SCO Says No Way To a GPL Solaris, Moves Trial Back

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SCO Says No Way To a GPL Solaris, Moves Trial Back

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday June 9, 2004 @12:34AM from the the-change-of-the-times dept.

penguino writes "Looks like it didn't take long for SCO to formally respond to claims by Sun that it will open source Solaris. According to SCO 'they [Sun] still have licence restrictions that would prevent them from contributing our licensed works wholesale to the GPL'. The company has also released a statement dated June 8 that 'SCO is making a motion to move the scheduled trial date to September 2005 and split IBM's counterclaims into a separate case'. Also quoted is AUUG president and FreeBSD developer Greg Lehey who recommends 'that the best thing for IBM to do would be to print out every single version as requested and send the resultant 20 tonnes or so of paper to SCO. That would keep them quiet for a while'."

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Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by stecoop · 2004-06-09 00:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

What version of Linux is IBM using now-a-days. Whichever it is, Sun should basically drop Solaris and focus developing Linux for sparks along the same lines as IBM is doing. I like Solaris machines, they're fast and reliable but I only see a future for Sun at IBM. Sun has Java technology that IBM could really use as a synergy for the core products. IBM with SUN would be a large player in the future of computing, but currently SUN standing alone will be like SGI and other once powerful computing companines.
1. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by turgid · 2004-06-09 00:41 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Whichever it is, Sun should basically drop Solaris and focus developing Linux for sparks along the same lines as IBM is doing.
  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, or something.
  Have you any clue as to how many years more advanced than Linux Solaris is at the high end?
  Sun is already using Linux at the low end, where it has it's niche. It's called the Java Desktop System.
  
  --
  Stick Men
2. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by pegr · 2004-06-09 00:48 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Have you any clue as to how many years more advanced than Linux Solaris is at the high end?
  
  Agreed, but how much of that "high-end Solaris" is under SCO license restrictions? (None, or it would be in SCO's products.) While Sun may not be able to open source Solaris due to SCO license restrictions, as soon as a judge declares that IBM enhancements to AIX are not the property of SCO, Sun can roll whatever "high-end Solaris" code they have into Linux. This would have the added benefit of destroying whatever is left of SCO.
3. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by pegr · 2004-06-09 01:02 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Sun can roll whatever "high-end Solaris" code they have into Linux.
  
  Why bother, when it's already in Solaris?
  
  Because the stated goal was to Open Source Solaris... Without that, this whole exercise is meaningless.
  
  While bolting on Solaris functionality to Linux would be a formidable task, it would also put Sun squarely in the middle of Linux development as a strong Linux consulting and implementation partner. Pretty cool way to beef up your Linux "street cred" if you ask me...
4. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by molarmass192 · 2004-06-09 01:02 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Hang on there. I like Solaris and I admin a dozen Sun servers myself, but since the 2.6 kernel went prod that's only true on the biggest and baddest >64-way E-series servers. Obviously, Sun would have a little issue with our service contract if I were to slap Linux on any of those servers, but I don't have a doubt that it could be just as reliable if I did.
  
  --
  
  Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
5. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by elmegil · 2004-06-09 01:44 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Linux "street cred" doesn't improve your revenues, nor your standing on Wall Street. It should be pretty clear from the public statements of management that Sun does not want to be "a Linux company". Personally I think that's a good thing--everyone derides Microsoft for promoting a monoculture, but here they are all advocating Linux uber alles for everything. Solaris for what it's good at, Linux for what it's good at, MacOS for what it's good at, and (gasp) windows for what it's good at (games and viruses! :-) all seem to be reasonable things to have around. [tongue-in-cheek]Not sure that I see any reason for HP/UX or AIX though...[/tongue-in-cheek]
  
  --
  7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
6. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by jedidiah · 2004-06-09 02:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Dell needs to get themselves at least some 12-way NUMA kit to sell before the more interesting features of Solaris become relevant.
  
  SGI is already bolting 200+ cpu NUMA support onto Linux, so any "help" they might get from Sun would be irrelevant.
  
