[LINK] Technical question about SCO claim

[Rick Welykochy]

On 25 Jan 2004, Jonathan Drews wrote:

>  I do not see why someone would take software that is supposed to work
> with outdated hard drives, floppy disks and modems and try to weave it
> into a modern UNIX operating system. I mean that is what an operating
> system is supposed to do; talk to keyboards, floppies and modems, right?
> I say that because the 2.2 Linux kernel is supposedly free of SCO
> proprietary code. Why then would someone include the code in the more
> modern 2.4 kernel?
>  I am not a computer professional so I may have misunderstood the
> situation.However to me, it makes no sense to take old operating system
> code and try and integrate it into something that now must work with
> WiFi, USB and so on. 

Keep in mind that the kernel of an operating system performs many functions.

Most of what you refer to is done in device drivers. Any time a new device is
invented, a driver is written for it, and the driver is installed in the kernel.
Then you can connect the device and the kernel will let programs interface to
it. Often a very old operating system can adapt to new devices by simply
writing a device driver for it and plugging it in. This is not the central
issue of SCO's claims.

The areas of software inside the Linux kernel that SCO claims
have been copied from its own proprietary work include recent additions to
enterprise computing like SMP (multiprocessing) and several others.
IBM paid SCO for a licence to use its software (source code), especially
in areas of enterprise computing on its AIX platform (another Unix).
IBM is as well an ardent supporter of Linux and sells enterprise
Linux solution. SCO claims IBM misused the licence to copy SCO source
code into the Linux kernel. This is the crux of the claim.

There are many holes in SCO's claims, some of which I listed to Link
a few days ago.

If you are really interested in the exact accusations SCO has made 
against IBM, scour the archived pages at <http://www.groklaw.net/>.
It is all there :)


cheers
rickw


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Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services Pty Limited

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