LWN: Comments on "Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)"

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dpolson — Sat, 14 Jun 2003 18:53:29 +0000

This has been linked at LinuxToday; everyone over there is pretty impressed with the article.

Rufus Polson

The Trillian Project : Proof of SCO's actions

ptempel — Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:10:33 +0000

> I'm not a lawyer but can you spell "I-n-s-i-d-e-r T-r-a-d-i-n-g"?

Well I don't know if it's insider trading. But the "pump n' dump"
tactic comes to mind after reading about it... ;-)

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

dmomara — Sat, 14 Jun 2003 12:46:10 +0000

Dead cow meat aside, no one seems to have had the presence of mind to have done any diff of the "show and tell" code (which now appears to be rather archaic by all rumor) with the Minix source. How wide was the nozzle on the code vacuum at AT&T/USL anyway? Certainly the details of the BSDi situation will finally out with all of this crap. It would not be any surprise to anyone that the closed source boys were/are playing bucaneer with everything and everyone to line their pockets.

As far as Scaldera is concerened, they have already defrauded the community by claiming that they would open the UnixWare code after their "unification" with Linux. This whole mess stinks to high heaven and will cause immense harm to all of the IT "industry," Hopefully the epicenter of the damage can be confined far to the northwest of Utah. I think it will ultimately turn out that way.

The Trillian Project : Proof of SCO's actions

mwfolsom — Sat, 14 Jun 2003 04:58:33 +0000

I found this fascinating ....

"http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/139257
Opinder Bawa, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Global
Services at The SCO Group, sold all his stock last week.
As Vice President of Engineering, Opinder Bawa is in a better position
than most to know who put what where."

I'm not a lawyer but can you spell "I-n-s-i-d-e-r T-r-a-d-i-n-g"?

Buying SCO

vksgeneric — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 22:39:30 +0000

NSA? Not possible, but it would have been the best outcome possible. If they want to outlaw anything, they can do it already. But if they own the IP and don't outlaw the stuff, it effectively means it becomes public domain.

If you meet a monster that is about to bite your head off, would you rather meet one that hates you (competes with you, that is), or one that doesn't really care whether you exist?

As smart as IBM is acting these days...

vksgeneric — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 22:34:17 +0000

Chapter7 would be a real bummer in terms of IP transfer. If a small company gets it, they can try the same stunt as SCO when times get tough. If a large company gets it (IBM, M$, whoever), they can easily sue smaller companies that compete with them and do other stupid things that hurt free software in general and Linux in particular.

Auctioning off IP is like auctioning off a nuke or a set of keys to a bank. You can't expect anything good to come out of it unless the buying party is super-honest and has best interests of humanity in mind, forever.

Customers not liable? Wrong!

jneves — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 22:26:30 +0000

From this set, probably the least liable of them all would be GNU/Linux users, if the courtroom accepts article 7 of the GPL 2, then SCO will have no case against Linux users.

Buying SCO

allesfresser — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 21:24:33 +0000

Well yes, them too. :-) I suppose the NSA could snap it up as well, and really screw things up...

Buying SCO

ccchips — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:31:25 +0000

Yes: Like Novell.

Buying SCO

allesfresser — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 15:21:13 +0000

Of course, there are other companies with really deep pockets that might like to snag the "IP" once its ownership has been established in court... and then where would we be? Does the prospect of a certain company in Redmond bidding for that code successfully scare y'all as much as it scares me?

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

raph — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 05:43:10 +0000

I think the main significance of the pregnant cow is that she provided incontrovertable evidence that somebody screwed somebody.

As smart as IBM is acting these days...

cr — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 01:59:54 +0000

They'll probably wait, and buy just the IP at a Chapter-7 yard sale.

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

proski — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 01:15:33 +0000

Both SCO and its customers thought that the kernel was barren, but it turned out to be pregnant. And the worst thing of all - it was pregnant by SCO itself!

Buying SCO

hamjudo — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:31:48 +0000

Google new search on IBM buyout SCO gets a few hits, change the spelling of buyout and you'll get some different hits. Judging by the stock price, I'd guess that some investors think SCO is worth buying.

There are more reasons why a buyout would be a very bad thing. If IBM were to buy SCO, they'd get stuck with all of SCO's liabilities and obligations, which may be substantial. Do any members of the SCO management team have a golden parachute? Do SCO customers have support contracts?

SCOX has a market capitalization of $110M USD today. Usually the purchase price exceeds the market cap. Far more cost effective to spend a comparatively small amount on lawyers, than a huge amount that rewards the scum.

Buying SCO

emkey — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 21:13:34 +0000

I agree its a risk, and back in the 80's I never would have believed I'd give serious consideration to supporting IBM in anything. Times change though and the stakes here are high enough that I find myself willing to believe that the last few years are indicative of a real change at IBM. It is interesting to consider the ramifications of such a move from the point of view of other companies trying. Frankly I suspect it happens all the time and we just don't notice since it isn't happening in our area(s) of interest.

To the best of my knowledge nobody in the press has looked at the buyout option which is interesting. Given the relative sizes of the two companies it just seemed like an obvious possible outcome.

Caldera originally bragged about using SCO code in Linux

mattdm — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:12:51 +0000

(And we can see that the 'preview' button is entirely lost on me. *sigh*)

Caldera originally bragged about using SCO code in Linux

mattdm — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:12:20 +0000

<I>Has everyone forgotten that when Caldera used their IPO cash and bought SCO (Note who bought whom!) that they were soon seen and heard at the Linux trade shows bragging that now they could now put SCO code in Linux. To now say that they didn't know about that possibility is a total fabrication.</I>

Hmmm -- can anyone find any articles with direct quotes from them to this effect? Didn't they say that it was IBM's comments at trade shows that made them decide to sue?

Caldera originally bragged about using SCO code in Linux

macemoneta — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:21:01 +0000

You're absolutely correct. It's one thing to say you didn't know you were shipping the code to the press, but saying that in court would be perjury. The Internet has a long memory, and I've recently seen the articles from that time posted on various boards.

SCO knowingly, willingly, and intentionally put that code in there, with a great deal of public fanfare. As the copyright holder, their authorized agents released that code as GPL.

They can whine and cry foul all they want, it's not going to change the reality of the situation.

Buying SCO

corbet — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 18:53:27 +0000

No, I don't think it would be a good thing. It would encourage more of the same sort of attack in the future, first of all.

But it's also worth remembering that IBM has not always been the good guy. The company has worked carefully and thoughtfully with the free software community for a while now, and I sure hope that continues. But man it would be a bummer to have some internal lawyer wake up one morning and say "gee, now *we* own this stuff that's in Linux." It's a highly unlikely scenario, but it's one that would not be fun to have to fight.

The Trillian Project : Proof of SCO's actions

emkey — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 18:48:57 +0000

On a different tack, has anyone else looked up the relative market capitalization of SCOX versus IBM? Lets just say that it seems obvious that IBM could open their petty cash drawer and buy SCOX easily... Would this be a good thing? Hard to say but I tend to think yes.

The Trillian Project : Proof of SCO's actions

NerdlyMcGeek — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 18:30:04 +0000

NZheretic Outstanding!! Its nice read such an informed opinion.

All the best, McGeek..

Re: Customers not liable? Wrong!

Ross — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:48:01 +0000

The customers can't be held responsible for any actions by
IBM in violation of the agreement with SCO. Lawsuits over
copyright infringement are of course possible, except for
the fact that SCO/Caldera released the same code under a
license which allows them to use it.

Customers not liable? Wrong!

rjamestaylor — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:05:08 +0000

(Please notice that I said companies and not customers. I don't think Unixware, AIX, or Linux users are ever going to be held liable for anything they purchased).

A common misconception is that buying a software product from a commerical vendor indemnifies me, the customer, from IP claims against my vendor. As Timeline vs Microsoft SQLServer customers* says:

In a judgement issued Friday, the Washington Superior Court of King County confirmed that a 1999 licensing agreement between the two companies limits Microsoft's ability to "sublicense" patented technology that was developed by Timeline and employed by Microsoft in SQL Server, Timeline said in a statement Wednesday.
The judgement means that certain customers, independent software vendors and other parties who have customized SQL Server by adding programs to it will have to pay Timeline a licensing fee for the use of its technology, according to Charlie Osenbaugh, chief executive officer at Timeline, in Bellevue, Washington.

SCO tries to imply that Linux users are vulnerable because there isn't a vendor responsible for reviewing the IP in Linux. But, in reality, vendors do not automatically indemnify their customers from IP claims. Even when it is obvious that a Microsoft customer expects that Microsoft owns the license for all the associated IP in its products, a court has agreed the Timeline can go after those customers.

The technology in question relates to the design and use of data marts and data warehouses and is protected by three U.S. patents, according to Timeline.
Last week's judgement confirms that Microsoft's right to sublicense Timeline's technology is "substantially limited," and means that some SQL Server users may be liable to pay Timeline for use of its technology, according to Timeline's Osenbaugh. The company didn't offer a clear estimate of how many users may be affected, saying only that it believes that "some" are.
Timeline said a license to its technology ranges from US$250,000 to $5 million depending on the size of the licensee and how the technology is used.

Good thing no one would ever think of using a SQL database for data warehousing and data marts. Whew! But the point is, SCO's assertions that proprietary vendors protect their customers is patently false.

* - I know, that's not the actual court docket for the case, but it is the effect of the judgement...

How long a period constitutes a "mistake"?

mepr — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:03:46 +0000

Yello! I mean, "Hello!"
That would be an interesting thought except that it wasn't a merger. Caldera bought SCO. How a Linux Distributor that bought a "Unix" distributor can come back and claim that Linux infringes "Unix" is funny, by which I don't know how Caldera, I mean SCO can keep a straight face.

The Trillian Project : Proof of SCO's actions

NZheretic — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:57:47 +0000

So, how did Linux become so capable of scaling beyond the heights of the
old UNIXs. More importantly, who helped put what where?

As with the marketing of cars and TVs, it is the vendor's high end
leading edge models which sells the standard models, from which most of
the sales and profit is made. For the enterprise server market today,
that high end is multi-headed 64bit SMP ( shared memory multiprocessor
) systems, never mind the fact that single 32bit processors provide more
than enough power to do most jobs. For all intensive purposes, it is the
ability of the core OS to scale on 64Bit SMP systems that defines
"enterprise scalability". Other enterprise feature are effectively just
addons, which in the case of Linux, have been freely contributed from
many vendors and developers.

Since version 2.0, Linux was more than just a 32bit x86 operating
system. With the insistence and assistance of John "Maddog" Hall, Linux
was already ported to the 64Bit Alpha processor, which delivered great
performance and stability. Just like the traditional AT&T UNIX source
base, the ownership of the Alpha chipset passed though many hands,
suffering the same fate of a thousand cutbacks. Even Alpha's "native"
OS, VMS, has been ported to Itanium by HP/Compaq.

Since 1997 Intel has been promoting the Itanium line as the inevitable
successor for every other server processor on the market. Despite the
early vaporware status, Intel has been very successful, at least in
terms of marketing. With the exception of it's mainframes systems, even
IBM ships Itanium systems that directly compete with their own Power
processors.

For what The SCO Group has to offer with SCO Unixware 7,the Itanium line
is the only 64Bit option. The problem for The SCO Group is that modern
Linux can compete so well in that same market, that the value of
Unixware is rapid deteriorating to a historical curiosity. I suspect
that The SCO Group ( at that time called Caldera ) executives were well
aware of this before they acquired the server part of Old SCO in August
2000, or they would have known, if they spoken to the right executives
and technical staff.

So how did Linux get scale on Itanium? The SCO Group would have you
believe it was all IBM's doing, which isn't as interesting as the real
story. The web of history weaves to encircle and entangle a much more
diverse group of conspirators, including many of The SCO Group, Caldera
and old SCO own former executives and other employees.

In October 1998, IBM, Old SCO and Sequent teamed up to
collectively develop parts of Unixware and AIX into scalable 64bit ready
ports for IBM's Power processors and Intel's AI64, or Itanium, under the
banner of Project Monterey. But by then, it was already too late.

In February 1998, well before even the first prototype IA-64 chips were
available, a skunkworks team at HP, with some assistance from Intel,
began the work toward porting Linux to IA-64. By October 1998,around the
same time that IBM, Old SCO and Sequent had finished negotiations, HP
had completed the build toolchain. By January 1999, the Linux kernel was
booting on an IA-64 processor simulator, months before the actual
Itanium processor was available. In March 1999, at Intel, Linux was
booting on the actual Intel Itanium processor. In April 1999, CERN
joined the projects for the port of the Gnu C library and VA Linux
Systems joined the project and rapidly improved the stability and
performance.

In May 1999, the Trillian Project is foundered and HP, VA Linux and
Intel collectively provided their source patches to the Linux kernel for
the Itanium port under the GPL license.

A bootable kernel alone however does not make an OS make. HP supplied
the patches for the toolchain ( initial GCC C/C++ compiler, gas
Assembler , ld Linker ). Intel supplied the test platforms, apache, EFI,
FPSWA, SCSI, SMP, libm ( the old Linux C libraries ). VA Linux ported E,
E-Term, XFree86, utilities & Term libs, bootloader, libs, and More SMP
patches. CERN ported glibc ( the "new" Linux C libraries ).

By the time August 1999 rolls around, a surprising array of vendors came
along and added ports of software to the stone soup. Cygnus added the
GNUPro Toolkit ( supported gcc, g++, gdb). SGI added their own compiler,
kdb ( kernel debugger ) and OpenGL. SuSE added KDE, and created an IA-64
distribution. RedHat added GNOME, more commands and also created an
IA-64 distribution.

Now it's at this point where things become very interesting. The
Trillian Project, providing free Linux on the IA-64 platform is
effectively already in direct competition with Project Monterey. This
makes the next three contributers somewhat surprising.

IBM contributed performance tools, measurement and analysis. It should
be noted that these do not add enterprise functionality to the kernel,
they just allow for the tuning of overall performance.

Caldera, yes, the same Caldera that acquired the server part of Old SCO
in August 2000 and renamed itself The SCO Group in 2003, created an
IA-64 distribution.

Lastly TurboLinux , like IBM, added performance counters and also
created a distribution. Whats so special about TurboLinux? In October
1999 Old SCO entered into strategic agreement with TurboLinux to develop
services for TurboLinux's TurboCluster Server and provide Linux
Professional Services for TurboLinux customers.Old SCO also made a
sizable investment in TurboLinux, Caldera and LinuxMall. In Old SCO's
words, to "engage a wider Open Source community and reflects our
continuing support of Open Source and UNIX on Intel.".

In February 2000, the Trillian Press Conference, disclosed all this to
the public .
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817011530/http://www.ia64linux.org/pressfinal.pdf

The development effort was split into two major sections,
the IA-64 Linux Project which concentrated on the Linux Itanium ports
http://web.archive.org/web/20000817011530/http://www.ia64linux.org/
and the Linux Scalability Effort, which concentrated on the general
scalable enterprise elements.
http://lse.sourceforge.net/

Why would SCO or even IBM invest in a project and companies in direct
competition to Project Monterey? One obvious conclusion is that both
were hedging there bets against a potential failure of Project Monterey
and Unixware on Itanium. This may explain why even some of SCO's people,
including at least one from the "Core OS Development team" became
directly involved with both the Linux-IA64 and the Linux scalability
project. In fact, both Old SCO and Caldera employees played a major part
in assisting and contributing to the success of both projects.

Developers such as Jun U Nakajima ( at that time Email: jun@sco.com,
Phone: 908-790-2352 Fax: 908-790-2426 ) of SCO's Core OS Development
team, SCO/Murray Hill, NJ. Jun U Nakajima, as well as other SCO and
Caldera employees, contributed advice and patches to the Linux kernel,
directly and though the Mailing lists of both the Linux-IA64 and the
Linux scalability project.
https://external-lists.vasoftware.com/archives/linux-ia64/2000-October/000684.html

Jun U Nakajima was aware of NDA ( Non-Disclosure-Agreement ) issues, as
this thread to Usenet proves....
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=linux.smp.3A87FA64.88B6CBA5@sco.com

Note that in the same thread, Jun admits that he was using stable 4-way
SMP systems Linux and has seen a demo 8-way system in the middle of the
year 2000.
Today 2.4.0 SMP kernels run on SMP IA-64 platforms (e.g. 4-way)
reliably. I'm using such systems for heavy-duty software
developement.
We had a demo using an 8-way IA-64 machine last Summer.

Many SCO and Caldera employees directly contributed to the development
of enterprise scale Linux, before, during and after Caldera made it's
purchase of SCO's Unix division.

Jun U Nakajima sometime in 2001, went to work for Intel, and even today
he is successfully performing the same job he did when he was employed
by Old SCO and then Caldera, improving the scalability of Linux on the
new Intel processor platforms.In 2002, Jun U Nakajima and Venkatesh
Pallipadi, also from Intel, presented a paper to a USENIX conference.
http://www.usenix.org/events/wiess02/tech/nakajima.html

As with all the Linux kernel work, the result of all the above work has
been incorporated into the main Linux branch at the discretion of Linus
Torvalds.

The SCO Group claim that their current case against IBM is based upon
breach of trade secret though "technological transfer". Well, Old SCO
and the current SCO group are as much to blame for the loss of secrecy
and the development of the competing Linux technology. The VPs at The
SCO Group should know about the Trillian Project and the contributions
of their own employees. Maybe one of them does...

http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/06/09/139257
Opinder Bawa, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Global
Services at The SCO Group, sold all his stock last week.
As Vice President of Engineering, Opinder Bawa is in a better position
than most to know who put what where.

I am not a lawyer, but even I can see that The SCO Group has put itself
into an intractable situation, any judge will look at evidence from the
above and laugh the SCO group out of court. The SCO Group have admitted
that their latest amendment for the deal with Novell does not cover the
old Unix patents, and The SCO group have sold and distributed the Linux
kernel and other sources under the terms of the GPL.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/2003/06/11.html

It's about time to reexamine the recent claims of The SCO group and call
in the lawyers and maybe the authorities.

