[TUHS] SCO's "evidence" (was: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO)

[Marc Rochkind]

Just to repeat, because of a bunch of confused posts here: The breach of
contract case was not about System V code in Linux. It was about non-AT&T
code from System V derivatives (e.g., AIX, Dynix) into Linux. (The
copyright case was completely different.) You may wonder why non-AT&T code
from a System V derivative into LInux should be a legal issue. To find the
answer you have to read the contract. If it sounds bonkers, then we can
agree that the contract was bonkers.

I don't know how strong the copyright case was. I didn't work on it.

Marc

On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 7:13 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2024, 6:54 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Nov 04, 2024 at 06:35:30PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
>> > On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 6:09???PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > > The thing I never got a reasonable answer to was I found code in BSD
>> that
>> > > was identical to code going back to at least V7.  Find bmap() in the
>> UFS
>> > > code and then find the same in V7.  I might be wrong about V7, might
>> be
>> > > 32V, might be V6.  I don't think it matters, it's the same in all of
>> them.
>> >
>> >
>> > bmap() is the code that maps a logical block to a phsyical block,
>> > > I'm quite familiar with it because I rewrote it to bmap_write() and
>> > > bmap_read() as part of making UFS do extents:
>> > >
>> > > http://mcvoy.com/lm/papers/SunOS.ufs_clustering.pdf
>> > >
>> > > When all the lawsuits were going on, since I knew that code really
>> well,
>> > > I went off and looked and the BSD code at that time had bit for bit
>> > > identical bmap() implementations.
>> > >
>> > > I never understood why BSD could claim they rewrote everything when
>> they
>> > > clearly had not rewritten that.
>> > >
>> > > I've raised this question before and I just went and looked, bmap()
>> has
>> > > changed.  I'm pretty sure I have Kirk's BSD source releases, if I do,
>> > > I'm 100% sure I can back up what I'm saying.  Not sure I care enough
>> to
>> > > do so, it's all water under the bridge at this point.
>> > >
>> >
>> > The short answer is that ffs_bmap.c was one of the 70 files that had
>> > a AT&T copyright notice added to it as part of the AT&T vs Regents suit.
>> > By the time 4.4BSD had been released, the file had been substantially
>> > rewritten, but some traces of original AT&T code remained.
>>
>> Yeah, this is completely a false claim.  It was identical.  At least
>> in 4.3 BSD, I can imagine that 4.4 changed it because I was pointing
>> this out around then.
>>
>
> 4.3bsd wasn't claimed to be a rewrite. 4.4bsd definitely was very
> different. I checked before I posted. So what i said is not false. I
> literally had the code up side by side 20 minutes ago. It is definitely
> different though clearly related and derived a bit. That function is
> absolutely not 100% copied.
>
> For the record, I'm a BSD guy, my OS was SunOS 4.x, it was a bug fixed
>> BSD.  If there ever was a guy that wanted this to be true, it's me.
>> It's not true, BSD ripped off Bell Labs code, that's a fact.
>>
>
> Except not in 4.4. 4.3 never was claimed to be a rewrite. You needed a
> AT&T license, prior to the ancient Unix license to get that. So there was
> no claim to originality prior to 4.4. I didn't look at net/2 though.
>
> I'll check after dinner for 4.3bsd and 4.2bsd, but since FFS/UFS is on
> disk different than v7fs I don't expect it to be identical.
>
> Warner
>
>>

-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind at gmail.com <mrochkind at gmail.com>*
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