SCO Makes Open Source Contributions 68
Ethanol writes: "SCO announced this morning that they're releasing cscope (a really, really sharp development tool for large C/C++ projects) and will soon release fur (a profiling/analysis/reordering tool for relocatable binaries that can speed up execution times quite a bit) under the BSD license. See their press release for details. "
Re:Ok here... (Score:1)
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Re:Free version exists already (Score:2)
Re:Hold On a Minute (Score:1)
My opinion.
Re:Free version exists already (Score:1)
In my experience, cscope is much better than cs for anything but very small projects. With small projects cs is fine, but when I tried to use it to dig into the Apache source code, all I got were seg faults. Meanwhile cscope just kept on running.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:1)
How can you "steal" BSD code? (Score:2)
Hold on a minute there. I'm no fan of MS, but to call this stealing really misses the point. The BSD license specifically allows you to use licensed code in non-open commercial apps. Even if Win2K's TCP is an exact copy of BSD, it's not "stolen", because the license says it's OK. If it was GPLed code it'd be a different matter, but how can a copy of BSD code be "stolen"?
Re:We will not accept this feeble stratagem. (Score:1)
Be happy for the bones that are thrown... In time, maybe more companies will be more and more willing to hand more important pieces of their product line to the open source community. The chances of that plummet when people thumb their noses at them, insult them, etc...
Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:1)
Forget my other post about not finding the link. AND I understand, now, that it is not sys v, fine by me. -d
Re:We will not accept this feeble stratagem. (Score:1)
When I asked for the good stuff you'll notice I was being sarcastic...notice the smiley emoticon at the end of my original post.
Cheers
Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:2)
Re:We will not accept this feeble stratagem. (Score:1)
Of course they had to attack OpenSource way back when... It was untested in the business world, and all they saw was a competitor to themselves on the x86 turf they'ed chosen to live on... They've now realized that they still have some advantages in some areas, a good name among some of their customers, and are realizing that Linux is mainly headed for a collision course with Windows, and not themselves, so they're arming Linux better for it's battle.
I say good for them! I hope that they can continue to revamp themselves to survive in the 21st century.
Does this work with other languages to? (Score:1)
It looks like it is matches text strings in the source files.
I haven't done much C or C++, but I work with PhP and HTML (i know it is not a language per say) daily, and PERL on occassion. And it looks like it could help me manage the larger sites i maintain.
-ms2k
And if you prefer a GUI... (Score:1)
...head on over to freshmeat and look up cbrowser, a nice TCL/Tk graphical front-end.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Are you Cliff Stoll?
Re:Does this work with other languages to? (Score:1)
They seem to think it'll work with Java, though I've never tried this myself.
It looks like it is matches text strings in the source files.
That's part of it. A small part, really. You can do this with grep, after all. The advantage of cscope is that it can distinguish identifiers from things like comments, and find only identifiers, or only the ident's declaration. It'll also look for plain text strings or egrep expressions, but that's more of a convenience so you don't have to leave cscope, it's hardly the main feature.
I haven't done much C or C++, but I work with PhP and HTML (i know it is not a language per say) daily, and PERL on occassion. And it looks like it could help me manage the larger sites i maintain.
As it stands, I don't think you'll find it useful for anything but grepping for strings. It just wasn't designed with PHP/HTML in mind. But now that it's open source, hey, why not extend it yourself?
Re:Ok here... (Score:1)
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Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Thanks
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Re:cscope vs etags (Score:1)
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
I'll consider myself corrected, then. I've had this sig for a few weeks - I guess nobody else noticed. Thanks.
So you wouldn't correct Cliff, even if you had evidence? He seems like an OK guy, you probably would survive the experience ;)
I like the idea of 'fur' (Score:2)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Re:How much help commercial open source apps get? (Score:1)
"Ancient Unix Source" license is also now
at not charge -- formerly $100. With this
license you can also get BSD and Ultrix source!
Goto mckusick.org. What with this and Solaris source available, why is anyone still hacking Linux?
Re:Kick Ass! (Score:2)
You might try id-utils too (check freshmeat). I use id-utils.el in Emacs a lot on code I'm unfamiliar with. If you want to see who calls the function you're on, you just hit M-x gid and you get a list of hits in the compile buffer. Then you can just iterate through the list. Pretty cool.