Caldera originally bragged about using SCO code in Linux

freeio — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:54:46 +0000

Has everyone forgotten that when Caldera used their IPO cash and bought SCO (Note who bought whom!) that they were soon seen and heard at the Linux trade shows bragging that now they could now put SCO code in Linux. To now say that they didn't know about that possibility is a total fabrication.

Always remember: Caldera (the linux distributor) bought SCO, and not the other way around. Caldera bought SCO when Caldera thought that they were a linux (thus largely GPL-based) company. Caldera renamed itself SCO after their linux business faltered. That they now have management who were not there at the time does not excuse their change of strategy. Whatever commitments were made by previous management are still in force - they are a corporation and not an individual, remember?

Marty

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

error27 — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:29:28 +0000

Chris Sontag said in an interview the day before SCO stopped selling Linux that it was OK for SCO to distribute the SCO IP inside the kernel because "it's our IP." In that same interview he admitted that they had been investigating the problem for over a year.

That's what SCO still doesn't seem to understand. It would be illegal for a company to pay royalties for the Linux kernel and then redistribute it. Companies are allowed to remove the infringing code and they are allowed to pay damages but they are not allowed to pay "royalties." (Please notice that I said companies and not customers. I don't think Unixware, AIX, or Linux users are ever going to be held liable for anything they purchased).

SCO's deal with Lindows is another example. Lindows claimed they had a unique position because of a deal with SCO, but under the GPL no one is unique. Either everyone can redistribute the code or no one can.

While it's obvious that Caldera doesn't understand the GPL, I hope it would be difficult for SCO to use that as a defense in court.

How long a period constitutes a "mistake"?

vmlinuz — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:21:08 +0000

Nope. It's significantly less than 3 years since Caldera bought most of SCO, including the UNIX code in question. It is just about feasible that it took a few months before anyone noticed anything, a year or so for their engineers to do a complete code sweep, and a few months for the legal preparations to get to the point where they were ready to announce the suit - making the announcement earlier on this year at a believable time. Not a particularly respectable time, but a believable one...

How long a period constitutes a "mistake"?

mattdm — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:17:47 +0000

I don't see how what Caldera did before the SCO merger is relevant at all.

How long a period constitutes a "mistake"?

sphealey — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 15:12:58 +0000

From a lawyer's perspective, how long a period must expire before an action is no longer considered a "mistake"? Didn't Caldera/SCO distribute Linux for >5 years?

sPh

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

ccchips — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 14:43:45 +0000

In other words, the two sides are crazy if they think the lawyers will not help make the situation more confusing, and the lawyers will naturally side with the more lucrative answer; i.e., the one that's more likely to result in more legal confusion, and thus get more cases for more fees?

You would think that these people would have enough of a conscience to understand and appreciate what the Free Software movement is all about, but I guess that when one's eyes are bigger than one's wallet, there's not much to expect.

It also amazes me how low people can go when it comes to excusing themselves by pleading ignorance. I know; I see it going on every day, at every IT job I've ever held:

"Clean up your home directory; it's taking too much space, and I'm not allowed to limit you."

"I don't know how."

"Here's how to do it. We have a help desk that can explain if you don't understand."

"I don't understand."

"Call the help desk."

"What's their number."

"It's in the warning letter."

"I deleted it."

...and so on, with everything from e-mail to job requirements to "missing" files:

"I couldn't finish my work because IT deleted my file."

"We audit that. It says here that you deleted it."

"Oh...I must have done it by accident...."

So, SCO may plead "ignorance" about the GPL. SCO was wronged. SCO got bilked by IBM. SCO would never do the reverse, and remove GPL indicators from code, then put it in their "private property."

Bullshit. When are people going to grow up?

Giving SCO the benefit of the doubt?

Odysseus — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 14:34:42 +0000

Reading the article carefully it seems the outside experts are all taking SCO's claim "we did not know there was UnixWare code in the Linux we were shipping" at face value.

As the Linux world has long been suggesting and as eweek's "anonymous SCO insider" has told eweek, this is FAR FROM THE TRUTH.

It'll be interesting to read what Ransom Love and various ex-Caldera/ex-SCO/ex-SCOx employees say in their IBM depositions under oath.

Did SCO open Unix source code? (ZDNet)

fozzy — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 14:07:00 +0000

So the progress of the IT industry now hinges on what happened to a pregnant cow in 1887.

And Intellectual Property Laws promote progress How?