11 Sep
2003
11 Sep
'03
5:59 a.m.
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
11 Sep
11 Sep
6:41 a.m.
New subject: Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Norman Wilson wrote:
I don't see how any diffing we do will make any
difference
`in the battle against SCO.'
[snip]
Some ways that I can see it being a good thing to do:
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.
Andru
--
Andru Luvisi
Quote Of The Moment:
Heisenberg may have been here.
11:25 p.m.
New subject: Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO
On Wednesday, 10 September 2003 at 19:59:07 -0400, Norman Wilson wrote:
I don't see how any diffing we do will make any
difference `in the
battle against SCO.'
It could. There's a lot of confusion out there. The people on this
list have a much better understanding of the technical issues than
just about any other group of people I can think of.
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.
FWIW, the first example that SCO showed in Las Vegas on 18 August does
appear to be derived from System V.3 malloc(). See
http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html for the details.
Also, if anybody else can confirm or deny my analysis based on code
inspection, I'd be *very* grateful.
Summary: the first example showed a slightly modified version of Third
Edition malloc() being used for a slightly different purpose in the
SGI ia64 port only. The slight modifications tracked those in System
V.3, suggesting that SGI derived their code from System V, and not
from an earlier version. On the other hand, the differences in System
V.3 were removed again, and in fact the Linux community had already
removed the entire code before SCO "revealed" it.
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.
No question.
Greg
--
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
11:32 p.m.
New subject: Fwd: Helping in the battle against SCO
On Wednesday, 10 September 2003 at 17:41:49 -0700, Andru Luvisi wrote:
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, Norman Wilson wrote:
Agreed. That doesn't apply to either piece of code they've shown so
far. This is http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.html
again.
I don't see how any diffing we do will make
any difference
`in the battle against SCO.'
[snip]
Some ways that I can see it being a good thing to do:
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.
That's the second example :-) The question I've asked SCO is: how
could you have missed the Berkeley license agreement at the beginning
of this file? SCO have backed off claiming that this is System V
code, and claim it's just an example of their code comparison
techniques. But on slide 15 of their presentation
(http://www.vangennip.nl/perens/SCOsource_Briefing_II.2.pdf), they
clearly claim that it's System V code. This suggests that SCO have
recognized their error, though they haven't yet had the decency to
apologize to the BSD community.
Greg
--
Finger grog(a)lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
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3 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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Andru Luvisi -
Greg Lehey -
norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca