The Coral Snake Ping.
Calling all Anti Commies and Anti Pirates
Posted on 08/26/2003 7:04:02 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
SCO Defends Against Open Source Advocates
By Mitch Wagner
SCO defended itself against criticism by the open source community, saying Unix code used in Linux comes from its own, copyrighted version of Unix, not - as Linux advocates argued last week - earlier versions that have been released into open source.
SCO also said the General Public License (GPL), a popular license for releasing software into the open source community, violates U.S. and international copyright law.
SCO, which owns intellectual property of Unix, is fighting a legal and marketing campaign to show that Linux contains sufficient proprietary Unix code that Linux distributors and users are ripping off SCO. SCO sued IBM in March, claiming that IBM included proprietary Unix source code in Linux, and later SCO warned Linux users that they, too, could be subject to intellectual property lawsuits if they failed to obtain legitimate licenses from SCO. SCO introduced a $699 license this month for Linux users.
SCO has been closely guarding its evidence - the allegedly stolen source code - disclosing it only people willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement. However, last week SCO disclosed some of the code at a presentation at its SCO Forum conference in Las Vegas. Linux advocates, including Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond, obtained copies of SCO's slides, and posted responses to the Web, saying that SCO's own evidence undercut its case.
Perens and Raymond said that some of the code disclosed on the slides, governing memory allocation, comes from early, "ancestral" versions of Unix that were released into open source by SCO itself, while SCO was doing business as Caldera.
But SCO said that, while ancestral Unix versions have earlier versions of the code, the code was refined in SVR4.1, and it's the later version of the code - still proprietary to SCO - that appears in Linux.
Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource, the company's business unit for licensing SCO's intellectual property, said another vendor copied proprietary memory allocation code from Unix into Linux, removed the original copyright notices and attached its own. SCO would not identify which company did the label-switch.
Linux advocates also said last week that the memory allocation code is only used in versions of Linux for IA-64 systems, such as systems running on the Intel Itanium chip, representing fewer than 10 percent of Linux installations. The vast majority of Linux installations are running on IA-32 systems such as Intel's Xeon processors.
Sontag accused the Linux advocates of splitting hairs.
"What's at issue is that there is copyrighted Unix System V code, Version 4.1 code, copied into Linux. Whether it is used broadly or not, it is widely published and available. SCO's copyright is stripped out and others are taking credit in violation of the copyright," Sontag said.
Perens said that one of the examples of allegedly stolen code shown by SCO last week was, in fact, from Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) routines taken from BSD, which is covered by an open source license.
But Sontag said the BPF routines were not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code, or code that had been altered slightly to disguise its origins. The slide displaying the code should have been written differently to reflect that intention, he said.
"It was an example of our ability to find moderately changed or obfuscated code, it was not an example we are using in court," Sontag said. "If they want to go off and make a big defense on that, they are welcome to it."
Sontag said the code examples SCO chose to disclose last week were not its best examples, merely the most easily understood ones. Perens had said the examples SCO disclosed were likely to be SCO's best, and underscored the weakness of SCO's case.
"He's wrong, he doesn't have examples of the evidence. We do. He is trying to put a happy face on a problematic situation for the Linux community," Sontag said. "Try as they might to come up with arguments to bolster their position, the facts and everything we know are extremely strong in SCO's favor."
SCO also focused criticism on the GPL, which is the license for many open source projects, including Linux. The license states that GPLed software and source code must be available to anyone. Modifications to GPL software are subject to the same provisions.
The Free Software Foundation developed the GPL, and defines free software on its Web site.
Linux advocates say that SCO undercut its own case by releasing its own version of Linux under the GPL. The SCO version of Linux contains the disputed code and - even if the code was once proprietary - SCO released it into open source when it released its own Linux, the advocates argue.
However, Sontag said that argument holds no water because SCO never intended to release its proprietary code into open source. "U.S. and international copyright law asserts you cannot inadvertently and accidently assign your copyright to someone else," Sontag said.
Moreover, SCO said its proprietary code in Linux does not meet the definition of free software as stated in the Linux GPL.
"The Linux GPL itself asserts that the valid legal copyright holder has to place a notice at the beginning of their copyrighted work, the source code, identifying the code and the GPL. It requires an overt action. SCO has not contributed its code, and as soon as we became aware of the copyright violation we suspended our distribution," Sontag said.
Huh? Placing source code on a web site for download is inadvertent? More SCO horse hockey.
This is better than watching Green Acres. What's Arnold gonna' do next?
Certainly welcome to them, as well as share them on FR. However it is the opinion of many others that SCO is simply trying to exert its rights over its own property in an age of growing internet piracy. Are they overpricing the value of the supposedly stolen code? Sure looks like it, but if it is their code they have every right to set the price.
If the majority of Linux users had ever paid one dime for the software they are using, their complaints might be more understandable. However, most didn't, and many have said they will still be unwilling to pay SCO a dime if/when it is positively proven the code was hijacked from Unix, again making their positions fairly unsympathetic. Launching the denial of service attacks against SCO further alienate their innocence.
Calling all Anti Commies and Anti Pirates
Well their stock went up ~10% Friday so it's probably too early for a fire sale. They still have a good hand to play, and are further setting themselves up as the victim going into the trial if reports of these latest DOS attacks are true.
Yes, what he's saying is if they didn't explicitly waive copyright, and they didn't since they had no idea IBM/SGI had planted their code, they aren't liable. Makes perfect sense to me.
One would have to guess he feels they are within their rights. As high a profile as this case is, along with IBM's recent counter suit, chances are he is aware of exactly what is going on.
But I don't believe that the primary motive of "many others", including you, is to hope that SCO gets its property rights fairly assigned. Furthermore, I don't believe that SCO has any case.
I think that the motivation of most people on SCO's side, considering the total mishandling of a court case (if they were serious and not dice-rolling) is to see chaos in the Linux community.
I think that if SCO were not desperate for a buy-out or playing legal roulette with our--your word here--"communist" legal system, that they would have either kept their damned mouths shut, as attorneys tell people to do, or they would be offering examples that are not easily skewered.
I believe that if Microsoft were being sued for IP violations--oops, they have been and lost--those very people on SCO's side would be, and have been, on Microsoft's side.
That's worth what you paid for it. And I am not a Communist, Socialist, or any other leftist, and I am not a thug or thief.
But Sontag said the BPF routines were not intended to be an example of stolen code, but rather a demonstration of how SCO was able to detect "obfuscated" code, or code that had been altered slightly to disguise its origins. The slide displaying the code should have been written differently to reflect that intention, he said.
Riiiiight Chris. That's why the slide was titled "Stolen Code".
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