Journal shepd's Journal: Possible infringing SCO code 2
So, I came across this story in LWN today. In it is a link to SCO's reasoning for their pricing (and the actual pricing, which is $699).
Amazingly, SCO explains where the infringing code is to be found!
Since the license is needed only by commercial users of a Linux 2.4 kernel and later version, does that imply that non-commercial users and earlier versions of the Linux kernels are non-infringing?
Major portions of UNIX® System V and derivative works began appearing in version 2.4 of the kernel. Prior versions of the kernel are largely unaffected. All distributions of Linux 2.4 and later versions of the kernel contain major infringments, regardless of whether Linux is being used in a commercial or non-commercial environment. At this time, SCO is focusing on the commercial uses only.
Versions prior to 2.4 are clean, they say.
Let's see what the impact really is then:
shepd@server:~/SCOre$ diff -r linux-2.3.99-pre9 linux-2.4.0-test1 | grep -e '^>'' | wc -l
3951
3,951 lines *maximum* of possibly infringing code. That's all. This means that SCO believes programmers make $0.18 per line of code. In other, by SCO's words simply rebooting DOS is worth 36 cents.
Does even the military spend that much on the software that runs their hammer-making machines?
2.3.99 (Score:1)
nice (Score:2)