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Darl McBride Interview By Dan Farber and Charles Cooper July 2003 - transcript |
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Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:08 PM EST
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We have received permission from Dan Farber to provide a transcript of a July 22, 2003 interview with Darl McBride, CEO and President of the SCO Group, by Dan Farber and Charlie Cooper of news.com. We have tried to be accurate, as always, and any mistakes are ours, not those of Mr. Farber, Mr. Cooper, Mr. McBride, or News.com. If you see any errors, do tell us, so we can perfect the transcript.
Our sincere thanks for allowing us to make this transcript available. You can find the video at this page [originally it was here] and then scrolling down. Thanks too, to the transcription group for working so hard to make this available. By far the most interesting statement is McBride's characterization of Novell's copyright position, in light of later evidence that came to light, the Novell correspondence.
Because of what we now know, it's also telling to read the description of the vast copyright claims they began by asserting and comparing those claims to the very narrow and limited claims of today. I see that from day one SCO was talking not so much about Linux accepting stolen copyrighted code but about code SCO lays claim to under their derivative code legal theory, but presented in such a way as to make people think they were talking about Linus being asleep at the wheel. Oh, and their header file claims, which have been debunked thoroughly. The understanding back then was that they were saying that there were flaws in the Linux code process. We all spent considerable time and effort to prove that there was no line-for-line stolen code in Linux, and that must have made them laugh, but in the end it has only strengthened the perception that the Linux open source system worked quite well indeed, with the result that there is no improper code, in the stolen code sense, and that the only way to attack it was to invent a new legal theory that no one else has ever gone by and then accusing Linux, or more precisely IBM, of violating this novel theory of what belongs to SCO. The final interesting point from this interview is McBride's obvious misunderstanding of how the GPL works. When he makes the assertion that "Because we were distributing Linux does not mean we had donated code to Linux", he reveals he does not accurately grasp that their distribution triggered the GPL, no escape, no excuses.
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Dan Farber (DF):
Darl, Thanks for being here.
McBride:
Hey, thank you guys. It's good to be here on your show today.
DF:
You know it's been about 4 months since you launched your
lawsuit against IBM. What precisely is the status of the lawsuit and
what are those thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers doing at this point?
McBride:
Yeah, good question. The lawsuit was launched back in March. It was
after a period of several months where we had found intellectual property
violations and contract problems. We launched the lawsuit on March 7.
We had a hundred-day notice in place at the time we put the lawsuit in
place that if we did not have these contract issues resolved then we
would in fact be canceling or revoking the AIX license. On June 13, we
in fact did revoke the AIX license agreement as per our contract rights.
With respect to the broader lawsuit that was filed on March 7, it is now
moving into discovery and we're going to the next phases. So basically
the legal teams on both sides are digging up information and, you know,
we're going from there.
DF:
Well, There seems to be some alleged code that's offending that is
purportedly the property of SCO through all the rights they've gained
in acquiring those versions of Unix. What precisely is the code that
you're talking about? We've seen some stories where it's 80 lines here
and
it's just the comments. I mean how can you have a lawsuit like this
and not be more forthcoming about what the offending code is?
McBride:
Right, so when we started off this problem with IBM, it was very clear
that IBM had donated things improperly into the open source community.
That was the basis for our lawsuit against IBM, among other things,
but that was the primary driver.
And during the period of time shortly after filing the lawsuit until
recently when they came back and responded, we had a 60 day period
there where we turned 3 different teams of code programmers loose
on the codebases of AIX, Unix and Linux. And they came back with -
independently - we had the three teams - one was a set of high-end
mathematicians, rocket scientist, modeling type guys. Another team was
based on standard programmer types. A third team were really spiffy on
agent technology and how all of this technology was built in the first
place. So the three teams came back independently and validated that
there wasn't just a little bit of code showing up inside of Linux from
our Unix intellectual property base. There was actually a mountain
of code showing up in there. Now if you look at the types of code,
we really see them in three different buckets.
DF:
But, Where does all this code come from before. I mean Unix goes
back to 1960. We're talking about code that could be as old as 40-some
years old.
McBride:
Sure.
DF:
So what's the prior art that you're going after at this point?
McBride:
Good questions. So in 1996 our company paid, or in 1995 I guess
it was, we paid more than 150 million dollars for the rights to Unix
from Novell. So you could ask the same questions, what rights did we
buy then? There very clearly are rights that are well beyond anything
that's been out there in the public domain. You know, just because there
have been versions or different iterations of Unix out there doesn't
mean the proprietary or commercialized Unix has been in that bucket.
So, what we have is the main code base of Unix. We have the source
tree here of System V if you will, that SCO owns, and then what you
have are multiple branches off from that tree that go into many of the
OEM vendors that have been selling Unix over the years. Unix last year
was a 21 billion dollar marketplace. All of those versions of Unix tied
back to SCO's branch. So what happens here is SCO owns the main source
trunk and they have derivative rights control on the branches that are
out there. So when you have an AIX or an HP-UX or Fujitsu or wherever
the various version is coming from, they have the rights to go sell
and promote their branches and the derivative works they do on those
branches, but they don't have the right to donate that or give it away.
