SCO Group, inheritor of the intellectual property for the Unix operating system, has sued IBM for more than $1 billion, alleging Big Blue misappropriated SCO’s Unix technology and built it into Linux. Update: ESR is editorializing on the issue. Update 2: Bruce Perens’ responce. Update 3: Sun’s response. Update 4: “Suit Not About Linux” says SCO’s CEO.
SCO Sues IBM Over Unix and Linux for 1 Billion USD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Isn’t it usually smarter to start lawsuits with companies that can’t financially crush you? Unless SCO really thinks that their case is rock-solid shouldn’t they be terrified by the fact that IBM’s legal team is probably much larger/better financed than theirs? The only thing I can think of is that maybe they think a billion dollars is no big deal to IBM and they’ll just pay it to shut SCO up.
sco…a prime example of things that make me sick. almost like the guy who sued the fast food joint cuz he slammed his mr winkie in the toilet seat after taking a dump. are toilet seats hazardous now?! though i doubt this little argument will go very far, just waste taxpayers $ in the court system etc.
I thought this announcement was a little funny. I don’t know if they did anything that they are accused of, and I really don’t care much, but they attack the company with the money (and consequently the money)! Heh. Good Luck SCO.
Well, I guess this time all the talk and rumors proved to be true. I try to stay neutral on this stuff, but in this case I hope IBM crushes SCO Group right off the planet.
Reading about SCO reminds me of Rambus for some strange reason. Can someone tell me if there was any redeeming qualities to SCO UNIX? I have a feeling they won’t be missed.
Man, ever since SCO started making noises about their patents, you just knew it was simply a matter of time before they tried to put the legal screws on and grab some $. They kept saying “no decision was made”, but the lawyers they hired and the moves they made, said “matter of time”.
So, SCO scoops up the assets of some dead company, then takes the patents of that dead company, looks through them carefully, and bingo – decides they got something…
Well, I for one hope the linux community comes together to come up with some hacks that get around these patents, and leaves SCO out in the cold.
I have nothing against people trying to make money from patents, but I prefer if it is the actual inventors. Some vulture guys scooping up patents and then doing the “submarine routine” (waiting until the world is dependend on the *hidden* patents, and then extorting), well, that has no sympathy from me at all. I recognize that it is “just business” – fine, but I then say, well “lets just hack around it” – fair is fair.
I wonder how much SCO actually manages to make from this.
I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Their Unix sales are dying (dead) and their UnitedLinux strategy is going nowhere… so lets lash out in one last effort to hold off the inevitable (closing our doors). One last temper tantrum before being smuthered!
I find it quite sickening that this has waited until now… what happened to morales? We’ve all seen some gross business practices in the last couple of years… Enron, Rentway, Adelphia, etc…
Caldera is a cornered animal. If they’re going down, they’re taking out as much as they can with them. What a selfish, negative, backwards group of people. I hope they get crushed. They’re anachronisms and they know it. IBM has finally seen the light, and is performing their penance. SCO has always been a patent monger, and refuses to accept that open source is the light. They will trap us in the past for as long as they can until someone eradicates their craven corpses.
After they SCO loses their lawsuit against IBM. After that defeat, SCO will probably be looking to sell out for whatever they can… and we don’t want Microsoft stepping in and getting their hands on SCO’s patents. SCO may be cornered, but that doesn’t mean that their rotting corpse will just waste away.
by Sco
Maybe that will be United Linux’s way of winning. Caldera/Sco will sue Red Hat and everyone else for patent infringement and try to put them out of business. Doesn’t sound so far fetched does it? Just another reason to not support Caldera/Sco and United Linux….
I was LMAO at this one…
“Representing SCO is David Boeis of Boeis, Schiller and Flexner, the attorney who prosecuted the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft and represented Al Gore in the vote-counting controversy in the presidential election.”
Ah the perfect one to represent SCO. A two time loser who couldn’t get the job done before when it counted, and won’t be able to come through now. Nice one Caldera/Sco/United Linux.
“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. ”
(Yes, I know there are Canadians that could be accused of this too 🙂 )
Then we we can be done with them for good
I, like most everyone else here, fully expect SCO to be crushed by IBM’s legal department. And, like others, I hope SCO gets bought out after it. Or goes bankrupt and has its assets bought up. I think it’s a travesty that the code for the original UNIX, around which so much of our prefered technology is in some way derived, is still locked up and guarded, despite the fact that for practical uses it is long dead.
You hit it right on the head: this is an attempt to get IBM to buy them out.
IBM should just simply crush them and let them die.
Then IBM should buy Red Hat, and crush Microsoft, while staying true to the new open source route they’ve chosen.
Remembering back to my SCO classes (I live in Santa Cruz, and a couple of the SCO guys did “charity work” teaching at the local comunity college, http://www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/ ), there are two things that stuck out to me as better than linux at the time: hard disk support, and netcfg.
First off, hard disks. Whoever decided on drive letters for Linux ought to be shot (yes, I realize it was almost definately Linus). I don’t know if SCSI support has improved since then, but seriously: in Mac OS I could hot swap drives, and linux won’t even boot with one of the disks gone because that puts all its partitions at sdb instead of sdc.
The second thing was netcfg. Networking in Linux still baffles me completly, which is probably my fault. I would like to know the common denominator by which I can configure a Linux box for networking. If there isn’t a standard program is there a config file I can edit?
Yes, I know my oppinions are misguided, and I know that Linux is far superior in many respects to SCO, but these are still problems I have had since my introduction to Linux in late 1999, and I don’t see them being addressed.
If you read the article you’ll see they have no real proof of any wrongdoing here. The issue is, SCO feels Linux developed faster than it could have without IBM helping out with some of their “methods”. It is even clear that they don’t believe a single line of code is copied. This will go nowhere. Their billion dollar suit is nothing more than begging IBM to settle for a few million. IBM may settle, but I hope they don’t. I hope they take this to court and crush those patent abusing bastards. It really irks me when companies stop innovating and start using their legal team to make money.
Check it out at:
http://websurveyor.net/wsb.dll/9929/websatisfaction20021210.htm
InfoWorld confirms the story:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/03/06/HNsco_1.html
I thought most of the scalability work came from SGI. If they mean IBM’s next-gen posix threads library, well, it’s still neck and neck with Redhat’s new thread library. Maybe some disk stuff, but pretty much all of that’s from non-IBMers. JFS is from OS/2.
I’m failing to see what could have come from AIX… I don’t know of anything in the kernel that sucks that badly. (Cheap shot, but well deserved. AIX imposes massive overheads. The only reason it seems “scalable” is because single-proc performance is piss poor.)
Added Sontag, “When they (IBM) started utilizing the same engineers that worked on the Unix System V source code and the ultimate derivative of it in the form of AIX, they have effectively been applying our methods and concepts, even if there isn’t a single explicit line of code” that shows up in Linux.
All cars have four wheels, all planes have two wings, blah, blah, blah. Some things just work a certain way. How is this any kind of supportable argument?
Plain foolish it seems to me…
They’re suing on the assumption IBM used their “property’ to benefit Linux? go IBM, crush them like bugs!
damn thier souls, i hope IBM crushes them like the bug that they are…
OMG that little SCO……
They don’ know that they will be crushed by IBM 99.99%. “misappropriated SCO’s Unix technology and built it into Linux”??????? Has SCO gone nuts? How could they say bad things about Linux considering they MAKE linux distro?
I find this funny, by the way Sco is not United Linux, United Linux is comprised of 4 companies, If sco tries to go after SuSE well since Sco uses Yast2 in their product, SuSE is the intellectual property holder on YaST and it wouldnt be smart. I found this very funny:
Sontag declined to comment on how his company’s actions would affect its UnitedLinux partners, but said customers who buy Linux from SCO have no intellectual property concerns. “Those that purchase our Linux product have nothing to fear. They have our full license to our Unix intellectual property when they’re purchasing our Linux products,” he said.
Sounds like a last ditch effort to make cash
Stopdabombing you stated: Well, I for one hope the linux community comes together to come up with some hacks that get around these patents, and leaves SCO out in the cold.
Dont worry about that, Linus and the other kernel developers saw this coming and I am pretty sure if ANY SCO code was used it will more than likely be taken out and replaced with something better.
Is that SCO sues Lindows.com, SCO if you are out there dont forget Lindows, they have your technology, not IBM
After reading both articles (the original one, and the one that Eugenia linked in Re: Proof) I don’t see any proof of wrong doing on IBM’s part. I can’t wait to see IBM destroy SCO. What I think is really amusing is that I thought Novell went after BSD with similar claims over a decade ago, and failed (how history repeats itself).
Earlier today I read an article where SCO make many potentially bold claims:
http://mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-02_Story01.html
SCO-Caldera is insane for making any such claims that Linux, GNU/Linux, or GNU have any SCO UNIX IP present in them. I would be shocked if they could point out one line of code, and on the off chance they could, the open source community will easily rewrite any small piece of code that may utilize proprietary code. What they have accomplished with this ludicrous claim is to p*ss off the entire open source community. A struggling company should not try to alienate potential allies by painting them as the enemy. SCO-Caldera has sealed their own coffin with this whole IP fiasco.
