Linux and 80 lines of stolen code??

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Originally posted here by Phat_Penguin
Does anyone know the real relationship between Microsoft and SCO Linux ?

Apparently Microsoft has purchased code off SCO Linux recently - the timing seems to be impecable in light all the recent developments.

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I think Microsoft trying to buy SCO cause they fear of the growing "mighty linux"

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Microsoft has become an increasingly harsh critic of open-source software over the past few years. Last month, the company signed a deal with SCO Group to license source code and a patent related to the Unix operating system. Many software industry analysts saw the deal as lending credence to SCO's charges that large parts of Unix source code have been copied into Linux.

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The link http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-1013124.html?tag=nl

Isn't it ironic that on 6/11/2003 Microsoft bought out an anti-virus company that makes it's profit by designing anti-virus software for Linux. According to Yahoo, this company has a "light" windows' customer base. Cant imagine why Microsoft, the pimps of modern standards, wants to buy Linux anti-virus software and IT'S PROGRAMMERS. Info - http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...pcworld/111123

indeed..

perhaps Microsoft's anivirus will be linux based ?? :rofl:

they have the SCO licences :P

this article has some interesting info..

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The issue isn't as clear-cut as either SCO or its opponents would have it, said John Ferrell, an intellectual-property attorney with Carr and Ferrell. 'If anybody tells you they have the definitive answer, they're crazy,' he said. But he'd give the edge to SCO in the situation, not because of its interpretation of the GPL, but because of a legal principle stemming from the 1887 sale of a pregnant cow in Michigan. That case established the so-called doctrine of mutual mistake, under which a contract can be nullified if two parties--in this case SCO and a company using Linux--misapprehended the true nature of what was in the contract.

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As evidence that putting software under the GPL must be a deliberate act, Sontag points to section zero of the GPL, which states, "this license applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License."

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Maybe SCO originally took this code from BSD or Linux

I know this is digging up an older thread, but i couldnt help it, i pissed myself laughing when i was searching for Caldera Linuc on the website:

Server Failure Message:

We apologize for any inconvenience you may have incurred. Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request at this time. By receiving this message, it means that either the web server is temporarily down, the network is temporarily down, or the database is unavailable due to scheduled maintenance.

If you are using a bookmarked URL, it is possible the correct URL for this page has changed. Please go to the www.caldera.com URL to find the correct page or try this site again in a few hours.

If you continue to have difficulty connecting to the site please email [email protected]

Thank you!





lol i was kinda shocked the site was working then i get an error.





EDIT:

Ok now im ****ing pissed:


http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_complaint.html

this **** is on SCO's website talking **** about Linux. Also, they have another section here you should look at:

http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_leaders.html

A warning to Linux shops here:

http://www.sco.com/scosource/gartner_warning.html

ummm, yea, im going to be making a new logo and uploading it soon.


EDIT again:

Enjoy new logo :)


"The announcement by SCO last week that it intends to sue everyone who has ever uttered the word "Linux" is the latest in a series of desperate measures by SCO to be noticed.

In the early 80's, SCO noticed how Microsoft took an obscure operating system called "Quick and Dirty" DOS, and resold it as the highly successful MS-DOS. SCO decided to try the same strategy: they got an obscure OS from Microsoft (Xenix), and resold it as SCO Xenix. They managed to sell a dozen copies. Scratching their heads, they noticed that Microsoft had changed the name of QDOS before it became successful. It was obvious they needed to do the same, and SCO Unix was born. The strategy worked. The company sold 125 copies in the first year alone, a 10x improvement over the sales of SCO Xenix!

But things were not going so well. They were still being outsold by Solaris, AIX, Digital Unix, Ultrix, HP/UX, and even Lu/nix on the Commodore 64. Meanwhile, customers were not happy with SCO Unix because it wasn't enough like real Unix. If Unix were a car, they said, SCO Unix was like a driving motorized wheelbarrow through a mosquito-infested swamp naked with both hands tied behind your back.

After a marathon 2-week strategy session, SCO decided to address those customer concerns by buying the Unix name. SCO acquired Unix Systems Laboratories, then owned by Novell, and declared that SCO Unix is now real Unix, so there, Nyeh nyeh! SCO also acquired Unixware from Novell, which it tried to sell alongside SCO Unix. The seven customers who bought Unixware returned it for reasons ranging from "It was the wrong size" to "That color is sooo last year".

In the meantime, Ray Noorda and Ransom Love founded a Linux company, Caldera. They decided to target "Linux for Business". Business responded with a resounding "What the hell is Linux, and why would I want to buy it from a two-bit fly-by-night company that sells it in retina-singeing green boxes?"

