be maintained by the following assembly code: * (Also see mfree/rmfree below)We haven't yet located the original source of this code, the next slide is more telling.
We've found the malloc() function this slide refers to. It is included in code copyrighed by ATT and twice released under the BSD license: once by Unix Systems Labs (ATT), and again by Caldera, the company that now calls itself SCO. The Linux developers have a legal right to make use of the code under that license. No violation of SCO's copyright or trade secrets is taking place.
The ATT source code is here on the net, from a version released around 1979, although we believe that earlier versions exist. The Caldera license letter releasing this code is here. Caldera is, of course, the company that now calls itself SCO. The license very clearly permits the Linux developers to use the code in question. Historical information on why Caldera released the Unix source code to the public is here, and contains some information relevant to the SCO court cases.
The malloc() code also appears in Lions Commentary on Unix, in this form:
Lions' book was first published in the 1980's under non-disclosure and was used as a textbook by universities that had licensed the Unix source. ATT vended a copy of this book to Unix licensees for some time, and a photocopy version was widely circulated among Unix licensees. The original SCO, before its purchase by Caldera, allowed the book to be published without any non-disclosure terms in 1996./* * Allocate size units from the given * map. Return the base of the allocated * space. * Algorithm is first fit. */ malloc(mp, size) struct map *mp; { register int a; register struct map *bp;for (bp = mp; bp->m_size; bp++) { if (bp->m_size >= size) { a = bp->m_addr; bp->m_addr =+ size; if ((bp->m_size =- size) == 0) do { bp++; (bp-1)->m_addr = bp->m_addr; while((bp-1)->m_size = bp->m_size); return(a); } } return(0); }
Another version of the algorithm was published in Kernighan & Ritchie's The C Programming Language, Prentice Hall 1978, apparently without restrictions.
Another version of the code is copyrighted by the University of California as part of the BSD Unix system that they produced for the U.S. Army and released as Open Source. That code is also under the BSD license, and appears here in this file released in 1984.
In the early 1990s, ATT's Unix Systems Labs (USL) sued BSDI, a company vending the BSD system, and the University of California, over this and other code in the BSD system. The claims that SCO is making are very similar to the ATT claims. ATT lost. It was found that ATT had copied heavily from the university without attribution, and thus ATT settled the case. In the settlement, the University agreed to add an ATT copyright notice to some files and continue to distribute them under the BSD license. ATT agreed to pay the University's court costs. Some details of the lawsuit are here.
The ATT code that was subject of this lawsuit survives into SCO's current system. SCO's "pattern analysis team" found this code and correctly concluded that it was identical to code in Unix. But they didn't take the additional step of checking whether or not the code had been released for others to copy legally.
Actually, you don't need a "pattern-analysis team" - you can just type lines of the allegedly copied program text into google.com, and google will show you where that code has been posted to the net.
My sources in this analysis are some very helpful members of the Linux community who posted information on the Linux Weekly News web site, and on this page of very useful information on the SCO cases.
What are you doing on an internet message forum then? You should know better than to expect critical root flows to be addressed anywhere on the web. :-P
You haven't seen all the evidence and yet you're calling it a "monumental mistake". Un-freaking-believable how far you guys will go to extrapolate...
Bwaaahahahahaha! Look who's saying "wait for the evidence" now! You are incredible.
SCO is publicly showing 30-year-old BSD code that they claim was "infringed". Now we know why they're so afraid of showing ALL of the "infringements".
Goodness gracious no, but have you ever wondered why companies were so tight-lipped about pending litigation? They have to be. If SCO is not, I think it may come back to haunt them.
OK, I was speculating there, but only a little bit. I have personal, first hand knowledge that by 1981 all of the code on that slide that came from malloc() was common knowledge. I have several books that I didn't sign any NDA's to get that have that code in them. The earliest was copyrighted 1979 and the copyright was not AT&T or any predecessor in interest to TSG (The SCO Group).cc2k wrote:Golden Eagle replied:
In short, this probably wasn't even a trade secret in 1975. It is entirely possible that this code was copied by an AT&T engineer from a textbook or technical journal back in the early 1970's, and that it is not an original work of anyone at AT&T.
Wild speculations certainly seem to be your specialty, if not this how the GPL servers possibly got hacked.
There is no way that TSG can claim trade secret status on this or that IBM violated any license agreement requiring them to protect trade secrets. This code was common knowledge before IBM licensed UNIX SVR2 (or was it SVR3) from AT&T.
One issue that TSG is going to run into here is when you have a copyrighted work and you allow the copyright to be infringed over a long period of time, you lose your right to enforce that copyright. The actual legal requirements are somewhat arcane, but in the most basic terms, if the statute of limitations has run out on the first infringement, then IBM can stand up in court and say that AT&T (and TSG as a successor to TSG) failed to enforce their copyright against others (including the authors and publishers of the books I have) in a timely fashion, and by doing that they have waived their right to enforce the copyright forever. There's a legalese term for this that I can't recall right at the moment. IBM used the proper terminology for this in the "boilerplate" responses to TSG's original complaint.
