TUHS September 2003

tuhs@tuhs.org

25 participants
23 discussions

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

Andru Luvisi: If SCO holds up a piece of common code and the good guys have no response, that is bad. If SCO holds up a piece of common code and the good guys already know that it actually came from BSD, and are prepared to demonstrate such, that is good. If SCO holds up a piece of common code and the good guys already know that it was contributed to Linux by SCO/Caldera themselves, and are prepared to demonstrate such, that is good. If there is infringing code, it should be taken out of Linux as quickly as possible. ====== I'll grant all those points, but if the idea is to defang SCO, the effort still seems fruitless to me. System V and Linux both contain appallingly large volumes of code. (On a list that discusses the UNIX of the 1970s, perhaps I can say that without creating undue ruckus.) The odds are that quite a lot of the code is similar. Should we really spend months and months tracking it all down and trying to declare where each line came from, or should we wait until SCO declares a specific set of cases that matter (as they must do sooner or later or abandon the court battle)? When one is faced with an enormous set of possible computations, of which only a handful are likely to be needed in the end, lazy evaluation is usually the better choice. It does seem sensible to me for the Linux community to do its best to hunt down any infringing code, and to try to assess whether there's a serious problem lurking that nobody had noticed. But that ought to be a matter of basic ethics, having nothing to do with SCO. I doubt it is likely to make much difference to the court battle anyway: SCO's claim is that the infringing code is there now, that it was put there deliberately at IBM's instigation to do harm to them, and that the harm already exists; removing it now won't change any of that. I think it's a good idea to remove any infringements that are there now, even if they are trivial ones; but let's not fool ourselves that it will pull SCO's fangs to do so. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

20 years, 7 months

VMS for MicroVAX 2000

by Natalia Portillo

Hello I know this can be some offtopic as VMS is not a UNIX system, but, I recently adquired a MicroVAX 2000 for a museum and I'm guessing if I can get a tarball of the original VMS installation tape or someone could send me a tape. Thanks in advance. Natalia Portillo Canary Islands Computer Museum

20 years, 7 months

Lexical comparator, was Re: the battle against SCO

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

Warren Toomey: For me it's not just a matter of defeating SCO, it's also one of sheer indignation in the face of Saganesque FUD ("billions and billions of lines of code"). I seriously want to know if there's even the tiniest possibility that SCO is right, or if they're are just Smoking Crack Often. That's fair enough. Just remember that no matter how much you scan the code, you can't beat the FUD campaign by doing so. SCO can just claim their tools are better than yours, and continue to stonewall about showing their evidence. And as I said last week, both legally and morally the onus is on SCO to provide proof of their claims: the infringement, that it was done maliciously, that it has caused them harm. The `evidence' they have shown so far makes me doubt very much that they can prove all three of those things, or possibly any but the least- significant case of the first. As I also said last week, I don't mean to discourage anyone from doing code comparisons. Intellectually it's an interesting exercise. Ethically it's the right thing to do if the Linux community thinks it's possible that licensed code got into the system. Even legally it might make some difference to have shown due diligence, though not in the matter presently before the courts. If it makes someone feel less frustrated, that's fine too. But scanning the Linux code won't provide hard proof of anything, any more than you can claim to prove there are no leaks in your roof solely by inspection. If proof is possible, it will work the other way. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

20 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Lexical comparator, was Re: the battle against SCO

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

Robert Brockway: Hi. Don't want to nitpick here but many of us think it is important to get this point straight whenever we are talking about GPLed code. The kernel is licenced (as I'm sure you know). What we are of course concerned about is: a) Code which is licenced in a manner incompatible with the GPL b) Code that the copyright holder did not authorise going into the kernel. I'm sure you were just speaking in shorthand but it is subtle point that many misinterpret. Many people outside the OSS community think that "all that free code" is in the public domain, which it is most definately not. ==== Quite right. I wasn't speaking in shorthand, I was speaking in clumsy; what I should have written is `possible that code restricted by the System V license got into the system.' Licenses come in all flavours, and whether there is any license at all is not the issue here. I certainly didn't mean, for example, to imply that all licenses are evil, reptilian kitten- eaters from another planet. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

20 years, 7 months

UNICOS

by Maciek Bieszczad

I am in contact with someone that is looking for UNICOS system sources from (1984 to April 1986). Does anyone have or know where to locate any such sources? -- Maciek (macbiesz(a)optonline.net)

20 years, 7 months

Re: Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO

by Roger Willcocks

Here's yet another version of the malloc routines: k_malloc/k_mfree in http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/osg/lehre/vorl_BS.SRC/malloc.c I wonder where these routines were 'borrowed' from? The code appears to be intermediate between 32V and SVR4, containing assertions and using mapstart/mapsize, but without spl calls. -- Roger

20 years, 7 months

[pups] IPv6 on 2.11BSD

by David Evans

Har har, I know. Anybody even looked into doing a port? -- David Evans (NeXTMail/MIME OK) dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/ University of Waterloo "Default is the value selected by the composer Ontario, Canada overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual

20 years, 7 months

Re: [TUHS] Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

I don't see how any diffing we do will make any difference `in the battle against SCO.' If we find cases in which Linux has incorporated System V licensed code, that will certainly be meaningful; but if, as seems likely, we don't, SCO can just say their tools are better than hours. And besides, it is SCO who have brought the complaint, so both legally and ethically it's up to SCO to prove the case, not up to others to disprove it, no matter what fearsome roars SCO emit. Comparisons done by others are certainly interesting, and I don't want to discourage anyone from doing them; just don't expect it to make any difference to the lawyers. (Not that I'm one, of course.) Norman Wilson Toronto ON

20 years, 7 months

Ancient Mosix patches

by Sven Dehmlow

Hi, I'm searching for patches form: - "UNIX with Satellite Processors" for Unix 6th Edition - "MOS" for Unix 7th Edition - "NSMOS" for AT&T Unix system V release 2 and all other ancient Mosix Versions (yes, the Mosix project changed it's name several times). Any hints? Sven -- "Security is just a state of mind"

20 years, 7 months

Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO

by Matthew Mastracci

What about comparing SVR1/2 to 2.4.x? SCO seems to be picking on the early 2.4.x codebase. This should also pick up the SGI code comments in the malloc() function that were recently publicized, though I'm not sure which version Linus removed the code from. Matt.

20 years, 7 months

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TUHS September 2003