To further upset me, and force me to post a long rant, they have claimed that GOD, a.k.a. Linus Torvalds, publicly stated, “That Linux is a derivative of that UNIX source code.”I took the challenge and found 5,040 results. I read approximately 100 of them and found no such comments emanating from the creator. I think Linus should file a civil tort against SCO for defamation of character (ok, so I don’t really think Linus should take them to court, but it would be fun).
We all know how carefully RMS thinks through everything he does, and I will guarantee that GNU C++ is safe from any IP infringements. Stallman is fanatical enough that he may very well declare war directly against SCO-Caldera for ever even considering such a claim. I hope that he does, and that the community rallies behind him.
SCO, your days are numbered! If M$ has realized that they can’t attack us directly, what makes you think that you have a snowball’s chance!
Linus could do a termination of License against SCO denying them the right to distribute or contribute to any bit of Linux code, The GPL is clear tho any code SCO contributed to Linux is hereby GPLed and they have given up any rights to IP claims, SCO is going to wind up falling on its own sword.
well, in yesterday’s story about Mozillaquest interview
with a weasel from SCO, a few posters disparaged Angelo
as a nutcase crank.
Seems he was right on the money and his timing was
uncannily fortuitous.
Ditto everyone who thought it was funny that they hired
Boes. A legal sledgehammer if there ever was one,despite
what some may say about his recent track record.
In retrospect, it is obvious they had something big in
mind.
As if it nees to be said:
SCO are henceforth outcast. A pox upon them and their house. They are an abomination in Tux’s eyes.
Do not type their name without “virtually” spitting on
the ground.
If I was Suse and Connectiva I would give them the boot
from UL.
There are no words to convey my disgust and contempt for
them.
Then IBM should buy Red Hat, and crush Microsoft, while staying true to the new open source route they’ve chosen.
You gotta be kidding yourself.
I know that most people will disagree with this, but maybe such allegations will convince people to abandon the archaic unix way of doing things. This suit could usher in a new era of computing thought that runs contrary to unix and pushes the industry forward.
I knew AIX would eventually be killed off, but I never thought it would happen like this, well I better go and buy SCO UnixWare, just kidding. But on a more serious note:
from the Mozillaquest article where the SCO rep says that Linux claims that Linux is based on UNIX, I typed in the exact words he said to and he claims to have 5,010 sites but when I do it I come up with 4,990.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28183.html
This is where Strassemeyer gets interesting with respect to Microsoft’s line on Linux patents: “When we put source code into the Open Source community, the code we are putting in there, we have clearly patent clearence for in the sense we know what we put out in the Open Source community so we don’t claim own patents on [it] anyway. Our patents clearance process makes sure we are not infringing the patents of anybody else. We are doing it with our proprietary code, so we are fine.”
But IBM can’t do that with Linux: “What is wrong about this distribution, is basically the millions of lines of code that we never have seen. We don’t know if there are any patent infringements [in this code] with somebody we don’t know. We don’t want to take the risk of being sued for a patent infringement. That is why we don’t do distributions, and that’s why we have distributors. Because distributors are not so much exposed as we are. So that’s the basic deal as I understand it.”
I have never trusted Caldera/SCO. This is not the first time that they have sued on behalf of a purchased companies assets. A couple years ago Caldera sued Microsoft in an anti-trust case. Caldera purchased digital research and sued over incompatabilities with DR-DOS running win3.11. This is not a moral company and I am not at all suprised by these actions. Unfortunately, patent holders almost always win patent cases, no matter how rediculous they are, so I assume that IBM will have to settle with Caldera.
I believe you are reading it incorrectly, bruce.
What IBM was stating was that IBM will NEVER create their own distribution of linux because they never know exactly what’s in the linux source code. RedHat and SuSE, as linux distributors, gets all the legal risks of distributing something that may or may not have infringed on other people’s patents.
That’s why IBM partners with RedHat and SuSE — IBM gets billions of hardware/consulting revenue from linux servers, and RedHat/SuSE gets tens of thousands of dollars in linux revenues (and also RedHat and SuSE takes all the legal risks).
If they can’t sell it they will suit it.
Better yet let big blue buy it. When I worked there it was the most professional place I had ever worked at. The servers that we have running AIX have yet to fail. Maybe that is proof that it wasn’t stolen Unix code.
patents are rediculous!
“Stallman is fanatical enough that he may very well declare war directly against SCO-Caldera for ever even considering such a claim. I hope that he does, and that the community rallies behind him.”
I read this and laughed. I just pictured RMS dressed up in that frock declaring a SCO Jihad… Ahahahaha!
I one of the previous thread I did mention that Sco is just too greedy but someone didn’t agree with me. Now I think Sco just show their another face as what I’ve been thinking. It is very bad since they got quite a number of good guy but maybe the USD make them blind especially the management. Maybe it is better for them to vanish forever as many suggest; “IBM should crush them”.
By the way Mr Chuck Hunnefield, i don’t think the word Jihad</d> is suitable for this kind of action since from what I know, Jihad cannot be use to vandalised others or for the purposed of getting own benefit by sacrifying others. I supposed it should be used for some sort of self protection when somebody got vandalised by others. Maybe you better refer it to the Arabs then.
“I’m failing to see what could have come from AIX… I don’t know of anything in the kernel that sucks that badly. (Cheap shot, but well deserved. AIX imposes massive overheads. The only reason it seems “scalable” is because single-proc performance is piss poor.) ”
Sounds like someone doesn’t know how to tune thier system.
Good bye Santa Cowboy Operation…. Woo Hoo!!!
ESR presents a reasonable arguement that SCO is destroying itself with this lawsuit. My immediate reaction was this is incredibly idiotic, why in the world would they do this?
Then I started thinking like a greedy company executive holding millions of SCO shares and share options which are becoming more and more worthless as the company I failed to make sucessful loses more and more money. How can I convert my shares into a decent amount of cash? I can’t sell them on the open market because as an insider I have to declare my intentions to the regulators and soon as I do that the share price will plummet. What I have to do is get someone to buy our company outright.
Well, I can’t even convince myself I can make this business sucessful, so it’d be difficult to convince another company to pay us much for our business. Let’s gather up everything we’ve got left and make it a leveraged weapon. Even a tiny splinter can potentially cripple an elephant.
IBM, buy us out now — it’s better than having a messy lawsuit, having AIX and your whole Linux strategy in limbo, wasting money on counter-suing us into liquidation, and then settling for all our assets (IP included) after time and money wasted on lawyers. Yeah, this is a great idea, I don’t even need shareholder approval to start the ball rolling. Once the ball gets rolling IBM will put a great offer on the table and all the majority shareholders will agree on it (not the least because we’ve already destroyed our business).
Excellent, instead of shares of a company I can’t make profitable I’ll have cash in hand or shares of one that is profitable. Of course I was granted these shares in the IPO and didn’t pay for them myself. Tough luck for anyone who didn’t get in on the ground floor.
Given our current legal system, SCO has the right to sue. What really needs changing is the US legal system that allows a few corporations to claim and hold ownership of the majority of intellectual property such that it prevents innovation. Without revisions to our legal system, everything will be owned by corps and we will continue to have these lawsuits. This may be great for lazy lawyers as they in effect get to impose and collect a legal tax on everything we buy, but it is not so great for non-lawyers.
I’ve paid for and enjoyed using Caldera Linux in the past. This recent development is most unfortunate.
Isn’t it strange how companies like Apple & Microsoft are critisized for bundling “free” apps with their operating systems which put companies out of business and yet Linux is praised for doing the same.
SCO was the market leader for Unix on Intel until Linux came along.
What right does open source have to force a company like SCO into the wall so that it has to sell to Caldera and end up in this situation.
This is not SCO. SCO does not really exist anymore. This Caldera. This is Linux against Linux.
What has been the main casualty of Linux – Unix. What is normally seen as the main enemy of open source – Microsoft.
It doesn’t quite add up.
But still – its only computers really and if the open source geeks can’t see that there actually is more to life than machines then they will die rather lonely.
pure braindeath…
oh how I feel for SCO…NOT!
This is nothing more than the haunting ghost of the UNIX wars of days long past- the IP battles around UNIX back then led the development of linux and the BSD’s….a failed company in it’s deaththrows searching in vain for a way to save it’s ass. Personally I wish that our legal system would prevent any other entity than the authors of said IP suing for IP damages, ie. once IP is sold from one company to the next, the new company can no longer sue concerning that IP- if they can coerce the former authors to sue on their behalf- ok. If the authors no longer are around(ie. buisness went belly-up) their IP would then become public domain…..
Isn’t it strange how companies like Apple & Microsoft are critisized for bundling “free” apps with their operating systems which put companies out of business and yet Linux is praised for doing the same.
