18 Jul
2008
18 Jul
'08
2:22 a.m.
Sun needed desperately to find a way to stop losing
money, and that
meant making themselves again desirable to the IT market. Sun mayor [sic]
rivals were (and are) Microsoft and Linux. Specially Linux, since more
Sun machines are being replaced by Linux than by Windows. So the Sun
strategy was two-fold: release an "opensource" Unix to "steal" the
grassroots support away from Linux, and give money to The SCO Group
so they could keep afloat their FUD campaign against Linux in the
Enterprise. If they could achieve these two goals with one swift move,
much better; and they did: the gave money to The SCO Group to buy a
bogus license to opensource Solaris.
Can we keep this kind of invective to a minimum? As it happens, you're
wrong in this particular case, but more generally it would be nice if
we could try to stick to the history of Unix as code, and not Unix as
endless trench warfare...
BTW, nobody
seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed
code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway
Nobody cares about OpenSolaris. It would not
have impacted any version of Solaris, including the Open one.
And why you are asking? I am glad you asked. It seems that according to the
good people at the Sun offices here in the City, that by the time version 9
was released, that the code base was completely rewritten, and contains
absolutely nothing from BSD, and most certainly nothing from the original
creators of UNIX.
That's not saying much. The original creators of UNIX wrote it in assembly
for the PDP-11. Nothing of that is in Solaris, that's true. And BSD is
open-source and legally close-able anytime, so no argument there either.
Now, if "the good people at the Sun offices" are trying to imply there
in no Unix System V code in Solaris, they are lying. Period.