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No 'smoking gun' in Linux code |
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A 2002 e-mail suggests that an investigation commissioned by The SCO
Group failed to produce any evidence that Linux contained copyrighted
Unix code.
The e-mail, which was sent to SCO Group CEO Darl McBride by a senior
vice president at the company, forwards on an e-mail from a SCO
engineer. In the Aug. 13, 2002, e-mail, engineer Michael Davidson said
"At the end, we had found absolutely nothing ie (sic) no evidence of
any copyright infringement whatsoever."
The e-mail was posted Thursday to Internet law site Groklaw. SCO sued
IBM in 2003 for more than $1 billion, alleging that IBM had
misappropriated Unix technology to which SCO claimed intellectual
property rights.
A SCO representative told CNET News.com that the e-mail was authentic,
but noted that the e-mail doesn't say when the SCO investigation took
place or what tools were used.
"That e-mail probably creates a lot more questions than it answers,"
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said. "We'll be fully prepared to address
that, but we will be doing that in a court setting if it is necessary."
An IBM representative declined to comment.
In the e-mail, Davidson shares his findings with Senior Vice President Reg Broughton, who then forwards that note to McBride.
"The project was a result of SCO's executive management refusing to
believe that it was possible for Linux and much of the GNU software to
have come into existence without someone somewhere having copied pieces
of proprietary UNIX source code," Davidson said in the e-mail. "The
hope was that we would find a 'smoking gun' somwhere (sic) in code that
was being used by Red Hat and/or the other Linux companies that would
give us some leverage."
Although the details of the investigation are not spelled out in the
e-mail, Davidson does note that it was done by Bob Swartz, a consultant
hired by SCO.
"An outside consultant was brought in because I had already voiced the
opinion (based on very detailed knowledge of our own source code and
reasonably broad exposure to Linux and other open source projects) that
it was a waste of time and we were not going to find anything," he
wrote in the e-mail.
Davidson goes on to note that Swartz spent four to six months looking
at the Linux kernel as well as a large number of libraries and
utilities, comparing them to several different versions of AT&T's
Unix source code.
Late Thursday, SCO released an e-mail from Swartz that it points out
shows the analysis dates back to 1999 and that SCO says shows that
Swartz did find possible issues with Linux.
In the e-mail, dated Oct. 4, 1999, Swartz said that there was some code
that was line-for-line identical to Unix and other code that appeared
to be rewritten, perhaps to disguise that it was copied. However,
Swartz also noted that it was not entire programs, but rather
"fragments of code."
"The fact however that there are pieces of code which are identical to
those in the Unix source and others which appear to be simply a
rewriting of Unix code is clearly disturbing," Swartz wrote in his
e-mail.
SCO said in a statement late Thursday that this memo "shows that there are problems with Linux."
"Thus, even aside from the fact that SCO's central contract claims in
the IBM litigation involve later Linux versions and different conduct,
it would simply be inaccurate--and misleading--to use Mr. Davidson's
e-mail to suggest that SCO's internal investigation revealed no
problems," SCO said.
Stowell said that IBM has brought up the e-mail in court and noted that
a judge has refused to dismiss SCO's suit. Although IBM had presented
Davidson's e-mail in court filings, it was part of a filing that had
been sealed and was only recently made public.
Previous Next In February, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball denied a
partial summary judgment request filed by IBM. However, in his ruling
he severely criticized SCO for producing almost no evidence to date to
support its claims.
"Despite the vast disparity between SCO's public accusations and its
actual evidence--or complete lack thereof--and the resulting temptation
to grant IBM's motion, the court has determined that it would be
premature to grant summary judgment," Kimball wrote. "Viewed against
the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's
and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the Unix
software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent
evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed
SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities."
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