They have to keep all of those works in confidence.
Charlie Cooper (CC):
And how ... Darl let me ask you this, how then did you folks determine
that this is worth one billion dollars plus in damages?
McBride:
Yeah, there are a few different ways you get there. But let's go
back to the basis of our claims which is there is a huge amount of code
inside of the Linux kernel today that is improperly there that has come
from system vendors that we have contracts with.
That... what that does is it creates copyright violations inside of there,
some of it coming straight from our source tree. So yes, there are direct
line-by-line codes.
DF:
Well, Novell would say you don't actually own those copyrights fully.
McBride:
Yeah well, the Novell thing. They came out and made a claim that held
up for maybe four days and then we put that to bed. If you go back and
talk to Novell I guarantee what they'll say, which is they don't have a
claim on those copyrights anymore.
DF:
Well, that's not exactly what they're saying at this point. But I
think it's pretty clear that one of the issues here is saying that the
open source community is purposely putting code into their open source
Linux that is code that is not their own. Is that something that you're
actually saying in your complaint, and will you end up suing the various
Linux providers?
McBride:
What we're saying right now is that we're seeing a lot of code.
Let's go to the basis here. Linux 2.2 kernel goes up through the end of
the millennium. 2.4 comes out early millennium. Since 2.4 has gone out,
there have been a couple of million servers shipped. And if you look,
if you do a comparative analysis, the code in 2.2 kernel is very simple,
doesn't allow for a lot of scalability, not high reliability in terms of
where this stuff runs. When you go to 2.4 and beyond, you're seeing
Linux run inside of enterprises. Data-grade, carrier-grade Linux and
the SMP - the symmetric multi processing, the ability to scale up to
many processors in terms of a Linux box - is way beyond where it was in
2.2. One thing I will make clear here, Dan, is we're drawing a line on
2.2 and 2.4. The massive amounts of code we're seeing show up in Linux
today that relates to our IP really came along the lines of 2.4 kernel.
DF:
Let me just get a clarification here. Does that mean that you plan to
levy a licensing fee on all commercial Linux users of 2.4?
McBride:
We think that there are a lot of ways that we get justice. Our main
thing right now - it's just a little bit like what's going on in the
music industry, the film industry. It's very clear in the film industry
when the video comes out two weeks ahead of the release date of the
showing
that there's been an infringement. It's very clear with the online music
sharing there are problems. They're working through their issues in
different ways. We very clearly have problems here. How we work through
and get justice to that? We're open to as far as how that works out.
Does it happen at an end-user level? Does it happen at an OEM level?
Does it happen at a Linux distributors level? We're looking at all of
those options right now.
CC:
Darl, does it bother you at all that the company is now considered a
pariah by the open source community?
McBride:
Well, there's no doubt we're not winning the Miss Congeniality
contest of the software industry now. But I think if you step back and
look at it, in terms of if we really are right with what we're saying,
and we're 100% convinced we are and the world is coming around to that.
The few dozen people that have come in, taken the time to take a look at
our code, take a look at our claims have unanimously walked out of our
Lindon, UT offices with the same conclusion that, "Yeah, you guys do have
some pretty powerful claims here." They then turn to, "What's next?
What are you going to do next?"
So I believe that as our claims are now being validated and as we start
to gain wins in this area, I believe that it will turn, it will come back
round and people say "Well, OK, there were problems." In the end of the
day though, what I would say is, we're not trying to kill Linux. I mean
we're not attacking Red Hat right now which if we did, by definition,
could end up shutting down Linux tomorrow.
CC:
But what do you think the impact is on a CIO who reads that they
may very well be vulnerable to litigation if they go ahead and deploy
open source software?
McBride:
I think the impact is, this situation potentially can get wrapped
up a lot sooner than having this big cloud over the industry for what
could take a couple years to go litigate with IBM.
DF:
You mentioned that you have a lot of evidence as to your intellectual
property that's being violated, but I so far haven't seen any of it.
I do have a quote from someone who said allegedly that they did see it,
an Aberdeen analyst, Bill Claybrook. He said he looked at the code, he
saw some lines that looked similar, but it was not conclusive in any way.
McBride:
Well, another report that I saw that Bill wrote basically said from
what I saw there seem to be claims that seem to be very legitimate and
if everything I saw was correct I think then the industry has a problem.
So I think depending on which press report and how they want to twist
his words, you come up with different conclusions. But very clearly
the two or three I've seen and the report that he in fact wrote on it
was very strongly weighing in on our side.
DF:
It sounds like there's a lot of confusion over precisely, you know,
is it a contract dispute, is it an IP dispute? Is there evidence,
clear evidence that you've been able to present, which I haven't seen,
that says that IBM in particular or the Linux community had violated any
copyright or patent that SCO might have? When is that evidence going
to be produced?
McBride:
Well, so these were the issues that were coming up in the May
time frame. Right after we sent out our letters to the CIO's, we had
a lot of demand coming in saying, "We'd really like to see the code."