  Other vendors such as Veritas are also already contributing to the (Linux) stew. Before too long, "all those years" of Sun "superiority" may be moot.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
7. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by msobkow · 2004-06-09 03:58 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  True enough -- Linux just happens to be a particularly widely available implementation of various open standards such as POSIX APIs, shell, thread processing, etc. AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, etc. provide their own implementations of those same APIs.
  Within reason I don't care what the kernel and vendor are -- I care about the tools that sit on top of it and the programming APIs used to create applications and services. Were Microsoft to provide those APIs instead of trying to force proprietary (but equivalent) APIs, they might even find they have a shot at the data center.
  I don't know that it's even an issue of what a kernel/OS "is good at". Businesses buy hardware to service a need -- in the vast majority of cases the details of a particular OS' benefits don't matter to the business. As long as it is stable and backed by a solid vendor with good support and maintenance, customers don't care much who provides it.
  Eventually IBM et. al. will abandon the proprietary kernels because it's not a profitable business. It's far cheaper to ensure a shared core has all the functionality needed, with the ability to turn off bits and pieces you don't want or need. That way the individual vendors only provide hardware-specific support and perhaps a handful of their own admin/maintenance tools. Far, far cheaper than developing and maintaining "proprietary features" which aren't even a selling point with most of your customer base.
  Who cares about one vendor's add-a-user tool versus another when the authentication and authorization are actually on another server that might not even run the same OS? Who cares that it's fully pre-emptive or a fine-grained network stack, provided it does the job? What does one particular vendor's backup facilities matter when your drives are in EMC or equivalent data servers?
  
  --
  I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
8. Re:Sun will Shine at the Big Blue by iabervon · 2004-06-09 04:42 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There was a recent post to the kernel mailing list saying that there were performance problems in (ironically) the RCU code on systems with a lot of processors. In this case "a lot of processors" meant 512. A few weeks later, someone posted a fix. There was a recent significant change to the virtual memory system to make it suitable for systems with 32G of RAM; there's another for 32-bit processors with processes that use 4G of RAM. When you see things like "My test box has 48G, but we recommend 32G to have a wide safety margin", and "we only designed this for a few tens of CPUs; here's a suggestion for 512, though".
  
  Solaris may still be ahead on the high end, but Linux is definitely catching up, with IBM and SGI, among others, working on it. Oracle seems to be betting on Linux passing Solaris soon. It may not be long before Sun has to give up on Solaris and embrace Linux in order to sell high-end systems. On the other hand, they don't list servers on their web page with more than 104 processors, so they might not have systems that still count as "high-end" before long.
Hmmm by liamo · 2004-06-09 00:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

Hmmm. I wonder if Sun expected this response from SCO, allowing them to say "Well, we offered" without actually opening anything.
1. Re:Hmmm by Smallpond · 2004-06-09 01:08 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Solaris source code has been available for a long time to qualified educational institutions, developers and computer hackers. Open Source doesn't mean free to copy in this case. They allow people to look at the source so that they can develop code and suggest improvements. They would be very upset if their code found its way into Linux, for example.
An element of truth? by Epeeist · 2004-06-09 00:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

This one may be partially true. Sun did licence SysV when they moved from SunOS. However, they have done a large amount of work on it since.

Are we going to see SCO try and claim the work that Sun have done on high quality SMP, multi-path support, hardware partitioning etc. as their "Intellectual Property" in the same way that they are attempting for the NUMA and JFS stuff.
Re:Ummm... by Pharmboy · 2004-06-09 00:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

The question isn't really if the code has any SVR5 in it, as it likely has little. The real question is how "derivative" is defined, and how that applies to the license Sun had with AT&T and more recently, SCO.

--
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
No more stalling! by the_mad_poster · 2004-06-09 00:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

That would keep them quiet for a while.

We don't WANT to keep them quiet for a while. We want IBM to go in for the kill and cut their tongue out to keep them quiet for GOOD. No more stall tactics, and definitely don't aid them in their stall tactics by giving them something to do. If they get even the faintest air of legitimacy again, rest assured some moron with more money than brains is going to pump funds into their hot air balloon to help reinflate it. I don't think I an take another year and a half of these stories every day like they were coming for awhile...

