LWN: Comments on "A look at the SCO complaint"

AIX genesis

ConradM — 2003-06-06T02:32:41+00:00

There are (or were) more than one "AIX" source bases... In 84-86 I
worked at IBM on the first one. It was an IBM-enhanced port by
Interactive Systems Corporation of ATT System V to a virtual machine
(VRM) on the RT PC. That would be the original System V,
sometimes referred to as release zero, back when the man pages
were a still a single volume - Jan 1983 is the date on mine. SVR2
stuff got pulled in later.

By the way the RT PC had little in common with an Intel PC: just that
there was an 80286 coprocessor option, and it had PC compatible 8
and 16 bit I/O slots... beyond that it was simply the first RISC ala IBM
architecture out the door - a single chip big endian commercialization
of IBM Research's "801".

FUD

amusedmis — 2003-05-21T04:24:03+00:00

This feels a lot like when Microsoft had Netscape bought by AOL.....
I love a good conspiracy theory.

What Monterey actually was

Wol — 2003-03-14T11:56:44+00:00

What happened to Monterey x86?

IBM sales and marketing suddenly realised that every time they talked about AIX/x86, the customers changed the subject to linux. Every time they tried to interest a customer in "possibly buying AIX/x86" the customer said "what's the point - linux is there already".

You can spend all the millions you like on advertising, but if everybody you talk to sniffs at what you're trying to sell, it's money down the drain.

Cheers,
Wol

From the news.com article

MLKahnt — 2003-03-14T05:37:43+00:00

Psst - Solaris is the Sun version of Unix arising from the work of Sun and AT&T Bell Labs that became SVR4 (which was supposed to unify BSD and SVR3 code), and led to the OSF counter-project. Ironically, iirc, at one point AIX was targetted as being some key parts of OSF o/s, partly because of design, and partly because of the significant lack of AT&T code, due to the substantively different underlying design of AIX. That difference meant that there was considerably less AT&T code that would need replacement.

SCO's role as the owner of Unix(tm) is about equivalent to that of Michael Jackson's wrt The Beatles - they may "own" the Intellectual Property rights, but they have done no creative development of that property.

The Unix(tm) API (The System V Interface Definition - SVID) is the only "standard" of Unix(tm), to my recollection, which was further formalised (and taken out of the IP realm) by POSIX.

Hidden hand?

Boot — 2003-03-13T20:37:05+00:00

Am I just being paranoid seeing the hidden M$ agenda in this?

If the case gets fought and SCO win, Linux is dead as far as being an M$ competitor.
If SCO gets bought out by IBM, the UL consortium is seen as compromised.
If IBM wins a quarter of UL is dead.

Whatever happens, the seed has been implanted that says that, after all the posturing, Linux isn't *really* as open source as its proponents claim, and, oh!, the news starts to bite just as Win2003 (or whatever) starts being real.

Papa John's Pizza caper?

Peter — 2003-03-12T20:22:40+00:00

Dunno what that is. But if they a) Make pizzas in some art or form, and b) pissoff SCO, it seems to me they just earned themselves a rough million new fans.

Yeah - I would be one of those new fans except that I was already one. They've got the best pizza in my town, at least. Granted, this ain't Chicago or New York, but Papa John's kicks the crap out of Pizza Hut and Domino's. I didn't know about the SCO / Linux angle until now.

Papa John's Pizza caper?

ekj — 2003-03-12T08:06:47+00:00

Dunno what that is. But if they a) Make pizzas in some art or form, and b) pissoff SCO, it seems to me they just earned themselves a rough million new fans. (I'm assuming only a small part of Linux users know/care about these things.)

What Monterey actually was

james — 2003-03-11T17:49:44+00:00

The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.

Actually, Monterey was AIX with Unixware and Sequent technology, aimed at POWER / PowerPC, Itanium, and x86.

I understood that the POWER / PowerPC side of things was commercialised as AIX 5L. There was an IA64 version of AIX 5L, too: the Bull "freeware site" for quite some time had IA64 AIX binaries of some popular Open Source software. (Bull licences AIX for use on their Escala range of RS/6000 compatibles).

I never understood quite what happened to the x86 version (which was intended to be the successor to Unixware and Open Server). If we get to see an IBM riposte, we might find out.

James.

Bicycles, luxury cars... and tanks!

fnesper — 2003-03-11T09:39:37+00:00

Hmm.. UNIX.