Well, Caldera, the company now doing business under the name "The SCO Group" and the one that filed the lawsuit against IBM released this code on January 23, 2002. The letter of license for that is available online at ftp://ftp.tribug.org/pub/tuhs/Caldera-license.pdf. Since you obviously didn't click the link in the original story, I'll put the text of that letter in this post.cc2k wrote:Golden Eagle replied:
As far as this representing "infringement," I doubt that will stick.
You're guessing again, but it may not matter if SCO can show that without their "official" release to copy this code, which may not have ever been explicitly granted, anyone who copied it did so illegally.
| 240 West Center Street Orem, Utah 84057 801-765-4999 Fax 801-765-4481 January 23, 2002 Dear UNIX. enthusiasts, Caldera International, Inc. hereby grants a fee free license that includes the rights use, modify and distribute this named source code, including creating derived binary products created from the source code. The source code for which Caldera International, Inc. grants rights are limited to the following UNIX Operating Systems that operate on the 16-Bit PDP-11 CPU and early versions of the 32-Bit UNIX Operating System, with specific exclusion of UNIX System III and UNIX System V and successor operating systems:
Caldera International, Inc. makes no guarantees or commitments that any source code is available from Caldera International, Inc. The following copyright notice applies to the source code files for which this license is granted. Copyright(C) Caldera International Inc. 2001-2002. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc. Neither the name of Caldera International, Inc. nor the names of other contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. USE OF THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED FOR UNDER THIS LICENSE BY CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. Very truly yours, /signed/ Bill Broderick * UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries. |
Golden Eagle wrote:They want business customers to pay for something they no longer own and can't legally demand payment for. They also want business customers to pay The SCO Group a license fee for code written by IBM, Sequent (and probably SGI and others) that is copyrighted by IBM and Sequent. This is code that The SCO Group does not have a copyright to and that the SCO Group has no economic investment in the development costs, and they want businesses to pay the SCO Group a license fee for this code.
What your mistaken about is that they want to sue everyone involved, every end user, when actually they just want business customers to pay.
As one business user of Linux, I can say, when they can prove that they own something that I need to license, I'll consider paying the license (or I'll stop using their intellectual property). Until they prove it, they can go pound sand.
They also want IBM to pay them $1 billion to continue to use software that IBM developed and IBM copyrighted.
Don't even try it.
You've staked your entire rep on this single issue here.
You've made some amazing, wild predictions about this case, in the most obnoxious, rude manner.
If you do, in fact, turn out to be completely, totally wrong, it speaks directly to your credibility. You've wrapped yourself in the flag to defend apparent criminal stock manipulation.
Here on FR, where we take patriotism very, very seriously. You've used it as a weapon to further your own ends. Claimed to be the defender truth, justice and the American way as a method to aiding and abetting stock fraud.
You'll need to retire this screen name, after this is all said and done . . .
I'm merely going to say I note your opinion, and I disagree with you.
Because it was in the article that started the thread.
Your whole defense is scrambled and meaningless.
Only because you refuse to acknowledge the evidence and insist on having it laid out on a silver platter. OK, have it your way. But, I demand the same thing: no more vague allegations. If you have an accusation to make, back it up with hard evidence. In other words, put up or shut up.
Direct me to a concise corroborated description and I will evaluate.
You can start with the article posted at the beginning of the thread.
But this unorganized gushing is worthless, and the critical root flows still aren't being adressed.
The existence of the code in question in the public domain, after being put there by previous "owners" of the Unix license establishes that SCO's claims are bogus.
What is the timeline, and how hard is it to understand why timelines are needed?
The timeline has already been established by the timestamps on previous releases of the code into the public domain, most recently by Caldera in 2002 (a previous incarnation of today's SCO Group).
But, if pictures will help you, try this:
It's part of this article. It's a long, but interesting read, such as:
The dashed red arrow from 4.2BSD to System V represents stolen property. AT&T, SCO/Caldera's predecessor in interest, took code from BSD Unix into System V, removing copyright notices and attributions in violation of the Berkeley license.
There's a much longer discussion of this, in the section entitled: SCO/Caldera misrepresents the scope of its rights over Unix.
The evidence is already clear: SCO is claiming proprietary rights over code that was released into the public domain twice by previous "owners" of Unix.
This error was discovered in a matter of hours after the disclosure became public. SCO apparently isn't bothering to do even basic research into the origin of the code in their own kernel, using tools and archives that are available to everyone.
That is indeed monumental. Even though it is only one of their claims, it was so easily discredited that it calls the rest of their claims into question.
It will be interesting to see how SCO responds this time, and how the market responds once it becomes widely-known during the next tech news cycle (at C/Net, etc)/
SCO is nearly majority-owned by the Canopy Group. The Canopy Group has been engaging in some interesting transactions, purchasing other companies in some sort of stock swap -- made easier by the inflated value of SCO stock.
I'll try to dig up the article tomorrow. I also read another that establishes that even the planned sales were initiated after corporate officers had to know about the plans to pursue IBM.
with specific exclusion of UNIX System III and UNIX System V and successor operating systems
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