...and if SCO is right...?

...and if SCO is right...?

Posted May 19, 2003 7:48 UTC (Mon) by ekj (guest, #1524)
Parent article: ...and if SCO is right...?

This article is silly, naive and overlooks several rather obvious points. For starters:

The source to various proprietary Unix systems tends to be more widespread than many people think. Numerous companies have source licenses, and, despite careful procedures, copies can leak out.

Sure. No question about it. I've got source for several historical unixes myself. But this fact would tend to increase the chanse that code lifted from other unixes was discovered. Afterall, this means there's a lot of people reading linux-kernel that has atleast some knowledge of the source of other unixes. I'm not saying we'd nessecarily catch anything derived from one of them, but lifts of major subsystems would very likely be spotted.

Some people are lazy or unable to program at the level required for kernel development (or both). Some of those people may have access to some flavor or other of proprietary Unix. And some of them might just be sufficiently dishonest to present somebody else's code as their own.

This assumes that porting the code to fit in with Linux requires significantly less skill and understanding than writing the code in the first place. That is typically not so. I can see cases where reading code from other unixen would help you understand how to solve a certain problem, but only if you already understood the problem and the Linux-framework well. A pure 1-to-1 (obfuscated or not) copy of code from any other unix would simply not work in Linux, and furthermore it would be rather obvious it was written for something other than Linux.

Obviously, a code purge would be called for. Unless SCO explicitly puts any offending code under the GPL (which it might have to do to preserve its own right to distribute the kernel), any infringing code must be pulled from the kernel.

SCO ALREADY willingly distributed the Linux kernel under the GPL. I know it, because I downloaded my kernel from ftp.caldera.com myself. I did so the 15th of may, long after this suit was announced. It seems that at the moment they have removed the SRPM for the kernel, yet the RPM remains, meaning they're in GPL-violation. They cannot legally distribute the kernel without also offering source. Anybody with a line of code in the kernel can sue them at will.

Given that SCO themselves gave me my kernel, and did so under the GPL, I don't see how they can come now and attempt to reverse their stance. The license is not revokable. They gave me (nd millions of other people) the permission to distribute this under the GPL. We will.

Furthermore, it is well-worth pointing out that SCO themselves do not have a unix with the advanced "enterprice class" features they accuse us of stealing. It's rather curious that we could steal it fro mthem if they haven't got it. ("it" here being your choise of advanced feature. They're lacking NUMA, robust SMP, hotswap, usb2.0, firewire ....)

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