The general argument is that OS companies invite other companies to develop software for their OS and then later put them out of businesss.
SCO was the market leader for Unix on Intel until Linux case along.
The UNIX market was small before Linux came along. If SCO was the market leader then perhaps we should study why they failed to scale up.
What right does open source have to force a company like SCO into the wall so that it has to sell to Caldera and end up in this situation.
The open source community is not based on this ideal. Quite simply, if they have written their own OS for free, why would they pay for something they don’t need? It was up to SCO to prove their product is worth the asking price.
This is not SCO. SCO does not really exist anymore. This Caldera. This is Linux against Linux.
What has been the main casualty of Linux – Unix.
Umm. I’ll let someone else field this one… 😛
<i What is normally seen as the main enemy of open source – Microsoft.
It doesn’t quite add up.[/i]
Perhaps because your assertions are wrong.
But still – its only computers really and if the open source geeks can’t see that there actually is more to life than machines then they will die rather lonely.
And perhaps some people need to develop better arguments anonymously on the internet before embarrassing themselves in the real world.
I personally think this is grudge match, SCO cant sell UNIX so now they are going to see to it that LINUX does fail, or if they go under and die they plan to take Linux with them, they just dont realize this will never happen. This suit is crap they have nothing on IBM, I cant wait till they tell IBM that they cant distribute AIX anymore, hehehehehee I know where IBM will tell them to go. But, If I was Linus I would rally the kernel developers and tell them to take out every single Caldera code submission in the kernel, it may delay the release a few more months but I would rather be delayed than in a few years have it come back and bite me with SCO claiming IP.
It’s funny to see people get so upset over this just because it mentions Linux. It’s just the regular corporate games and politics – nothing new really, so get over it already.
Having a crap day – what could be better than winding people up??
IBM has access to the UNIX code. If any of their developers that work on GNU/Linux have also looked at the code for UNIX, there is a problem. From what I understand, it is completely legal to re-implement/reverse-engineer a product based on publicly available information, as long as they do it completely from scratch, and are not “tainted” by the fact that they have ever seen, touched, breathed on the original code they are trying to re-create. If SCO can prove that some of IBM’s engineers that have worked on Linux, have also worked on AIX, then, SCO may actually have a case.
Though, I could be completely wrong on this 😉
And perhaps some people need to develop better arguments anonymously on the internet before embarrassing themselves in the real world.
And how does ther internet relate to the real world ??
I wonder how many lines of codes SCO stuck in their linux product?
As for the bundling issue…
Why does Linux get praised for bundling? They are freebies, ontop of most linux distro’s being freebies.
When it costs $0, no one really complains about bundling… But when you charge $299 per copy or high prices on a niche system… It’s wrong…
Ah well.
As for your comment on “geeks” and “machines”. If some people make a living out of skateboarding all their lives, playing sports all their lives, blah blah… You said computers can’t be one of em?
Hey, it was the self-proclaimed computer geek that ended up being the richest man in the world… The real world, as you call it.
Hey… I disagree with the whole bundling issue vs. Microsoft… WMP and IE are an integral part of Windows
Anyone else amused by the idea (At least from comments in this thread) that big blue has gone from being one of the most hated firms in the IT sector to being acceptable thanks to their support of certain OSS projects?
No matter the real reasons behind their position as a marketing ploy it is a stunner.
I always get dubious about these “doesn’t include even a single line of” arguments. There’s only so many efficient ways to put a character on the screen, or concatenate a string, or… If you look at any two programs performing a similar function then chances are that you will find similar code/algorithms in the source. I’ve never been totally sure where the line between copy/paste/tinkering and coming up with the same solution in isolation is drawn.
“You copied my quick sort code.”
“Did not.”
“Did too, I can see it in your source.”
“It’s a quick sort, of course it looks like your quick sort, it’s the same freakin’ algorithm.”
“No, you looked at my source, admit it.”
“No I didn’t. I researched the algorithm and implemented it myself.”
“Prove it…”
I think part of the solution would be to educate/change the various patenting instututions around the world to free things up a little. In particular I’d like to see patents running out after a short period (Eg 5 years, which is a sufficiently long software lifespan), so that (As with medicines) after the patent expires anyone can use the technology at will.
George Harrison had a song all about this I believe.
Anyway, at least 33% of all the e-mail circulating around the public Internet is fraud of some kind; people are constantly being hounded by security violations that have the quality of *home invasions*; hundreds of thousands of people are willing, even in these ridiculous conditions, to produce software code for free, so everyone can have it…
You would think that people would be able to focus on beneficial behavior, wouldn’t you?
“No. I want 2 Rolls-Royces, not just one.”
InfoWorld confirms the story
I wasn’t talking about the story being wrong. I was just saying that SCO has no proof of wrongdoing on IBM’s part.
Well, config files in Linux vary greaty between distributions. However, the drive naming problem you mentioned does not happen as far as I know. Linux maps your master/slave primary IDE controller to hda and hdb always, and in the case of SCSI I would suspect it maps channels 1-6 to sda, sdb, sdc, sdd, sde and sdf. The only time you would have the problem you mentioned is if you changed the channel numbers on your disks or moved them between controllers.
In any case the config files for RedHat are:
/etc/hosts
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/etc/yp.conf
/etc/sysconfig/network
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
The last two are the most important.
The config files for Slackware are:
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
etc.
Solaris:
/etc/hosts
/etc/nodename
/etc/defaultrouter
/etc/netmasks
/etc/defaultdomain
/etc/hostname.eri0
/etc/resolv.conf
/etc/nsswitch.conf
/var/yp/binding/`domainname`/ypservers
HPUX:
/etc/rc.config.d/netconf
/etc/rc.config.d/namesvrs
If I was Linus I would rally the kernel developers and tell them to take out every single Caldera code submission in the kernel
This is completely unnecessary as any code submission becomes GPL. Whatever changes SCO made to gpl’d code are free now and there is legally nothing they can do about it. I am sure they are aware of this fact. Going after IBM isn’t about their code submissions but about what they claim is in IBM’s code that is their property.
This is greedy capitalists against progress, as usual. They didn’t make their money so now everyone has to stop what they are doing and pay attention to SCO.
But I found your comment amusing. Do you think good companies like Apple and Microsoft were bundling free apps to help their customers or to outmaneuver their competition? In Microsoft’s case I think its obvious they bundle for competitive reasons.
Linux doesn’t act like any capitalist company, which makes it so damned confusing for people like you. They bundle apps to help their customers. They built an OS for their customers. They aren’t trying to compete, exactly, they’re trying to replace the entire market you take for granted with something better. Something people like me can use without reading licenses, EULAs, patents, laws, or any other legal BS. I’m sick of the legal consequences to owning IP. I don’t want to own anymore IP if it means I have to give money to corporations like SCO, Microsoft, Adobe, etc. And most of the world agrees with me.
The sad thing is you still don’t get it, do you? You don’t understand how a world full of people who give and share could be better than this commercial americanism we live in today. You’ll have us drag you kicking and screaming into the future, hating us every step of the way. Do you enjoy being monitored 24/7, tracked between websites, tracked and video taped for homeland security, being part of demographics designed to milk money out of the population, etc. Do you enjoy the spam and constant interuption by rude advertisements? Do you enjoy managing money? It must be rather lonely when all your friends care more about their pocket book than you.
If we didn’t care so much about our property, like these machines, and more about eachother, maybe we could solve a few problems by devaluing money. Perhaps eliminate it altogether. People need to learn how to coexist in harmony. The alternative is war and death and taxes to maintain a system of control. It is a prison and we are all enslaved to maintain it. I don’t want to live this way. I’d rather live that other way without worrying about property, and I think Linux will help us get there.
Do you honestly think software IS property? I don’t except in rare circumstances not relating to OSs. Your OS is like your fuel. Is fuel property? Now you see the problem.
Do we value oil more than human life?
Now you see the problem.
The case is worse than you think. There are all sorts of factual innaccurecies in the filling.
For example they make a great deal out of the fact that Linux = Linux + Unix; to show that the intent was to steal Unix intellectual property. As a side note Linux is a pun on Linix which was an abreviation for Linus’ Minix and SCO owns no Minix intellectual property.
They refer to Stallman as a former MIT professor.
Where it is not just factually untrue they often are highly misleading. For example they talk about SCO intellectual property as part of the Monterey project and then have quotes from IBM indicating the version of JFS in Linux is from Monterey project. The clear intent is to leave the reader with the impression that JFS came from SCO and was stolen by IBM.
Unlike the other two mistakes (which might just show negligance is preparing a court filing) this one is clearly an attempt to mislead the court.
Similarly they have multiple sections outlining the fact that the probability of someone randomly creating libraries compatable with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries are close to 0; which hints but never states that Linux is compatable with the SCO OpenServer Shared Libraries.
I think a very good case can be made for summary dismissal. As for IBM winning in court there won’t be a problem. If this is the best claim Caldera has they really are in deep trouble.