We opened up our offices in Lindon, UT for code-viewing sessions. As I
said, we've had dozens of folks that made the trek out to Lindon and
we haven't had anybody yet that's walked away not a believer. So to the
extent that you wanted to come and see it, you're more than welcome to.
Anybody else that wants to come in. What we are doing to open it up
more to the world, to more of an open session: We have our annual event
that's coming up in Las Vegas on August 18, and we will in fact be doing
a full show-and-tell session at that point in time.
DF:
Let me ask you to comment on something that Linus Torvalds said.
He said none of the SCO accusations have anything to do with IP rights.
It's all about contracts between SCO and IBM and that it's blathering
by SCO and it's a kind of holier-than-thou stuff.
McBride:
The part with Linus that I would agree with him on is that it started
out as a contracts case about IBM - and Linus and I have shared emails
along the way and I guess we've chosen to agree to disagree. The point
that we fully disagree on at this point is whether it is an intellectual
property problem or not. Although it started off as a contracts problem,
as we've gone in and done our full analysis of the code base, it is
very clear that we have a copyright problem with the code that's in
Linux today.
Now one thing that is late-breaking and fresh news for you and all
the listeners out there is that last week, middle of the week, we did
receive our registered copyrights back on the Unix code base. And the
copyright registrations are interesting because they do in fact give
you the ability to go seek injunctive and damages relief from end users.
CC:
Well, clarify something for me. SCO has been a distributor
under the GPL which provides for free distribution of the code.
So how can SCO claim rightly that its IP has been violated
if Linux customers are using the code that was distributed?
McBride:
Right, so what happens here is there's a difference between a
distribution of a code base and a donation of code. Because we were
distributing Linux does not mean that we had donated code to Linux.
In fact the GPL is very specific that it protects users or code developers
who have had their code improperly donated into Linux. That is in fact
the part that shuts down the GPL. If you have tainted code that's in there
you have to in fact stop shipping, if we came out and put a claim against
one of the Linux distributors. That's why we haven't done that at
this point. If you look at the code that is out there. So we just found
out about this a couple of months ago and when we did, immediately we
came out and we suspended our shipment of Linux until this gets resolved.
So we're really protected on two fronts. The GPL actually protects
us on this front and then if you look at copyright law, copyright law is
just
as explicit in terms of saying a copyright owner cannot accidentally give
their rights away. You have to actually sign your rights away and we
have never done that.
CC:
If SCO prevails, what's the impact then on the future of Linux?
McBride:
Well, I think the thing that is clear here is that we have code that
is massively showing up inside of Linux 2.4 today. There's a couple
million servers out there in the marketplace, and if you go back to early
2000, maybe 2001, and go forward, you have a lot of versions of Linux
that are running that are tainted.
So I think the implications are pretty simple. We either get square
with users that are using our code improperly and true up on that front, or, well, in any case we do that. But then I think in terms of the go
forward is the real question.
The real question is, does the Linux community want to roll the
codebase back?
I mean I actually agree with the points that Linus is making around
"show us the code, we'll go back and fix this." The problem is we are
talking about hundreds of thousands of code that have come from 25-year
veterans of putting symmetrical multi-processing together.
When you take that code out, you know, to the extent that you can redo
it with your own workings and have it there ready to go tomorrow, great.
Most likely what happens is this rolls back to a pre-2000 state on the
Linux codebase.
On the other hand if we want to leave the code in there and keep going
and there's a way for SCO to get compensated for the damaged goods that
are out there, then we're fine with that too.
DF:
Did the symmetrical multi-processing actually come from SCO or its
licenses, or did it come from IBM or some other organization?
McBride:
When you look at the types of code that are in Linux today that are
violating, there's really three types. There's line-by-line code that
came right out of our System V source tree. There's derivative works
code that came from vendors that we have license protections against
them donating. And then there is basically non-literal implementations
where they've munged code or obfuscated it to make it look like it's not.
The biggest concerning areas are the direct line-by-line and these
derivative works code. The derivative works is the main area that IBM
has been in violation of.
DF:
Isn't it difficult to prove derivative works in the sense that Unix
System V is derivative. There's things that predated it. There's BSD,
I mean, is the Mac OS still going to be in your gun sights as well?
McBride:
No, this is a little bit different than that. We're not aiming
at BSD. We're not aiming at pre-2000 Linux. We're not trying to go
after University code. We're basically saying in the late 2000's or
pre-2000, you had two codebases that had the NUMA technology - non uniform
memory architecture - that allows high end scalability inside of them.
It was Unixware and it was Dynix that Sequent held. OK, so IBM buys
Sequent while we're doing Project Monterey. Within the last 18 months,
two years, they have in fact donated the Sequent NUMA code, the Sequent
RCU code into Linux. OK, so part of it is code that we had as part
of our Unixware product. Other parts such as RCU were things that were
clearly derivatives. I mean if you look at the RCU code it could not be
more clear that it's a derivative because in the copyright statements
where IBM donated it into open source -- you can go out and look on
sourceforge yourself -- it lists out that in fact RCU is a derivative
work of Dynix, and Dynix is in fact a derivative work of System V.
