TUHS

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by Wesley Parish

I came across this: cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/bsdi/930303.ruling.txt 17 U.S.C. 101. Version 32V source code has now been distributed, without notice, to literally thousands of licensees. Consequently, Plaintiff can have no valid copyright on 32V unless it can fit within one of the statutory or common law escape provisions. The three statutory escape provisions are listed in section 405(a). These provisions relieve a copyright owner from the harsh consequences of noticeless publication if the owner (i) omitted the notice from a "relatively small number of copies;" (ii) registers the work within five years of publication, and then makes a "reasonable effort" to add notices to the noticeless copies already distributed; or (iii) proves that a third party omitted, notice in violation of an express agreement in writing 17 U.S.C 405(a)(1)-(3). Plaintiff cannot avail itself of any of these provisions. Notice was omitted from thousands of copies of 32V; no contractual agreements require the licensees to affix notice; Plaintiff failed to copyright 32V until 1992, well over five years after 32V was published; and Plaintiff has not yet made reasonable efforts to add notices to the many noticeless publications of 32V. Consequently, Plaintiff must try to fit within the common-law doctrine of limited publication. and I felt like asking a few questions in relation to Sys III - was it copyrighted? When? And has SCO's publication of said Sys III on its Ancient Unix web site created the presumption that SCO has no further interest in Sys III? Wesley Parish -- Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

22 years, 1 month

the SCO/Novell contract

by Kenneth Stailey

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1013229.html Contract illuminates Novell, SCO spat By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 4, 2003, 3:01 PM PT A 1995 contract sheds light on the conflicting Unix ownership claims by Novell and SCO Group, with SCO receiving broad rights to the operating system but Novell retaining copyrights and patents. According to a copy of the contract obtained by CNET News.com, Novell sold "all rights and ownership of Unix and UnixWare" to the SCO Group's predecessor, the Santa Cruz Operation. However, the asset purchase agreement, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically excludes "all copyrights" and "all patents" from the purchase. "This agreement is kind of murky...You end up with a lot of questions, to put it mildly," said Mark Radcliffe, an intellectual property attorney with law firm Gray Cary. While the contract squarely leaves the copyright with Novell, a section that gives to SCO "all claims...against any parties relating to any right, property or asset included in the (Unix) business" could be interpreted to give SCO the right to enforce the copyright, Radcliffe said. "The question is, even though (Novell) didn't assign the intellectual property (to SCO), did (Novell) assign the rights to enforce the patents and copyrights?" The Unix ownership issue is central to a debate about whether companies can be taken to court for using Linux. On May 14, SCO claimed in letters sent to 1,500 of the world's largest companies that using Linux could open them to legal liability because Unix source code has been copied into Linux. That copying, if proven and illegal, could violate Unix copyrights and the independent spirit of the open-source movement that creates Linux, but the contract indicates SCO won't have a simple time relying on Unix copyrights in such a case. A week after SCO's letter, Novell said it never sold SCO the Unix copyrights and patents and that SCO's actions could bring legal action on itself. "We believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership interest whatsoever in those copyrights," Novell Chief Executive Jack Messman said in a letter to SCO. The Unix ownership debate grew from SCO's $1 billion lawsuit against IBM, alleging Big Blue breached its contract with SCO and misappropriated SCO's trade secrets by moving Unix intellectual property into Linux. IBM denies the claims. SCO didn't immediately respond to questions about how the contract supports its claims to rights of copyright enforcement, but company Chief Executive Darl McBride last week said the contract had "conflicting statements." "It doesn't make sense. How would you transfer the product but not have the copyright attached? That would be like transferring a book but only getting the cover," McBride said. Novell continues to disagree with SCO. "It's pretty clear that patents and copyrights were excluded and not included in the business as it's described (in the contract), so we don't believe SCO would have copyright and patent enforcement rights," Hal Thayer, vice president of communications for Novell, said Wednesday. Novell is basing future operating system products on Linux, and open-source advocates say they are reassured by Messman's words that the company won't press its own copyright claims. "Novell is an ardent supporter of Linux and the open-source development community," Messman has said. "It's difficult to imagine any scenario in which we'd bring Unix copyright infringement action against Linux users. We certainly don't have any plans to do any such thing...and we wouldn't have undertaken this whole call to SCO to prove their claims if that was the road we wanted to pursue," Thayer said. The 1995 contract appears to give Novell the edge in the copyright debate, said John Ferrell, an intellectual property attorney with Carr and Ferrell, who reviewed the contract. "This would support Novell's contention that SCO does not own the copyrights and does not have the right to litigate" a copyright infringement case, Ferrell said. However, he said, the contract does indicate SCO could pursue a case that a Unix licensee breached its contract. But the contract is odd, Ferrell said. "It's very unusual to have the transfer of a software program and not have the rights of copyright transferred as well," he said. SCO vehemently argues that it has copyright enforcement rights, but in any case, it doesn't need the Unix copyright to go after Linux users. "I think it's perfectly clear we have the rights to enforce copyright claims," McBride said in an interview after Novell challenged SCO's Linux actions. But more likely than a copyright case, would be one based on breach of contract, he said. "The letter went to 1,500 large companies around the world, the majority of which all have (Unix) System V licenses with us...We do have sublicense rights," McBride said. "They sign up for the fact that they will not misappropriate the code." The sublicenses come through Unix purchases made with direct Unix licensees such as Silicon Graphics, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, he said. But the absence of copyright and patent claims in SCO's lawsuit against IBM is telling, Gray Cary's Radcliffe said. Copyright and patent claims can make a strong case. "If they had the rights to enforce the copyrights, how come that didn't show up in the IBM suit?" Radcliffe asked. "It's very weird they would bring a lawsuit on trade secret (misappropriation) and unfair competition and not put in copyrights and patents. Those are the strongest rights. Particularly with IBM, you don't go out and say, 'I'm not going to take the elephant-hunting rifle with me, I'm just going to take my .22-caliber.'" SCO has said it has the option to include copyright claims later. But while it's said Unix code was copied into Linux, it hasn't yet said who it believes is responsible. SCO says it will show proof of the copying later this month to some neutral parties. SCO's suit mentions concepts and methods, but not copyrights: "It is not possible for Linux to rapidly reach Unix performance standards for complete enterprise functionality without the misappropriation of Unix code, methods or concepts to achieve such performance and coordination by a larger developer such as IBM." Radcliffe said copying methods and concepts are much weaker evidence than copying code. "If they did enough due diligence to figure out there were concepts there, how the heck did they miss that there was actual code copying?" he asked. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

