Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] SCO vs. the world

[Miles Bader]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 09:43:37PM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:

>     >  (1) The functionality involved is not a very large portion of linux,
>     >  and code that goes into central areas of linux usually gets
>     >  massively scrutinized and mutated before it actually goes in.
> 
> You don't believe the percentage is large?   or you don't believe
> there's over 100K LO-tainted-C?

Both.  Linux is about 6M LOC, so 100K is 1.5% -- and anyway, I feel fairly
confident that 100K LOC is grossly overstated.  Even all of JFS (which I can
imagine SCO claiming tainted as a whole in response to a few copied
functions) is only 30K LOC.

> Thinking "worst case scenario" here -- if it's really that much code
> ... who exactly is going to be able clean-room it without risking
> further trouble?

Remember, (1) it's copyright that's being claimed, and so as far as I know
`your mind is tainted' doesn't apply, and (2) the objectional code came from
single party, who has fairly well defined channels for interacting with linux
development (and apparently quite anal internal accounting of such thigns).

Determining who wrote each line of linux would be very hard, but deciding
what code has to be deleted (and how to rewrite it) in this particular case
is a much, much, much, easier problem.

-Miles
-- 
`Life is a boundless sea of bitterness'