Over the next few years SCO would put out a number of press releases blatantly ignored by the public. Their customer base slowly trickled away. Caldera, on the other hand, went ahead full-steam with their "Linux for Business" campaign. "Linux for Business" ensured that they would have low mindshare not only amongst geeks, but also amongst businesses, who would say, "You want me to buy an operating system that doesn't give me anyone to sue when it fails? Pfft, I'd sooner buy from SCO."

None of this, however, deterred Caldera from developing their flagship product, Caldera OpenLinux. (In those days, the use of the word "Open" preceding a product name ensured a 25% increase in sales. This meant that Caldera sold 3.75 copies of OpenLinux in 1997, instead of the 3 they otherwise would have sold. SCO also used this trick to inflate their sales: They had renamed SCO Unix to SCO OpenServer several years back, netting them 14 additional sales).

Then a turning point came in 1998, when a noted investment bank said to a group of Wall Street insiders, "Sorry, we've just run out of dot-com IPOs, but how about some Linux IPOs? They're just as good...". The Wall Street insiders ate it up, and Linux became the hottest buzzword since "New Economy". It didn't even need to begin with a lowercase "e" or end in ".com".

Customers started asking for Linux. SCO became extremely agitated. "Geez, what is wrong with you people?" ranted the company CEO. "First you wanted us to be more Unix-like, so we gave you Unix, the real thing, now you tell us you don't want that, you want Linux, something which only pretends to be like Unix, and contains no Unix whatsoever. DID YOU HEAR ME? IT HAS NO UNIX WHATSOEVER. It's a fake! An inferior product. If you want to use it, I can only conclude that you are a deranged imbecile who must be trying to compensate for being less then well-endowed both intellectually and in other areas. Oh, and by the way, I'm pleased to announced "LXrun", a tool that allows you to run Linux applications on your "SCO® OpenServer(TM) server".

In spite of this, SCO customers began dropping like flies.

The Caldera OpenLinux development team introduced its crowning achievement, the first GUI Linux install from a major (?!?) Linux distributor. Named "Lizard", this new install was so easy to use that it actually let you play Tetris while it was installing. This actually backfired when a large portion of the sysadmins at the five companies who purchased OpenLinux 2.3 were canned for allegedly playing games on the job.

Caldera had another problem. While it had preached "Linux for Business" for years, and while businesses were now actually buying Linux, they weren't buying from Caldera. That company with the stupid red hat was eating their lunch.

Caldera needed to do something to win mindshare. What if they took on Microsoft? Then maybe they could win the hearts and minds of hard-core geeks. But what could they sue them for? Then they decided to buy a product that came with litigation against Microsoft already included -- DR-DOS. "DR-DOS?" asked skeptical company insiders. "DR-DOS!" exclaimed the believers. "We can always use it in a kiosk, or set-top box or something." So Caldera went ahead an sued Microsoft on grounds that Windows 3.1 deliberately made DR-DOS unstable, in spite of the fact that nobody uses Windows 3.1 anymore, and even fewer used DOS of any kind. Microsoft lawyers tried to keep a straight face as they quietly settled out of court for a reported $150 million in cash and scratch tickets.

Then, in a stroke of great timing, Caldera went public the week after the Nasdaq bubble started to burst. In spite of this, they managed to double their share price (although they didn't get the 700% launch that previous Linux IPOs enjoyed). So with a pile of cash, and a way-overvalued stock, Caldera decided to look for a decent company with synergy to acquire. They found SCO instead, as the good ones were already taken. SCO sold operating systems for the PC and had almost no marketshare and had bought a dead-end product from Novell (Unixware). Meanwhile, Caldera sold operating systems for the PC and had almost no marketshare and bought a dead-end product from Novell (DR-DOS). So at least there was synergy.

In an attempt to further alienate their customer base, Caldera announced that future releases of OpenLinux would actually contain the SCO kernel, because Unix-like kernels are a basic commodity. "This would be like Butterball buying Hormel, and announcing that Spam would now be the official main entree of Thanksgiving dinner," said Dr. Jacob Jacobson, professor of Information Technology Analogies at MIT.

When Caldera discovered that its OpenServer line outsold its Linux line 3-2 (no, that's not a ratio, those are actual sales figures), they changed their name back to SCO.

This brings us to the current situation. After the company's unsuccessful "We're a player, dammit!" campaign caused 10% of their customer base to flee, SCO decided to resort to that time-honored American business tradition, litigation. After all, they had already taken on Microsoft, so they figured they could take on IBM. They sent IBM a letter oozing with legalese that said, "All your AIX are belong to us." After IBM blatantly ignored them, they've decided to take on the entity that actually cost them all of their lost revenue: the customers who failed to buy or even notice SCO/Caldera products, but instead bought a competing Linux product.

