Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
SCO–SGI code dispute of 2003
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Background== During [[SCO Forum]], on August 17–19, 2003 at the [[MGM Grand Las Vegas]], SCO publicly showed several alleged examples of illegal copying of copyrighted code in Linux. Until then, these examples had only been available under [[Non-disclosure agreement|NDA]], which had prohibited them from communicating about it. SCO claimed the infringements are divided into four separate categories: literal copying, [[obfuscation]], [[derivative works]], and non-literal transfers. The example used by SCO to demonstrate literal copying is also known as the ''atemalloc'' example. The name of the original contributor was not revealed by SCO, but quick analysis pointed to SGI. It was also revealed that the code had already been removed from the Linux kernel, because it duplicated existing functions. Within hours, the open source community started several different analyses of the infringing code. The results of these analyses differ slightly, but they all confirm that it was derived from Unix code.{{Citation needed|date=June 2008}} These analyses also pointed out that while the code could possibly have originated in Unix, this does not necessarily prove infringement of copyrights. The community was determined that this was a particularly bad example, because the code in question had never been used in the mainstream distributions of Linux, and had been present only in the [[IA-64]] version. The relative sparseness of worldwide IA-64 installations, combined with the limited time in which the code was present in Linux, makes the chance of actually encountering a system running this code very slim.
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)