Anyone else amused by the idea (At least from comments in this thread) that big blue has gone from being one of the most hated firms in the IT sector to being acceptable thanks to their support of certain OSS projects?
Actually. That’s where I disagree. IBM is no longer in the dominant position they were in the mainframe market way back when. They were in the same position Microsoft is in today in the software market.
But as stated in many articles, made present especially during the IBM crisis in the early 90’s, is that IBM is the U.S.’s national treasure. It displays the power of an American Corporation, blah blah.
IBM is popular because a.) It WAS the “standard” for all other corporations.
b.) Hey… Look how many patents they filed!
c.) A success story, many thanks to Gertsner (from evident doom to leader again).
d.) There PR and Marketing team.
IBM is no longer the Tyrant they are way back when. Now they’re just a big elephant
, unlike Microsoft…
Hey, maybe in a decade or so, we’ll all like Microsoft (after they are no longer as dominant as they are now, and they support something oogly to techies).
1 billion dollars!
Sounds like Dr. Evil all over again! ;o)
The gpl will be reocgnized oneday as important as the Magna
Carta, being instrumental in helping us wrest back a reasonable amount of control from Corportatins and excessive commercialism.
Why has everyone gone batty with the “Make no mistake” phrase since Bush started using it in every speech? Bush says it, and now just about every politcian uses it, people yelling “terra”, saying “test our resolv” etc. Make no mistake: Give it a rest.
All the crap asside, Bruce kicks ass and hits the nail on the head i think.
…Digital Research’s claim against Microsoft was perfectly valid. Microsoft put code in early versions of Windows 3.11 whose explicit purpose was to check if it was being run on DR-DOS and crash if it was. By the time Windows 3.11 was truly shipping this wasn’t the case, but the damage had already been done–the “incompatibility” had been widely reported by the press and DR had lost important OEM contracts.
Given Caldera’s reputation over the last few years combined with the fact that many Linux supporters of today simply weren’t around when Caldera was starting up, it’s not surprising that the general reaction is “they were always slimeballs” rather than “how far the mighty have fallen.” But the truth is that early on, Caldera contributed code to both the Linux kernel and userland utilities and they were years ahead of anyone else in believing that Linux had a future in the business world, both server and desktop. Most of the drives toward better installation programs, more usable desktop functionality, and enterprise support programs started with Caldera. If you look at reviews of Caldera Linux, you’ll see time and time again that compared to their contemporaries they were far ahead of the pack in usability.
So I’d hardly say that their suit against Microsoft was a sign of an immoral company. In pont of fact, I felt that the beginning of the end for Caldera was when they settled that lawsuit out of court for a relatively modest amount of money. That was a philosophical turning point, a choice of easy money instead of what could have been a courageous–and according to a fair number of analysts, more winnable than the somewhat specious “browser wars” that came later–drive to hold Microsoft accountable for their restraint of trade. The bright yellow line of cowardice runs straight from the abandonment of that first suit to this new nonsense.
I’ll be vaguely curious to see if the real SCO Group, now known as Tarantella and competing in the tiny yet deadly internet infrastructure market, survives longer than the renamed Caldera does. Even with Tarantella’s “going concern” warning, I bet they just might.
…but this GPL crap is just irritating.
“”The gpl will be reocgnized oneday as important as the Magna Carta””
Ok, let’s put this in teeny tiny playschool simple terms.
Imagine your country’s leaders announced that “Yes, you have the freedom to say whatever you like about any subject whatsoever. However if anyone says anything about women with odd sized feet and a squint then they’ll get sent to jail.” Now are you going to be happy? Are you going to feel that your rights to free speech aren’t threatened? Are you going to believe that you actually have free speech, and not freedom to speech within bounds laid out by your government?
Ok, so we come to the GPL. It’s a LICENSE, it remains a license, it can never be anything other than a license. It promises certain liberties for those willing to adhere to the terms of the LICENSE. The GPL is NOT free (as in speech), it can never BE free (as in speech), because the very existence of the LICENSE by definition prevents it from being free (as in speech).
The GPL has done nothing that public domain authors haven’t being doing for years. It is the zealotry of a few, and the blind adherence to their ideology by the many, that has allowed it to push itself forward as the self proclaimed messiah of the software developement community. One day it will be recognised that the GPL is worthless in terms of the very things it seeks to achieve.
The GPL is part of the problem, not the solution.
SCO is alleging that IBM has “stolen” their intellectual property by incorporating it into Linux. With all the ranting and raving going on here you’d think that everyone already knows that IBM is innocent. IBM very well could have stolen SCO’s property while they were making their own contributions to Linux. This could have been intentional or by accident.
Remember back with USL sued BSDI a few years back? It turned out that there was some AT&T tainted code in the BSD 4.4 Lite distribution. We all thought that BSD 4.3 Net was free of AT&T code and we were darned sure that BSD 4.4 Lite was but it turned out not to be the case. Luckily it turned out that AT&T themselves was guilty of stealing BSD code and using it without credits in SysVr4. The two parties worked out their differences; the BSD folks rewrote a few files; and we went on happily ever after.
Even if it turns out IBM is guilty of including pripriatory software in their Linux contributions the effect on Linux will be little. We might loose a few features IBM provided but we will be able to delete the tainted features and carry on with the vast majority of the code base that is untainted.
gpl has been doing nothing the public domain hasn’t been
doing for years.
The public domain? Where’s your public domain now?
(edward g robinson voice).
Dying on the vine.
the public domain has been shrinking thanks to copyright
extensions.
only the gpl has been able to slow the MS juggernaut. Linux was developed with gnu tools and licences.
No gpl no linux. There are other ingredients to be sure,
but there is no underestimating the gpl’s role.
gpl, linux, and open source help capitalism protect it
from it’s own worse impulses.
You argue gpl limits freedoms. Everything does in some
sense other than pure anarchy. Don’t like gpl don’t use.
A lot of people are using gpl code so it is becoming hard
to avoid if you don’t like it? Tuff. That is their decision. Gpl uses power of copyright to benefit developers and users at the potential expense of distributors . Too bad for the middle man.
The irony is that the gpl is protecting and increasing
freedoms. The only freedom it limits is the freedom of
someone like MS to embrace and extend.
It is the last, best hope for true open standards.
Why do you think Linux has the momentum. In the beginning
it wasn’t the best code. Everyone sees it as a chance to
get out from proprietary standards dominated by you know
who. That is it’s true value.
It is one for the ages.
“…but this GPL crap is just irritating.”
that is your problem. anti-gpl zealot no better than
pro-gpl zealot.
Myself an enthusiast not a zealot,imho.
that is the proof in the pudding for me.
it is one of the great stories of the late 20th and early
21st century.
Go google for Brett Glass . You can preach to each other’s choirs.
Al Dente,
SCO are not only claiming that IBM has “stolen” their intellectual property, but that it was done not simply by a few programmers who were too lazy to come up with their own code, but rather that it was done as part of an IBM corporate plan to damage SCO.
This is quite an accusation, my personal suspicion is that it is unfounded, however if I am wrong and IBM is guilty then quite frankly they should suffer, since that kind of thing is just not cricket!
“Gpl uses power of copyright to benefit developers and users at the potential expense of distributors . Too bad for the middle man.”
Quite frankly as an independent developer I’d say that statement is rubbish. If I write something and release it under GPL, who makes money? Well the publisher/distributor can, since he puts it in a nice box with a manual and there are a few people who will want that rather than a free download, the user can (assuming the software is useful to him and helps him in his work), support people can (unless I write it so well that noone has any problems). The one person who cannot is the developer, unless he has a prior contract to develop that software (e.g. he is on a salary).
I don’t have a problem with the GPL as an option, where developers can decide if they want to distribute their work under it. However if the GPL zealots are to be believed, then when I release software that I have put a year of development time and a decade of experience and education into, and if it does what it should and it brings pleasure to thousands and hopefully money to some of them, then I am some kind of ogre for doing so under a proprietary license where each person who gains directly from my work is expected to contribute a little towards my cost of living.
“Gpl uses power of copyright to benefit developers and users at the potential expense of distributors . Too bad for the middle man.”
Quite frankly as an independent developer I’d say that statement is rubbish. If I write something and release it under GPL, who makes money?
the benefit I implied for developer and user was not financial. For the distributor that was the implication as
that is what they are about.
If you want monetary benefit go the lgpl route which is
variation of gpl…or go proprietary, ie Opera.
I don’t think all software should be gpl or even lgpl. Just the foundation stuff.
Just the stuff that if anyone having control of it can
use that contro to leverage control of everything else.
cough Microsoft,windows, file formats,IE,Exchange cough. Standards should be gpl ,lgpl.
So if you came up with new file format/system and wanted to
have it be proprietary, I would be against it being used
as a standard.
You want to write a tax program that is proprietary great.
I don’t think that bundling that in your own distro would
allow you to take over computing. You would have a succesful
product on hand and good for you.
We can blah, blah all we want. Look at what the gpl has
accomplished.
Conventional wisdom is usually wrong.
