IBM's Linux code copying: 326 Lines?!

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Mar. 16, 2007

Sometimes, you just have to shake your head in wonderment. The ongoing SCO v. IBM case about possibly cloned code just gets keeps getting weirder all the time.

For years now, I've been covering the SCO vs. IBM case. Since the beginning, I've said SCO didn't have a case when it claimed that IBM had copied Linux code into Unix. Now, according to IBM attorney David Marriott, it turns out that "the 'mountain of code' SCO's CEO Darl McBride told the world about from 2003 onward ends up being a measly 326 lines of non-copyrightable code that IBM didn't put in Linux anyway."

Should I laugh or should I cry? In a Groklaw report on the March 7 hearing on SCO v. IBM in the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, we discover that "of those 326 lines, most are comments, not code. Allegedly, those lines of code infringe 320 lines of Unix code. But they aren't copyrightable."

Specifically, you'll find those 326 lines in 12 files. Eleven of those are header files. You know, the files that just set out the basics for a program. The files that contain such valuable intellectual property as "#define EPERM" (which stands for permission error). There are some programs out there that don't contain such define statements in their header files. Those are the programs that tend to get handed back to their freshman writers with a large red "F."

SCO tries to defend its position in the hearing; but to quote Groklaw editor Pamela Jones -- who appears to be back in the saddle of running Groklaw -- "I read it all, and I don't see any of IBM's points directly responded to, except for saying in passing that the business agreement and the GPL don't give IBM the rights it says they do and a broad assertion that estoppel [the legal principle that prevents a person from asserting or denying something in court that contradicts what has already been established as the truth] isn't appropriate, for this reason and that; but estoppel isn't at all necessary for IBM to prevail. It's the cherry on top."

Now, I'm no lawyer, nor am I a paralegal like Ms. Jones; but when an IBM attorney replied to an SCO question, "Your Honor, the explanation for that is we spent the last four years horsing around trying to figure out exactly what it was that supposedly IBM did," I can only nod in agreement.

Despite all this, I remain certain that even this isn't going to bring this case to a close anytime soon.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Except where otherwise specified, the contents of this site are copyright © 1999-2009 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise is prohibited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.