Clean BSD code [LWN.net]

Clean BSD code

Posted Aug 19, 2003 20:59 UTC (Tue) by muon113 (guest, #14196)
Parent article: Why SCO won't show the code

Thanks to Arker who pointed this out on slashdot. The code actually traces back to earlier origins. The code can be found in 2.11 BSD and later versions (which, as we all know thanks to AT&T v. University of California, is clean). A copy of the code is here: http://unix-archive.pdp11.org.ru/PDP-11/Trees/2.11BSD/sys/sys/subr_rmap.c

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Clean BSD code

Posted Aug 19, 2003 23:19 UTC (Tue) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Hey,

Thanks for crediting me. Just because of you, I made an account here.

I'm always late on these things. I've been posting to slashdot since just after they went live, but I have an embarrassingly high uid because I never bothered to register until it became necessary because of the trolls.

Enough about me, the case at hand, much as I'd like to agree with you I don't. It's my understanding that BSD before 4.4lite is not necessarily unencumbered. If someone can show that I'm wrong on that please do, I'd love to hear it.

However, the good news is that the comment does not prove copyright infringement, only the code could do that, (although the comment could be used as evidence to help convince a judge that this was a cut and paste rather than just a tight algorithm which any competent programmer would have hit on quickly) and that at worst what we have here is a failure of a contributor to include a legally required copyright notice, with actual damages being the statutory limit to the award against him.

So, IANAL but it looks to me like the best SCO can get out of this particular example is $1 from whoever originally contributed the code. No? Why not?