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.'"

You're not getting off *that* easy.

[Novell$699FeeTroll (1141325)]

Don't forget ...to pay US your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers.

Re:

[SIGALRM (784769)]

Classic! I wondered where you were, if that's you s/SCO/Novell troll guy.

I don't see Novell clawing for its very survival using the legal system to extort F/OSS users. Well, I hope I'm right anyway.

McBride: "...we have no problem with it..."

[LinDVD (986467)]

Now that the Novell ruling has been handed down, reaffirming that Novell owns the copyrights Caldera Systems claimed and wished to have had, most of McBride's public statements are now worth less than zero. Before the judgment, there was some intangible value in the FUD factor, especially for Microsoft (and maybe SUN Microsystems).

Re:

[Maserati (8679)]

Nahh, Novell didn't get a ruling that says they owned it (they have some, UC Regents has some, some is public domain). This ruling just says that SCO got exactly none of what Novell had, however much that may have been - which probably isn't much, the UNIX copyrights are a horrible mess that no one in their right mind would dig into (or sue over).

Re:

[tomhudson (43916)]

"the UNIX copyrights are a horrible mess that no one in their right mind would dig into (or sue over)"

Oh, great - the insanity defense ... :-)

... because the stupidity defense won't work, and the truth that they're a bunch of lying cheating swindling dickheads [trolltalk.com] (do NOT click!) will hang them.

Re:McBride: "...we have no problem with it..."

[dgatwood (11270)]

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.

Re:

[AaronW (33736)]

I could see Novell using this to the advantage of Linux. For example, they could require that Sun allow ZFS and some of the other Solaris technologies be made available under the GPL as well. (I personally would love to see Linux gain a filesystem with some of the features built into ZFS like snapshots).

-Aaron

Re:

[mgv (198488)]

ZFS is already available for BSD and there is a useland implementation for Linux. How much more open do you need?

Its not the more open that you need. You need less open for ZFS to make it part of linux.

Once Apple adopts ZFS as well as BSD it won't be long before it goes to linux.

I do realise that this post sits on a fine line between insightful, troll and flamebait - but bear in mind I'm just commenting on how most good user features on OS X are now also available on Linux. And apple does have a way of ma

Re:The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The management of Sun Microsystems believed that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". So, Sun proceeded to ally with SCO and put the screws to the entire Linux community.

Definitely. They were in it to kill Linux. The fact that they had an operating system that was based on the original UNIX code that they were planning on releasing as open source, and have spent the last few years auditing and systematically buying up any IP rights that they need for this process is completely irrelevant.

Does anybody run OpenSolaris on non-Sun hardware?

[Animats (122034)]

Does anybody actually run OpenSolaris in production on non-Sun hardware? Open-sourcing Solaris seems more of an end-of-life abandonware move than a product line.

Re:Does anybody run OpenSolaris on non-Sun hardwar

[bhima (46039)]

I am in the middle of building a X86 server that I intend to run OpenSolaris on. Trying to find a board that I know in advance is supported has been frustrating. However, I *think* the major problem is the lack of updates for documentation and not that new devices are not supported.

You'll know how it went if you see me trying to sell a server, cpu, RAM combo.

Re:

[argent (18001)]

If those were my only two choices then I'd pick Red Hat. I've never used Solaris 10 for more than anything but messing around, but I've used Solaris 9 and below extensively and frankly, their package management system sucks ass.

My experience with packages on Red Hat has left me of the opinion that I'd rather find the original distributions from wherever Red Hat got them and roll my own distro than deal with the Red Hat Package Manager or anything that uses it ever again. If I didn't have experience with bet

Troll Article

[turgid (580780)]

Linux and Solaris come from different code bases. Linux is Linux and Solaris is UNIX System V R4.

Secondly, Sun didn't "license unix" from SCO. Sun bought some device drivers.

There, settled.

Re:

[kripkenstein (913150)]

Linux and Solaris come from different code bases. Linux is Linux and Solaris is UNIX System V R4.

TFA didn't say otherwise, perhaps you miss the point here.

The point is that Solaris is Unix (not Linux), and it just turned out in court that Novell own Unix. Coincidentally, Novell also happen to own a Linux distro. So, in theory, they might want to assert their rights on Unix to prevent Unixes (Solaris) from competing with Linux (and therefore with Novell's Linux, SUSE).

But, this is just theory. For al

Jesus Fucking Christ!

