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Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld)
ComputerWorld's Patrick Thibodeau interviews
Chris Sontag, a senior vice president and general manager of SCOsource
Division. "How many lines of code in the Linux kernel are a direct
copyright violation? It's very extensive. It is many different sections of
code ranging from five to 10 to 15 lines of code in multiple places that
are of issue, up to large blocks of code that have been inappropriately
copied into Linux in violation of our source-code licensing
contract. That's in the kernel itself, so it is significant. It is not a
line or two here or there. It was quite a surprise for us." (Thanks
to Sharon Machlis)
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Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 29, 2003 23:14 UTC (Thu) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link] SCO must have copyrighted "i++" or "for(;;)"...
MSFT and UNIX Posted May 30, 2003 0:48 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] From the article, Chris Sontag speaking:"Microsoft has been adding more and more Unix compatibility and Unix interoperability into their prod ucts. We got in contact with them early this year to let them know that we had concerns about if they had all the appropriate intellectual property necessary to be providing that Unix capability." I assume that he is referring to the POSIX subsystem that runs on top of the Windows XP executive. It seems unlikely that anyone outside of MSFT has seen this code, so SCO must be arriving at this conclusion based on the interface, which is POSIX. So is SCO claiming that it's illegal to implement a POSIX-compatible OS without purchasing IP from SCO? What's the point of having open standards if it's illegal to implement them? What strange alternate reality are SCO executives living in?
MSFT and UNIX Posted May 30, 2003 7:38 UTC (Fri) by the_JinX (guest, #3953) [Link] SCO most be using some kind of new drug..Suing people for copyright based on the way it looks doesn't work (Apple v.s. Microsoft) so why the hell did Microsoft pay up to SCO ?? And that Chris Sontag guy looks more like a car-sales-man then anything else.. but: Anything is always a possibility.
MSFT and UNIX Posted Jun 2, 2003 19:34 UTC (Mon) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link] The obvious answer is that Microsoft isn't interested in the licensing, but in financing this assault, which may benefit them in the long run (assuming SCO actually wins, which I personally think is a snowball's chance…). I suppose there's always the chance that what Microsoft's doing is exactly what it appears to be; a simple precautionary licensing tactic, ala CYA. But what're the chances of that, really?
Weasels. Posted May 30, 2003 9:10 UTC (Fri) by dark (✭ supporter ✭, #8483) [Link] "There is no mechanism in Linux to ensure [the legality of] that intellectual property of the source code being contributed by various people."What this statement ignores is that NOBODY has such a mechanism. It is simply not possible to ensure this. In the end, you have programmers (or teams of programmers) writing code, and the only evidence that it came out of their brains is inside their brains. You can only have proof in the other direction: if something was copied, then someone who knows about both pieces of code can spot that. Now, if I were to design a system that would maximize the likelihood of such things being spotted, what would I do? I think I'd set it up so that all the code is immediately published, and copied all over the world, and then I would encourage many programmers to look at the code and play with it. That seems to be the best way to ensure the legality of that "intellectual property". Come to think of it, keeping your code secret and only showing it under NDA is pretty darn suspicious, and it's just asking for trouble. I think SCO should adopt some sort of mechanism for ensuring the legality of the "intellectual property" of the source code contributed by their programmers. Without that, use of SCO's products is a legal minefield that I wouldn't want to get into.
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 30, 2003 10:02 UTC (Fri) by monk234 (guest, #11260) [Link] Who's to say that SCO (and Microsoft for that matter) didn't do a lot of copying of source code themselves. You know, the copy-and-mutate process. The SCO mission statement: "If you can't make it in the business world, get the courts to help you. The publicity ain't bad either!"Could this be the first step in software corporations trying to wrestle control away from the people? A collection of software made by the people for the people turned out to be so darned good maybe corporate folks are saying; "It's ours now! We'll be happy to sell you a license for it" Grrrr!!!
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 30, 2003 13:27 UTC (Fri) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link] Chris Sontag says there is a very extensive direct copyright violation. On SCO's website I see ( http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=110126 ) "SCO's lawsuit against IBM does not involve patents or copyrights."I think SCO now realy must start to make clear what they want. They threatened the owner of the copyright on the Unix source (Novell was one of the 1500) with action about "SCO's pending intellectual property claims" This is a thing you should not do. Anyhow, if the same specifications are implemented twice and one implementation involves about 3 million lines of code, it is not strange to find some spots where a few lines from one implementation resembles lines of the other implementation. It is up to SCO to prove lines are their intellectual propperty and that this intellectual property was stolen by IBM to incorperate in the Linux source.
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 30, 2003 15:05 UTC (Fri) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link] You hit the key aspect that is overlooked by virtually everyone- IBM has to be shown to be the source of the code. Otherwise the suit is out the door regardless if SCO is actually correct. It is interesting that the interview there is no mention of this nor the fact that they distributed their own Linux distro that includes this code.
So why won't IBM talk? Posted May 30, 2003 15:24 UTC (Fri) by cwong15 (guest, #3013) [Link] That's an important point. Surely SCO must have indicated to IBM somehow just what code they are accusing IBM of abusing. If SCO wants to make up a fake allegation and just posture menacingly, their silence on the specifics is understandable. But why won't IBM reveal even a hint of what SCO is alleging?
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 30, 2003 15:44 UTC (Fri) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link] Just one hint about the "lines" of code. It must be in 2.4 or higher kernels as I still can find the source of 2.2 kernels on their website with GPL statements:ftp://ftp.caldera.com/pub/updates/eServer/2.3/current/SRPMS/linux-2.2.14-13S.src.rpm
Q&A: SCO's Chris Sontag on Linux, Unix and brewing legal fights (ComputerWorld) Posted May 31, 2003 1:10 UTC (Sat) by neoprene (guest, #8520) [Link] Why not examine all the SCO code (and MSFT too) for any similarity to BSD and Linux? BSD is obviously prior art. No NDA is needed to look at open source. Sontag were are your balls?
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