I had a chance to sit down with a member of SCO's legal team, Mr. Swin D. Lerr, Esq. Here's a portion of our conversation:

Me: "But didn't your CEO once state that Linux has no Unix code in it?"

Lawyer: "Well, let me ask you this, your bank probably claims to be hassle free, right, but is it? The same goes for Linux and Unix."

Me: "Huh?"

Lawyer: "Let me spell it out for you, we know Linux has Unix code in it, we put it there. After all, what else could integrating the best features of Unix and Linux possibly mean?"

Me: "Well then, how can you possibly sue for that?"

Lawyer: "How the code got there is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the code is there now.

Me: "What about the allegations that Microsoft put you up to this?"

Lawyer: "There is absolustely no truth to those rumors."

Me: "It seems awfully suspicious that they are the first to pay up... no questions asked."

Lawyer: "They're scared of us, after all we beat them once before."

Me: "From what I hear, the general consensus is that SCO is cash-strapped and desperate and that's why they are doing this."

Shyster: "Nonsense, SCO and Caldera have run for years without cash, why should now be any different?"

So there you have it, SCO is not doing this for Microsoft, they are not doing this for the money, they just want some customers. If their sales force can't win any, then maybe their lawyers can.

Pete Mawse is an analyst with the Blartner Group."

News.com has had an interview with Chris Sontag, vice president of SCO. In this interview Chris Sontag describes about a new trial against all companies who are using "SCO code". When SCO decides to start a new trial, it shall be a trial against a large american computercompany.

Read all about this article at >>

http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...es/1017267.htm

Interesting update, here is a link of a translation from a German analyist that didn't have to signe the NDA http://forum.golem.de/phorum/read.ph...&i=1869&t=1716 .

Basicly the comments are the same but the dates are diffrent...but more interestingl all the date stamps have been removed so from looking at the code you just have to take SCO's word that their code was written first. :)

A kernelcoder has sent SCO a warning that in the kernelsource on the FTP-server from SCO are parts of code that he has written. He published it under GPL-License. You can find it back in a subdirectory of OpenLinux 3.1.1.

More information about this >> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10018

News.com had a new article about the SCO issue. Now they are trying to get 3 Billion from Big Blue. There were a few rather "intersting" parts of the article.

1. "However, the suit still makes no claims of copyright violation, which several independent attorneys believe could lead to stronger claims than that of trade secret infringement. After the Novell spat, SCO said it had not registered those copyrights. Independent attorneys say SCO must register the copyrights before basing legal action on them. "

Ummm..Earlier, SCO stated that they had all of the copyrights from Novel. Of course NOvel stated that was not the case but later on Novel changed their mind. So, SCO says they have the copyrights and are telling the world they have it, but they have no registered those copyrights yet?

2. "The suit specifically blames Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds for allowing proprietary Unix code into Linux. "As IBM executives know, a significant flaw of Linux is the inability and/or unwillingness of the Linux process manager, Linus Torvalds, to identify the intellectual property origins of contributed source code that comes in from those many different software developers. If source code is code copied from protected Unix code, there is no way for Linus Torvalds to identify that fact," the suit said. "As a result, a very significant amount of Unix protected code is currently found in Linux 2.4.x and Linux 2.5.x releases in violation of SCO's contractual rights and copyrights."

Torvalds said in an e-mail interview that the Linux developer community's process is transparent and called on SCO to reveal what its specific complaints are.

"It's not our side that isn't identifying the code. We'll work damn hard to identify everything they care to name," Torvalds said. "In fact, the source control system is out there in the public, and it identifies the source and the reason for patches," mentioning the BitKeeper repository he's used for the past two years to keep track of code in the heart, or kernel, of Linux.

Torvalds sided with IBM over what rights Big Blue has over its code. "IBM, as the original sole author to a particular piece of code, has full copyright rights, and they (not SCO) can use the code they wrote themselves in any way they see fit," Torvalds said. "



I thought that there were several different Linux source trees and that Torvaolds was just one of these. I also have read one the kernel mailing list that it is a somewhat drawn out process to get anything to be in his "official" source tree. That being said, I would suspect that there is ample documentation to show when a particular piece of code was entered into the Torvalds offical tree. I would be surprised if any Unix code was placed in there. Of course, I am not a kernel hacker and I don't follow the mailing list everyday so I could be wrong. Does anyone here know more about this process?

There is quite a bit of new info in this article. You can read it here.

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html

Sounds like they are shuffling the cups around.