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.'"

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

[Maserati]

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).

Troll Article

[turgid]

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.

Microsoft also has a problem ...

[tomhudson]

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:Let me be the first to say...

[JFitzsimmons]

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]

You are (depending on how you count) between about 3 and 9 months out of date [itworld.com].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

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:Let me be the first to say...

[should_be_linear]

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, ...

the sale to Sun looks valid

[hedrick]

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]

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.

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

[an.echte.trilingue]

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:well, now that we know

[jonbryce]

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:Let me be the first to say...

[an.echte.trilingue]

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]

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:Let me be the first to say...

[sinan]

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:Let me be the first to say...

[ricegf]

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:Wasn't sure where to put this

[iwoof]

Sun placed NFS as well as the underlying XDR and RPC source code in the public domain over 15 years ago. There is no need for a license.
The protocol itself is described in RFC-1094, RFC-1813 (NFS v2 and v3), RFC-1057 (RPC) and RFC-1014 (XDR).

--Woof!

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Page one from the doc you listed.

"Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this Study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission."

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

[anilg]

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:Troll Article

[Guy Harris]

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.

Re:Does anybody run OpenSolaris on non-Sun hardwar

[heybo]

Actually the company I work for is running a little over 50 Solaris10 boxes in production running on x86 hardware, and as time goes on we look to replace all our Linux boxes with Solaris. Yes I am a long time Linux fan and yes I still think it is a great OS. So why the change? It is easier to manage in a data center and has a lot of tools and features that Linux doesn't have like zones and the zfs file system. Also the EOL policy for Solaris is longer. I would rather not have to rebuild an OS on a box because of lack of updates before the hardware is either outdated or dies.

Yes they are lacking in the driver department but they are working on that and have made big improvements in the last two years on that.

No I am not saying that one is better an the other. Yes I am still a big fan of Linux. All I am saying is yes we use it and love it and for our needs it fits best.

Please remember that over 25% of the code in your Linux box was given freely to the Linux Community by Sun Systems. Remember they are buying up the IP patents that are owned by others and Open Sourcing these patents.

Yes a long time ago they were worse than MS about being propriety but you have to give them respect for their change it heart. They have seen the change and changed with it. Something MS has failed to do.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Novell. They bought the rights to it from AT&T and they never surrendered it to SCO as the ruling showed.