[kaiwai (765866)]

Sun *NEVER* bought their rights off SCO - they bought drivers. Sun bought their rights off who ever owned SVR4 20+ years ago - IIRC Novell who bought UNIX Labs. Sun bought the most extensive rights to the code one could possibly have.

The issue in question *SHOULDN'T* be Sun but Microsoft who purchasing IP rights to UNIX for their Services for UNIX. Sun already bought them 20 years ago. The issue at play are sales of IP by SCO to third parties.

Re:Troll Article

[Guy Harris (3803)]

If I remember correctly, when Sun moved from Sun/OS to Solaris (and from kind of mix of BSD and SysV to pure SysV), first they didn't want to get a SysV license

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.)

Re:

[Guy Harris (3803)]

At the time, Sun claimed that Solaris 1.x was SunOS with Openview

They did so because it was. Back when the SVR4 project started, if there was any notion of using the term "Solaris", nobody told us in Engineering about it; as far as we knew, the new OS was going to be called SunOS 5.x.

Just one question....

[apodyopsis (1048476)]

...can Microsoft buy Novell?

I mean like 'em or hate 'em thats one firm with awfully deep pockets and the ownership seems to be settled now. Please, please tell me that I have missed something and I am being naive.

Re:

[marvinglenn (195135)]

...can Microsoft buy Novell?

Based on M$'s arguments in the anti-trust/monopoly action against them years ago that they were not a monopoly because of Linux, it is quite likely that government regulatory agencies may block such a purchase based on monopoly issues.

This, though, does not preclude M$ from pulling Novell's strings behind the scenes to inhibit growth in the Linux market. And with their business relationship with Novell, it looks to me that they're setup to have a certain amount of control witho

Re:Just one question....

[Master of Transhuman (597628)]

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.

Microsoft also has a problem ...

[tomhudson (43916)]

Two, actually.

Remember, they also bought a license. I wonder what Novell IP made it into Microsoft products, and if that wasn't the REAL reason Microsoft wanted a deal with Novell - not because of Microsoft IP in linux, but Novell IP in Windows?

Plus, if Novell and/or IBM and/or Red Hat manage to piece the "corporate veil" surrounding the PIPE invenstment, there's another problem, which will be much worse for the convicted monopolist.

Re:

[tomhudson (43916)]

"which SCO did have the authority to license to third parties (though SCO failed to actually give Novell their chunk of the pie -- but that isn't Microsoft's problem)."

If Novell can prove that Microsoft doesn't have "clean hands", it becomes a problem for Microsoft, not just SCO. The timing of the PIPE deal as well as the license is suspicious, to say the least. I'm left wondering if there's a sudden shortage of paper shredders in the SCO area this weekend ...

There's a huge difference

[by Anonymous Coward]

If Sun has to deal with Novell, it's not the same as anybody having to deal with SCO. SCO didn't care if it existed or not at the end of its legal battle with the rest of the world. Their strategy was all about monetizing their precious IP. Sun and Novell, on the other hand, think of themselves as ongoing businesses. They have no desire to run up huge legal bills. If there is an issue between them, they will negotiate like adults, money will change hands and everyone will go about their business.

Bottom line: Novell isn't going to sue Sun.

certainly not.

[by Anonymous Coward]

True, SCO had no "IP" (as Darl would like to put it, frequently) to sell. However, they were Novell's authorized agent for handling licensing for UNIX. The deal was that ALL money from such deals would go to Novell, and a 5% administrative fee would be remitted back to SCO. Furthermore, SCO had no authority to initiate new deals with SYSV without Novell's authorization.

However, Sun bargained with the authorized agent. It was not Sun's job to make sure Darl was fufilling his contractual obligations.

Novell has asked for the money from this and the MS deal. THis means they are not trying to kill it.

the sale to Sun looks valid

[hedrick (701605)]

While SCO didn't own Unix, it did have a right to sell licenses. The recent court order seems to regard the sale to Sun as valid:

Finally, the court concludes, as a matter of law, that the only reasonable interpretation of all SVRX Licenses includes no temporal restriction of SVRX Licenses existing at the time of the APA. The court further concludes that because a portion of SCO's 2003 Sun and Microsoft Agreements indisputably licenses SVRX products listed under Item VI of Schedule 1.1(a) to the APA, even if only incidental to a license for UnixWare, SCO is obligated under the APA to account for and pass through to Novell the appropriate portion relating to the license of SVRX products. Because SCO failed to do so, it breached its fiduciary duty to Novell under the APA and is liable for conversion.

Microsofts legal sockpuppet?