The thing I like about cscope, from what I've seen, is that it does more and generates the ID file dynamically. Choices are good!
Re:Microsoft owns 11.9% of SCO (Score:1)
Microsoft SCHEDULE 13G [sec.gov]
Re:How can you "steal" BSD code? (Score:1)
Well, in the legal sense, of course you can take BSD code and use it without telling anyone or recontributing your changes. However, it seems like a very mean thing to do. Of course, the BSD license still requires that users of the code redistribute the license and include the copyright notice. So if MS really did take the OpenBSD TCP/IP stack and use it without displaying the copyright, they _are_ in violation of the license (and therefore in some sense "stealing").
I would be very interested if that allegation is true. And it would be great if OpenBSD could sue MS for copyright infrignment, as they don't get much money and while I don't like OpenBSD that much, I feel it is an important tool for network infrastructure.
How long does it take before it is up to speed? (Score:3)
Source projects (http://phplib.netuse.de) it
takes at least 6 months starting with the release
of proper documentation until you get the first
developers who really grok what is going on.
It takes at least 12 months for the project
to get a proper community which is able to
self-support itself. Finding developers with
a vision who are able to develop the project
beyond its current scope depends on luck and
charisma. No time scope can ge given for that.
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Ok here... (Score:3)
Secondly, I'd like to say that SCO is very brave releasing as BSD instead of GPL or a custom-designed licence deisgned to protect them. Under the BSD license, (IANAL) incorporation into proprietary products is allowed - that means that Mickeysoft could go off and take SCO's stuff and come out with Visual (insert name of SCO tool here)++. Good for them - it shows true faith in the Open Source community.
Thirdly, this might be an experiment by SCO on Open Source. Let's not let them down - further openings will be good. Let's not forget that there is some virtue to SVR4 Unix, and I'd like to see some of those tools and abilities on Linux.
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releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:2)
Putting aside the grammatical curiosity of how you historically preserve something, rather than preserving something historic, does this mean I can log in and look at old SYSV code, or is this something else entirely that I'm not getting?
This is a good thing! (Score:1)
I applaud this initiative, and hope that they continue to support the community.
Re:Who cares, it's SCO (Score:1)
Your comment is arrogant and uncalled for. Companies have to earn money. SCO is in the Unix business. Why bash them for a good deed?
Re:This is a good thing! (Score:2)
How much help commercial open source apps get? (Score:5)
I am not terribly familiar with this product, but obviously this is a good thing, you can learn something from any sample of code.
What I wonder, is when companies release their source code like this, how much do users pick it up, redistribute, etc.? I mean, Darwin and Mozilla looked dead for a while, but then they picked open some help (I know Mozilla did, did Darwin?). Mozilla and Darwin were HUGE projects, it makes sense that users took a while to jump in there. On the otherhand, will a project like this be picked up and improved by proponents of open source, or will we just say, "finally, they get it" take their software and run?
I mean, the idea is, according to RMS, we have a fundamental right to copy digital data, and that licenses that prohibit this are fundamentally immoral, so he'll write a free OS that we can copy.
The Linux community says, we'll work with corporate interests, because they can sell support. We'll help improve the product, and you can sell support for it and make lots of money.
Now, is the latter true? Are we helping the companies that are releasing their source code with the promise that we will help, or are we grabbing their code and adding the useful bits into our pet GPL projects?
Alex
Trend Setter (Score:1)
Kick Ass! (Score:3)
Now all we need is lint...
??? (Score:2)
Tcl/Tk (Score:3)
This is bound to start a flamewar of some sort, but it's a question that I've wondered about for a while and the nifty GUI to this inspires it: I've found that Tcl/Tk is great for whipping up interfaces to C code but I remember that there were a lot of hard words spoken about the licensing by RMS. Is there still considered to be a problem with this for Free projects? If so then what other routes do people take for easily-portable GUI'ed software? Python+mxWindows? Qt? Gtk? I don't really like the last two options because of what I perceive as the amount of work involved in becoming familiar with them, but perhaps I'm wrong?