22 years, 1 month

RE: [TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

by Ian King

There's an old joke: If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If both are against you, call the other attorney names. It's possible this is an elaborate tactic to step on IBM's feet until IBM apologizes - see "The Mouse That Roared". It could be that the issues are so convoluted, the SCO folks are very crafty (and think they can irritate Big Blue enough that IBM will pay them to go away). But it is indeed possible that they are really this clueless. There are many examples of businesses that once held pre-eminent positions, layed low by bonehead business decisions. In any event, baseless lawsuits are a common business tool these days. And in a country where you can become independently wealthy by spilling coffee in your lap, and you can lose the popular vote by a large margin but be appointed to the highest office in the land by your daddy's Supreme Court - is any legal maneuver really a surprise anymore? I printed out my "ancient UNIX" license (I got a no-charge license), I'm not erasing my RK05s yet. :-) -- Ian NOTE: The above is my personal ranting, and should not be construed to reflect the policies or opinions of my employer. ________________________________ From: tuhs-admin(a)minnie.tuhs.org on behalf of Larry McVoy Sent: Thu 5/29/2003 7:42 PM To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org Subject: [TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs > SCO is blustering more and more as the open source community exposes > them for the fruads that they have become. In the for what it is worth department, I happen to know that this stuff is more complex than it seems. For instance, I am pretty sure that ATT should have won their lawsuit over the BSD stuff and if you doubt that I'd suggest that you go compare the UFS code against the 32v or v7 code. bmap() is a good place to look. Any suggestions that that was completely rewritten are patently false, at least in my opinion. I'm a file system guy, I've done a lot of work in UFS, I'm intimately familiar with the code. In fact, I defended UFS against LFS when Kirk wouldn't (LFS is a friggin' joke, any file system hacker knows that the allocation policy is 90% of the file system). I do not have knowledge of the code it is that SCO says infringes. And I think that SCO is about as astute as I am in terms of public relations (we both tend to be our own worst enemies and I thought I was without peer in that department :-) But I suspect that there is at least some merit to what they are claiming. I have to believe that nobody is stupid enough to have zero data and jump out in public like they are doing. That's just way too far over the top. Anything is possible I guess, but doesn't it seem just a little unlikely that a corporation would commit that public a suicide? I'll probably be proved wrong but I'm a CEO, running a small company, much smaller than SCO, and there is no way I'd stick my neck out that far with no data to back it up. I'd like to think I'm smarter than they are but I tend to doubt it, they have more experience. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm _______________________________________________ TUHS mailing list TUHS(a)minnie.tuhs.org http://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

