"Stolen" SCO Linux Code Snippets Leaked

"Stolen" SCO Linux Code Snippets Leaked

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 19, @11:43AM
from the we-gotta-figure-this-one-out dept.
stere0 writes "An article (in German) published on the German IT news site Heise includes two pictures (1, 2) of the "stolen" source code SCO claims to be theirs. Part of the first screenshot has been scrambled, the font has probably just been changed to Symbol; can anybody decipher it? I searched for the code snippets on Google. The code does indeed come from the kernel; the photographs show what seems to be lines 88-102 and 109-123 of /arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c from the 2.4 kernel tree. " Update: 08/19 16:39 GMT by M: LWN has a nice piece tracing the origins of the disputed code, and showing that SCO is simply lying.

[Slashdot]

The LWN piece mentioned on /. includes the following:

The code in question is found in arch/ia64/sn/io/ate_utils.c in the 2.4 tree. It carries an SGI copyright. It seems that SGI was not entirely forthcoming in documenting the source of its source; some of the code in question was, indisputably, not written at SGI. So where does it really come from?

This code is from sys/sys/malloc.c in V7 Unix. It has been widely published; among other things, it can be found in Lion's Commentary on Unix (if you can get a copy). It featured in this 1984 Usenet posting. And, crucially, it has been circulated with the V7 Unix source, which was released by Caldera (now the SCO Group) under the BSD license. SCO would like the world to forget about that release now, but the Wayback Machine remembers.

Comments on the piece trace the code back as far as the early 70's and note that it has been removed from the latest kernels in favor of something that is more efficient.

For more on the history of the revealed SCO code see this article on Bruce Perens' website.

Another interesting note: the code in question is part of the ia64 kernel and apparently do not appear in the i386 kernel.  personally, I use the i386 arch kernel for my P4 boxes, so I'm not having a probem.  Question is, how many folks are using the ia64 kernel? 

More fun: If you follow the /. link to the source in question, the comments in the header refer to kernel maintainer Marcelo Tosatti, who presumably oversaw the inclusion of this section of the kernel.  He works for Conectiva, a Brazilian Linux distributor, member of UnitedLinux and partner with SCO!  Check out this announcement.

4:06:51 PM    comment []  

Open-Source Community Approaches SCO. Members of the open-source community have approached The SCO Group with a proposal that they hope will allow them to look at the alleged offending Unix code in the Linux kernel either without or under a less restrictive non-disclosure agreement. [Technology News from eWEEK and Ziff Davis]

Sounds like a good idea.  The linux community is offering to remove the offending code.  In a typical copyright action, the infringer is given the opportunity to 'cure' the infringement.  In this case that would mean removing SCO code from the linux kernel.  SCO seems to have no interest in this course which could mean that there is no copied code in the kernel or that SCO's actual aim is not to get its code out of Linux but to discredit and destroy the operating system.

8:57:23 AM    comment []