[Mimedefang] grammar nit

[Kelson Vibber]

At 08:43 AM 7/8/2004, john at essenz.com wrote:
>He claims that some intellectual property has made its way into Linux.
>Does anybody know specifically what he is talking about? Or is it all just
>BS, and the real issue is that Linux "resembles" SysV UNIX, and therefore
>it is theft of intectual property. Thats like suing a band who sing songs
>that "sound" like Metallica songs!

Well, in 1 1/2 years they've made a lot of noise, but given no 
specifics.  On the rare occasions they've provided examples, those examples 
been debunked quickly (basic functions with obvious solutions, code 
available from other sources under the BSD license, etc.).  At times 
they've claimed to have millions of lines of infringing code, but lately 
they've said they don't know exactly what code was involved, and they can't 
find it without access to IBM's source.  The IBM suit is currently focusing 
on code IBM wrote in-house for things like the JFS filesystem, added to 
AIX, and later added to Linux -- basically claiming that because the code 
touched Unix at some point, SCO owns it.  (And they call the *GPL* 
viral!)  Sort of like suing a band for singing a song that Metallica *covered*.

An excellent resource on this issue, if you're interested, is 
http://groklaw.net .  Also informative: 
http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SCOvsIBM and 
http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html

Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>