I gues it would be trucks. Made to hurl large workloads across the road, nobody but companies use them, sure there are a few people that own their own trucks, but these are mostly antiques. The different truck manufactures parts does not fit together, some does but you have to take the part totally apart and puts it together again on the other manufactures truck. The trailors that the trucks pull, are normally many many times more expensive than the trucks. The trucks are expensive, but if you buy a piece of road, you usually get the a truck for free.

A look at the SCO complaint

fnesper — 2003-03-11T09:25:57+00:00

He he, been hearing that a couple of times lately.
But the software to run on Linux on pSeries hardware isn't there yet.
And to be honest, neither is Linux, the highend Unix hardware offers
a lot of things, that just aren't there on IA32 or most IA64 boxes. And Linux doesn't have the code to use these things, like AIX does. I believe it _will_ come over the next years, but there are lot of things like bootlist manipulation, dynamic cpu deallocation, first failure data capture, diagnostics, workload manger, dynamic and static logical partitioning etc etc.

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

Odinson — 2003-03-10T22:55:35+00:00

You have been looking at the unfounded Linux bashing on the Microsoft stock boards then.

The world does need this kind of anaylsis to not dismiss Linux at a cheap IP rip off scheme, yesterday.

There is already malcontent among the Linux .com GPL ignorant/unfortunate.

Bicycles, luxury cars... and tanks!

denials — 2003-03-10T20:19:49+00:00

If SCO is going to use an analogy of Linux as a bicycle and UNIX as a luxury car, they had better tread carefully: In 1999 Neal Stephenson developed a similar analogy in In the Beginning was the Command Line, a brief book available for free online that describes the differences in the product philosophies of operating system developers:

Microsoft - originally producers of bicycles (MS-DOS), then mopeds (Windows 3.x), and finally ugly station wagons (Windows 95) and off-road vehicles (Windows NT)
Apple - the real producer of luxury cars
BeOS - creators of the Batmobile: stylish and super-powered
Linux - tanks:
These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for free.
Stephenson, Neal. In the Beginning was the Command Line. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html. 1999.

Oddly enough, UNIX isn't even mentioned; I suppose Neal was talking about consumer-oriented operatin systems.

Clearly, however, by not citing Neal Stephenson's original intellectual property on the operating-system-as-vehicle analogy in their case against IBM, SCO has placed themselves in a precarious legal position.

Dan Scott

A look at the SCO complaint

mrlee — 2003-03-10T13:56:05+00:00

They could chose Linux instead of AIX on IBM hardware ;-)

A look at the SCO complaint

fnesper — 2003-03-10T12:29:47+00:00

Well, the scary part for BIG Blue is the 'revoke license of AIX in 100 days'
part. Not so much the risk of it happening, but the fact that customers might
chose not to buy IBM hardware due to that risk. Just to get that threat out
of the way, would be worth the 30M$ that SCO costs.

From the news.com article

mattdm — 2003-03-10T05:08:11+00:00

The even more funny part about of that claim is the part where they say IBM gained this elusive and mystical Unix-on-Intel knowledge while working with SCO on Monterey -- which was, of course, Itanium, and not really relevant to x86 Intel at all.

Re: A look at the SCO complaint

pointwood — 2003-03-09T16:33:44+00:00

Well, although I really don't like SCO and this complaint of theirs, IBM is certainly not at nice company either!

Here is a quote:
IBM's patent department is actively lobbying Europe to legalise software patents. They have invested millions in fighting example cases to leading European lawcourts such as the EPO's Technical Boards of Appeal and the German Federal Court in order to soften and eventually remove European restrictions on patenting software. They have also threatened European politicians that IBM might close down local facilities if software patents are not legalised in Europe. IBM has also prevented the US government from conducting studies on the value of software patents for the national economy. In the wake of the Opensource hype, IBM's rhetoric has become relatively moderate, but nonetheless it is supported by real pressure. IBM has acquired approximately 1000 European software patents whose legal status is currently unclear. Given the great number of software patents in IBM's hands, IBM is one of the few software companies who may have a genuine interest in software patentability. Once software patents become assertable in Europe, an IBM tax of several hundered million EUR may be levied on European software companies.

The quote is from this site.

As all sane persons know, Linux and software patents aren't exactly the best combination. Basically, I don't feel that sorry for IBM as long as their are pro software patents. If they wanted to, they could probably do exactly the same thing today as SCO has done and their claims would probably also have a much better chance of victory in a court than SCO's claims.

A look at the SCO complaint

garsun — 2003-03-09T06:32:50+00:00

Perhaps the whole thing is a brilliant maneuver to establish, in the public eye, linux's parity with the enterprise quality Unix's...
...and also establish SCO/Caldera's legitimacy in the evolution of Unix...

