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

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

[Douglas McIlroy]

As a bit-part expert witness for the other side of the SCO case, I saw
hundreds of pages of evidence in the form of side-by-side code
comparison. As I recall, the vast majority of highlighted
correspondences were small snippets, often rearranged. I didn't
interact with the lawyers enough to form a solid opinion about where
this stood on the spectrum of coincidence to fair use to plagiarism.
It certainly wasn't wholesale copying. I do not recall being asked to
opine on whether trade secrets had been stolen.

Apropos of rearranged snippets, one of the diff algorithms I
experimented with in the mid-70s identified rearrangements. I
abandoned it because real life code contains lots of similar lines, so
many in PDP-11 assembler programs as to suggest that these programs
are largely permutations of each other. The phenomenon is much less
common in C, but still present; witness the prevalence of code like
      int i, n;
      for(i=0; i<n; i++) {
The phenomenon may have been afoot in the SCO evidence.

In regard to trade secrets, I was surprised when I moved from Unix at
Bell Labs to Linux at Dartmouth and found calendar(1) to be completely
rewritten, but with logic absolutely identical to the original version
I wrote at the Labs. That was so idiosyncratic that the identity of
the two could not have been an accident.

Doug

[TUHS] RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO

[Will Senn]

It happened in September, apparently, but is only now making the rounds. 
Darl McBride, known for taking everybody and his brother to court over 
stolen code, has passed away.

https://fossforce.com/2024/11/once-linuxs-biggest-enemy-darl-mcbride-dies-and-nobody-notices/

I actually remember liking SCO back in the day, before the company 
leadership went dark-side. These days, we get to play with ancient unix 
cuz of their license. What a topsy turvy world.

Is there a concise summary of the SCO suits and fallout out there? I've 
seen a lot on the AT&T side of things, but other than having lived 
through it, I've not seen much on what eventually happened and why it 
all sort of just dissappeared.

Will

[TUHS] Re: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Sunday,  3 November 2024 at 19:17:03 -0600, Will Senn wrote:
> It happened in September, apparently, but is only now making the rounds.
> Darl McBride, known for taking everybody and his brother to court over
> stolen code, has passed away.
>
> https://fossforce.com/2024/11/once-linuxs-biggest-enemy-darl-mcbride-dies-and-nobody-notices/

Oh.  As you say, RIP.

> I actually remember liking SCO back in the day, before the company
> leadership went dark-side. These days, we get to play with ancient unix cuz
> of their license.

Yes.  SCO really changed between 2002 and 2003.

> Is there a concise summary of the SCO suits and fallout out there? I've seen
> a lot on the AT&T side of things, but other than having lived through it,
> I've not seen much on what eventually happened and why it all sort of just
> dissappeared.

Not quite what you're looking for, but at the time I kept quite a bit
of information at http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/

It's a bit of a mess, and a lot of the links have atrophied, but some
of it could be interesting.  Potentially the reference to BSD code in
the fossforce article could be related to
http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.php

Greg
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[TUHS] Re: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO

[Wesley Parish]

I've just checked, and ibiblio has retained the Groklaw blog, static 
now, over the past few years. It was perhaps the best dissection of the 
case from a legal point of view:

http://groklaw.ibiblio.org/

http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.org/articlesonly.php

though it seems that only the last pages have in fact made it to 
ibiblio. You may have to browse the Wayback Machine for the earlier ones.

Wesley Parish

On 4/11/24 15:31, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Sunday,  3 November 2024 at 19:17:03 -0600, Will Senn wrote:
>> It happened in September, apparently, but is only now making the rounds.
>> Darl McBride, known for taking everybody and his brother to court over
>> stolen code, has passed away.
>>
>> https://fossforce.com/2024/11/once-linuxs-biggest-enemy-darl-mcbride-dies-and-nobody-notices/
> Oh.  As you say, RIP.
>
>> I actually remember liking SCO back in the day, before the company
>> leadership went dark-side. These days, we get to play with ancient unix cuz
>> of their license.
> Yes.  SCO really changed between 2002 and 2003.
>
>> Is there a concise summary of the SCO suits and fallout out there? I've seen
>> a lot on the AT&T side of things, but other than having lived through it,
>> I've not seen much on what eventually happened and why it all sort of just
>> dissappeared.
> Not quite what you're looking for, but at the time I kept quite a bit
> of information at http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/
>
> It's a bit of a mess, and a lot of the links have atrophied, but some
> of it could be interesting.  Potentially the reference to BSD code in
> the fossforce article could be related to
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.php
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

[TUHS] Re: RIP Darl McBride former CEO of SCO

[Marc Rochkind]

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Many opinions of the evidence, especially on Groklaw, but also elsewhere,
including here. But none of these people offering opinions have really seen
the evidence, which has been sealed. Mostly people talk about "evidence "
offered by Darl at the start. But NONE of the actual evidence came from
him. It was researched by a team of expert witnesses on both sides, of
which I was one.