It is like those fashion “what we were thinking” oops that
magazines run.
Helps if you know what the Magna Carta is, because obviosuly you don’t you seem to have gotten it mistaken for some other historic document. And because of that your post makes no sense whatsoever.
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/magnatranslation.html
Notice the lack of a clause about Free Speech
The Magna Carta is not about freedom of speech, the GPL isn’t either they are about another sort of freedom.
GPL code is JUST as proprietary as MS code. It forces you to adhere to its conditions JUST as much as the MS EULA. There isn’t any difference.
Let’s imagine the wonderful utopian world of RMS. Everyone is using GPL, all source code is available for download on demand. How does a developer make enough money to continue developing new software? Is it truly the intent of the GPL to turn software development into little more than a customer support industry? You couldn’t charge for software, because some enterprising person would just download the source, compile it up, and release it for free on the net. So that leaves you with charging for services other than the code itself. That may work great for large firms, but it’s a killer for the small developer.
Let’s get something straight, the GPL has accomplished absolutely nothing, the same way the BSD license has accomplished nothing. The accomplishments are all the work of the developers who happen to use those licenses to publish their programs. The GNU software collection isn’t the result of the GPL, it’s the result of years of hard work by a number of talented individuals. I don’t want the GPL remembered as altering anything. What I’d much rather see is an acknowledgement that a large section of the developer community has begun working for the common good, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the GPL despite what some people seem to believe.
I never said the GPL was a bad thing, personally I think it’s a useful license to have around. My problem with it is the simple hypocrisy that it attempts to maintain an illusion of giving freedoms which it simply doesn’t offer. If it was just a license then there wouldn’t be a problem (Seen anyone criticize the BSD style license recently?). However it isn’t presented as just a license, but a means to pursue the ideology of the FSF/GNU project. That’s why it irritates people, because the GPL attempts to pursue its objectives using exactly the same methods those objectives are opposed to. GPL doesn’t open the cage, it just makes the bars harder to see.
It just bugs me, as it probably does other people. In the same way I get irritated by Linux zealots saying “Linux is about choice”. Well how come if someone chooses to use Windows then you act like the cool kids at school who’ve just spotted someone not wearing the latest trainers? I just don’t like people attaching values, or anything else, to computer programs. I don’t like that people on this board sometimes feel pressured into justifying their use of whichever OS they have installed (“I use Windows, but only because…”). I don’t like that others attack people simply because they use a different OS.
I just wish people would start seeing these things as a computer program, or an OS, or a piece of hardware, and leave it there. However certain elements of the community just won’t leave it there, they have to drag in their latest zealotry and they persist in attaching significance to software that is simply unjustified. In the end I just want to have some hardware, and some software. I don’t want it to come bundled with a manual on “Beliefs you should adhere to whilst using this hardware and software”. If we stop reminding ourselves that it IS just hardware and software, then we lose the right to a moderate developer community. GPL is not helping the situation.
Anyhow, rant over. I apologize for the two OT posts.
” 74. A new operating system derived from and based on UNIX recently *has* become popular among computer enthusiasts for use on personal, educational-based, and not-for-profit projects and initiatives. This operating system is named Linux ”
Linux is not *derived* from Unix. It just behaves like Unix.
” 75. The name “Linux” is commonly understood in the computing industry to be a combination of the word “UNIX” (referring to the UNIX operating system) and the name “Linus.” The name “Linus” was taken from the person who introduced Linux to the computing world, Linus Torvalds. ”
heresay.
” 76. The initial market positioning of Linux was to create a free UNIX-like operating system to be used by developers and computer hobbyists in personal, experimental, and not-for-profit applications . As such, Linux posed little, if any, commercial threat to UNIX. ”
Talk about twisting the truth. Why did they start selling Linux before IBM even came into the scene?
” 78. The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software. The primary operating system advanced by GNU is Linux. ”
GNU software not *based* on commercial software. Are they trying to imply that FREE software is not valuable?
” 80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property. ”
To quote from the preamble of the GPL:
“We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.”
” 81. In addition, the GPL provides that, unlike SCO’s UNIX operating system or IBM’s AIX operating system or Sun’s Solaris operating system, no warranty whatsoever runs with its software. The GPL includes the following language :
NO WARRANTY
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW…THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. ”
They must be really angry to be this spiteful.
” 82. Linux started as a hobby project of a 19-year old student . Linux has evolved through bits and pieces of various contributions by numerous software developers using single processor computers . Virtually none of these software developers and hobbyists had access to enterprise-scale equipment and testing facilities for Linux development. Without access to such equipment, facilities, sophisticated methods, concepts and coordinated know-how, it would be difficult or impossible for the Linux development community to create a grade of Linux adequate for enterprise use. ”
The famous “poisoning the well” fallacy all over again. This time mixed with lies. Difficult does not mean impossible. If they said difficult, then it won’t be strong enough. If they said impossible, it would be too strong. So the use both to leave the reader wondering what the mean, giving an appearance of almost-impossible. Almost can not catch a bird!
I could go on
RMS’s vision of the GPL is to give away the software but sell support. That was the whole idea behind Cygnus support long before Linux came along and Red Hat bought them out.
I do believe that GPL can be a good business model but most of the Linux companies cant see the forrest for the trees.
I’d say that the best business model for Linux would be to sell Linux as a turn-key system. A company that needs 1000 desktops would buy a year of service/support for their company at $n/seat. The Linux company would install hardware, software, fix anything that broke (hardware and software) for the year. If a company can profitibly provide this service for less than companies are having to spend for their Windows desktops the company should be able to make money hand over fist.
” The GNU software collection isn’t the result of the GPL, it’s the result of years of hard work by a number of talented individuals”
Sure, but the gpl stopped MS from embracing & extending
that hard work. Those developers wanted the software gpl.
“I never said the GPL was a bad thing, personally I think it’s a useful license to have around. ”
I never said proprietary is bad. Just don’t want it on
the foundations of computing, ie 0S, internet protocols,etc.
“GPL code is JUST as proprietary as MS code. It forces you to adhere to its conditions JUST as much as the MS EULA. There isn’t any difference.”
I agree more or less with that characterization. So both licenses let the coders determine how their code will be
used. The difference is how the code will be used.
GPL coders desires are just as valid as proprietary coders.
” How does a developer make enough money to continue developing new software?
Most software is custom software written for in house consumption. It never gets sold, so gpl is irrelevant.
Guess we better stick a fork in it , before Eugenia does :>
Quote,
“In the end I just want to have some hardware, and some software.”
In the world of propietary operating system software and closed-source hardware drivers this is exactly what you cannot have. Not just “some” (ie.any) software runs on “some” (ie.any) hardware. As it stands now the software you buy requires specific OS’s which require (or only support) specific hardware. If the(all) OS’S were free and open-source (all) software(commercial and open-source/free(GPL/LGPL)) would be easily available on the different OS’s, if the hardware drivers were open-source and free all hardware would be, or could be easily supported by all the differnt OS’s.
Certain applications will always remain commerical. There is ample space for commercial applications in an environment where open-source/free(GPL/LGPL) software becomes more of a mainstream standard of operating system software and hardware drivers- in fact there are more potential customers for hardware and software developers. Corporations will always prefer commercial applications for certain tasks, for corporations live and breather money, and propietary operating systems are not going to simply vanish-yet they shield their predominance and hence their capacity to monopolistically capitalize on and exploit fettered users bereft of *free* choice will be abridged.
Freedom != unlimited, every freedom entails responsibilities, and the responsibility of contributing back to the community from whence you as a developer profit by virtue of access to the code and coding techniques which enabled you to become a programmer. Where freedom = unlimited right-wing anarachy, war of all against all, rules…
“”Guess we better stick a fork in it , before Eugenia does :>””
Agreed. I shouldn’t have brought it into this thread anyhow, that and reading those posts again I should lay off the caffeine a little.
There’s an argument in there, I just didn’t construct it very well. Maybe another day… :>
What will happen to the all the unix code if SCO would go bankrupt and noone bought them? would it all just be gone with them, or what?
What was obvious from the very beginning of li*ux:
It’s a clone.
The code is stolen and just recompiled.
Yes sue all this stupid
(not able to come up with own creativity)
Li*us fucktards.
And yes, SCO go after all the Clone companies
like Red Hat and Suse.
Let’s see if they can maintain the “it’s free” bullshit
if they have to pay like anyone on the planet.
That looks like a very nice and constructive comment!!
Thank you for sharing your immense wisdom with us poor mortals…
Nice way to do friends Stardust
(just like the way SCO has done a lot of friends lately…)
go crawl back in the hole from whence you come, troll.
The absurdity of SCO’s claims against IBM only become apparent when one quits talking shit concerning Intellectual Property. Since the birth of the microcomputer in the mid-seventies, which coincided with the birth of the notion of propietary software, everybody and their brother has been “borrowing” each others ideas, methods and techniques, and if it weren’t for the braid dead IP system, they would have simply been sharing. “Borrowing” is not the same as stealing, but it is also not as clean-cut as sharing- it remains always somewhat gray, because much of what is borrwed is borrowed without consent and without due recognition.
