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SCO - UPDATE 8-25 - their "stolen" code was under BSD license

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Interesting article debunking the SCO "proof" slides from their latest pump-and-dump reseller meeting (found via Ars)
LWN Net - lies, damn lies, and SCO

Dear Warren, and friends,

I'm happy to let you know that Caldera International has placed
the ancient UNIX releases (V1-7 and 32V) under a "BSD-style" license.
I've attached a PDF of the license letter hereto. Feel free to
propogate it as you see fit.

For less serious looks at SCO activities:
- SCO plans to start shooting babies
- Ars - SCO is run by the Nigerian Prince!

Update 8-25
Hey, is that a dead horse I see? :: grabs club ::

From Ars, it's We Love The SCO Information Minister .org with a bunch of great, real quotes from SCO. It's fun to watch their story change over time.

 
SCO does NOT have to show the code until a preliminary trial, and then it will be under seal, the public will never see it, only those named in the suit. They are NOT obligated to show their proof until it goes before a court of law.


Do you honestly believe David Boies is incompetent? Sure he lost Gore v. Bush but hes one hell of a lawyer. People just scoffing off SCO saying their claims are totally false or baseless, because they havent shown their evidence, do not know how the legal system works. The case will will have a preliminary trial and then AND ONLY THEN will those named, and ONLY THOSE NAMED, in the suits will see the infringing code. The public will never see it, the OSS movement will never see it, only those named it the suit.

Do I like what SCO is doing? No, but I dont really care either way. This case isnt baseless because SCO hasnt shown their evidence yet. SCO has every right to protect their IP, dont like laws regarding IP? Well try and get them changed.

 
From the link it sounds like Boies didn't do his homework before accepting his fee:

At SCO's annual reseller show, the company's executives put up a couple of slides as a way of demonstrating how Unix code had been "stolen" and put into Linux. The two slides were photographed and have since appeared on Heise Online; see them here and here. The escape of these slides has allowed the Linux community to do something it has been craving since the beginning of the SCO case: track down the real origins of the code that SCO claims as its own. The results, in this case, came quick and clear. They do not bode well for SCO.
The code in question is found in arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c in the 2.4 tree. It carries an SGI copyright. It seems that SGI was not entirely forthcoming in documenting the source of its source; some of the code in question was, indisputably, not written at SGI. So where does it really come from?

This code is from sys/sys/malloc.c in V7 Unix. It has been widely published; among other things, it can be found in Lion's Commentary on Unix (if you can get a copy). It featured in this 1984 Usenet posting. And, crucially, it has been circulated with the V7 Unix source, which was released by Caldera (now the SCO Group) under the BSD license. SCO would like the world to forget about that release now, but the Wayback Machine remembers.

So...SCO's code demonstration, the one that it put up to convince its resellers of its case, comes from a version of Unix which first came out in 1979. The code was publicly circulated in the 1980's, and explicitly released under the BSD license by [the company now known as] SCO at the beginning of 2002. SCO might well have a complaint that SGI did not properly give credit for the code it used. But there is no possible way the company can argue that this code's presence in Linux is an infringement of its copyrights.
 
Of course SCO might have found some code in linux that was taken from a newer, non-BSD'd version of unix. It's just good fun that this gang of protection-racket thugs messed up so badly on their first public airing of their "proof."
 
Originally posted by: digitalsm
SCO does NOT have to show the code until a preliminary trial, and then it will be under seal, the public will never see it, only those named in the suit. They are NOT obligated to show their proof until it goes before a court of law.

I can't interpret that the reluctance to demonstrate any of the disputed code is anything more than a bluff and stall tactic designed to buy time while SCO decides to levy additional lawsuits.

Hope no one's installed a 2.4 or later kernel on their brand spanking new box that they built by asking for advice for components on AT.
 
Most of the stuff I have read and looked at leads me to believe that putting BSD code into a GPL project either infringes on the copyright of the BSD code's copyright holder or breaks the viral clause of the GPL and therefor invalidates it.
 
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