LWN: Comments on "Open Source "State of the Union" address"

Open Source "State of the Union" address

MLKahnt — Tue, 12 Aug 2003 07:03:52 +0000

> Having the Unix source handed over to FSF would be sweet payback :)

Before we get looking at that (I'd also thought of this in the early days of the SCOX suit,) we need to be sure that it is SCOX's copyright to lose - Novell's claims to still hold the copyright would probably preclude such a transfer, unless a court (probably a bankruptcy court, by that point) was to determine that Novell's IP rights were extinguished.

Other people's copyrights will prevent Unix source release

thirupathi — Mon, 11 Aug 2003 11:35:05 +0000

u are keep on scolding on SC why?Its their bussiness..

Other people's copyrights will prevent Unix source release

BrucePerens — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 04:53:18 +0000

I am willing to settle for just SCO's rights. And I wasn't thinking of integrating the software into anything else. I think it would be good to have those rights under responsible care where they would not hurt people.

SCO's kernel is something that Caldera sought to replace with Linux. Go look through their old promotional materials. I don't think they have much to offer us technically, any longer.

Thanks

Bruce

Open Source "State of the Union" address

BrucePerens — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 04:43:07 +0000

There are a number of legal theories that can be used to go after that contract, which a lawyer would discuss better than I. But here's one. The SCO license is a contract to infringe, with SCO performing the infringing (violating GPL terms regarding the allowable licensing of derived works) but the customer knowingly contracting for SCO to do it.

Bruce

If so: GNU ==> GNU's NOW UNIX

DaveK — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 16:51:05 +0000

How ironic would that be if the FSF ended up owning the UNIX patents etc.?
IIRC was it not the issues of UNIX patents and NDAs that caused RMS to start the FSF and GNU project all those years ago?

Other people's copyrights will prevent Unix source release

james — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 09:54:36 +0000

As I understand it, no court can order the opening of "modern" Unix sources. There are too many copyright owners.

The early Unices were purely Bell Labs code, and had a pure AT&T copyright. That made them easy to open: there was only one copyright holder. Even when Berkeley and other university code began to be included, the contributions (predating both the terms Free Software and Open Source) were clearly licenced under FS/OS terms.

But modern Unices include software from all sorts of people. A check through AIX install logs shows the "base operating system" (largely System V stuff) to have about ten different copyight holders. There are a lot more for other parts of AIX. I'm assuming that SCO's Unices (and base System V) are in a similar position.

Only two of these copyright holders are party to the current lawsuits: many of these will have licensed their code only on payment. Many of them will still consider their software to be valuable.

The court cannot take from SCO what isn't SCO's to confiscate. So in order to release modern Unix as open source, someone is going to have to work through the entire source tree, cut out stuff that isn't owned by SCO (or comes from BSD, X, or other places that have already released their contributions), and release what's left, as an uncompiling mess. Worse, every one who used it would have to be sure that every last bit of third-party code had gone, or face similar lawsuits.

And if someone takes Unix code, in good faith, incorporates it into part of GNU/Linux, then one of these copyright holders discovers that actually, that was their code, thankyou very much, we'll be right back where we are now.

We can't get Unix open-sourced. And really, we don't even want Unix open-sourced.

James.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

ekj — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 08:52:30 +0000

Maybe you should consider getting a hobby or something. Not everyone knows english equally well, and it is not reasonable to demand that people who are less able must spend a lot of time spell and grammar -checking everything before participating in a debate.

A bad argument does not improve noticeably from being spellchecked, nor does a good argument degrade very much from containing a few stray errors.

The Trouble With Patents

wweber — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 02:52:17 +0000

The trouble with patents is that they have gone from an encouragement for innovation to a form of obstructionism.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

mmarq — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 22:37:00 +0000

Other have understood it!... just read all the comments above this one.

If so: GNU ==> GNU's NOW UNIX

coriordan — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 22:33:36 +0000

GNU's Nabbed Unix?

Sounds about right:
"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Nab Nab, v. t. imp. & p. p. Nabbed; p. pr. & vb. n.
Nabbing. Dan nappe, or Sw. nappa.
To catch or seize suddenly or unexpectedly. Colloq.

