[NCLUG] SCO full of more crap

[J. Paul Reed]

So it seems that SCO hasn't been very careful about who they give their
presentations to, and a full copy of the slides that spurred this
discussion are now available on Perens' website.

http://www.perens.com/SCO/SCOSlideShow.html

The relevant analysis, considering our recent discussion on IP issues is:

"Under SCO's theory, if any code created by a Unix licensee ever touches
Unix, SCO owns that code from then on, and can deny its creator the right
to make use of it for any other purpose.

SCO's legal theory fails, because they ignore the fact that if a work
doesn't contain some portion of SCO's copyrighted code, it is not a derived
work. This is especially glaring on slide 20, in which SCO claims ownership
of JFS, IBM's Journaling File System. The version of JFS used in Linux was
originally developed for the OS/2 operating system, and was later ported to
both Unix System V and Linux. SCO's claims fail in a similar manner for the
other products they mention: RCU or Read Copy Update, software that keeps
processors in a multi-processor system from interfering with each other,
was developed by Sequent, a company later purchased by IBM. Sequent
developed RCU under Dynix, a Unix-derived operating system. They later
removed RCU from Dynix - separating it from any code owned by SCO - and
added it to Linux. Similarly, SGI's XFS, the eXtent FileSystem, was
separated from IRIX, a Unix-derived operating system, and ported to Linux.

SCO's contention is that copyrighted software can never be separated, that
any code created by a Unix licensee that ever touches SCO Unix or is even
loosely based on Unix is entirely SCO's from that moment on, and can never
be used for another purpose by its creator without authorization from SCO.
SCO's contention goes against any reasonable understanding of the
boundaries of intellectual property. It's unlikely that it would survive a
court room."

Couple of interesting things to note:

-- The slides only refer to "2.4+" kernels
-- The other "damning" example of infringement? The Berkeley Packet
   Filter... which SCO DOESN'T OWN. Their pattern-recognition team
   correctly found matching code, but it's because they were *both* derived
   from the BPF, which is BSD licensed.

Sean: since you were asking, there seems to be an unofficial movement to
call the FTC and lodge complaints against SCO; supposedly, they track
trends in complaints, so enough people complaining may actually do
something about this; there's an informative comment on /. with phone
numbers, the guy's experience, and what he said.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=75499&cid=6751095

I think I'll be giving that number a ring tomorrow.

Later,
Paul
------------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Paul Reed -- 0xDF8708F8 || preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
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