This history, viewed by some as the history of propietary theft, is the history of the microcomputer and it’s software itself. Apple was one of the first companies to engage in this fullscale. Strarting with Wozniak “borrowing” the TTL components from the stock-room at HP in order to build the first apple prototype. Later Apple went to Motorola and talked half of the 6800 design team to quit and come and join with another group of investors to form mostek, whose first chip design – the 6500- was pini-for-pin compatabile with the 6800, an who then designed the 6502 which was used as the heart of apple computers. Jobs and Wozniak also approached the designers over at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and talked a bunch of deisgners into joing them in developing the Lisa, which later became basis for the Macintosh computers.
Bill Gates worked for the man who had written CP/M, learning how CP/M worked and how it was written, as a part time employee during his colloege days, he then stabeed his employer in the back by circumventing him and trying to work out a deal directly with IBM to provide them with their first version of DOS. The first version of DOS was so close to CP/M that there were virtually no changes necessary between Wordstar for CP/M and DOS-because only a handful of lines of coded had significantly changed- the recompile was a breeze.The only reason that the IBM PC was successfull where others had failed was because they had an open motherboard design which required of mobo manufacturers only that their mobo conform to BIOS standards.
Franklin took the Apple BIOS copied it and changed only the copyright text at the beggining and added a bit of code to the end. This stuff is trivia nowadays- if you accept the current IP paradigm of software/hardware development then the entire history of the personal computer is nothing but one long windy tale of IP theft and thievery. I refuse to look at this history from such a narrow-minded perspective.
Programmers and developers were, in the beginning, and still are today to a lesser extent, totally dependent upon the free availaility of code in order to learn coding techniques and methods. This code sharing practice was normal in the day prior to microcomputers-for computer companies sold software and harware as platforms, because there was no portability of software per se.
Only with the development of generalized microcomputers made by a mulitude of manufactures did software become trully distinct from the operating system in which it was written and from the hardware platform for which it was written. Only in the course of this process did propietary software become viable, as a way of monopolizing cetain techniques and methods involved in programming. Programmers who had had worked for one of the big computer companies in the day prior to the mcirocomputer revolution regularly switched jobs back and forth between the big companies- each company benefited from the experience and knowledge which new programmers brought to their portfolio. Back then IP had a name, ie. the name of a particular programmer. One did not have to sign away ones soul when getting a programmer job back then.
Since the days of the microcomputer revolution- everyone has had sullied hands, it’s just that some are more honest and some are more hypocritical. When one knows that programming is an art which thrives best in an atmosphere of open exchange of ideas, methods and techniques, and only thrives where the exhcange of ideas, methods and techniques occurs, one knows that the notion that certain companies with IP pulled their coding ideas, methods and techniques out of thin air, vapor if you will, developed supposedly in a vaccum, untainted by previous knowledge and skill, is a crock of shit and a delberate lie based on the foul-play of hypocracy and sophism.
You can look for clean hands in this history if you so desire, if your desire for your feeling that propietary development is superior to open-source/free development is so strong that you are willing to lie to yourself in order to maintain this myth. But if you are honest with yourself you won’t find any clean hands, and this starts by looking at yourself in the mirror. Propietary software eats itself, it spites the community of shared ideas, tehchniques and methods, from whence it arose and reifies this relationship by not contributing back into the pool from whence it profited, thus making the whole community poorer, while benefitting a select few.
This paradigm is perfect for a consumer-based society, but it is antithetical to the spirit which gave birth to microcomputer revolution in the first place. The microcomputer revolution began as an ebling technology freeing indviduals to have computer power at their finger tips without having to pay big corportations for time-sharing usage of processor power. The revolution has now come full circle, for now users are rebelling against the consumerism which microcomputers have foisted upon the world throught the establishment of massive corporate monopolies which wish to claim IP rights over every aspect of computers and what we can use them for and how we use them…
put things into perspective, it helps to see a little more clearly….
The microcomputer revolution began as an ***enabling*** technology freeing indviduals to have computer power at their finger tips without having to pay big corportations for time-sharing usage of processor power
Your knowledge of history is rather distorted, as is your understanding of the word “borrowing”. To borrow something implies that it will be returned, after which the borrower will not continue to be able to use it. If you borrow the neighbour’s lawnmower to cut your lawn, then after you give it back you can’t use it any more. I can also accept extending this terminology to situations where rather than return the item you replace it, since that can be viewed as a loan followed by a purchase (you pay for the replacement in some way, even if it is not in monetary terms).
The only way in my opinion that you could claim to be “borrowing” code is if you use it purely as a temporary fix. You put it in to your system to so that you can get everything else working IN HOUSE, and then you replace it with your own code later, BEFORE release.
Taking someone else’s code (or other intellectual property) and using it in your released products without their permission is not borrowing. If you believe in intellectual property (I ds) then it is theft, if you do not believe in intellectual property then you can argue that it is sharing, but in no way can it be borrowing, unless we wish to make a change to the English language.
As for your understanding of history
– The 6502 was designed by MOS technologies, Apple had nothing to do with it, it was released before Apple ever came into existance, and was used in the Apple 1. Mos Technologies did consist of a number of former Motorolla employees, and the first processor (the 6501, not the 6500) was pin compatible as you said, but they were prevented from selling it because Motorola sued.
Bill Gates never worked for Gary Kildall or Digital Research. And anyway he and Microsoft did not write the original DOS, it was purchased from Seattle Software Works. What SSW’s internal knowledge of CPM was I do not know.
Franklin did copy the Apple BIOS – but then Apple sued him out of business for doing that, so that was hardly a successful use of “borrowing” (your definition).
It is true that knowledge and ideas have always flowed from one project to another, just as any author who writes a novel will be influenced in some way by probably every novel he’s ever read, but generally that has happened WITHIN the laws of intellectual property. i.e. you don’t copy that which is copyrighted, and you license inventions which are patented. (though saying that, some patents are for things which are so obviously not inventions that I can understand they get ignored, since they could not stand up in court).
My “warped” historcial perspective is the result of having been an a computer freak since the late 1970’s.
MOS technologies, later know as Mostek was taken over by Commodore in 1976. Several of their cpu designers were former employess of Motorola who had worked on the 6800 project. Motorola had invented the 6800 in 1974. MOS never released the 6500 becuase it was virtually 100% clone of 6800- the 6501 had some changes in it which they thought were sufficent to market- they erred- and motorola sued them. I may be mistaken but I believe that Jobs and/or Wozniak had contact with the MOS developers and were influential in the changes that went into the 6502 which was released at the end of 1975- apple was the first commercially available computer to use 6502, commodores PET first appeared in 1977.This was the version I heard back in the mid-eighties.I f I am wrong I stand corrected.
As regards Bill Gates:
Here are some quotes which I found looking around on the internet:
“It should be remembered that the first version of MS-DOS was essentially a clone of DRI’s CP/M version 1.4 ported to the Intel 8086/88 (CP/M 2.2 was the more common version by then already). SCP DOS (aka QDOS = “quick and dirty operating system”) as it was initially called was written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products, a maker of an 8086 processor board for S-100 machines. The new operating system was purchased by Microsoft and licensed to IBM when DRI refused to sell all rights to CP/M-86 for a song.”
http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/dri.html
” * In Apr. 1980 Tim Paterson begins writing an operating system for use with Seattle Computer Products’ 8086-based computer”
” * In July of 1980 IBM representatives meet with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to talk about Microsoft products, and home computers. IBM asks Bill Gates to write the operating system for their upcoming PC.”
” * In Aug. 1980 QDOS 0.10(Quick and Dirty Operating System) is shipped by Seattle Computer Products.”
” * In Oct Microsoft’s Paul Allen contacts Seattle Computer Products’ Tim Paterson, asking for the rights to sell SCP’s DOS to an unnamed client (IBM). Microsoft pays US$50,000 for the right. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer meet with IBM in Boca Raton, Florida, to deliver a report to IBM. They propose that Microsoft be put in charge of the entire software development process for IBM’s new microcomputer, including converting Seattle Computer Products’ SCP-DOS to run on the computer. Getting the rights to QDOS (quickly renamed PC-DOS 1.0) was probably the best overall deal Bill Gates ever made, and they never looked back. It has, of course, been fully rewritten since, probably several times with the biggest change being at Version 2.11, which changed the file system. Most DOS programs will not run on versions before 2.11.”
http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/hiwdone.htm
“Seattle Computer Products in early 1979 introduced the first 8086 computer kit. Sales languished while SCP waited for DRI to introduce CP/M-86. In desperation SCP hired Tim Paterson to develop a DOS for them. Tim quickly created a simplified 8086 version of CP/M which he called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System, since it did not implement all of CP/M’s features). Microsoft, located nearby, modified BASIC for the system.”
http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/kildall.htm
“Their paths crossed early on when Gates, a high school student, and Gary, a college student, both worked on the same DEC PDP-10 computer” system.http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/kildall.htm
I remember hearing that Bill Gates had worked with Gary Kindall as a part time programmer during his summer breaks from MIT. They had known each other for years. At any rate Tim Patterson may have been more responsible for the acquisition of code from Kindall by Bill Gates -the first IBM DOS PC DOS was a repackaged QDOS, written by Patterson,amd was a virtual copy of CP/M with some tiny minor changes. DRI wanted to sue IBM but by version 2.0 of PC-DOS it had been enitrely re-written, freeing it of legacy code. Exactly how Kindalls code got copied is subject to debate, but the fact remains that Bill Gates delivered Kindalls “stolen” code to IBM.