<offtopic> Also, does anyone know how to get around the size limit using etags? < /offtopic >
Hmm... (Score:1)
I run
So- don't get all excited/agitated/irritated just yet.
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Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:2)
the link. [sco.com]
Slashdot may also mention the annoucement in its archive.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
No, sorry, I just think his Klein bottles are really neat, and I don't have a web page which is non-cheesy enough to point people to :) So I just point them to his.
Re:Ok here... (Score:1)
I think cscope will be immune to Microsoft. I believe Visual Studio already has a lot of the functionality of cscope built in. I say believe because I have not yet tried cscope; I have only read the man page.
Re:How much help commercial open source apps get? (Score:2)
I fully agree. In fact, I would like to suggest that companies with a history of doing this may enjoy better sales of their products overall, and less slow down in sales late in the product's life. The reason is that customers can expect to be able to get ports and bug fixes even if there are no new features. This is a kind of hybrid pricing/licensing scheme: new products sold as products, older ones sold as support contracts on open source code by the company most familiar with the code.
One way to encourage the products to live on would be to continue to offer support contracts for them after they are open sourced and to act as project coordinators. It could even be done with an official statement by the company that they aren't going to develop new features, but that they will roll them in if submitted and continue to do ports and any bug fixes needed by the people paying for the support contracts. As a good faith gesture, they can do the port to Linux as a kick off to open sourcing the project.
Re:Kick Ass! (Score:2)
it's great to see it released, too bad i mostly do perl stuff now.
You people just don't get it. (Score:1)
Many of you look at the BSD license, and say, well, companies can use the code and adapt it to their propietary products. Well, DUH! that's the whole point. For most of it's life, the BSD camp has been focused on improving computer design overall, not only their system.
;)
;)
In most applications, you cannot just cut and paste code, you need to adapt it to fit your frame work, which makes it quite different. All that is left is the ideal on the design, which like standards, should be shared. The importance and the competitive edge is gained by the better implementation, well sometimes at least.
The BSD camp practically fueled the used of the tcp/ip protocol, greatly due to their fact that's their tcp/ip stack was freely available for others to build on, and oddly enouhg, it is still arguably the fastest performer.
Need i mention bind or apache? both improved by corporations despite their BSD license. The BSD license allows a greater corporate appeal to OSS. Great designs need to be shared
And for those who some how believe that th elinux ip stack is catching up... heh, try packet capture/shaping on a linux tcp/ip stock.... not fun... the reasons why anyoen doing serious network software would not choose the linux tcp/ip stack... ask junipernetworks why their choose freebsd
Well, those where my $0.25... before you blabbler away.. read a bit on the BSD mentality at freebsd.org [freebsd.org]
Re:How much help commercial open source apps get? (Score:2)
Re:Tcl/Tk (Score:1)
In 1994, he made his opinions public on the gnu-announce mailing list (gatewayed to Usenet in gnu.announce) in an article titled Why You should not use Tcl [pdx.edu]. This of course started a huge flame ware in gnu.misc.dicsuss and comp.lang.tcl. He followed it up with another article (which I can't find right now) which detailed his objections further. (I remember distinctly his stating that Tcl's arrays aren't true vectors since they don't have O(1) access)
It was RMS's complaints about Tcl which caused the creation of Guile [fsf.org] project. The reason that Guile multiple translator front ends [fsf.org] was so that it could replace Tcl as an extention language with no user visible changes.
Re:Tcl/Tk (Score:1)
Re:Who cares, it's SCO : I CARE!!! (Score:1)
What the hell happened to grope? (Score:1)
Re:Ok here... (Score:1)
Why does someone have to post something like this every time something is open-sourced with a BSD license? It is getting to be the same as the "First" posters to me.
Mickeysoft could go off and take SCO's stuff and come out with Visual (insert name of SCO tool here)++.
They won't. It would be too obvious. Microsoft has too much pride. They don't want anyone to know that they are actively using open source. By anyone I mean businesses as opposed to us developers.
13.0? (Score:2)
Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:1)
Re:This is a good thing! (Score:1)
Ummmm...