22 years, 1 month

Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

by Larry McVoy

> SCO is blustering more and more as the open source community exposes > them for the fruads that they have become. In the for what it is worth department, I happen to know that this stuff is more complex than it seems. For instance, I am pretty sure that ATT should have won their lawsuit over the BSD stuff and if you doubt that I'd suggest that you go compare the UFS code against the 32v or v7 code. bmap() is a good place to look. Any suggestions that that was completely rewritten are patently false, at least in my opinion. I'm a file system guy, I've done a lot of work in UFS, I'm intimately familiar with the code. In fact, I defended UFS against LFS when Kirk wouldn't (LFS is a friggin' joke, any file system hacker knows that the allocation policy is 90% of the file system). I do not have knowledge of the code it is that SCO says infringes. And I think that SCO is about as astute as I am in terms of public relations (we both tend to be our own worst enemies and I thought I was without peer in that department :-) But I suspect that there is at least some merit to what they are claiming. I have to believe that nobody is stupid enough to have zero data and jump out in public like they are doing. That's just way too far over the top. Anything is possible I guess, but doesn't it seem just a little unlikely that a corporation would commit that public a suicide? I'll probably be proved wrong but I'm a CEO, running a small company, much smaller than SCO, and there is no way I'd stick my neck out that far with no data to back it up. I'd like to think I'm smarter than they are but I tend to doubt it, they have more experience. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm

22 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

Greg Lehey: For example, last year Caldera released "ancient UNIX" under a BSD-style license, but now they're claiming it never happened. Maybe they don't know about the company history. And if the code in dispute is derived from ancient UNIX, there'll be egg on their face. ===== If the code in dispute is derived from an ancient UNIX covered by the Jan 2002 free license, and it doesn't clearly say so somewhere, there is certainly egg and chips on someone's face. Said license imposes few conditions, but one is that Caldera's copyright must be maintained and the notice `This product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc.' placed in `any advertising materials.' Of course, if the code comes from V6 and those notices are present and Caldera still claims it's stolen, that's another basket of eggs. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

22 years, 1 month

The REEL reasons for the SCO vs. IBM affair

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Hello folks. I've been watching this whole SCO vs. IBM assault on Linux thing and here are my thoughts. I would not surprised a bit if it turns out that this idea was conceived somewhere inside Microsoft, or in the White House, in the Pentagon, or even at Area 51. This is about world control. A certain group of enormous power has been ruling this planet and holding it in slavery for the past 4000 years. They are the ones in control today. They control the world through their control of globalised imperial capitalism, total control of all media, and mind control achieved by controlling all information input into human minds. Control of computing and information resources is obviously of vital importance to them in this day and age. It is they who invented M$ Weendoze, probably the most effective brainwashing device since the Bible. It is really Weendoze that keeps them in power. There are many activists fighting against this shadow government, but their efforts are in vain for as long as they use Weendoze. Fighting the shadow government while using their OS is like going on a duel and having your opponent load your gun for you. This is precisely why the shadow government is acting so arrogantly and seemingly naively. Many conspiracy researchers have wondered how come if this shadow govt is so powerful and obviously wants to remain in control, why aren't they assassinating us or something to stop our efforts to defeat them. And I think I know the answer now. They government is not assassinating conspiracy researchers en masse because the vast majority of them use Weendoze and praise Bill Gates. Thus while thinking that they are fighting the shadow government, they actually support it. And now it seems like the shadowy powers have begun to *really* fear Linux. Because Linux more than anything poses the greatest threat to their power. It does because if all those conspiracy researchers and anti-shadow govt freedom fighters who are already out there happen to switch to Windows to Linux, the probability of which rises proportionally as Linux gains more and more use, then bye-bye shadow government. *That* is what they fear. And that is why they have undertaken this ultrasecret covert anti-Linux operation. Just my thoughts. MS P.S. Too bad that you've just missed Conspiracy Con 2003 last weekend, but they have them every year. But there is also the companion conference, Bay Area UFO Expo held in September, where they also talk a lot about conspiracies, as these conspiracies are ultimately extraterrestrial. If anyone is interested in this I strongly recommend going to the Expo this September. I'll be there if anyone wants to meet me.

22 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] SCO vs. IBM: NOVELL steps up to the plate