CC:
OK, one quick question.
McBride:
Sure.
CC:
You said in the past that you intend to sue other hardware vendors.
What's the status of that?
McBride:
Well, I think what I've said in the past is I don't want to have
any more lawsuits. If people press me on it and say if they don't come
clean, does that mean you won't sue them? No. I mean, if we have to use
the legal resources we have available to us, we will do that, but our
preference would be to work things out with whether it's at vendor,
user, or at a distributor level, or at an end-user level.
CC:
I'll take that as a yes.
DF:
I have one final question, Darl.
McBride:
Sure.
DF:
Speaking about IBM, you were quoted as saying, "Those guys know what
it's going to come out in discovery and you hear a lot of rumors on the
street that they're going to buy us out. Well, I bet that's exactly what
they want to do. The last thing they want to do is hear the testimony
that's going to come out." Is your strategy really to get acquired by
IBM, to basically save your company from extinction?
McBride:
No, our strategy is not that. Our strategy is to take this business
that we have and get it back on track and moving again. It was rolling
along very nicely at the end of the millennium. IBM approached us and
said,
"Hey, let's do this thing called Project Monterey. Let's go to market
together, file this thing with the Justice Department. Let's create 54%
of the market share going into the new millennium." It was all set up
and then after the project was all done from a technology standpoint,
IBM backed off and didn't go to market with us.
And at the same time they did that, they jumped in bed with Red Hat and
went off and started distributing Red Hat.
Now, just because they did that doesn't mean -- I mean at one level, yeah,
we can be upset and we can whine and moan about it -- but that doesn't
create technically a legal violation. What creates the violations are
when they actually go out and take our code, contribute that into open
source that in fact does boost Red Hat. It does boost the other distros.
And at the same time our revenue comes down from 230 million down to
60 million. At the same time, the Linux marketplace is just booming.
DF:
So didn't it really, didn't you really just miss the Linux market?
Just kind of timing, that Unix being displaced by Linux in a lot of
these scenarios? And that's a lot of the enterprise, not kind of in the
smaller businesses where necessarily SCO has been doing a lot of
business in the past.
McBride:
I think you have to look at it real clearly. What is Linux? It is a
Unix-like operating system on Intel. For 20 years, SCO had the value
proposition of Unix on Intel. We all remember in the valley what it
was like in the 90's, early 90's moving on. It was a boom time for
the SCO group, the Santa Cruz Operation. It had the kind of brand Red
Hat has today. When you go into the new millennium, what is the Red Hat
value proposition? It is Unix on Intel.
CC:
So you're saying if Linux hadn't come up, SCO Unix would have
conquered the world?
McBride:
A lot of the people that I talk to today talk about the proposition
of Linux has more to do with cheap hardware than it does the operating
system. I think absolutely SCO was positioned to be in the driver's
seat for this burgeoning market of Unix on Intel.
DF:
Well, the operating system wouldn't be in the enterprise if it were
just because of cheap hardware.
McBride:
I'm sorry, say that again?
DF:
The operating system Linux wouldn't get into enterprises if it were
just because of cheap hardware. It's got to be a robust operating system.
McBride:
Understood. And the point is if you look where Unixware was in the
90's, it was way ahead of Linux by any stretch of the imagination. If you
look at Unixware today, it still runs on more boxes from an SMP standpoint
or from a NUMA standpoint than Linux does, but Linux is closing the
gap fast. And from a certification standpoint, obviously Linux is ahead,
because all the hardware vendors have jumped ship with us and gone over
and now are supporting Linux. The value proposition is Unix for free,
which is obviously a good deal if you can pull it off. But if you're
going to do Unix for free, you've got to make sure it's also IP-free.
DF:
Well, we'll have to leave it at that Darl. I want to thank you
for joining us today. Darl McBride, who is CEO and president of
SCO.
I'd also like to thank my colleague, who is Charlie Cooper from News.com.
I'm Dan Farber. This is Face to Face.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:23 PM EST |
Please post URLs and comments here where they are easy to find. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:25 PM EST |
Please post corrections, spelling, etc... here where they are easy to find. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Corrections go here - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 07:21 PM EST
- Nit pick - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 08:34 PM EST
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Authored by: winkey on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:33 PM EST |
Why is it we do not hear anything from the companys with source licences? You
would think that those that have the source would have looked into sco's claims
themselves.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: ravenII on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:34 PM EST |
This guy Macburger is crying that Linux took away his chance of world dominance.
Well we will see what happans. I am sure of Linux not going away. But on the
other hand SCO and it's GPL laden software (their OS will be next to useless id
GPL code is taken away) might get bought by someone else. Better yet become
public property and make all these troubles go away.
I for one making my future, based on Linux.
Thanks PJ and I wish you took this weekend off, you are going to busy nest
week.
---
"Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things,
but just look what they can do when they stick together."[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Andy on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:50 PM EST |
We have tried to be accurate, as always, and any mistakes are ours, not those
of Mr. Farber, Mr. Cooper, Mr. McBride, or News.com. If you see any errors, do
tell us, so we can perfect the transcript.