--
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
but... by mattyrobinson69 · 2004-06-09 00:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

IBM will own all of SCO's IP at the end of the trial anyway - if SCO even go that far.

what happens to the IP of a company that goes backrunpt (does it go to their investors maybe?)
OSS License by Peartree · 2004-06-09 00:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

Was there ever any mention of Sun making their license GPL?
More misunderstandings of the "viral" effect by Sunnan · 2004-06-09 01:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

Speaking of which - this debacle kind of proves which license is really "viral". It's the proprietary ones, such as the one half-assedly half-granting Sun use of the Unix source.

"You can use it, but you can't give it away." So much for ownership.
Update as of Wednesday ... by Random+BedHead+Ed · 2004-06-09 01:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

I don't think Darl's dream of prolonging the FID will come to any fruition. The court has replied to one of their attempts at delay, as reported on Groklaw today:

"Court hears arguments and DENIES the motion due to lateness of the objection and inconvenience to the parties scheduled for deposition."

IBM had argued that SCO didn't need a delay because "two of the witnesses scheduled next week ... are former employees of AT&T, not IBM. .... Similarly, Mr. Rodgers was employed by Sequent, not IBM, and IBM does not have any of his documents. The final deponent, BayStar, is an investor in SCO, wholly unrelated to IBM, and that deposition apparently will not go forward." Today Judge Wells agreed and denied SCO's attempt to prolong the FUD. This guy really seems to understand the importance of getting these decisions out sooner rather than later, since the claims are enormous and the business impact could be huge. Their arguments to postpone the trial date are equally without merit, so expect more embarassing setbacks for SCO soon.
Future of Patents and Derivative Works by endofoctober · 2004-06-09 02:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

For me this brings up an interesting future scenario re the "Solaris is a derivative work of System V". If a company (SCO) licenses software to a second party (Sun), then the second company builds a huge code base around the licensed work, at what point does the second company's contribution become large enough that it's no longer considered "derivative"?

If enough new code is written to replace original code, is the resultant work still considered to be a derivative of the original? It may be inspired by it, but is it still legally hemmed in under the original copyright?

Maybe in this case Sun feels that enough of the licensed work has been re-written (and vastly improved) by their own staff that it no longer resembles the original System V.

--
- Jack
I wish they'd open X/NeWS. by Ungrounded+Lightning · 2004-06-09 04:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

If I've got this right:

Quite a while back the Grasshopper Group (which was working on a NeWS for Macintosh at a garage-shop level) contracted with Sun to combine it with X as a Sun product. It didn't catch on. But the contract resulted in Sun having enough IP rights over the codebase that the developers couldn't open-source it. Since then they have tried several times to get Sun to allow them to release the code. But nothing ever came of it.

X is already open and NeWS is currently moribund. None of Sun's current or likely future market advantages are the restult of its windowing system, and an open version of NeWS wouldn't be any threat to Sun. (Even if it caught on big time Sun could just grab the open version and use it - and an open project would no doubt include a good Sun port anyhow.)

So if Sun is really interested in contributing to Open Source, here's something they can do on the cheap: Free the orphan.

--
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Re:Serves them right by spitzak · 2004-06-09 05:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

Although you seem to be trying to slant your argument into an anti-slashdot/pro-microsoft rant, the basic premise is quite true.

The company on top always fights standards, and the companies below it all claim "standards are good".

Even in recent history Microsoft has flip-flopped on this in instant messaging, because they were not number 1 in this, AOL was.

I fully agree that if IBM "wins" they will turn quite evil. And Microsoft will turn into the good guys so fast it will make everybody's head spin. Smarter people are trying to make sure that IBM truly gives away enough stuff so they cannot become entirely evil, such as officially saying that open source is allowed to use their patented technology. So far IBM has not been stupid enough to do that, but there is hope...

People thinking the GPL on Linux will save them are deluded. The design of the Intel 486 is documented quite well and can be duplicated (AMD did so) yet this did not mean that Microsoft could not run a closed-source Windows atop it. In the same way a fully open-source Linux bottom level would not prevent a closed-source upper layer from being written, much like OS/X's user interface code.