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.'"

Comments

Re:support free developmen

[freemacmini]

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.

Re:RMS was right, it's about freedom

[sacrilicious]

For all his rough edges, the simple truth is RMS is right about the GPL and technology. Freedom matters, and it is an end in itself unlike technology and wealth which are a means.

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".

Open Source Exclusion

[tomhath]

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.