[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Gregg C Levine]

Hello!
Good to know.
However that's only valid for those individuals who are still running older
versions of Solaris.

It would not have impacted any version of Solaris, including the Open one.
And why you are asking? I am glad you asked. It seems that according to the
good people at the Sun offices here in the City, that by the time version 9
was released, that the code base was completely rewritten, and contains
absolutely nothing from BSD, and most certainly nothing from the original
creators of UNIX.

The fact that we can login on to a Sun system the same way we can logon to
an emulated PDP-11 running the Seventh Edition of UNIX is clearly meant to
be that way. (BSD2.11 included but not presumed.)

Besides, those zealots at SCO only wanted to go out of business making all
of us look foolish, I am very glad that it backfired and they are the ones
looking foolish, because in the end it ruined the work habits of a lot of
good people, and destroyed a lot of good software as well. (Not the stuff we
discuss, related in function however.)
--
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
"The Force will be with you always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
  


> -----Original Message-----
> From: tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org]
On Behalf
> Of Jose R. Valverde
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:18 AM
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
> Subject: [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:
> 
> > Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets forth SCO's obligation
> > to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the
> > Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties.
> > Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights
> > in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO
> > shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology
> > or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has
> > not been implicated or applied.
> 
> 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
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