If so: GNU ==> GNU's NOW UNIX

proski — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 21:03:09 +0000

Sorry for ruining your joke, but trademarks and copyrights are different things. UNIX trademark is owned by the Open Group

Open Source "State of the Union" address

proski — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:58:47 +0000

You are still not following my advice. "wright" and "replay" are English words, but "Protuguese" is not! It looks like you are trying to replay the intro to "Zero Wing" :-)

I must respectfully disagree that your comment was "perfectly understandble". It's wasn't understandable for me, which prompted my comment.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

josh_stern — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:37:02 +0000

In the case of SCO, they are specifically targeting the Linux kernel as
an integrated product.

I'm afraid that Bruce may prove prophetic when his says that we
have only heard the very beginning of the patent wars.

Of course stuff like virtual memory is not something to be broken out,
but because device drivers interact with a huge assortment of different
'stuff' out there in the world, I believe there is more
potential for them to touch a wide range of patents - especially ones
that are not familiar to software developers. Suppose, for instance,
it turned out that some obscure individual had a patent on a certain
method of scheduling and driving ham radios using a computer device,
and he decided that Linux infringes on his method. In that case, it
would be a good thing if rich Linux targ^H^H^H^Husers with no ham
radio driver involvement had prima facie nothing to do with his claim.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

mmarq — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 20:16:29 +0000

I belive that with all the problems "we" open-source face, as so well exposed, as usual, by Bruce, a compromise is vital to survival...

Open-Source now has enough "momentum" to negotiate between its burocratic institutions FSF, Open-source, OSAIA, the drawing of clear frontiers, that separate the developing world from the commercial world, and their patents and closed hardware information and publicity...

I've no love neither for IBM, HP, SUN or RED HAT, they need "volunteer Open-Source developers" as much those developers need them for finance and protection, but that not without clear rules that not beneficiates no big or small entreprise as does not beneficate well known and newbes developers.

This can only make politics and publicity, a world outside the traditional BSD, GNU and Linux ones.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

dwalters — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:29:00 +0000

In its call for public comments leading up to this vote, the vast majority of replies opposed software patents. The survey takers rejected these comments because they were associated with the Open Source community. They justified that because Open Source was, in their words, "not economicaly significant".

This is a grave injustice to the democratic process. I feel so helpless to do anything about this. I've written to newspapers (and was published), written to MEPs. What more can I do as an individual?

Open Source "State of the Union" address

mmarq — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:28:10 +0000

I belive you know Open-Source is a worldwide movement.
And i know that there must be lots of orthographic errors in it,... but the content and the spirit is perfectly understandble...

...should i state that you do not make sense because you can not wright in Protuguese... or am i trying to replay to someone at IBM, HP or SUN !

Mario Marques
Portugal
Setubal

If so: GNU ==> GNU's NOW UNIX

AnswerGuy — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:12:45 +0000

If this were to come to pass we'd have to change the FSF recursive acronym to read:

GNU's NOW UNIX

Open Source "State of the Union" address

coriordan — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 19:09:53 +0000

> various hardware drivers and the larger range
> of patents that they might potentially infringe on

I've haven't yet heard of a patent infringement within a driver.

The patent infringments of Linux that I've heard about are in the virtual memory and filesystem code. Not so easy to break out.

Anyway, it's the distros that will get targeted, they'd still have to include all the drivers.

Ciaran O'Riordan

Open Source "State of the Union" address

josh_stern — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:58:27 +0000

The author above made a thoughtful and interesting point.

That is that even if Linux is not for sale as a shrinkwrap
product, it may still have a legal identity as an integrated
product. When we consider that the greater diversity of
sources for various hardware drivers and the larger range
of patents that they might potentially infringe on, it is
worthwhile to ask whether Linux, the product, could
achieve greater legal insulation by separating drivers into
a different set of products - a kind of legal fireline to
prevent small fires from turning into big ones. This idea
deserves serious consideration on its merits.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

proski — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:37:05 +0000

I know it's a bad style to criticize spelling of comments, but your comment is hard to read. Maybe you were in a state of great excitement, but it's a bad excuse. Spending some time spellchecking your comment would give you a chance to cool down and express your thoughts in a more coherent way.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

jdthood — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:32:16 +0000

> Good Morning, and thanks for coming.

Thank YOU, Bruce.

--
Thomas Hood

Open Source "State of the Union" address

mmarq — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:24:01 +0000

As an Open-Source user and supporter, i belive the all movement face more serious trouble than the SCO DIVERSION...