Public controversy is often very cost effective marketing.

Wouldn't SCO/Caldera stand to profit by that?

AIX is derived from Mach

davecb — 2003-03-09T02:43:56+00:00

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

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

zonker — 2003-03-08T16:32:58+00:00

I think Jon did the right thing. This was too important to a) hold until next Wednesday for subscribers and b) hold until the following week for non-subscribers.

I'm sure that the remainder of the material for next week will continue to justify the subscription fee. Granted, I'm sure Jon's piece will be the most widely-read piece for next week's LWN (unless SCO does something even MORE bone-headed, if that's possible) but it isn't as if this is the only piece that will be in the weekly edition.

Further, it shows that Jon respects the LWN readers enough to share this with everyone rather than holding it back in the hopes that it will drive a few more subscriptions. Instead, maybe it will remind the non-paying folks exactly what they're waiting to see on a regular basis and incite a few more people to subscribe.

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

jonth — 2003-03-08T14:49:34+00:00

Sorry, I am not being self centred. Did I say I was unhappy about paying for the content? No. I said that I was unhappy that it was sent out to all the people who don't support LWN.

I just feel that LWN short-changed itself. This was a really interesting article, just the sort of high quality comment I have come to expect from the LWN front page. However, it wasn't earth-shatteringly important that everybody read it right now, and as such, should have been restricted to those who pay for LWN. If they had, then perhaps those people who don't pay would have read it in a week's time and thought, "hey, that would be worth the money" and subscribed to LWN.

cheers,

Jonth

A look at the SCO complaint

komarek — 2003-03-08T06:03:31+00:00

Maybe this is some kind of reverse-psychology trick. Perhaps IBM paid SCO a lot of money to commit suicide this way, so that (pick your favorites)

*) IBM looks good saving the community from SCO's specious claims
*) Evidence useful in future defence of GNU/Linux and/or Linux is recorded in a court case
*) A public relations exercise to finally educate the press about where Linux and GNU/Linux came from

-Paul Komarek

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

komarek — 2003-03-08T05:56:53+00:00

Personally, I view my subscription as a way to keep Mr. Corbet alive long enough to write articles. I don't care much who as access to these articles, so long as I'm included and so long as they keep coming.

Note that we can't allow Mr. Corbet to actually live comfortably from our subscription money. If that happened, he might lose his artistic edge.

-Paul

A look at the SCO complaint

mmarq — 2003-03-08T01:17:53+00:00

I wish IBM well in this one!...
But even if IBM gets guilty in some form, the big question is?

Was and still is IBM indespensable for Linux growth and fitness??

The answer only has to be NO.

As a user i personaly thank IBM for any contributition that have maid my life easyer, but i also have to thank all the other individuals and entreprises ( including eventualy SCO/Caldera) because i think none deserves more respect or has more merits than others.

SCO as shown a total lack of consideration for open-source developers, but it also is about to demonstrate that Linux has to stay away, as far as possible, from any possible "to much" corporate influence and control.

" The idea that IBM or HP... are going to save Linux from M$, is bad from any angle you watch... it got to stand up by itself or no one is going to make it run"

I hope that after this ordeal that < It's "directed mutation" on a microscopic level> got just a little more global vision.

Papa John's Pizza caper?

dthurston — 2003-03-07T23:12:38+00:00

Sorry, what is the Great Papa John's Pizza Caper?

A look at the SCO complaint

sjohnston — 2003-03-07T22:58:52+00:00

Its really not ironic. The SCO Group is Caldera renamed... Of course they're running linux servers. If you check out some of their other pages you'll also see UnixWare and OpenServer running different areas.

IBM and AIX makes some sense for SCO as compared to Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, etc because of past partnerships SCO has had wih IBM, Project Monterey being an example.

Is there merit behind the case? Don't know. I can see that there is good cause to believe that SCO may have merit too their suit though.

A look at the SCO complaint

alonzo — 2003-03-07T22:40:19+00:00

Who's next? HP, SGI, Sun? They've all benefitted/contributed to/
from Linux. SCO'll be claiming next that
OpenOffice was derived from 'ed'!! Heck, There's probably
some Linux code in OpenServer and UnixWare! This could
get very circuitous. I wonder if M$ paid off SCO
for UNIX services for WinXX? Anyway, I thought that AIX was derived
from Mach (OSF) and that Mach was derived from BSD.
(it's been too long... I've forgotten all that stuff now.(
although, what I remember of early AIX is that it was
very ATT system V, Release III like (my mind is going...
got to get (my body)out of here!)))
Just say NO to SCO!!

