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A look at the SCO complaint

Posted Mar 7, 2003 19:33 UTC (Fri) by stevenj (guest, #421)
Parent article: A look at the SCO complaint

You write:

SCO has not pointed out a single line of code which, it claims, is derived from the Unix source. One would assume that will change during the trial phase, if this case gets that far.

That's not entirely the case. Their filing specifically cites IBM's statement:

IBM: Were willing to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable. We have open-sourced the journal filesystem, print driver for the Omniprint. AIX is 1.5 million lines of code. If we dump that on the open source community then are people going to understand it? Youre better off taking bits and pieces and the expertise that we bring along with it. We have made a conscious decision to keep contributing.
SCO: IBM, however, was not and is not in a position legally to open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable. Rather, IBM is obligated not to open source AIX because it contains SCOs confidential and proprietary UNIX operating system and, more importantly, the code that is essential for running mission critical applications (e.g., wire transfers) for large businesses.

So, it sounds like they are obliquely citing IBM's JFS and Omniprint (or any part of AIX that they open) as infringing code. I have no idea whether this claim has any merit, but it is nice to know that this is one possible angle of their attack.

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A look at the SCO complaint

Posted Mar 7, 2003 20:27 UTC (Fri) by cpeterso (subscriber, #305) [Link]

it sounds like they are obliquely citing IBM's JFS and Omniprint (or any part of AIX that they open) as infringing code.

I thought that IBM's JFS port was taken from the OS/2 JFS, not the AIX JFS. So in that case, Linux JFS would be based on OS/2, not UNIX(TM). And is officially AIX consdiered UNIX(TM)?

Here is the answer from IBM's JFS FAQ: http://oss.software.ibm.com/developer/opensource/jfs/project/pub/faq.txt

Q1. What is the history of the source based use for the port of JFS for Linux.

A1. IBM introduced its UNIX file system as the Journaled File System (JFS) with the initial release of AIX Version 3.1. This file system, now called JFS1 on AIX, has been the premier file system for AIX over the last 10 years and has been installed in millions of customer's AIX systems. In 1995, work began to enhance the file system to be more scalable and to support machines that had more than one processor. Another goal was to have a more portable file system, capable of running on multiple operating systems.

Historically, the JFS1 file system is very closely tied to the memory manager of AIX. This design is typical of a closed-source operating system, or a file system supporting only one operating system.

The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness in April, 1999, after several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped with OS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000. In parallel to this effort, some of the JFS development team returned to the AIX Operating System Development Group in 1997 and started to move this new JFS source base to the AIX operating system. In May, 2001, a second journaled file system, Enhanced Journaled File System (JFS2), was made available for AIX 5L. In December of 1999, a snapshot of the original OS/2 JFS source was taken and work was begun to port JFS to Linux.

A look at the SCO complaint

Posted Mar 7, 2003 21:10 UTC (Fri) by mosborne (guest, #10001) [Link]

Omniprint came from OS/2, not AIX. Also, the jfs in linux also was ported from the OS/2 jfs codebase, not the AIX codebase. The jfs in AIX 5.x is the same codebase that is now in Linux. So, I don't think the SCO claims hold any water here.

SCO cannot hold a propriety claim over *every* aspect of AIX anyway. That notion is completely absurd. AIX is a very different animal than any version of SCO that I have used and I started with SCO Xenix on 286's.

AIX is derived from Mach

Posted Mar 9, 2003 2:43 UTC (Sun) by davecb (subscriber, #1574) [Link]

SCO: IBM, however, was not and is not in a position legally to "open source any part of AIX that the Linux community considers valuable." Rather, IBM is obligated not to open source AIX because it contains SCO's confidential and proprietary UNIX operating system.

To make this arguement work, SCO must prove that AIX, which I understand was substantially derived from Mach and the BSDs, included SCO's Unix source code, and that it was not developed by CMU (the initial Machians) or IBM.

--dave