McBride's mistakes are
his own -- he may very well be the only person would claim some of them.
Mistakes in transcript are ours.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: grendelkhan on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:50 PM EST |
Wait a minute, Darl says "(W)e had a 60 day period there where we turned 3
different teams of code programmers loose on the codebases of AIX, Unix and
Linux."
And yet they were demanding the source to AIX to do
this analysis in court, how could Darl be making these claims to have gone over
the source if he didn't have it in the first place?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Hygrocybe on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 05:59 PM EST |
More and more it is being shown that SCO's ambit claims in 2003 were utterly
stupid and with a little effort can be easily blown away. Again, I wonder, very
much wonder, what is in that 1992 sealed agreement. There is a recent article:
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39149353,00.htm
(it's 8 pages of very careful reading) that suggests there is very strong
evidence that the 1992 sealed agreement contains material to the effect that
most of Unix copyright may in any case be totally unenforceable and invalid.
Have we all been living a legal lie due to a sealed agreement on Unix ? And
would SCO like that to be included in the current situation ?
---
Blackbutt, Australia[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: SlOrbA on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:13 PM EST |
No way!
At end of summer year 2001 Linus had a quick visit to Finland and give two
student oriented presentations one in Espoo Otaniemi and one in Helsinki at the
IBM's finnish HQ. I attended the later which was more of a debate with audience
asking and Linus answering.
The one topic that Linus was the most facinated by was the multi-procesor
element in 2.4 kernel version. In fact it was talked about 2/3 of the event.
Another big topic was the Nvidia's way of suplying only binary code drivers
which were not accepted to the official kernel release.
So Linus most likely was not a sleep when the multi-procesor features got into
the kernel.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:24 PM EST |
Here's a tyipcal example of Darl's logic.
First he says:
"If you have tainted code that's in there you have to in fact stop
shipping, if we came out and put a claim against one of the Linux
distributors."
Then:
"The real question is, does the Linux community want to roll the codebase
back?"
And:
"On the other hand if we want to leave the code in there and keep going and
there's a way for SCO to get compensated for the damaged goods that are out
there, then we're fine with that too."
Is he too clueless to understand that his proposal to leave the code in there
renders the Linux kernel illegal to distribute? Or does he understand this and
is intentionally being dishonest to make SCO's financial future look more
promising?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: DebianUser on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:27 PM EST |
It is interesting that the derivative works theory is so clear in that
interview. The Linux looks like a duck, and we own all the ducks position is
also explicitly stated, although it only seems to have been explicit in the
lawsuits with the action against Daimler-Chrysler.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:28 PM EST |
"For 20 years, SCO had the value proposition of Unix on Intel. "
Once again Darl is making ridiculously inaccurate claims about how long they've
owned the Unix rights. Caldera bought the Unix rights from Santa Cruz Operation
in May 2001. Santa Cruz Operation bought the Unix rights from Novell in 1995.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:36 PM EST |
Referring to Project Monterey, Darl says, "It was all set up and then after
the project was all done from a technology standpoint, IBM backed off and didn't
go to market with us."
IBM pulled out of the project with Santa Cruz Operation, not Caldera. IBM killed
the project shortly after Caldera agreed to buy the Unix rights from Santa Cruz
operation, but long before Caldera closed the deal, and would therefore lack
standing to bring complaints about IBM's actions.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: drh on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:40 PM EST |
"... we had the three teams - one was a set of high-end
mathematicians, rocket scientist, modeling type guys.
Another team was based on standard programmer types. A
third team were really spiffy on agent technology and how
all of this technology was built in the first place..."
Were any of these teams SCOX in-house people? I doubt it.
That means they were contractors who may have been paid to
find similarities. This also means that SCOX may have
shown AIX to outside parties in violation of IBMs rights.
Only one of these three teams has any relevance to the
situation at hand, the "standard programmer types". This
also publicly refutes their court testimony that they
could not show the offending code. Either these three
teams had it, or they did not. SCOX has said both.
"...You know, just because there have been versions or
different iterations of Unix out there doesn't mean the
proprietary or commercialized Unix has been in that
bucket... "
According to SCOX theory, yes they ARE all the same
bucket. Which is it Darl?
(re: Novell) "...They came out and made a claim that held
up for maybe four days and then we put that to bed. If you
go back and talk to Novell I guarantee what they'll say,
which is they don't have a claim on those copyrights
anymore..."
How much is that guarantee worth Darl, 1 Billion dollars
perhaps? Can I have a piece of that? Unless Darl has cut a
deal with Novell in the past two days, Novell has already
said otherwise.
Darl then made several comments about Linux reliability
and scalability in the 2.2 and 2.4 kernels, which are
false. Linux has been proven reliable for years,
scalability has been a part of the kernel for longer than
2.2, but not actively tested. However, there is also a
hardware timing issue here, clusters and SMP were all
repidly changing during this time as well.
"...So I believe that as our claims are now being
validated and as we start to gain wins in this area..."
