Darl's interesting quoting style (Score:5, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 08, @07:55PM (#6905469)
An open letter alleged to be from Darl:
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/34007.htm [linuxworld.com]
>From the above link, this quote:
The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens
that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it
shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux
developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in
Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003).
Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the
Linux developer's process." However, nothing can change the fact that a Linux
developer on the payroll of Silicon Graphics stripped copyright attributions
from copyrighted System V code that was licensed to Silicon Graphics under
strict conditions of use, and then contributed that source code to Linux as
though it was clean code owned and controlled by SGI. This is a clear
violation of SGI's contract and copyright obligations to SCO. We are
currently working to try and resolve these issues with SGI.
This appears to be the ComputerWire article referred to
http://au.news.yahoo.com/030826/20/lfff.html [yahoo.com]
The paragraph in which the "error" quote reads:
The other SCO code snippet Perens walks through had to do with memory
allocation functions in Unix System V and Linux. He says there was, in fact,
"an error in the Linux developer's process," specifically a programmer at
SGI, and he says while the Linux community had the legal right to this code,
it didn't belong in Linux and was therefore removed.
I looked what Perens said in the original (referred to be ComputerWire)
Slides 10 through 14 show memory allocation functions from Unix System V, and
their correspondence to very similar material in Linux. Some of this material
was deliberately obfuscated by SCO, by the use of a Greek font. I've switched
that text back to a normal font.
In this case, there was an error in the Linux developer's process (at SGI),
and we lucked out that it wasn't worse. It turns out that we have a legal
right to use the code in question, but it doesn't belong in Linux and has
been removed.
These slides have several C syntax errors and would never compile. So, they
don't quite represent any source code in Linux. But we've found the code they
refer to. It is included in code copyrighed by AT&T and released as Open
Source under the BSD license by Caldera, the company that now calls itself
SCO. The Linux developers have a legal right to make use of the code under
that license. No violation of SCO's copyright or trade secrets is taking
place.
In this case, there was an error in the Linux developer's process (at SGI),
and we lucked out that it wasn't worse. It turns out that we have a legal
right to use the code in question, but it doesn't belong in Linux and has
been removed.
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