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Fwd: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

by Warner Losh

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> Date: Fri, Nov 8, 2024 at 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [TUHS] SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO) To: David Barto <barto(a)kdbarto.org> On Fri, Nov 8, 2024 at 1:07 PM David Barto <barto(a)kdbarto.org> wrote: > > > On Nov 8, 2024, at 12:27 PM, Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote: > > > > On Fri, Nov 8, 2024, 6:20 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 2:02 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote: >> > On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 11:52 AM ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I keep wondering if this assertion of code difference or lack thereof >> can be tested. Are not all these sources available? Which bits are missing? >> > >> > Yes. Great question. >> > >> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.32v >> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.2 >> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.3 >> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.net.2 >> >> Hmm; these all 404 for me? > > > Doh! Too much muscle memory. Those should all be bmap: > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.32v > <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.32v> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.2 > <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.2> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.3 > <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.3> > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.net.2 > <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.net.2> > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.32v https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.2 https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.3 https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.net.2 Not sure why the previous... Warner

9 months, 2 weeks

Re: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

by Warner Losh

On Fri, Nov 8, 2024, 6:20 AM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 2:02 PM Warner Losh <imp(a)bsdimp.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 5, 2024 at 11:52 AM ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> I keep wondering if this assertion of code difference or lack thereof > can be tested. Are not all these sources available? Which bits are missing? > > > > Yes. Great question. > > > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.32v > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.2 > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.3 > > https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.net.2 > > Hmm; these all 404 for me? Doh! Too much muscle memory. Those should all be bmap: https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.32v <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.32v> https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.2 <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.2> https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.4.3 <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.4.3> https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/bmap/bmap.net.2 <https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/pmap/pmap.net.2> which shows the progression before the rewrite in 4.4BSD-lite. Warner

9 months, 2 weeks

Re: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warner Losh >> On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 8:14PM Larry McVoy wrote: >> The bmap implementations I saw were bit for bit identical, same code, >> same variables, same style, same indentation. I'm 100% sure they were >> not independent. > They are different in 4.3BSD. They are different in 4.2BSD (but less > different). The underlying filesystems are different on disk, so they > routines have to be different. That last sentence points out something important that people need to remember in this discussion: in between 4.1 and 4.2 (technically, in 4.1B), BSD switched to the BSD Fast File System, so I very much doubt that the low-level (i.e. logical file block to disk block) file system code in anything after 4.1A looks much like the AT+T low-level file system code. (I have no idea how the BSD code compares to the Linux file system code, but that's between the Linux people, and Berkeley.) Noel

9 months, 3 weeks

IBM's involvement (was: SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO))

by Douglas McIlroy

As a bit-part expert witness for the other side of the SCO case, I saw hundreds of pages of evidence in the form of side-by-side code comparison. As I recall, the vast majority of highlighted correspondences were small snippets, often rearranged. I didn't interact with the lawyers enough to form a solid opinion about where this stood on the spectrum of coincidence to fair use to plagiarism. It certainly wasn't wholesale copying. I do not recall being asked to opine on whether trade secrets had been stolen. Apropos of rearranged snippets, one of the diff algorithms I experimented with in the mid-70s identified rearrangements. I abandoned it because real life code contains lots of similar lines, so many in PDP-11 assembler programs as to suggest that these programs are largely permutations of each other. The phenomenon is much less common in C, but still present; witness the prevalence of code like int i, n; for(i=0; i<n; i++) { The phenomenon may have been afoot in the SCO evidence. In regard to trade secrets, I was surprised when I moved from Unix at Bell Labs to Linux at Dartmouth and found calendar(1) to be completely rewritten, but with logic absolutely identical to the original version I wrote at the Labs. That was so idiosyncratic that the identity of the two could not have been an accident. Doug

9 months, 3 weeks

QED Archive updated

by arnold＠skeeve.com

Hi All. For anyone who's interested, my QED archive at https://github.com/arnoldrobbins/qed-archive has been updated. Changes were provided by Sean Jensen. The usenix-80-caltech subdirectory is now more complete and the README.md points at Sean's updated QED port which now works with Unicode. I thank him. Arnold

10 months

Other UNIX Archival Efforts?

by segaloco

So with all that has happened with the Internet Archive lately, I do find myself a bit concerned regarding the UNIX materials that I know to only exist there. Selfishly, this includes my own uploads here: https://archive.org/details/@segaloco I was curious if anyone has any suggestions on places beyond just IA and TUHS where I could see about getting this stuff mirrored? Unfortunately my stuff runs afoul of bitsavers's DPI requirements, that's the only other source that immediately comes to mind where these materials would find home. Any thoughts? Warren, I know you had mentioned a "write only" archive you maintain regarding materials that need to be mothballed until legal understandings are reached, would you be comfortable with my contributing any of my materials the Caldera license does not apply to there? - Matt G.

10 months, 1 week

v6 Unix Documents

by Dan Plassche

Hi, A scan of the printed UNIX Version 6 documents set is now online at the link below since last week. The set consists of documents accompanying the manual pages in the programmer's manual (similar to volume 2 in v7). https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102659317 The [nt]roff user manual, tmg compiler-compiler, and m6 macro processor memos were previously missing from the distributions in TUHS and later efforts to re-create the documentation. I have been working on finding this documentation as part of researching roff history. Still interested in earlier copies of the internal memoranda from Ossanna that served as the NROFF User's Manual since v3, the TROFF User's Manual after v5, and TROFF Made Trivial starting around v4. Based on the manpage histories, the documentation was revised for v4, 5, and 6. Best, Dan Plassche

10 months, 1 week

Re: On computerese

by Douglas McIlroy

> Who created the "cat" command and did they have the > word "catenate" or "concatenate" in their heads? Ken Thompson wrote "cat" for the PDP-7, with "concatenate" in mind. The cat(1) page in the v1 manual is titled, "concatenate (or print) files". Only later did someone in Research--I don't know who--remark on the existence of the shorter synonym. It was deliberately adopted in v7, perhaps because it better mirrored the command name. But brevity is the defensible argument for "catenate", while familiarity boosts "concatenate". It stll takes some conscious effort for me to use the former, However, I sense sinister vibes in "concatenate", driven by the phrase "concatenation of events", which often is used to explain misfortune. Doug

10 months, 1 week

Re: lilian schwartz has died

by Rob Pike

I always forget that TUHS can't handle pictures. Perhaps Warren will let my post through, but in any case here's a link to the mail, reformatted but otherwise intact, with photos, on Mastodon. https://hachyderm.io/@robpike/113322062117546253 To pique your interest, here's the first paragraph. *In August 1981 we had a persistent problem with the RP06 on our PDP-11/70 crashing disks. It even crashed once while the DEC repairman was standing next to it trying to figure out why the previous pack had died. We collected a few dead packs, and they were forming a pile. Lillian, never one to miss an opportunity, suggested building a mobile.* -rob

10 months, 1 week

Can Ancient Unix be relicensed?

by Anton Shepelev

Hello, all. In 2002, Caldera released Ancient Unix code under Caldera license: <https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Caldera-license.pdf> based on the four-clause BSD license: <https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-4-Clause.html> Consequently, it was used by derived projects, such as Traditional Vi: <https://ex-vi.sourceforge.net/> This proect having been abandoned and orphaned since 2005, I wanted to host it on GNU Savanna and there to breath some life into it. Unfortunately, the 4-clause BSD license is incompatible with GPL: <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OriginalBSD> The incompatibilty is due entirely to the infamous third clause about adverising. Three years prior to Caldera's release of old Unix code, The Berkley Univercity removed this clause, producing the GNU-compatible modified BSD License: <https://opensource.org/license/BSD-3-clause> They published a notice to that effect on their FTP: <ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change> Although it has been taken down[1], copies exist all over the internet, e.g.: <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abbrev/punix/refs/heads/master/README.Imp…> That said, is there a chance that the copyright holder of Ancient Will agree to release a similar note regarding everying released under Caldera license? If there is, whom shall I contact about it? It will benefit everybody using Ancient Unix code. ____________________ 1. Why the murrain of FTP servers all over the world?

10 months, 1 week

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