No claims have been vaildated, no wins have been gained,
only continuation of SOME current licensees, a dirty trick
played on CA in an unrelated court settlement, and a
misreported announcement of a deal with EV1. No wins
there, Darl.
"...We have our annual event that's coming up in Las Vegas
on August 18, and we will in fact be doing a full
show-and-tell session at that point in time..."
Wanna bet? And even if you do hold the session, can the
attendees talk about it? No? NDAs all around again?
"...And the copyright registrations are interesting
because they do in fact give you the ability to go seek
injunctive and damages relief from end users..."
No, they don't, unless the "end user" is also
distributing.
"...Because we were distributing Linux does not mean that
we had donated code to Linux..."
Possibly correct, the donation was made on separate
projects. However, any code released under your Linux
distribution, unless otherwise stated, becomes GPL or
public domain. Just like you would have code released with
your products fall under the same restrictions as SYSV
itself Darl.
I could go on and pick apart each one of Darl's comments
as being false, but then again, they were all false, and
many of the responses did not answer the question asked.
I wonder when Boise et al are going to muzzle this idiot,
he is destroying their case.
---
Just another day...[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:42 PM EST |
He seems to be saying that some of the code is from System V, some is from
UnixWare, and some is so-called derivative code. Some interviewer should ask him
how many lines of each.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:42 PM EST |
"I mean if you look at the RCU code it could not be more clear that it's a
derivative because in the copyright statements where IBM donated it into open
source -- you can go out and look on sourceforge yourself -- it lists out that
in fact RCU is a derivative work of Dynix, and Dynix is in fact a derivative
work of System V."
I did a grep of my (slightly patched) Linux 2.6.4 and 2.4.22 kernel source trees
and there were zero files found with "dynix" inside.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:46 PM EST |
This interview really brought out some words which raise up some extreme red
flags in my mind. It is Darl who uses them most obviously, but they clearly
apply to other people as well.
Each word or phrase is accompanied by a
translation.
"Monetize": "I am a corporate drone who is incapable
of looking farther into the future than next quarter's earnings
meeting."
"Intellectual Property": "I am either ignorant, or am
trying to confuse the issue by grouping 4 completely different things together
which are even in some cases mutually exclusive of each other."
"I am
*-agnostic"(platform-agnostic, OS-agnostic, etc.): "You are about to hear
some very flimsy rationalizations"
Anybody know any other hackle-raising
words? [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 06:47 PM EST |
"NUMA technology - non uniform memory architecture"
It actually stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access according to the Linux kernel
documentation (and dictionary.com).[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jbb on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 07:01 PM EST |
If you go back and talk to Novell I guarantee what
they'll say,
which is they don't have a claim on those copyrights
anymore.
Darl
0, The Real World 1.0E06 [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: phrostie on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 07:16 PM EST |
Is it too late for IBM to require TSG to provide the names of the three teams
and it's members in Discovery.
---
=====
phrostie
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/snafuu[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Pirulo on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 07:35 PM EST |
Said something like "lie, lie, lie, ...something will remain"
These people are using old nazi's propaganda techniques, damn, where are US
trustworthy judges?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Khym Chanur on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 07:57 PM EST |
Since Jugde Wells implcitly decided against SCO's interpretation of deriviative
works during the *discovery* phase of the trail, can SCO use that to call for a
mistrail or appeal after they lose the case? (Assuming that they still have the
money around to do so?)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 09:35 PM EST |
It is nice to read this interview in hindsight. Funny how brave Darl was about
the "expert teams" that "found the infringing code" and how
he was all about "copyright infringement" over many, many lines of
code (practially all of 2.4 and above, one would have to conclude). Fast forward
to the present day - discovery with IBM, copyright allegations against IBM and
the companies they sued afterwards. Number of lines of code infriging in Linux
mentioned in any of those suits? Zero. Absolutely none.
That's what I call creative![ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 09:46 PM EST |
Here's a quote from a 1995 SunSoft (yes that Sun) add for a book in their book
store:
"Description: The INTERACTIVE Unix System V/386 Release 3.2 operating
system is designed to run on PC architecture with minimal hardware requirements
providing an alternative to DOS systems for small business, manufacturing, and
end users. Written for first-time system administrators and end-users, this
guide goes step-by-step through the CUI menus for configuring, tailoring, and
maintaining your INTERACTIVE Unix System V/386 Release 3.2, Version 3.0 through
Version 4.1. It is also a reference for any SVR 3.2 Unix system. 250 pages; ISBN
0-13-161613-7"
The reason I found this is That I went looking for Interactive UNIX, which we
used around my organization from around 1990. Interactive, the company, was
bought by Sun in the early 90's. We also had SCO UNIX for a while. All of it was
replaced by Linux by 1996 because Linux was superior, even then.
I'm guessing Darl flunked history in high school due to an inability to memorize
and retain facts.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- I used that! - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 10:13 PM EST
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Authored by: blacklight on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 09:50 PM EST |
"McBride: Right, so what happens here is there's a difference between a
distribution of a code base and a donation of code. Because we were distributing
Linux does not mean that we had donated code to Linux. In fact the GPL is very
specific that it protects users or code developers who have had their code
improperly donated into Linux. That is in fact the part that shuts down the GPL.