IP, as relates to software, was a new phenomena which appeared on the scene in the mid 1970’s. The standard prior to this was code sharing. That was the environment in which RMS learned to program. It was only after mulitple corporations began to develop computers based on cheaply available mass produced TTL technology that software as a form of IP became an issue.
I used the word “borrow” in an everday sense, which has a rather broad range of meanings, ranging from sharing to taking- it implies indebtedness, which sharing does not, to the same extent. If you approach that which I write with legalistic definitions you miss the point that these legalistic definitions have developed their meaning post-hoc of that which I was describing…….
“My “warped” historcial perspective is the result of having been an a computer freak since the late 1970’s.”
Notwithstanding that, your original post contained factual innacuraccies. Apple did not talk Motorola engineers into quitting, MOS Technologies released a processor (Wozniak does not mention if it was the 6501 or the 6502, but he also does not mention swapping processors part way through the Apple I design) before Wozniak started developing the Apple I, and before Apple existed , nor did Bill Gates ever work for Gary Kildall.
“IP, as relates to software, was a new phenomena which appeared on the scene in the mid 1970’s. The standard prior to this was code sharing. That was the environment in which RMS learned to program. It was only after mulitple corporations began to develop computers based on cheaply available mass produced TTL technology that software as a form of IP became an issue”
Actually it was MOS technology which was the big enabler(Microprocessors, Dynamic RAM, and other LSI).
I also doubt that the sharing of code was quite as prolific as you seem to imply. RMS was in an academic situation, but anybody working for IBM or Bell Labs or any other company would almost certainly have been under NDA, plus it is human nature to sometimes want to stay one up on the competition.
The fact that the nature of the market place (hardware and software often supplied as a package by one company, applications developed on a bespoke basis to an pre agreed price) made Intellectual Property less of an issue in the past does not mean it should be ignored today.
“I used the word “borrow” in an everday sense, which has a rather broad range of meanings”
I used the word “borrow” in the English language sense, which apart from anything else, implies a temporary state of affairs.
You penguinistas make me ill. When IBM was the bad guys on the block, it was cool to be anti-Blue. I actually remember a time (late ’80’s) when it was considered a badge of honor in the programming community to be a Microsoft programmer.
Now we have the new outsiders who consider MS a pariah and IBM a savior just because IBM is making money supporting their favorite hobbyist OS which furthers their agenda. I personally don’t consider computers and technology a religion, but it appears to be just that to the Linux faithful ready to take up a jihad against the infidels who blasphem against their God. It’s just an OS – and not a very good one for anyone not willing to vest tremendous amounts of time just to learn how to get it to run.
When was the last time that you used Linux.. Red Hat 3. Linux is not all that hard to install anymore, my mother can install it, she uses it. It has gotten easier and IDC predicts that in 2003-2004 it will aquire the #2 slot in desktop Operating systems displacing the Macintosh.
Poor ignorant idiots, sometimes you just gotta feel sorry for them.
“Notwithstanding that, your original post contained factual innacuraccies. Apple did not talk Motorola engineers into quitting, MOS Technologies released a processor (Wozniak does not mention if it was the 6501 or the 6502, but he also does not mention swapping processors part way through the Apple I design) before Wozniak started developing the Apple I, and before Apple existed , nor did Bill Gates ever work for Gary Kildall. ”
You go boy. I already admitted that much of what I wrote was based on things I had heard. I also stated that I may be incorrect. Thank you for acknowledging(sp?)-NOT!. I heard the contrary as regards apple=Wozniak /Jobs having talked to former-motorola engineers about comming up with something cheaper than the 6800. MOS was formed in 1975 by former designers from the motorola 6800 design team. Perhaps this was a fortunate series of of coinicidences. Wozniak and Jobs did talk several PARC employess into comming to work for them- so it remains plausible for me that they may have talked to the guys at motorola- I cannot prove this- can you disprove this ?
I also stated that I had heard that Gates had worked for Kildall during his summer breaks as a MIT student. Do you have proof that this did not occur ? Given the “fact” that Bill Gates sold IBM the SSW/SCO QDOS(Quick & Dirty) to IBM as a Microsoft product- how do you account for the their code being a copy of Kindalls CP/M except for a few small changes? So I am still more inclined to believe what I have heard than your simply stating that such was not the case. Again if you can disprove such I am more than willing to be corrected- but just because you say it ain’t so does not mean that you are correct. Quite possibly we are both mistaken.
“Actually it was MOS technology which was the big enabler(Microprocessors, Dynamic RAM, and other LSI).”
MOS was a late comer in the game- Intel, who invented the first microprocess (4004), was followed quickly by Motorola and HP and Rockwell were also selling cheap mass-produced TTL LSI stuff before MOS was formed. Zilog followed short thereafter.
” I also doubt that the sharing of code was quite as prolific as you seem to imply. RMS was in an academic situation, but anybody working for IBM or Bell Labs or any other company would almost certainly have been under NDA, plus it is human nature to sometimes want to stay one up on the competition.”
I doubt seriously that any programmer in 1975 ever had to sign a non-disclosure argument. Although the engineers did have to do this, software was not cross-platform at the time, so “trade secrets” as regards software were mostly a mute issue due to the differences in the underlying architectures of the computers involved and that the OS software was written primarily in assembly. If you were a programmer back in 1975 and care to disporve me – go for it. I am more than glad to admit to any mistakes but you vs. me isn’t going to cut it….
“I used the word “borrow” in the English language sense, which apart from anything else, implies a temporary state of affairs.”
Well english is my mother tongue-If you wish we can argue as to whether “borrow” more often expresses “a temporary state of affairs” or “indebtedness”. But you could try to understand what I am getting at and you have chosen not to. That is your choice. What did IP mean before IP became the standard by which everything is measured ? If you answer this from the current understanding of IP you have not even seen the question….
My point was, and remains- what IP-drones call ‘theft’ is exactly that which gave birth to the microcomputer revolution and what led the offspring of this revolution to create a world where IP wishes to be the standard of all things. Anybody who wishes to claim that they had IP “clean hands” during the heyday of the microcomputer revolution is simply being hypocritical, and this becomes more and more apparent and contemporarily relevant due to open-source/free software (GPL/LGPL/linux) rekindles that revolutionary spirit…..
mistakenly posted as Anonymous….I wrote the last response
Karl Zollner@infwis
Firstly…
“mistakenly posted as Anonymous….I wrote the last response
Karl Zollner@infwis”
Thanks for your honesty, but I’d guessed that bit 🙂
Secondly I have to apologize if I misinterpreted your comment –
“My “warped” historcial perspective is the result of having been an a computer freak since the late 1970’s”
My interpretation was that you were saying “I’ve been in this for over 20 years so I know what I’m talking about”, in reponse I was trying to point out that you were not completely correct, no matter how long you have been a computer freak. Again, I apologize if I misinterpreted your original meaning and overeacted in response.
“Wozniak and Jobs did talk several PARC employess into comming to work for them- so it remains plausible for me that they may have talked to the guys at motorola- I cannot prove this- can you disprove this ?”
The first part seems to be generally agreed, certainly I find several references to it on the net. However Wozniak was just another guy working for HP when the guys left Motorola to form MOS Technologies, also in his long description of how he came up with the designs for those early machines http://www.macworld.com/2002/10/macbeat/woz/ Wozniac makes absolutely no mention of having any conversations with or influence on those designers, either whilst they were with Motorola, or later when they were with MOS. His description basically is that when he found he could get that processor for $20, he then went and designed a machine around it.
“I also stated that I had heard that Gates had worked for Kildall during his summer breaks as a MIT student. Do you have proof that this did not occur ?”
Gates was never an MIT student, he went to Harvard, and never finished his degree. Neither was Gary Kildall an MIT student, he got a Degree in Mathematics and a Masters degree and a PHD in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Also if you look at the timeline of the early days of Microsoft and Digital Research, and read the articles, I find no mention of Gates working for Kildall, and cannot see that there was much time unnaccounted for in the descriptions where he could have been doing so.
However in one interview Gates does mention that in some of the CP/M deals that Microsoft had done, they had handled the porting to specific platforms. “On a lot of these CP/M deals, we had done the adaptation for the machine… because Digital Research just didn’t do that.”, so in that way they would have had some inside knowledge of CP/M
“Given the “fact” that Bill Gates sold IBM the SSW/SCO QDOS(Quick & Dirty) to IBM as a Microsoft product- how do you account for the their code being a copy of Kindalls CP/M except for a few small changes?”
