Re: SCO brings ELF and Sys V init into lawsuit?

From: Bill Vermillion (bv_at_wjv.com)
Date: 07/17/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 14:05:11 GMT

In article <cdb477$l3s@odbk17.prod.google.com>,
Tony Lawrence <pcunix@gmail.com> wrote:
>(From http://aplawrence.com/Blog/B992.html)

>Apparently SCO has added Sys V style init scripts and the ELF
>executable format to its list of misused code in the IBM lawsuit. If
>that were to hold up, it's pretty nasty. Even the most non-techy judge
>or jury would agree that Linux certainly does use ELF and Sys V init.

>But it always did.

>This certainly can't be part of the IBM suit, because these were part
>of Linux from day one, long before IBM realized that the little penguin
>was useful against Microsoft. In http://aplawrence.com/Blog/B832.html,
>I asked why SCO hadn't jumped on Linux earlier. That was back when we
>still thought the case was about esoteric memory managment schemes and
>SMP code. If ELF and Sys V init are what SCO claims they own, they
>should have had Linux in court a long time ago.

>But they didn't.

>I am not a lawyer. Every time I think something is plain and obvious,
>my lawyer tells me there's more to it, and vice versa. So I am
>definitely talking through my hat here when I say that it seems to me
>that it is a little late to be yelling theft now. If Linux "stole" Sys
>V init and ELF, SCO certainly knew that way back when. This stuff isn't
>buried in a gazillion lines of code, it doesn't take MIT mathematicians
>to ferret this out: it's right there, in plain sight, and anyone can
>see it. Again, SCO certainly cannot blame IBM for passing this to
>Linux, because this predates IBM's involvement entirely!

I remember the first time I had a system that started using ELF and
the OS [IRIX] went through and purged all non-Elf [or is the Elven]
files. That was about 1995 - so this goes back a long way.

>Sometimes I feel like I must be living in some alternate universe where
>nothing makes any sense. I don't know whether it's possible to "own"
>Sys V style init or ELF. I don't know enough about their respective
>heritage to make any guess as to whether SCO can make this stick. I do
>have the opinion that it will be a sad day for all of us if they do,
>because stifling innovation is never good, and killing or crippling
>Linux would do tremendous damage to Unixish OSes. If SCO gets this
>plum, it will be Microsoft who ends up eating it for dessert.

There is always the BSD world. It's code was made clean by the
lawsuit that AT&T started against BSDI and then had the Regents
join in when it was shown that AT&T had taken BSD code and stripped
the copyrights. And the init code on this machine has a copyright
date of 1991 and 1993 by The Regents.

I've heard some Linux users complain about BSD because it means
that MS can take code from BSD, and thus BSD futhers the MS cause.

Technical problems in court cases can have problems because of
mis-understanding of the technical details by those handling the
details. Just look at some of the decisions we've seen in the
past few years.

My ELF man page references the Santa Cruz Operation System V
Application Binary Interface, Unix System Laboratories "Object
Files" Executeable and Linking Format [ELF] and Hewlett Packard
Elf-64 Object File Format.

That can lead to a crooked path.

Notes say that "The ELF format is an adopted standard". I thought
standards couldn't be proprietary or owned.

I see another document that says "Portions of the ELF specification
copyright Unix System Laboratories, Inc". But it does not say
what portions.

It would not be fun if we all have to go back to COFF. 

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com