3 Mar
2017
3 Mar
'17
9:28 p.m.
I've been given two different interpretations so I'm not sure who to
believe. I really would like to hear a lawyer from Oracle (ney Sun) for
Micro Focus (ney - At&t -> Novell) make a statement.
I believe the issue is that Sun was given something called "complete
rights", similar to what IBM had( which is how OSF was licensed - from the
IBM one). This was interpreted to believe they could anything with it
with anything >>they<< did. That is to say, if they hacked on the kernel
and published there kernel, then the parts that came from AT&T could be
also.
The question is what happens to the code that got from AT&T but did not
use. I'm going to be hypothetical here, Larry correct me to the specifics
please as I never saw Solaris sources, but SVR4 had Streams Networking in
it. Let's say the Solaris pulled that out like we did at Stellar with
SVR3 and put a BBN or BSD style stack back in and never shipped the streams
code. The Network stack they did publish would be available, but what
about the AT&T version?
I have heard different legal folks say it was both still "closed" and
others say, it was now opened.
I don't know. I'm not willing or have I ever worked for anyone that has
believed it was now "free."
I do tend to think of 32V and before as generally open technology. I come
to that between the UCB regents position, one hand, much less the
publishing of books like the Lions' book years ago. There have been
publications of how things like SVR3 and SVR4 >>worked<< but I don't
know
of source being included the same way the Lions text. If that were done,
I would be more comfortable.
That said, I do feel like its time it >>should<< be made available; but the
IP is I guess owned by Micro Focus.
Clem
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 3:06 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:
From: Warner
Losh
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 12:49 PM, Random832
<random832(a)fastmail.com>
wrote:
>> My understanding is that System V source
of any sort is not legal
to
>> distribute.
> surely there are big chunks of the
opensolaris code that are not
*very
> much* changed from the original System V code
they're based on.
Under
> what theory, then, was Sun the copyright
holder and therefore able
to
> release it under the CDDL?
Their paid-up perpetual license that granted them
the right to do
that?
I wonder, if they do indeed have such a license, if they have the rights to
distribute original SysV source under the CDDL? Or does that license only
apply to SysV code that they have modified? And if so, _how much_ does it
have
to be modified, to qualify?
Maybe we can get them to distribute SysV under the CDDL... :-)
Noel