1) Inspite resistence from it's original author, Linux, the most influencial and importante piece of Open-Source (like it or not), has a technical driven evolution vision, but is mostly sponsered by Marketing entitys, as is centered on OSDL, and wich include SUN now (could have Lindows aswell) that had no regrets in signing a licence with SCO, that by following public comments was only to gain "marketing" space by saying "He are save from litigation"... IMHO this is not acceptable that when the push comes to shove what's importante is marketing and profit, even less in a technical driven project, even less among partners,... and as the Ottawa Summit was mostly around "Super-computers", i belive its only time what separates IBM from showing itself not much better than SUN(even if they smach SCO).

2) in a rogue manner we can say that all started 20 years ago, in an attempt to get technical information to wright a driver for a printer...
20 years later, and after the formation of the "Free Hardware Foundation", i belive "IT'S PRETTY CLEAR" that the "gross" hardware industry will never colaborate with Open-Source in a open-source manner.... those that cry for patience, allover native code always, and UDI was a desgrace,... dont pay attention that ,example among to many, NVIDEA "deceive" them an only deliver binary forms, and that a "ZELOT" attitude is very counterproductive.... A "COMPROMISE" and another API/ABI, besides LSB, is badly needed,... invent, and dont use UDI !,...ever.

3)"Reverse Engeniring",... if a compromise is not achieved, and the gross of the hardware industry fall behind the M$ umbrella, it will be just IMPOSSIBLE to make drivers for DRM locked hardware, that is, you could make a replica of the all car but when you make a replica of the key, you go to prison. Why would you want a car if you cant use it ?.... This is a decisive stop in all open-source "hardware device driver" making,... just ask the Debian Lab guys if they are willing to go to prison!?.

NOTE: As stated above as that what is importante is marketing and profit, i cannot see a problem here for the big IBM , SUN or HP,... they make there own CHIPSETs and CPUs, so reverse engeneiring is not a issue!... that is why SUN has joined the OSDL, and why DELl as started the DKMS development as they need "others" CHIPSETs.... i'm i being "NASTY" ???... when IBM, SUN and HP release technical data of their hardware that permits "ANYONE" to make Open-Source drivers, then i'll prostate myself in penitence.

4) All Goes Well (tm), the gross of the hardware industry fall behind Linux wiht open source drivers, M$ DRM machines rapidly go towards a niche market position, but then,... Linux has a problem, because it's not hard to imagine, isnt it, that it has over 1 million drivers(for 5-7 years old hardware) in the source, wich (sources) could easly reach near 1 Giga or beyond, and it toke 4,5 or 6 years to get to a stable version,.... i belive that those who say never mind, are willing to deliver cigarretes to Linus in the Lune house, or are willing to be one of him's 102 ltenents...
IMHO, for maitainability Linux has to get "device drivers" separeted from the kernel.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

coriordan — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 18:09:53 +0000

Great talk Bruce!

Having the Unix source handed over to FSF would be sweet payback :)

BP> we've not heard of software patent cases being pursued
BP> against free software, have we?

This is true but court cases aren't the main form of attack. Free software projects have been affected directly and indirectly. Here's a list of them:

http://www.sslug.dk/patent/fri-software-med-problemer

The best example is probably Virtualdub, GPL'd video editting software. Microsoft informed the author that he'd have to remove support for it's ASF video format since they had a patent on it. There was no court case because the Virtualdub author couldn't afford it.

http://www.goldenpi.no-ip.org/drm/asf.txt

This doesn't contradict Bruce, it's just useful associated info.

Ciaran O'Riordan

Open Source "State of the Union" address

JoeBuck — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 16:52:19 +0000

I think that Bruce is wrong about one thing: people who make the mistake of buying the SCO "license" are not violating the GPL. It's only if they buy the license, and subsequently modify or distribute Linux, that they are in violation. The GPL only restricts distribution and modification, not use, so it's not possible to violate the GPL if you engage in neither activity.

UNIX code would be useful

proski — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 16:14:36 +0000

UNIX code would be useful for historic and educational purposes. Computer Science students could see excellent examples of how to write software and how not to write software.

Also, some little pieces of code could be still useful for practical use. For example, some Minix utilities were included in Busybox after Minix license was relaxed. The UNIX shell and make utility could be used in testsuites for portability of GNU software.