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