Linus speaks about SCO
eweek.com has a really candid interview with Linus.
What is your position on SCO's IP claims and its allegations that code from Unix System V like its non-uniform memory access [NUMA] technologies have been incorporated into Linux?
As far as I can tell, SCO doesn't have any IP claims. Their lawsuit isn't about IP claims; it's about some contract dispute with IBM. The only IP issues they have brought up in a verifiable way has been the RCU [Read Copy Update, a way to access data structures that may be changing on multiple CPUs with less locking than normal] work that IBM did, and that SCO doesn't have any IP rights to that I can see: the patents are all IBM, and the code was written by (and thus copyrighted by) IBM too. Well, it was Sequent at the time, but they're all IBM now.
SCO alleges that you need to focus more on getting clarification as to where the code that goes in the Linux kernel comes from. Do you have any plans to change the current Linux development model?
No. I allege that SCO is full of it, and that the Linux process is already the most transparent process in the whole industry. Let's face it, nobody else even comes close to being as good at showing the evolution and source of every single line of code out there. The only party that has had serious problems clarifying what they are talking about is SCO, and now when details start emerging like with RCU, it's clearly about IP that they had nothing to do with, and don't even own. I'm sure that they are confident that they own the collective work of Unix, but that's a separate thing entirely legally from being the actual copyright owner of any specific section of code.
posted Tue 24 Jun 2003 in /issues/sco-vs-linux | link
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