If you have tainted code that's in there you have to in fact stop shipping, if
we came out and put a claim against one of the Linux distributors."
The
problem with the statement above is that the Darl has convinced no one that
there is any tainted code in Linux that belongs to the SCO Group.
"So
we're really protected on two fronts. The GPL actually protects us on this front
and then if you look at copyright law, copyright law is just as explicit in
terms of saying a copyright owner cannot accidentally give their rights away.
You have to actually sign your rights away and we have never done that."
At the risk of repeating myself: the Darl is engaging in misdirection.
Only the copyrights owner has the right to distribute his or her own copyrighted
code under the GPL. I see three issues: (1) the Darl is claiming that other
parties are improperly contributing their own copyrighted code to Linux, and he
is acting as if their copyrighted code is his to distribute. The Open
Source community's position as I understand it is that the Darl has no rights
whatsoever over someone else's copyrighted code, and if he's got a problem with
that, he is to take his case to the owner of said copyrighted code; (2) Assuming
that the SCO Group has any code in Linux under its own copyrights, the fact that
the SCO Group voluntarily distributed that code from its own website under the
GPL for years is a de facto acknowledgment that the GPL is legitimate - it's not
as if the SCO Group was distributing that code under the GPL at gunpoint; (3)
the Darl claims that the SCO Group was not aware that the allegedly infringing
code was in Linux at the time it was distributing the code. The ignorance
argument is not plausible because the SCO Group's employees contributed code to
Linux with the full knowledge of their management - and these employees saw
nothing suspicious, and because the Darl claims that up to 50% of Linux code is
infringing - I suggest it's pretty hard to miss 2.25 million lines of allegedly
infringing code, especially since that code was always in plain view and the SCO
Group distributed it for years. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: jdg on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 09:53 PM EST |
McBrice has:
"We launched the lawsuit on March 7. We had a hundred-day notice in place
at the time we put the lawsuit in place that if we did not have these contract
issues resolved then we would in fact be canceling or revoking the AIX license.
On June 13, we in fact did revoke the AIX license..."
This has always made me wonder. Either they gave notice before the lawsuit or
they do not do well in substraction. I suspect that it is the former, but note
that it is only 98 days from March 7th to June 13th, but.... Does anyone know
this detail? I also recall that they did NOT wait 100 days in the revocation os
the Sequent's license.
---
SCO is trying to appropriate the "commons"; don't let them[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 10:00 PM EST |
Seems to me this transcript really adds substantial support for RedHat's suit
aginst SCOG, *BUT* I A N A L.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 10:03 PM EST |
From the town of Linden Utah, came some SCOundrels one fine day
Didn't have much of a product, but they said we'd have to pay
Oh they are outlaws loose and running, came the whisper from each lip,
And they are here to do some business with their lawyers and their lip.
Wheeeeeooooh, Wheeeeeoooooh,
In this town there was a SCOundrel by the name of Darl McBride
He couldn't sell a license, no matter how he tried.
I will sue to get the profit, that I cannot rightly make
I don't really care who gets hurt , cause I am a lowly snake.
Wheeeeeooooh, Wheeeeeooooh,
Billy Gates was just a watcher, or so he claimed to be......
Darl could not do it alone, because lawsuits are not free......
A Northern Banker took a risk, but might not loose his gold,
If stories of Bill's backing are as good as we've been told........
Wheeeeeooooh, Wheeeeeooooh,
The SCOundrels called in their hired guns to take on bigger men.
But those they tried to take on, surely wouldn't let them win.....
IBM, Novell and Redhat, had their own plays left to make,
And the townfolk knew that soon they would see a well skinned snake.
Wheeeeoooooh, Wheeeeooooh,
It was early in the morning when they came to make their play..
The stupidity of the outlaws is still talked about today.....
Darl had hardly made his comments, 'fore a reply fairly flew
The infringement claims were shown as false as everybody knew.
Wheeeeeooooh, Wheeeeeooooh,
It was over in a moment and the folks all gathered round.
There before them lay the company of the outlaws on the ground
Oh they might have gone on selling but they made one big mistake
when they tried to take on Linux with lies and just a snake.
Wheeeeeooooh, Wheeeeeooooh,
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: fishy on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 10:17 PM EST |
what if sco reverse engineered the linux kernal and added the similer, but
different code to unix.
then they copyrighted that code, and a year or two later (or more) and a
takeover or two, and the current sco with a failing business model decides to
sue because they know that some of the linux kernal code is in unix?
i've been thinking this for a while, is it possible?[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: dmscvc123 on Sunday, March 21 2004 @ 10:45 PM EST |
I'm really looking forward to SCO having to either give the evidence or explain
away their statements about the three different teams:
"And during the period of time shortly after filing the lawsuit until
recently when they came back and responded, we had a 60 day period there where
we turned 3 different teams of code programmers loose on the codebases of AIX,
Unix and Linux. And they came back with - independently - we had the three teams
- one was a set of high-end mathematicians, rocket scientist, modeling type
guys. Another team was based on standard programmer types. A third team were
really spiffy on agent technology and how all of this technology was built in
the first place. So the three teams came back independently and validated that
there wasn't just a little bit of code showing up inside of Linux from our Unix
intellectual property base. There was actually a mountain of code showing up in
there. Now if you look at the types of code, we really see them in three
different buckets."