Microsoft's first Xenix was released in 1980. SCO didn't release their Xenix until '83.
With that said... I once ran a box (Altos 400 (an 80186 box at that)) with a very early version of MS-Xenix; it had to be one of the weirdest OSs I've ever seen. Hardly Unix like... but it was multi-user/multi-tasking.
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cscope vs etags (Score:2)
It will be a very welcome addition to have cscope join the ranks of code management tools - it's something I use at work a lot to navigate very quickly through a vast amount of code, and it has different strengths and weakness when compared with etags (Emacs Tags for the uninitiated).
From my experience, cscope wins over Etags for navigation because it produces lists of likely jump points, whereas etags invoke with a tags search can leave you at some first level define which is not necessarily where you want to be (multiple #ifdef #define ... type calls muck up the etag reference lists). Cscope is also pretty speedy with its reference database, and can be stacked inside an editor, so you can do cscope -> editor -> cscope -> editor and then you can work back out by quiting the chosen level which makes it nice for chasing ideas through the code.
On the other hand, the tight integration between etags and Emacs means that etags still comes in very useful for traversal of source files - it just doesn't quite offer the same flexibility that cscope does.
Of course, I may have just started a major holy war, but such is life ...!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
You might have to build the database first, before searching. I'm using cscope 13.3 on HP-UX, and I have to do something like:
find -type f -print > cscope.files
cscope -b -i cscope.files -f cscope.out
cscope -d -f cscope.out
YMMV, of course, since you have a later cscope than I do.
Hold On a Minute (Score:1)
Re:releasing "historically preserved UNIX"? (Score:1)
Assuming it covers the same things as the previous 'Ancient UNIX' license, no, it doesn't include System V. It covers up to everything up to 32V, including Seventh Edition etc. This is enough to cover the encumbered parts of 2BSD and 4BSD as well.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Free version exists already (Score:2)
There has been a free version of cscope for quite a while now. It's called cs and available from ftp://cantor.informatik.rwth-aache n.de/pub/unix/ [rwth-aachen.de].
Both versions work with the graphical tcl/tk interface cbrowser [ziplink.net].
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Microsoft CScope??? (Score:1)
MS OWNS part of SCO, so they are probably able to get what they want anyways.
Through Open Desktop 3.0, SCO bundled a Unix port of Microsoft C (ODT2 got C5.1, and ODT3 got C6). Microsoft also created a port of (DOS) MS Word 5.0 for SCO Unix. It ran on ASCII terminals and under X.
Re:cscope vs etags (Score:1)
Gary
Re:Tcl/Tk (Score:1)
Re:We will not accept this feeble stratagem. (Score:3)
I respectfully disagree. Instead of viewing it as competition they could have viewed it as free promotion for *nix and embraced it. Linux was the media darling. You couldn't click on a website without seeing Linux. That was the marketing opportunity of a lifetime. All they had to do was come out and pay lip service to Linux for a ton of free PR. They had to realize that people were going to try Linux regardless of what they said. Why shoot yourself in the foot?
I don't wish any ill-will on them but I think you will see them slowly go away (they already are) as Linux becomes more enterprise ready.
Also...this looks like a nifty tool, but it seems like they are just throwing us a bone. Come on guys, if you want to do something for the Linux community give us the good stuff
Re:Ok here... (Score:1)
Sorry - I was joking. Didn't mean to sound like that - I just don't want to hear anything of that from the rest of the line. I use a BSD license in stuff that I do, but I don't jump around over the GPL like that.
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Mmmm... cscope (Score:1)
cscope + xvi (vi in an xterm) is the only IDE I need. And since I've discovered this week that you can query cscope non-interactively from the command line, I use it when writing scripts to parse code rather than having to build that intelligence into my scripts. It isn't perfect (especially when you combine c code and assembly) but it's usually close enough that you can find the spot you're looking for.
Re:How much help commercial open source apps get? (Score:1)
By the way, some companies' open-source-project pages are intimidating - they don't seem to welcome me into the development. Perhaps all companies that start a project should get a sourceforge server to host the development - it's much more friendly!
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Re:Kick Ass! (Score:3)
Re:We will not accept this feeble stratagem. (Score:1)