[geoff lane (93738)]

Sun spent a lot of time and cash with lawyers to establish the ownership of all the code that was opensourced. Some parts of Solaris are still not available because of the ownership problems. One of the characteristics of open source is, once released, the worms cannot be forced back into the can. The Solaris code is never going to disappear. What would Novell gain by fighting Sun over this? Novell have no grounds (the same that TSG) for objecting to Sun orginated code, and the old Unix code has been publicaly available from many sources for years.

It's possible that Novell could act as Microsofts legal sockpuppet, but as we have seen, those who act as Microsoft proxies are doomed to failure.

Agency

[John Hasler (414242)]

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.

SCO was Novell's agent in the sale of SysV licenses and it is likely that they were Novell's "ostensible agent" in the sale of this license to Sun. If so the license will stand even if they exceeded their authority in in selling it. Their failure to remit the receipts to Novell is entirely between Novell and SCO and has no effect on the validity of the license.

More trouble for SCO, actually

[Trailer Trash (60756)]

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.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

Not to mention OpenOffice, Java, etc. Sun has brought a lot of good stuff into the Open Source world lately. I personally would hate to see them get spanked.

Re:

[should_be_linear (779431)]

Exactly, in version 6 Java really matured as desktop, server and mobile holy grail open source platform. Only thing they did wrong was not open-sourcing it earlier (so they give traction to _now_ meaningless projects like Mono, classpath, gcj, kaffe, ...

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[EvanED (569694)]

so they give traction to _now_ meaningless projects like Mono, classpath, gcj, kaffe, ...

Mono will still allow some programs written for .NET to run on other platforms, or a free platform on Windows. That's not meaningless. It will also allow people to choose the .NET languages, like C#; that too is not meaningless. (I happen to think that the C# language is notably more fun and better to program in than Java, but that's just my opinion.)

GCJ provides a compiler for Java that goes to native machine code rather than bytecode. Open-source Java doesn't do this; this project too is not meaningless. (Though there was, I'm sure, a good bit of duplicated effort.)

Re:

[cyber-vandal (148830)]

Can I ask you something? Is 2005 really so hard to say/type that you say/type 2K5 instead?

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[jimicus (737525)]

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.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

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.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

and that's fairly typical: a normal Linux install contains very little Sun software (except maybe OpenOffice).

Gee, that's odd... why then does the European Commission [slashdot.org] say that Sun is the number one contributor to the entire Debian project? They made fewer actual kernel contributions than redhat, but still a lot.

So what if they have done bad things in the past? Right now, they support open source. As long as they keep supporting open source, I will support them.

Re:

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

Fixed URL:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/do c/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Score Whore (32328)]

That's a surprisingly uninformed post you made there buddy. First, of all the open source licenses out there, the one that take the most childish attitude of "my ball, my rules" is the GPL. Compare the GPL with the other major licenses and it's the one that puts the most restrictions on people who would incorporate the code into their deliverables.

Secondly, Novell would have a really hard fucking time suing Sun over Unix because Sun didn't buy their license to unix from SCO. They bought it from AT&T way back. What they bought from SCO several years ago was licenses for additional drivers. Which wouldn't be under the rights Novell purchased from AT&T when they bought Unix.

Sun has built more core technologies and released more code open source than almost any other organization. You are disingenius with you claims of bad mouthing. The most recent spat comes from Linux people shitting on Sun and Sun responding. Eg. systrace and Andrew Morton's claims that Sun is fracturing the non-windows market. Hey Andrew here's a clue for you, Sun was shipping a non-windows product before Linus ever started work in Linux. If you can grasp that little fact it would make a lot more sense for you to say Linux is fragmenting the non-Windows market.

Re:

[sinan (10073)]

Actually Sun bought out their license from Novell in 1994

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_199 4_March_24/ai_15082383/ [findarticles.com]

Re:

[JFitzsimmons (764599)]

Wasn't it released under GPL2 just recently? I think by most people's standards, that is both "Free" and "Open Source".

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[EvanED (569694)]

You are (depending on how you count) between about 3 and 9 months out of date [itworld.com].

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[an.echte.trilingue (1063180)]

Sorry, Java isn't Open Source.

From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Sun made the Java HotSpot virtual machine and compiler Free software under the GPL on November 13, 2006,[11] with a promise that the rest of the JDK (which includes the JRE) will be placed under the GPL by March 2007 ("except for a few components that Sun does not have the right to publish in source form under the GPL"). According to Richard Stallman, this means an end to the Java trap. Mark Shuttleworth called the initial press announcement, "A real milestone for the free software community".[12][13]

Following their promise, Sun released the complete source code of the Class library under GPL on May 8, 2007, except some limited parts that were licensed by Sun from 3rd parties who did not want their code to be released under an open-source license.[14][4] Sadly some of the encumbered parts turned out to be fairly key parts of the platform such as font rendering and 2D rasterisation. Sun's goal is to replace the parts that remain closed with alternative implementations and make the class library completely open.

