OpenBSD (Still) Seeks UltraSparc III Docs From Sun

An anonymous reader writes "There is a very interesting article on kerneltrap regarding OpenBSD's lingering battle with Sun over UltraSparc III documentation (that's right ... it still hasn't been resolved). Jeremy Andrews relates his efforts to get a position from Sun on the matter. In summary, he was completely stonewalled ... and that is exactly what makes the article so noteworthy."

Comments

Re:Why ever would they give up the IP ?

[sql*kitten]

Sun has always seemed to be in the bussiness of sharing , but oftens seems to do a stab in the back

No, Sun are in the business of making money. All the cool stuff they do has to be paid for one way or the other. A fab is possibly the most expensive artifact on the planet, short of an aircraft carrier. Sun are perfectly willing to provide documentation to anyone willing to meet them halfway and sign an NDA, which is fair enough, since they need to protect their opportunity to earn a return on their investment. (Note that I said opportunity, not right).

This is not a flame or a troll, but the OpenBSD people's position is "we want you to respect our terms, but we aren't willing to respect yours". Well, you can't have your cake and eat it - and no amount of ranting will change that.

Re:Why ever would they give up the IP ?

[TPS Report]

Sun are perfectly willing to provide documentation to anyone willing to meet them halfway and sign an NDA, which is fair enough, since they need to protect their opportunity to earn a return on their investment.

If they are so willing, as you say, why has an offer not been made? The fact remains: he has not been offered the documentation for something that is supposedly "open" and availble (whether under an NDA or not).

This is not a flame or a troll, but the OpenBSD people's position is "we want you to respect our terms, but we aren't willing to respect yours".

No, you have that wrong. The OpenBSD position is "What ARE the terms?" -- they haven't been offered anything at all.

I think they have been ignoring his requests because they realize Theo is not going to be happy with an NDA, and is going to call the bluff. On one hand, Sun says it's an open architecture, but on the other hand - they're telling people they need to sign an NDA to get the data. I believe Sun would have offered him the NDA a long time ago if they thought he would sign it -- just like they've done with other (Linux) developers - but they probably realize it's not going to work like that with him. I don't think Theo is as concerned about the actual documentation; I think his driving motivation here is to get Sun to "practice what they preach."

Theo is of the opinion that if you're going to say something is a certain way, it better be. Sun will need to either ignore him indefinately, thus avoiding the whole NDA paradox -- or they will change the policy and truly offer the documention in an open manner, as they claim.

What I find interesting is the comment near the end of the article that basically says Theo thinks they have everyone sign an NDA to avoid public discussions of architecture bugs in the US3. Am I the only one that remembers Sun having customers sign NDA's so they could get their faulty UltraSparc chips replaced with bad cache? I can't find a link to past discussions about this, but...