Slashdot Mirror
SCO Fiasco Over For Linux, Starting For Solaris?
kripkenstein writes "We have just heard that the SCO fiasco is finally going to end for Linux. But Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at DesktopLinux.com points out that the favorable result for Linux may cause unpleasant consequences for rival open-source operating system OpenSolaris: 'At one time, Sun was an SCO supporter ... Sun's Jonathan Schwartz — then Sun VP of software and today Sun's president and CEO — said in 2003 that Sun had bought "rights equivalent to ownership" to Unix. SCO agreed. In 2005, SCO CEO Darl McBride said that SCO had no problem with Sun open-sourcing Unix code in what would become OpenSolaris. "We have seen what Sun plans to do with OpenSolaris and we have no problem with it," McBride said. "What they're doing protects our Unix intellectual property rights." Sun now has a little problem, which might become a giant one: SCO never had any Unix IP to sell. Therefore, it seems likely that Solaris and OpenSolaris contains Novell's Unix IP.'"
It's not really about the FUD, though. The real question is whether Novell will sue Sun or not for misappropriating their intellectual property by open sourcing OpenSolaris. My guess is probably not. I don't think Novell has anything to gain from it. They aren't making money off UNIX, really. They seem to have bet the farm on Linux and were willing to defend it against companies trying to bury it (because their livelihood depends on it), but I'm not convinced they'd stoop so low as to pull a SCO themselves and try to sue away the competition. That's just not how responsible businesses operate.
Besides, Novell isn't really making money off of Linux, either. They're making money off their higher level bits---bits that run on both Linux and Solaris. Thus, suing Sun would actually be hurting Novell. That would be pretty silly.
Of course, I'd love to see Novell drive a stake through SCO by releasing the UNIX copyrights into the public domain, but I don't see it happening. Would be fun to watch, though.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is just it. I find it fantastically funny that their bankrolling SCO may come around and bite them on the bum, and they've hardly been a friend to Linux, but overall it would be a shame for that to happen when they've given a fair bit up as open source.
Ahem, I'd like to see some supporting evidence for the notion that Microsoft has ANY sort of "control" over Novell.
Making an interoperability deal - even if it includes "patent protection" and money changing hands - does not seem to me to indicate any sort of "control".
Last I heard, despite Novell's profitability problems with the Linux side of the business, Novell is still relatively cash rich and entirely a viable company at this point. They're not SCO, dying on the vine and desperately looking for a way out. They might be that way in another five years if they can't get Linux moving fast enough, but they're not there yet.
And obviously it would be ridiculous for Novell to "inhibit Linux growth" since they're betting the farm on Linux - unless you're one of the conspiracy theorists like Bruce Perens who think Novell only made the deal to tempt Microsoft into buying them out. I call tin-foil hat conspiracy theory on that notion.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
SCO possibly sold something to Microsoft and Sun that they didn't own, which is fraud. I'm not sure exactly what the agreements were (some vague unix licenses), but Sun and Microsoft might be able to sue them for that in addition to criminal charges.
Of course, I believe that Sun and Microsoft really didn't buy anything, they were just funneling money to SCO.
Do you have ESP?
Yes, but this is why I don't think that would be funny:
I need Open Source. I make my living with Linux. I need Linux to be strong and healthy. I need Apache and PHP. I need Bluefish, Kate and Quanta Plus. I contribute financially to a couple of products, although I don't have much to give. I learned how to do what I do by following Open Source documentation, asking questions on web forums, and mostly by downloading and installing the software to learn to use it for free. I never could have afforded to buy Windows Server 2003 with IIS as ASP just to learn, but it took me one evening to install and start learning debian, apache, mysql and php, and now I make my living with those tools. Do you understand how liberating that is? I was a sand-pounding infantryman for god's sake, and now a year later I am a skilled worker in the IT industry, thanks to Open Source.
If different members of the development community (and Sun is and continues to be a huge member of that community) perpetually sue each other, it hurts the Open Source reputation (which equals fewer customers and fewer developers) and it prevents them from working together toward the common goal of a better set of software for everybody.
The prospect of that is horrifies me.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
You do not remember correctly. Sun most definitely got an SV license at least as far back as SunOS 3.2, which picked up a large chunk of System V code (yes, even before SunOS 4.0). I don't remember what UNIX license they had earlier, but even in 3.0 there was, as I remember, some SV code (I think the SunOS 3.0 Bourne shell was an SVR2 Bourne shell tweaked to be more V7/BSD-compatible and the SunOS 3.0 Berkmail was SVR2 mailx - itself based on Berkmail - tweaked similarly).
The SVR4 project whence SunOS 5.x came was an AT&T/Sun joint project, and Sun hardly would have wanted to avoid getting an SVR4 license. It was most definitely based on AT&T code - although a lot of the "AT&T code" in SVR4 was, in turn, based on Sun code (e.g., SVR4's VM system was derived from SunOS 4.x's).
(Oh, and Solaris 1 was based on SunOS 4.1[.x]; Solaris 2 was the name for the Solaris that used the SVR4-based SunOS 5.x, and, until SunOS 5.7, Solaris 2.x had SunOS 5.x as its core OS - eventually, I guess Sun decided that "Solaris 3" in the sense of a complete rewrite with the OS becoming "SunOS 6.0" wasn't going to happen any time soon, so they got rid of the no-longer-very-interesting "2." and just went to "Solaris 7", followed by Solaris 8, 9, and 10.
In addition, the license purchase didn't have anything to do with the "start of a stable Solaris" - that was, from everything I know, the result of a lot of people at Sun doing a lot of work on the OS to beat it into shape.)