[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement between SCO and Sun. Particularly he mentions: I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies totally on SCO. SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third parties with respect to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant (though seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to allow open sourcing via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess they thought it would play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware as an 'enhanced' or 'better product' than open solaris. It also fits within Caldera's previous opening other ancient UNIX. My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to increase market share of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's open source solution in line with tradition. But then comes the last sentence: the issue of opensolaris damage to the closedness of SVRX was not brought up at trial. May be it wasn't the time and place, or may be Novell reasoned that it does not matter to them to offer one open source system (linux) or other (solaris). I'd also guess given Novell involvement in SuSE that they would have liked to open SVRX all along but didn't dare to because of possible complains by existing licensees (like IBM or HP) who might see their licenses as oblivious, and -most probably- because it was never very clear whether all code could be open or belonged to them (sort of like Linux going to GPL3: it's difficult to identify all contributors and ask their permission). Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes, and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all responsibility. BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway, but it might also be that they were waiting to see the case unravel. In any case, we now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great thing to know. My kudos to SCO. They were bolder than I thought. Even if -IMHO- their strategy against Linux was misled, their willingness to support open solaris deserves respect. Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly Sun's money to follow their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls (and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows? One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked for allowing opening of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux OTOH is another issue. j -- These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first! José R. Valverde De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural