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

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

[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@minnie.tuhs.org on behalf of Larry McVoy
Sent: Thu 5/29/2003 7:42 PM
To: tuhs at 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
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[TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

[Cornelius Keck]

> As far as I can see (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), most of
> the key players at SCO have changed over the last 12 months.  They
> ppear to have few engineers left, which is presumably one reason wh
> they gave the UnixWare and Linux code to outsiders to compare.  I'm

I'm not surprised. Considering SCO's pricing policy (ever looked at
that? They charge for every little bit of configuration above and be-
yond, say, Sony PS2 multiplayer environment, like extra users, more
memory, more processors, ..., uname it, they charge for it), the place
looks more and more like a dominion of marketing folks, and lawyers,
with the latter no longer being considered a defense entity against
unfriendly intrusion, but rather a business division, expected to
generate substantial revenue. If a company trades innovative head-
count (i.e. developers and engineers) for headcount unaware, or un-
familiar with the prime business objective, then the second rate
headcount will come up with many "interesting" schemes to justify
their continued employment.

I might be overdoing it just so. But then I have seen this happen
thrice during my career, so there is a pattern.

Thank you for listening to a not-too-old man rambling ;)

Regards,

Cornelius


-- 
                             Cornelius Keck
                 cornelius at keck.cx / ckeck at texoma.net

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

[Norman Wilson]

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

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

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Thursday, 29 May 2003 at 19:42:53 -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> I do not have knowledge of the code it is that SCO says infringes.

Which puts you in the same boat as the rest of us.

> 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?

It's certainly unlikely, agreed.  But SCO has done some unlikely
things recently.  You saw the public threat to sue Linus Torvalds
personally?

> I'd like to think I'm smarter than they are but I tend to doubt it,
> they have more experience.

As far as I can see (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong), most of
the key players at SCO have changed over the last 12 months.  They
appear to have few engineers left, which is presumably one reason why
they gave the UnixWare and Linux code to outsiders to compare.  I'm
not convinced of their understanding of the matters at hand.  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.  

Of course, a simple comparison doesn't show the origin of the code.
If it proves to have been lifted from Linux, they'll *really* look
stupid.

Greg
--
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
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[TUHS] Re: TUHS digest, Vol 1 #159 - 12 msgs

[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