SCO's own pages suggest GPL knowledge

SCO claims that they did not knowingly distribute their IP under the GPL so they are not bound by it?

Now check these links from SCO's own website:

Date April 15,2003 , 1 month after filing the suit against IBM. SCO releases OpenLinux 4.0 for Itanium. Remember what SCO's amended complaint states as their claims (NUMA,RCU,SMP,JFS).

The product features of OpenLinux Server for itanium, released on April 14,2003, advertise JFS,SMP as enterprise features of the new version.

"Journaling file systems add a higher level of reliability and faster recovery time. JFS, ReiserFS, XFS and Ext3 journaling file systems are included with SCO Linux Server."

This document is the core technology white-paper for SCO Linux 4 32-bit version released in December 2002. Under features for business on the second page, the document advertises NUMA,O(1) scheduler, SMP, JFS as enterprise features for business for OpenLinux 4.0

"Linux 2.4.19 Kernel The core of SCO Linux Server 4.0 is the 2.4.19 Linux kernel. New features include broadened USB support, Logical Volume Manager, improved journaling file system support, POSIX-ACLS, new O(1) scheduler (improves SMP support), Asynchronous I/O, Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS), PCI Hot Plug Support on supported hardware, NUMA support, and many other performance enhancing capabilities."

"Journaling File System Journaling file systems add a higher level of reliability and faster recovery time. JFS, ReiserFS, XFS and Ext3 journaling file systems are included with SCO Linux Server. Each of these file systems has been tested and optimized for the best performance and stability."

Thus even if NUMA,RCU,SMP,JFS are derivative works of SysV ( a long shot) they are now legally GPL'ed. IANAL but their lawyers may have realized this and that is why they are trying to fight against the GPL. That is their only chance (no matter how slim) of winning anything in this saga.

Regards
Michel

Contrary to a common myth, the GNU GPL does _not_ preclude charging, for the act of distributing, software. The software must be available "at no charge to all third parties" (which Caldera/SCO are now reneging on), but "[y]ou may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy" (quotes from the GNU GPL v2).

Not that Caldera/SCO is upholding its GPL committments, or is otherwise acting either ethically or as many believe, within bounds of grounds or legality. But let's keep the discussion to facts, not myths. Particularly as Caldera/SCO have no interest in doing same.

Karsten M. Self

Hey Mike,

Wait a minute here...

If the GPL is invalid because you can only make one copy of copyrighted material, then aren't the Unix distribution/sales licenses held by Sun, Hewlett-Packard, et al. also invalid? They've certainly distributed more copies of Unix than the one copy permitted by US copyright law. Why, HP-UX must have sold at least 3 copies since its inception.

If their Unix licenses are pre-empted by US copyright law, they better get their money back...

I think the fine point that the SCO lawyers are missing (and I might be wrong, as I'm no lawyer myself) is that someone isn't allowed to make copies without the permission of the copyright holder. The GPL provides express permission, as (I imagine) do those Unix licenses.

Patrick Kelly

"The GPL licence allows software and work derived from it to be copied by anyone at no charge.

"But according to today's WSJ, quoting lawyer Mark Heise, the GPL is pre-empted by US federal copyright law.

"How does that work then? According to Heise, federal law only lets people make a single backup copy of software, and that makes the GPL void under US law."

The GPL isn't pre-empted by U.S. federal copyright law, in fact the GPL follows U.S. federal copyright law.

I would draw Mr Heise's attention to Title 17 chapter one, section 106, item (3)

§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works36 Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

(3) Specifically gives the original copyright holder the exclusive right to distribute copies by sale or other transfer of ownership. IMO the GPL falls under "other transfer of ownership" The GPL doesn't destroy, negate, infringe or transfer the original copyright but simply spells out how the copyrighted work may be used under transfer of ownership. That which is within the rights of the original copyright owner. To say anything else is to violate U.S. federal copyright law by denying the right of the original copyright owner control of their work

Pat

Alchemist beats Winston Churchill, Diana to become top Brit

Quite right, too! And I hope he wins his court case with that dreadful foreign 'Leibniz' fellow about the patent rights over the calculus... After all, the calculus is far too useful for it to become public property - good God, anyone might start using it!

The moment such usefull things as the calculus can no longer be tied up in legal red tape, who know where we'll be? There'll be mechanical ships crossing our seas laying cables, so that infernal devices can communicate with each other over great distances, and men will be running around on our nearer planets!