The MIT Math Department Rocket Scientists have so far been the most amusing part
of the case to me! If they don't have to do it in the IBM case, I really look
forward to their day of reckoning in the RH or any other case.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: webster on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 12:03 AM EST |
Richmond Times Dispatch article that includes the following headlines:
LEADING-EDGE LAW: Is it safe legally for firms to use Linux software?
Sub titles: "Messy litigation," "Legal risk with open
source," "Linux stakeholders step up."
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_Ba
sicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031774431797&path=!business!columnists&a
mp;s=1045855934868
He actually touches on IBM v SCO but then makes a lame conclusion. Overall a
FUD-filled impression. The media prefers the alarmist view.
The real headline should be: "SCO can't point to one line of stolen
Code."
I sent the online editor and the author some remaining pieces of my mind.
---
webster[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: swedulf on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 05:35 AM EST |
"Now one thing that is late-breaking and fresh news for you and all the
listeners out there is that last week, middle of the week, we did receive our
registered copyrights back on the Unix code base."
To what extent is this true? Can it be verified?
Ulf from Sweden who finally got registered.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Tim Ransom on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 08:42 AM EST |
DF: You know it's been about 4 months since you launched your lawsuit against
IBM. What precisely is the status of the lawsuit and what are those
thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers doing at this point?
McBride: Yeah,
good question.
DF: But, Where does all this code come from before.
I mean Unix goes back to 1960. We're talking about code that could be as old as
40-some years old.
McBride: Sure.
CC: You said in the
past that you intend to sue other hardware vendors. What's the status of that?
McBride: Well, I think what I've said in the past is I don't want
to have any more lawsuits
Also of note: First mention of 'buckets'-
no mention of ladders or the universe yet.
--- Thanks again,
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 09:04 AM EST |
Darl neglects, in his mention of NUMA, that SGI and others had developed NUMA
based scalability. In fact, SGI's scalability is the best there ever was or has
been, along with the SGI/cray T3{d,e}.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Stoneshop on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 09:58 AM EST |
"So we're really protected on two fronts. The GPL actually protects us on
this front and then if you look at copyright law, copyright law is just as
explicit in terms of saying a copyright owner cannot accidentally give their
rights away. You have to actually sign your rights away and we have never done
that."
Just like Novell accidentally transferred their copyrights to oldSCO (who may or
may not have accidentally transferred those they actually owned to Caldera, who
may or may not have accidentally transferred them to SCOG), without actually
signing them away, did they, Darl?
---
Rik
IANALJLMOY
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 10:55 AM EST |
As I understand it:
They could distribute "their" parts of the code, if they were
willing to identify "their" parts and if "their" parts
could
be usefully separated from the rest.
But they can not claim that they have copyright to all of
Linux. And they can not distribute those other parts, that
they don't claim as theirs, which are under GPL, unless they
accept the GPL for those other parts. There is no other way
to get a license to distribute those parts.
If they accept the GPL there, and if "their" parts depend on
the other parts, they have to put "their" parts under GPL,
too. If they don't do that, they don't implement the rules
of the GPL, and if they don't do that they have no license to
distribute the rest of Linux, nor any of their own code
that depends on it.
benny
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 12:25 PM EST |
great illustration. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: rmorrish on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 03:14 PM EST |
My tin foil hat is at the dry cleaners, which is perhaps why I just had this
thought. What if SCOs backers (Canopy, Microsoft, whoever) actually want SCO to
fail? Then they'll put out anti-Free Software statements like "Caldera released
code under the GPL and it destroyed the company"
Am I being too
paranoid? [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Probably - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 07:22 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 04:02 PM EST |
OS/2 didn't suck. It was just as good as Windows in its day and in many ways
better. In fact, Windows looks more and more like OS/2 with every release.
For example, OS/2 was criticized because you had to execute a
"shutdown" command before you hit the power switch on the computer.
This was inconvenient compared to Windows 3.1 but is now accepted as normal on
Windows and Linux systems.
I think OS/2 was ahead of its time.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: prammy on Monday, March 22 2004 @ 07:18 PM EST |
If you go through the videos again, The July 2003 one and the recent one on
March 2nd and observe Mr. McBride. He is scared. He is combatative. He
contradicts himself many times, sometimes in the same interview.
Im assuming that he either expected IBM to roll over or buy SCO or did not think
that his claims would be so easily refuted by others. He knows now his sclaims
are shaky at best and his company's time is measured in weeks and months , not
years.
prammy[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, March 24 2004 @ 03:51 AM EST |
I hope Darl is planning to retire after all this. Although his ramblings have
given me countless chuckles, I'd hate to see another company get tricked into
giving him a job - ooooh except M$, oh the fun that would be![ Reply to This | # ]
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