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Sun's Patent and Licensing Practices Examined
RMX writes "Groklaw has an excellent analysis of some Patent Questions About the CDDL. For /.ers who don't like reading a lot, the most important point is that 'it would be possible for developers co-developing Open Solaris to someday find themselves blocked from distributing code by a Microsoft patent infringement claim, while leaving Sun, because of their cross-licensing deal with Microsoft, free to continue to distribute the contributed code.'
The article also notes that 'The short answer why [some particular clause] is needed in the CDDL and not the GPL is that Linus Torvalds has not just entered into a cross-licensing arrangement with Microsoft, the relevant details of which are not public'. Makes you wonder what those relevant details are?" And reader rudy_wayne writes "David Berlind's column Will Sun's 1600 patents suck the life out of Linux? talks about Sun's open sourcing of Solaris 10 and the problems that occur due to the fact that so many open source licenses are incompatible with each other. One of his most important points is 'when a large company -- IBM, Sun, or anyone else-- donates code to the open source community with a one-off license, like the Eclipse Public License (IBM) or the CDDL (Sun) it gives those companies a way to donate their code to the open source community, which in turn can enhance it to the benefactor's advantage, without that code leaking into a competitor's product (with a non-reciprocating license) in such a way that it can be used against the benefactor.'"
What would RMS do?
A few comments on the valid points:
+ Linux took off mainly because of shitty x86 platform support and pricing from Sun and other UNIX vendors
This is very much true, the status of the UNIX:es for so long was what gave space for Linux to grow to what it is now.
+ Solaris is a technically superior Unix kernel to Linux and always has been
Traditionally been, very true, technically superior now is more depatable, but in any case today the differences are more that one is better at one thing and other at other.
One of the real weaknesses of Solaris is made very clear even in SUN:s own marketing where they say say that Solaris is guaranteed to run on over 275 Systems. That is, the driver support is still quite limited.
I mean, even Linux is very limited in driver support and one has to be carefull in buying hardware, but Solaris is way behind.
On the other hand features like Dtrace are things that Solaris is ahead in.
That's right. This guy placed himself voluntarily on the same side of the spam wars as the spammers who committed massive DoS attacks against major DNSBLs, leading to the loss of some of the most useful ones. On the same side as the other spammers who sued Spamhaus, one of the single most effective anti-spam resources in the world, in an effort to intimidate its operators into silence.
No, I'm not misquoting him. He didn't say "make DNSBLs obsolete" or "stop spammers with other tools so effective, that nobody needs or wants to use DNSBLs". He said to get them shut down.
The guy had one bad run-in with a DNSBL operator after users reported his commercial, ad-sponsored email "newsletter" was being sent out as spam to people who never wanted it. So he decides that all DNSBLs need to be censored, and stands up in front of a bunch of guys at MIT and makes fun of the DNSBL operator for acting like a nerd on Usenet. Oh, that went over well. Utter shocked silence: "Who is this bozo, and who told him he knew anything about stopping spam?"
After the conference, I looked up his column. Nothing else he had to say was any more worth listening to. This guy does not actually know one thing about anything technical, or about the social implications of the things he discusses or his own moronic proposals.
Sun doesn't want linux to benefit from any solaris technology. They would have never made their license BSDL for that reason. Ironically due to the way the license is written neither can freebsd.
Maybe that's what's wrong with the BSD license. Sun took BSD code, added stuff to it and now makes it impossible for BSD to gain any benefit.
Get a free Mac Mini
To be honest, I came from the opposite side of the spectrum where I begged upper managment to listen to me when I told them that a few of these cheap linux x86 servers can do more than that big expensive sun server. Of course, I often just got the blow off while they went out and wined and dined with their Sun rep.
Well, a few years later, the dot.com crashed - and they decided that it was better to try Linux than to be gung ho on Sun till the point of bankruptcy. Well guess what. Those cheap linux boxes could do more than those Sun servers that cost 10 times as much. And even more, they turned out to be just as reliable and supportable without a platinum sun contract. (have you ever priced one of those).
Too bad Sun was so jealous of MS that they couldn't accept the Linux thing until it was too late. In fact, it still seems they can't accept it - it seems like they feel it's better to be in a Sun+Microsoft only world than a Linux world too.
> because Solaris is a technically superior
> operating system
What makes you say this? do you have actual examples of how solaris is superior to linux ?
as far as i can tell, the main advantage of solaris was that it ran on sun's big-ass servers. Now that we can get the same performance out of a 2-way AMD64 machine as out of 64-way e10k this doesn't matter anymore.
Sitting Walrus Blog
You do realise you are spreading anti-Sun FUD. It might be true - though I personally doubt that - but it's most definitely FUD. You're saying "if you partner with Sun they can sue you over these patents". FUD. FUD. FUD.
I hate this "new wave" political arm of OSS. I much prefer the reliable ranting of RMS regarding Free Software to the OSS FUD from Bruce and ESR.
What a petty and misguided attack on Bruce.
Bruce's analysis and instincts about this issue are right on target.
Something very bad is going on at Sun... management is consistently posturing and conniving, rather than focusing on producing value. As a reluctant stockholder of Sun, I'm concerned. As a spectator, I'm disgusted. I almost have more respect for the SCO people... because I don't really believe that SCO management is deluded enough to think that what they're doing is anything but a naked grab for money. Sun thinks it's on a holy mission.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Absolutely. It's funny, I see cycles of RMS bashing, followed by swings towards recognition of his vision, followed by more bashing... lather rinse repeat. When OSS has a good day people love to nitpick about RMS's beard, his social awkwardness, what have you. When OSS is on the ropes, people realize that the only f'ing thing holding it together is the GPL and RMS's refusal to "find a middle ground".
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I work for a company that has a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft. One of our lawyers explained that if we write code that infringes on a Microsoft patent, we're covered. But Microsoft insisted on an exclusion for Open Source. If we use an OS product that infringes, the cross-license agreement does not apply; they can come after us and our customers.
We are approaching a point beyond which the art of engineering will be so seriously hindered that only very large companies will be able to approach the creation of software products. Legislative action will be necessary. But will the big companies win that legislative battle? They are winning it so far.
What we probably need is a massive grassroots movement aimed at tearing down software patents in the US. (Similar to the one aimed at preventing them in the EU). We don't have to stand around and accept what we see around us. But that is precisely what most people are doing, based upon the commentary surrounding the Sun/MS patent nonsense. What will it take to get people peeved enough to take action? A combined Sun/MS lawsuit against Linux developers / IBM / etc.?
But what is perhaps more dangerous is the FUD that will arise out of this. And that is why I think we need to destroy software patents now, as a preemptive measure.