'Possession is nine tenths of the law', I say - and a healthy desire to remain in the dark ages should constitute that remaining tenth! Who need electricty, anyway?

Blaster Worm and the like
We have fended off all but one attack in 3 years. And that was due its speed and we still shut it down before it got far. We continuously monitor. We patch, religiously. We constantly update. We inform/educate our users. And I remind our users whenever I get the chance that isn't more interesting to hear on radio, read in the news or see on TV these awful computer problems rather than experiencing them first hand? If the answer is yes, then you go by my bosses office and you freakin' thank him for his diligence and leadership and praise his staff for their hard work and thoroughness.

Look at the fundamental of what is going on. It is a root level exploit. Therefore you have no idea of knowing who/what has touched your system. Given that the worm has opened your system to be exploited there is nothing that you can trust. Given this fact you must level and rebuild from known good sources. Anything less is completely unwise from a security standpoint and Microsoft would obviously not recommend such an action given that it could leave your system compromised. Already there are people piggybacking into systems on this worm and setting up other services etc. If you are wise you would revise your article and point out the reason behind such an action.

Understanding what is going on at a deeper depth than the standard media should be a goal for a tech site and this shows a lack of understanding.

Jim

Dim lightbulbs

"According to PC Watch, Prescott is currently consuming 103 watts, the equivalent to the power of a dim light bulb. And even Dothan, Intel's Pentium M processor at the 90 nano shrink, is looking a tad shaky, too, in its words."

Do you own a light? 100W is a pretty damned bright lightbulb! :)

[It was a joke. Ed.]

Blaster underlines the emptiness of Microsoft's security initiative

Well the email address is to a Mike Magee but the article is by Charlie Demerjian So I will CC this to him as well.

After reading the long winded "Pure Rant" in the article titled "Blaster underlines the emptiness of Microsoft's ‘security initiative'" I am left with a sort of emptiness in my stomach. There is only one thing that irritates me more than the long winded spew of someone bad mouthing everyone in sight. That is when they are absolutely correct.

I am a system administrator at the company found on the end of my email address. I am constantly updating software and system features for my company. The company I work for is not all that large. It has three locations (two I control via remote access). There are about 100 or so employees.

Several of my co-workers came to me during the week asking me if we were safe from this virus that was going around. You see these guys learned of this virus from "clients". These clients are major companies such as city utilities and other services. Apparently these major companies were not prepared for such an attack. This blows my mind. I think I need to go administer one of their networks for the "big bucks".

Anyway, what you said about the majority of sysadmins is true. They are burying their little noses in pamphlets and brochures talking about new clock speeds of servers, bandwidth of the the WiFi standards etc. They ignore the "little things" like having an active firewall and updating their damn servers with the latest security updates. Now they are all running around like chickens with their heads chopped off while their networks are crashing because of something they could have prevented.

Most IT guys I have met (not all but most) are simply paper jockeys. The only qualification they have is they passed all the tests for their MSCE and they had a friend in the IT department that got them a job. They think the wonderful Microsoft Machine will run itself and doesn't require any real maintenance. Boy do they have a thing or two to learn.

Windows update only repairs issues that MS acknowledges and patches. There are so many "unknowns" out there. In order to manage a stable and secure network, you have to be proactive.

My one and only major network crash occurred three weeks ago. I was down for a little over four hours. I run a cluster server so there are additional issues with that. After about an hour I was unable to bring the cluster up myself so I called MS. They were kind enough to walk me through about another two hours of troubleshooting. After all was said and done it turned out to be a log file issue. Apparently it's a bug in MS clustering and is actually "kinda common" as the guy put it. There is no fix for it I had to recreate the log file. There is no Windows Update for it. There is no information in the knowledge base I could find.

I had to argue with MS for these two hours before they would even admit it was their own bug. They said I must have put the cluster together wrong. I emailed the guy a copy of the white pages I used as reference. MS is not easy to work with when there is a problem. I don't think any of these wet nose paper jockeys would have a clue on how to resolve such an issue.

This whole mess is a combination of faulty software, poorly trained and selected administrators and overly curious jackasses that think crashing others machines is fun.

Well that is my rant back. For the record, my network suffered no downtime and was protected from this virus as well as the other email worm that was running amuck last week. All my updates are in place. Yeah for me I get to keep my job.

I enjoy reading the inquirer. I especially like the slogan "biting that hand that feeds IT". That is really very catchy. I would love to write something for you guys if you ever have a need. Let me know.

Thanks for your time

Name supplied