The fact that is was sold as a Microsoft product is irrelevant, even today there are products sold under the Microsoft label that they do not develop themselves (I was interviewed about working on one of them, so that bit of information is first hand). Patterson claimed he wrote the original from scratch and just copied the APIs, he may have been lying, he may have been given information by Microsoft. I’m not saying plagiarism didn’t occur, I’m saying it didn’t occur through the route you claimed.
‘”Actually it was MOS technology which was the big enabler(Microprocessors, Dynamic RAM, and other LSI).”
MOS was a late comer in the game- Intel, who invented the first microprocess (4004), was followed quickly by Motorola and HP and Rockwell were also selling cheap mass-produced TTL LSI stuff before MOS was formed. Zilog followed short thereafter. ‘
Note that I said MOS techonology with a lower case “t”, I was referring to Metal Oxide Semicondector (not MOS Technology the company), as opposed to TTL (Transistor Transistor Logic) which is based on Bipolar transistors. The 4004, 6800, 6502 etc. were all implemented using MOS logic, not TTL logic.
“just because you say it ain’t so does not mean that you are correct”
Quite right, but then I try to research what I say before posting, the net is a wonderful thing. Doesn’t mean I’m always right, but it helps 🙂
“I doubt seriously that any programmer in 1975 ever had to sign a non-disclosure argument.”
Every company I ever worked for EVERYONE signed Non Disclosure Agreements, Engineers, Salesmen, Accountants, Secretaries… I wasn’t employed in 1975 so I can’t comment specifically on that time.
“My point was, and remains- what IP-drones call ‘theft’ is exactly that which gave birth to the microcomputer revolution and what led the offspring of this revolution to create a world where IP wishes to be the standard of all things.”
Just because a great deal of theft occured in the birth of an industry does not mean it was required for that birth to occur. If Patterson had not had QDOS (which he may have stolen IP for) then IBM would have had to go back to Digital Research on a day when Kildall wasn’t flying. If MOS technologies had not made the 6502 then there would probably have been many more machines built using the 6800 and 6809.
PNGHD said it so eloquently (sp?) in a previous post so I feel compelled to say it again:
“The gpl will be reocgnized oneday as important as the Magna
Carta, being instrumental in helping us wrest back a reasonable amount of control from Corportations and excessive commercialism.”
YES! I do agree 100%!
I am by no means an expert concerning much of what I have written here. And I would be a fool to act as if my words were made of gold. But I was totally immersed in computers and everything to do with them as a child and my interest in these things led to read everything I could find and to talk with everyone who seemed to know more.
I stand corrected regarding Gate going to MIT- you are correct it was Harvard, I confused the two. Both Gates and Kindall lived and grew up in Seatle. They knew each other when Gates was in high school-because he hung out at the university where Kindall studied. The picture of Gates working for Kindall part-time during his summer breaks still sticks in my mind, from the time I first heard it circa 1984.
Yet I am prepared to yield on this one- I cannot state factually that I know this was the case- I still however am reluctant to let this completely go-because then I have no way to comprehend how QDOS could have been the copy of CP/M which it was. Patterson may have been the middle-man, but I doubt it, I can’t imagine Gates not having had access to the CP/M code and I can’t imagine him having had that had he not worked with Kindall. logical conundrum….
whoops MOS- sure I know what you mean, didn’t get it first time around…..
I believe the NDA’s came into vogue in the late seventies-early eighties. As an adult it is the only thing I have ever known, but I know that this was not universally the case in the mid-seventies- IP is only an issue relative to the availability of cheap mass-produced hardware which allowed OS’s, application software and hardware platforms
to become sufficiently differentiated as to make porting, and by extension, copying of software, something which could be percieved as a threat to the platform buisness model of computer manufacturers of the day.
UNIX came into being in the attempt to build a set of portable tools which would work on interchangable hardware, this was the reasoning behind the switch to C from assembly and the UNIX programming world of the mid to late 70’s was a world in which programmers taught each other, by sharing code,how to implement stuff in C.
This extended beyond academic institutions and there was a free flow of exchange of knowledge and experience between the corporations and the universities during this time. It was when this network of informal exchange broke down that the IP battles between companies over UNIX started and it was the relative economic success of software companies, which were not platform bound, via IP which poisoned the atmosphere of informal exchange due to economics of such monopolistic IP polices.
You are correct- what occured could have occured differently than it did. There were alternatives(eg. 6800 / 6809) – so “theft” was not the only option and not the cause of the microcomputer reolution- it was however the motor, that which actually occured and what gave birth to the despotic IP domination which has become common sense today.
If there had been no informal exchange, ie. borrowing, IP would not have been an issue, for corporations would not have had to worry about control- it was there lack of control(=relative monopolization ergo capitalization) over what the programmers were doing behind their backs which led to the corporate clampdown of informal exchange – many programmers were loyal to the code and not primarily to the companies-and this was an untenable position for management-how dare these programmers become empowered/emanicpated-how ungrateful-we’ll show them a thing or two.
My problem with IP is this: that which is based on and functions with IP is fundamentally incompatible with anything which is not covered by IP. IP is the currency of IP-and in this economy(ie. the IP economy) nothing else is tolerated and everything which is not clear-cut IP is held to be “dirty” in contrast to the lilly-white world of pure IP. As with any economy, the values exchanged within the economy gain their (non-relative/non-relational)value from that which bounds the economy and is not contained within the economy itself (the identity of identity and difference-second order logic).
IP thinks that it is the world, yet it presupposes a world in which IP has a value irrespective of it’s relative value inside a world defined by IP. I have yet to see its value. The world is not IP. IP exists in world not based on IP and wishes to equate itself as the world (ie. perfect identity) by wiping out anything which is not defined in terms relative to IP.
And this precisely the logic which is at work in SCO’s lawsuit against IBM. But the grace of what -I do not know, IBM, the most propietary oriented company on the planet, which holds more patents than most countries in the world combined, is a slumbering giant not unlike China- if IBM awoke and wished to assert itself if could bring the entire high-tech industry to it’s knees with never-ending patent suits. IBM appears more sympatico than SCO does now, because it appears to be shifting away from its base philosophy as the foremost advocate of IP towards a proponent of opensource/free software.
But IBM has the luxury of doing so- they can drop opensource just as quickly as they adopted it. This is what dispositive is all about and that is POWER.
Firstly I want to thank you for showing that it’s possible for two people to have a disagreement and a debate on OSNews without it degrading into the personal insults and mindless shouting that I see all too often on here.
On the Gates/Kildall thing I would just like to draw your attention to the Gates quote I gave earlier, where he said that Microsoft did adaptations of CP/M for customers.. which implies to me that they would have had source access, so that is an alternative way in which IP could have been tansferred to Patterson…. of course this still leaves Gates as the guilty party if it is correct 🙂
I like IP, it is how I earn my living. People think that Intellectual Property is all about protecting ideas, it’s not, at least copyright isn’t. Copyright is about protecting work. I have a product which is nearing completion, it is the result of a great deal of hard work in the past year, plus years of experience and education (which cost money), and then there are costs of hardware and software tools on top of that Because of the nature of the product and the market I could not make money on support, nor is it likely that I could have got anyone to stump up the money for me to develop it to be released without the revenue that comes from IP protection (it is completely self financed in any case). Without copyright anyone and everyone could simply copy it, gain advantage from it, and not pay me a penny.
Patents are slightly different, but even there I have no problem if they are awarded sensibly (many unfortunately are not). Patents are for inventions, so theoretically someone could have a brainwave, write it down on paper, submit it, and then rake in billions for the next 15 years or so. But generally there is a hell of a lot more work that goes into it than that. Also one of the arguments in favour of patents is that they encourage the revelation of ideas by guaranteeing a period of income from those ideas… otherwise companies would just keep that information secret.
IBM is I suspect only interested in open source/ “free” software when it suits their business plans. It is used simply as something to help them gain revenue from what they have that is proprietaru (hardware and software). I don’t have a problem with that at all.
As for SCO’s claims. My suspicions is that they are bogus, though it will be interesting to see if they can actually back them up with facts and real code they can point at, rather than saying “well it’s just not possible without stealing our stuff”.
But note that they’re not just claiming that IBM stole IP from them, but that they did it as part of a concious plan to damage SCO. Imagine if someone took your work or your property, and then used it with the express intention of causing you financial harm, how would you feel? IF IBM did this then they would deserve to suffer… but I have to say so far it just reads like a lot of unfounded whining by SCO, whatever case they may have has not been well presented so far.
I think that by the time IBM has taken care of SCO, Linus could buy SCO for a song, but then a box of patents always has some value.
Would be a kind of irony, set out to write a free alternative to ATT license only to have it become worthless.
If IBM had those patents, they might also use them against someone else, who knows.