[TUHS] Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 19 May 2006, at 09:16, Wesley Parish wrote:
> Three - there is usually a group of people willing to do this sort  
> of work -
> voluntarily - as the Groklaw example shows us, so it's often more  
> an inertia
> thingee than anything more serious.
>

I think this is off topic now, but the issue is that the company that  
signed the license agreements is the entity that is liable to be  
sued.  So it is their responsibility to ensure that they are safe  
from that.  That pretty much means it will cost them money, because  
*their* engineers and legal people will have to check things, and  
demonstrate to the satisfaction of the officers of the company (who  
carry the can if they get sued) that it's OK.

This doesn't mean it can't happen (as said in another branch of this,  
people within Sun have tried it before) but it does mean it's  
competing with other stuff for resource.  Would Sun (say) improve  
their chances of survival by  to open source SunOS 4 (which, although  
people romanticise it now, actually sucked, even at the time - it was  
only being better than early SunOS 5 and being a long time ago that  
make it seem nice) or to open source Java?  Or by doing neither?

Sorry for the rant, I'll shut up now.

--tim