On Mon, Nov 4, 2024, 8:23 AM Wesley Parish <wobblygong@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've just checked, and ibiblio has retained the Groklaw blog, static
> now, over the past few years. It was perhaps the best dissection of the
> case from a legal point of view:
>
> http://groklaw.ibiblio.org/
>
> http://groklawstatic.ibiblio.org/articlesonly.php
>
> though it seems that only the last pages have in fact made it to
> ibiblio. You may have to browse the Wayback Machine for the earlier ones.
>
> Wesley Parish
>
> On 4/11/24 15:31, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > On Sunday,  3 November 2024 at 19:17:03 -0600, Will Senn wrote:
> >> It happened in September, apparently, but is only now making the rounds.
> >> Darl McBride, known for taking everybody and his brother to court over
> >> stolen code, has passed away.
> >>
> >>
> https://fossforce.com/2024/11/once-linuxs-biggest-enemy-darl-mcbride-dies-and-nobody-notices/
> > Oh.  As you say, RIP.
> >
> >> I actually remember liking SCO back in the day, before the company
> >> leadership went dark-side. These days, we get to play with ancient unix
> cuz
> >> of their license.
> > Yes.  SCO really changed between 2002 and 2003.
> >
> >> Is there a concise summary of the SCO suits and fallout out there? I've
> seen
> >> a lot on the AT&T side of things, but other than having lived through
> it,
> >> I've not seen much on what eventually happened and why it all sort of
> just
> >> dissappeared.
> > Not quite what you're looking for, but at the time I kept quite a bit
> > of information at http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/
> >
> > It's a bit of a mess, and a lot of the links have atrophied, but some
> > of it could be interesting.  Potentially the reference to BSD code in
> > the fossforce article could be related to
> > http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.php
> >
> > Greg
> > --
> > Sent from my desktop computer.
> > Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> > See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> > This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> > reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php
>

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

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Monday,  4 November 2024 at 10:35:40 -0700, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> Many opinions of the evidence, especially on Groklaw, but also
> elsewhere, including here. But none of these people offering
> opinions have really seen the evidence,

I think that depends on what SCO (and when) claimed as evidence.  They
did present slides of obfuscated code (replacing ASCII with Greek
letters in the assumption that nobody could recognize the original and
maybe that the code was too precious to show in the orignal).  I can't
find that any more, and maybe its on one of the many dead links on
http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/.  But
http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.php refers to it and
identifies the errors in the claims.

> Mostly people talk about "evidence " offered by Darl at the
> start. But NONE of the actual evidence came from him. It was
> researched by a team of expert witnesses on both sides, of which I
> was one.

I'd be very interested to hear what else they presented.  Did your
conclusions agree with mine?

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

[Marc Rochkind]

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By evidence, I mean evidence that was part of the legal case(s). Material
presented as a part of a marketing, sales, or public relations effort is
not evidence in this sense. I don't know what Darl McBride and SCO were
doing here, as I didn't work on that and only met Darl for 30 sec. (He came
over to say hello to me in a conference room, and then the lawyers came
over and told him to get away from me, for fear that he would pollute the
waters. I worked extensively with his brother, Kevin.) My understanding is
that SCO was trying to get money from Linux licenses of some sort. The
Linux community freaked out.

There were two principal legal cases. The first alleged copyright
infringement in the development of Linux. I'm not sure who exactly was
being sued, since I didn't work on this case. People tended to think that
"Linux" was being sued, but I don't think there was any such entity like
that. The second case, which I worked on, was about breach of contract
between IBM and AT&T, and SCO I guess took on the rights and obligations of
AT&T. This second case was extraordinarily complicated and, inasmuch as
most everything about it was sealed, Groklaw and people in general never
did understand what the issues were. Which, of course, didn't serve as an
impediment for them offering up opinions about it. This second case started
about 2005 and ended about two or three years ago, so it went on for about
15 years. The copyright case I think ended when it was determined that the
copyrights in question didn't belong to SCO.

The way the copyright case ended doesn't mean that Linux development didn't
violate copyrights. I'm pretty sure that it did, based on conversations
with a friend of mine who was a technical expert on that part of the case.
One might ask, how could Torvalds and all those Linux developers violate
System V copyrights since they had never seen System V code? The answer is
that corporations such as IBM also contributed to Linux, and those
corporations did have such access.

If one wants to take all this seriously and differentiate between what one
knows to be true, on the one hand, and what one thinks is true or wants to
be true, on the other hand, then I think one would realize that nobody
outside of the legal teams knows anything about the case. As I said, I know
a whole lot about part of the case(s) and next to nothing about the other
parts. Groklaw used to reprint redacted documents that had been released by
the court, a couple of which I wrote, but ignored the fact that they were
redacted and that all the juicy parts were missing. Generally, if anything
was important, it was sealed.

I just a few minutes ago glanced at the Wikipedia article "SCO–Linux
disputes" and it's not bad. It does pretty much explain the breach of
contract case. There is a section titled "IBM code in Linux" that lists
some technologies (e.g., JFS, RCU), and that's the area that I worked on. I
wrote a program that could in effect do a "diff" on entire operating
systems, hundreds of thousands of lines of code. It was amazing to see the
results. Even the attorneys who were doing the suing were amazed. (Whether
all my discoveries represented actual breach of contract is a legal
question, not a technical one, and was therefore well outside the scope of
my work.)

Marc

On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 3:50 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:

> On Monday,  4 November 2024 at 10:35:40 -0700, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> > Many opinions of the evidence, especially on Groklaw, but also
> > elsewhere, including here. But none of these people offering
> > opinions have really seen the evidence,
>
> I think that depends on what SCO (and when) claimed as evidence.  They
> did present slides of obfuscated code (replacing ASCII with Greek
> letters in the assumption that nobody could recognize the original and
> maybe that the code was too precious to show in the orignal).  I can't
> find that any more, and maybe its on one of the many dead links on
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/.  But
> http://www.lemis.com/grog/SCO/code-comparison.php refers to it and
> identifies the errors in the claims.
>
> > Mostly people talk about "evidence " offered by Darl at the
> > start. But NONE of the actual evidence came from him. It was
> > researched by a team of expert witnesses on both sides, of which I
> > was one.
>
> I'd be very interested to hear what else they presented.  Did your
> conclusions agree with mine?
>
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php
>


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

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Monday,  4 November 2024 at 17:05:45 -0700, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> By evidence, I mean evidence that was part of the legal case(s). Material
> presented as a part of a marketing, sales, or public relations effort is
> not evidence in this sense.

OK, that makes sense.  Did it contradict the "evidence" that we
mortals saw?  That wouldn't have made sense.

> The way the copyright case ended doesn't mean that Linux development
> didn't violate copyrights. I'm pretty sure that it did, based on
> conversations with a friend of mine who was a technical expert on
> that part of the case.

Yes, I established that in the article that I wrote.  The real
question is how serious the violation was.  In the case (malloc()) it
was put in the Linux tree by somebody at SGI, and its use as
"evidence" appeared to show that System V was still using a very old,
inefficient memory allocation scheme.  More egg on SCO's face than
anything.

> One might ask, how could Torvalds and all those Linux developers
> violate System V copyrights since they had never seen System V code?
> The answer is that corporations such as IBM also contributed to
> Linux, and those corporations did have such access.

I worked for IBM's Linux Technology Centre at the time.  Everything
was very encapsulated.  I had the task of writing a JFS 1
implementation for Linux.  We already had JFS 2, but JFS 1 was a very
different beast.  It was written by IBM, so you'd think that I would
have had access to the sources.  No such luck.  All I got was the
header files.  This was before the SCO debacle, so it wasn't a
consequence of that.  I greatly doubt that any System V code came into
Linux via IBM.

> I just a few minutes ago glanced at the Wikipedia article "SCO–Linux
> disputes" and it's not bad. It does pretty much explain the breach of
> contract case. There is a section titled "IBM code in Linux" that lists
> some technologies (e.g., JFS, RCU), and that's the area that I
> worked on.

The JFS would have been JFS 2, of course--see above.  I can't comment
further.

My understanding had been that RCU originated in Linux (Paul
McKenney).  Following up, though, there's a patent
(https://patents.google.com/patent/US5442758) to this effect that puts
him in second place behind John Slingwine, and it started off at
Sequent.  I discussed the matter with Paul at the time, and he
dismissed the use of System V code out of hand.  Knowing Paul, I
believe him.  What level of code similarity did you find there?

> I wrote a program that could in effect do a "diff" on entire
> operating systems, hundreds of thousands of lines of code. It was
> amazing to see the results.

Did it establish the direction of the transfer?  The other "evidence"
that was published showed SCO claiming that the Berkeley Packet Filter
was part of System V (which I suppose it was), but of course it went
from BSD to System V, and presumably SCO had removed the Berkeley
license header.  And in the RCU case, I could imagine that some of the
RCU code found its way from Sequent to System V.

Greg
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