First Linux SMP work was sponsored by Caldera

dank — 2003-03-07T22:19:23+00:00

This is delicious. A message posted on Nov 2, 1995 backs this up, saying: "See http://www.linux.org.uk/SMP/title.html for details on this project. Caldera simply bought Alan some SMP hardware to help get the project off the ground."

A look at the SCO complaint

mosborne — 2003-03-07T21:10:13+00:00

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.

Is it about the kernel or the full operating system?

ber — 2003-03-07T20:39:06+00:00

For the point of the article I think that the distinction between a "full operating" system and a kernel should be made. Actually the GNU/Linux operating system are much more than the kernel. SCO seems to mostly complain about the kernel. (I'm not completely sure.)

Again this shows that it is very important to have the FSF Europe and the FSF who envisoned legal battles like this years before and tried to build up some ways to resist. The FSF always tried to maintain a legal maintainability like through copyright assignments. In this light the new Fiducary License agreement worked out by the FSF Europe seems to be more important than ever. Disclosure: I'm a member of the FSF Europe's coreteam.

A look at the SCO complaint

cpeterso — 2003-03-07T20:27:06+00:00

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

ctg — 2003-03-07T20:26:26+00:00

You missed the slur on the GNU project aswell...

The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software.

A look at the SCO complaint

Ross — 2003-03-07T19:54:25+00:00

I thought it was David Miller and that the first SMP Linux was on SPARC. Am I remembering incorrectly?

A look at the SCO complaint

deatrich — 2003-03-07T19:52:39+00:00

Thanks for the analysis and summary. This is one of those moments the community has been waiting for (not in a happy sense) -- a court challenge of some kind that drags Linux into the muck of licensing, trademark, and proprietary software disputes.

This case is extremely important, and I'm glad that LWN.net opened this article for all to read. It will be very interesting to hear the responses of major Linux kernel authors -- I'm sure that we won't have to wait long for them. I imagine that most Linux distros, and major commercial *nix vendors will be holding pow-wows. We will probably hear from them too.

There is some irony in examining SCO's web site over at netcraft: what's that site running?

enjoy.

From the news.com article

Ross — 2003-03-07T19:50:45+00:00

"Some claims, though, have more potential merit, Eunice said. One is that
creating Unix on Intel processors needed expertise that SCO developed but
IBM lacked, Eunice said. Another claim is that it would have been
impossible for IBM to re-create versions of SCO libraries without SCO's
actual code."

On the first of those "better" claims:
Umm... so how did FreeBSD happen? How did Solaris x86 happen? Did they "steal" SCO secrets? How is it that the original "port" of Linux was for Intel? How could IBM not have the knowledge when they created the IBM PC?

On the second:
So how did Linux implement compatability with native binaries on Alpha, SPARC, MIPS, etc.? How was WINE created? Is SCO aware of the existance of POSIX andthe relative simplicity of the Unix API?

I can't say how much this bothers me. This is one of the most frivolous lawsuits I have ever seen. If SCO is just trying to get media attention I guess it worked because this is the most discussion of SCO I have seen -- ever.

FUD

rknop — 2003-03-07T19:36:01+00:00

Who needs Microsoft when you have SCO?

With vendors like these, who needs competitors?

Sheesh. One of the most extreme cases of mass rectal defilade I've ever seen.

-Rob

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

torsten — 2003-03-07T19:35:26+00:00

If you don't find value in what you have paid for, don't pay, or reduce your subscription level. Personally, I find this article of tremendous value. That the information may benefit a thousand other people, only multiplies my $10 monthly investment by a factor of 1000. I'd say that is a better return on investment than most.

Try not to be so self-centered.

Torsten

A look at the SCO complaint

stevenj — 2003-03-07T19:33:15+00:00

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.

A look at the SCO complaint

jlnance — 2003-03-07T19:31:08+00:00

I Love this:

Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use.

Alan Cox wrote the first SMP version of Linux. Do you know who bought
Alan the hardware? It was Caldera :-)

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

corbet — 2003-03-07T19:13:44+00:00

We've been running with subscriptions for almost six months now, and this is the first article we have released in this way over that time. I expect it will be a while before we do it again. I'm sorry you didn't like it, rest assured that it doesn't indicate a change in strategy on our part.

A complaint about the look at the SCO complaint

jonth — 2003-03-07T19:08:42+00:00

Nice article, but I'm not very happy that "This article has been released without the usual subscription delay." Guys, what's the point of me paying you money for a premium service on the grounds that I get the important stuff now, only for the _really_ important stuff to be given out early anyway?

Jonth