Counting Code

At that point in time when the teams came back and said, 'Yes, there are violations, and it's not an insignificant amount of code we are talking about,' we, after much dissecting of the problem and kicking it around, came to that we conclusion that we needed to send out an alert or notice to let people know that these problems existed. That notice came in two forms. One was a press release that went out [on May 14,] while the second was a letter that went out to customers.-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-16

"We're finding...cases where there is line-by-line code in the Linux kernel that is matching up to our UnixWare code," McBride said in an interview. In addition, he said, "We're finding code that looks likes it's been obfuscated to make it look like it wasn't UnixWare code--but it was."-- Darl McBride, 2003-05-01

We're talking about line-by-line code copying. That includes not just the function but the exact, word-for-word lines of code. And the developer comments are exactly, 100 percent the same. The developer comments really get to the DNA of the code. It's one thing to have something look the same, but when the developer comments are exactly the same, that tells you everything you need to know that this is in fact lifted, that it has been copied and pasted from Unix into Linux.-- Darl McBride, 2003-06-16

We're talking about line-by-line code copying. That includes not just the function but the exact, word-for-word lines of code. And the developer comments are exactly, 100 percent the same. The developer comments really get to the DNA of the code. It's one thing to have something look the same, but when the developer comments are exactly the same, that tells you everything you need to know that this is in fact lifted, that it has been copied and pasted from Unix into Linux.-- Darl McBride, 2003-06-16

So, I have been waiting. And now Groklaw posts this:

On this day, we learn from IBM's attorney, David Marriott 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 noncopyrightable code that IBM didn't put in Linux anyway.

On the other hand, SCO has infringed all 700,000 lines of IBM's GPL'd code in the Linux kernel.

SCO's GPL defense is of the lip-curling variety and quite funny. (You can find a few of the copyrighted Caldera and SCO contributions to Linux here and here, by the way, to help you to understand David Marriott's argument regarding SCO's switching-the-names game.)

And it's also quite amusing to watch SCO try to wriggle out of responsibility for all the trash talk its executives treated us to in its PR campaign.

and:

In the first motion, we learn a bit more about those 326 lines of code. 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, IBM says, because they are dictated by externalities, they are unoriginal and they are merger material. Even if they were protected by copyright, those 320 lines don't result in substantial similarity between Linux and Unix.

More details: As for the 326 lines, 11 of 12 files are header files, which aren't copyrightable. Header files don't do anything, IBM's attorney David Marriott explains. You can't run a header file or execute a header file. Header files are just descriptive of how information is shared among the components of an operating system.

Now, the header files themselves are of three types, #define statements, structure declaration, and function prototypes. The first specifies abbreviations. 121 of the 326 lines are #define headers.

What a joke. Why would anyone buy a used car from these guys? This is why we have had millions of dollars spent on lawyers and reporting?