Ya Gotta Hear This (Updated)

I thought that I had heard the worst ravings and silliest nonsense from some of SCO’s people concerning their claims about Unix and Linux. SCO, after all, claimed that some of their code was in Linux, but never managed to prove it.

(Image on the right is from the film “Reefer Madness.”)

After over six years, it seemed that the case was winding down: Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, still owned the copyright to Unix; and SCO filed for bankruptcy. Despite some news that SCO might be bought out and get enough money to continue the case, to me it pretty much boiled down to when — not if — SCO would just plain lose once and for all. Now, like some bad gas emanating from a crypt, we hear this latest whopper from SCO CEO Darl McBride, as reported by Ars Technica in “Deluded SCO CEO on witness stand: ‘Linux is a copy of UNIX’“:

McBride said that SCO holds the rights to UNIX and that “many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.” Specifically, he said, “We have evidence System V is in Linux,”—directly contradicting what Sontag had previously testified. Due to the witness exclusion rule invoked by both parties, McBride was not present during Sontag’s testimony and wasn’t aware of what had been said. McBride’s claims also directly contradict internal SCO memos from 2002, which reveal that the company’s own extensive source code audits had uncovered no UNIX code in Linux. McBride attempted to reinforce his argument with analogy. “When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there’s books on ‘How to Program UNIX’ but when you go to the Linux section and look for ‘How to Program Linux’ you’re not gonna find it, because it doesn’t exist.” Then came the real humdinger, and my jaw dropped when I heard the following come out of his mouth: “Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].”

Here’s Groklaw’s take on McBride’s “bookshelf” argument, found in “Day 2, April 30, Novell v. SCO Trial Transcript - as text, no line #s“:

By the way, he mentions that if you go into a bookstore you will find how to program in Unix and Linux books in the same section. That is because Linux is not a programming language. Neither is UNIX. They are both written in C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, and Ada95. Etc. You know. In programming languages. And both are POSIX-compliant, POSIX being a standard. Duh. What he says is like saying that if you go into a US bookstore and head for the cookbooks section, you’ll find a lot of books written in English. That is true. You will. Not only that, but they all use cups as a measurement and Tablespoons and such. That doesn’t mean they copied from one another, or that all the recipes will produce the identical result, just that they were written in the same language and use standard measurements for US cooks. He is such a riot. And I have only scratched the surface.

The word “deluded”, used in the Ars Technica story, isn’t a nice way to describe someone; yet it seems so appropriate. The only other ways to describe McBride’s performance are far nastier.

I’ll be nice to McBride this time and keep my peace, even though he doesn’t deserve it.