by Wesley Parish

On Friday 30 May 2003 11:50 am, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 29 May 2003 at 6:33:54 -0600, M. Warner Losh wrote: > > In message: <BAFBB8B1.118%rob(a)vetsystems.com> > > > > Robert Tillyard <rob(a)vetsystems.com> writes: > >> I believe the legal action is over breach on contract with IBM and > >> not on copyright issues. > > > > All of SCO's statements to the court have been contractual. Their > > statements to the press have been inflated to include things that > > aren't actually alledged in the court filings. > > What's not very clear here is that there seem to be two issues. The > IBM issue is, as you say, a contractual one which about which they > have been remarkably vague. The suspension of Linux distribution is a > different matter. From http://www.lemis.com/grog/sco.html: > > On Tuesday, 27 May 2003, I spoke to Kieran O'Shaughnessy, managing > director of SCO Australia. He told me that SCO had entrusted three > independent companies to compare the code of the UnixWare and Linux > kernels. All three had come back pointing to significant > occurrences of common code ("UnixWare code", as he put it) in both > kernels. > > In view of the long and varied history of UNIX, I wondered whether > the code in question might have been legally transferred from an > older version of UNIX to Linux, so I asked him if he really meant > UnixWare and not System V.4. He stated that it was specifically > UnixWare 7. > > >> But if it turns out the IBM is guilty of lifting SCO code and > >> putting it into Linux I think SCO does have the right to get a bit > >> upset about it, after all I wouldn't be to happy if I had to > >> compete with a product that's just about free and contains code > >> that I wrote. > > > > That's the rub. Do they, in point of fact, actually have any code > > they own the Copyright to or the patent rights to? > > Of course they have lots of code with their own copyright. The > release of JFS was one example. Probably the majority of AIX was > developed by IBM, not by AT&T. It's rather similar to the issue with > 4BSD in the early 90s: with a little bit of work you could probably > replace the entire AT&T code in AIX and have a system which did not > require an SCO license. I would say that that is entirely likely. AIX was developed by IBM for IBM-specific machines running in IBM-style environments, and I can imagine that SysVRx just _doesn't_ _cut_ _the_ _mustard_. So, SCO's latching on the IBM for Monterey - RS-6000 was 64-bit, or am I getting confused? - probably gave SCO much more than it gave IBM. So ironically, if IBM donated stuff to Monterey under the terms of the agreement and later incorporated the same stuff into Linux, it _could_ look as if they had taken stuff from SysVRx/Unixware - stuff that SCO had never had the opportunity to develop if it hadn't been for Monterey and IBM's pre-existing expertise. Just some thoughts - but if that is so, I can see why IBM's not getting too het up about the whole muck-up. Wesley Parish > If you mean "is there IBM copyright code in Linux?", I think the > answer is again yes, but it's under the GPL or possibly IPL, IBM's > attempt at a compromise between proprietary licenses and the GPL. I > think they've given up on the IPL now. > > For what it's worth, I'd be astounded if SCO's claims were found to be > true. > > Greg -- Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?" You ask, "What is the most important thing?" Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

22 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] SCO vs. IBM: NOVELL steps up to the plate

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

Interesting. I suggest everyone interested in this fracas read the whole scoop at (to repeat Kenneth Stailey's pointer) http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/05/pr03033.html Here's a question of interest not to the Linux community but to the TUHS one: if, as Novell now claim, the 1995 agreement didn't convey the UNIX copyrights to SCO, under what right did SCO issue the Ancient UNIX Source Code agreements, whether the restrictive version of early 1998 or the do-as-you-like Caldera letter of early 2002? Are those agreements really valid? Norman Wilson Toronto ON

22 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] SCO vs. IBM: NOVELL steps up to the plate

by norman＠nose.cs.utoronto.ca

M. Warner Losh: There's another article that is saying that there are 10-15 line snippets scattered all through the kernel. Give me a break. That claim is so absurd as to be not credible on its face. I can see one or two files, maybe stretching my disbelief to its limits, but I can't see anything more pervasive than that. I agree that it sounds unlikely, and I won't give it much credit until SCO makes its evidence generally available. But it's by no means absurd. Suppose SCO invented some whizzy data structure and associated code conventions to afford especially efficient interprocessor locks. That could show up in fragments scattered throughout the kernel, and the idea itself could in fact be valuable intellectual property and the fragments a demonstration that the idea was stolen. Or suppose the issue at hand was a particular way to implement a file system switch. I was involved in adding such a thing to an old-fashioned kernel myself; it touches many little pieces of code all over the kernel that happen to do certain things to or with in-core i-nodes. If I was worried that someone had stolen such work wholesale, part of what I would look for would indeed be scattered fragments. As I say, there's no useful evidence on view at all, therefore there is no useful evidence that what I am describing is what the fuss is about. Norman Wilson Toronto ON

22 years, 1 month

where to find source to pack(1)/unpack(1)

by Kenneth Stailey

Hi, I have a cont.a.z I would like to extract. When I run it through Solaris unpack(1) there are no complaints but then I go to unarchive it with either my 3BSD derived ar11 port or Warren's 2.9BSD newoldar and get: $ file cont.a cont.a: old PDP-11 archive $ ar11 tv cont.a rwx---r-- 2/0 3505 Aug 20 17:07 1976 alog.mat rw----r-- 2/0 273 Jan 3 05:14 1978 assem rwx---r-- 2/0 6332 Aug 20 17:07 1976 atan.mat r-s--x-w- 9/49170995977 Oct 22 01:48 1974 1 1 1 1 1 ar11: phase error on 1 1 1 1 1 Same thing with newoldar. I'm thinking Solaris unpack was incompatible with the pack that was used to make the cont.a.z. Possibly endian issues. I go poking around for pack(1) in V7 and PWB and 2.11BSD but can't find anything. Any ideas? Thanks, Ken __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com

22 years, 1 month

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