If its good enough for Richard Stallman, its good enough for me.

Re:

[FishWithAHammer (957772)]

rms doesn't use Hurd, though. He uses Linux.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[ricegf (1059658)]

No, rms uses Gnu/Linux, you heathen!

Re:

[ricegf (1059658)]

Who owns UNIX??

The Open Group owns the trademark on the name UNIX®, so whoever owns code that TOG says is Unix owns a Unix product.

TOG currently gives the nod to any set of code that conforms to the Single UNIX® Specification, as maintained by The Austin Group. Thus, from a product point of view, Unix is not a set of code but a set of specifications.

So, if Linux were to evolve to the point where it met the SUS, Linux could be UNIX®. :-)

Re:

[anilg (961244)]

So, if Linux were to evolve to the point where it met the SUS and built a distro with that specific version, and spent $$ to get certified, that distro of Linux could be UNIX®. :-)

Fixed that.

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Get Behind the Mule (61986)]

... and so development is slow.

My friend, you may be a champion in the Understatement of the Century Contest.

Sure, there are many entirely respectable reasons why Hurd never got finished.

But, ah, erm ... ... you see, I feel an acute sense of embarassment when I'm about to point out something that is obvious. So blindingly obvious that it feels preposterous to have to say it at all. But, here goes.

It's time to give up!

The Hurd project has failed! Blue blazes, tarnation and a monkey, it's been seventeen fucking years!

There are software projects for which a delay of seventeen days is intolerable, although that is usually salvageable. A project that is seventeen weeks too late, on the other hand, is universally recognized as a failure.

And we all know about projects that come in seventeen months too late. We all know that someone, somewhere in a project like that was thoroughly incompetent.

There are simply no words, no satire, no amount of acid-tongued vituperation that could do justice to a software development project that still isn't finished after seventeen years.

Not so fast!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast! Solaris' roots go back to before UnixWare. UnixWare wasn't released until 1992. The SVR4 code that went into Solaris split off before then, according to the UNIX History Timeline [levenez.com]. The sale of UnixWare to Novell took place later. And don't forget that a lot of the Solaris code was supposedly taken from BSD-based SunOS, plus there's no doubt that a lot of it was also written by Sun or for Sun.

Somehow, I don't see Sun and its top-notch legal team making a mistake on this matter. This isn't the sort of scenario that would have been overlooked.

- John

Re:

[stox (131684)]

If Sun didn't exist, open software would probably be way behind where it is today. Most open software of the 1980's and 1990's was developed on Sun's. Why? Because back then, Sun had the most open documentation and open architecture. Go look where Linux was distributed for the first 5 years or so, Sunsite's.

Sun also, through greed, vaulted GCC into the mainstream. When Sun decided to no longer include compilers with the base operating system, GCC really took off.

Now then, the community may have a legitimate

Re:well, now that we know

[jonbryce (703250)]

There were three key elements to the defence, and success in any one of them would mean victory for linux.

These were:
1. Linux does not include any unix code.
2. SCO does not own the copyright to unix code.
3. SCO themselves published a linux kernel under the terms of the GPL, and hence granted permission for any SCO owned code it might contain.

The court judgement yesterday established point 2, and therefore linux wins.

In a court case taken by Novel, point 1 would still apply, and point 3 would apply as well in that Novel have also published a linux kernel under the terms of the GPL. Either of those two points would be sufficient for Linux to win.

Re:well, now that we know

[benanzo (1047464)]

At this point, it doesn't matter if there's any UNIX code in Linux. The _whole_ thing could be UNIX and Novell (or anyone else) still couldn't sue any Linux vendor for IP violations. The reason is because Novell (the legal owner of the UNIX copyrights) has been *actively* distributing _all_the_code_ (whether UNIX or Linux) under GPL as part of SLED/SLES for at least a few years now. You can't put code under GPL and then forbid your competitors (Red Hat, Ubuntu,etc) from Freely modifying and redistributing.

Any (if any) UNIX code that is in Linux is effectively Free software now. If Novell owns it, and they've been distributing it under GPL, it's Free. They can't sue anyone. Linux vendors are completely and utterly safe now.