18 Jul
2008
18 Jul
'08
1:55 a.m.
From: "Jose R. Valverde"
<jrvalverde(a)cnb.csic.es>
Following up to recent questions about whether OpenSolaris might be jeopardized
if SCO didn't have the rights to provide the license, I see that judge Kimball
has ruled on the case, and in discussing its ruling, he mentions the agreement
between SCO and Sun.
Particularly he mentions:
You guess Sun was worried about non-ATT code in SVRX? No quite. The SVRX
code in Solaris (if any; and certainly there is plenty) is certainly 100%
ATT-derived, and any non-ATT code in the SVRX code that The SCO Group
passed on to Sun had (by a mere matter of time) to be added to SVRX
after ATT relinquished the original SVRX code and quite after Solaris
branched out of the UNIX System V Release 4, and therefore any non-ATT
(or non-ATT-licenseable) code inside The SCO Group's SVRX certainly is
not inside Solaris, so no worries there.
You forget the The SCO Group was fully engaged in a total FUD campaign,
whose ultimate goal was to cut off Linux support in the Enterprise via
fear, uncertainty and doubt, and whose collateral goal was to make
plenty of money selling bogus Linux licenses and suing everybody in
sight (IBM and The SCO Group's own customers, of course).
Sun needed desperately to find a way to stop losing money, and that
meant making themselves again desirable to the IT market. Sun mayor
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.
Section 10 of the 2003 Sun Agreement also sets
forth SCO's obligation
to indemnify Sun for any claim brought against Sun asserting that the
Section 4 licensed technology infringes the rights of any third parties.
Section 10 further provides that if the intellectual property rights
in the technology become the subject of a claim of infringement, SCO
shall ensure that Sun has the right to continue to use the technology
or replace the technology to make it non-infringing. The provision has
not been implicated or applied.
I have to change my opinion on SCO to consider them now UNIX zealots. As
I read it, I guess Sun was worried by possibly non-ATT code in SVRX, and
may be by Novell's assertions, so they shielded themselves: if I'm not
wrong that means OpenSolaris is safe and the responsibility for that relies
totally on SCO. SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding third
parties with respect
to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant
Your ingenuity here is shocking.
My guess is they were for opening SVRX as a way to
increase market share
of UNIX against LINUX but preferred Sun to open _their_ version instead of
opening SCO's own. At the same time they must have thought that a combined
attack on Linux would drive most people off Linux towards opensource UNIX
and that corporate interests would prefer SCO's closed Unixware to Sun's
open source solution in line with tradition.
Ridiculous. With Solaris the Enterprise has a growth path to big iron.
With UnixWare the Enterprise has a "growth" path from the PC to a bigger
PC.
Thus SCO move benefits them twice as now they have two
open source OSes,
and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing
SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all
responsibility.
So, what two "opens source" OSes does The SCO Group have?
"Open"-Server
and "Open"-Unix (aka Unixware)? Amazing!
BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of
SVRX contributed
code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway
Nobody cares about OpenSolaris. If you are going to go with Solaris,
open or not, you are going to be paying much more for year-on-year
support to the vendor than the Solaris license costs, so whether it is
open o not is moot for the Enterprise.
In any case, we
now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great
thing to know.
I do not see it like that at all. The SCO Group has afforded SUN
indemnification in the eventual case the license they sold to them gets
shot, as it is going to happen unless Novell gets its money, either from
the now-bankrupt The SCO Group or from SUN itself (second payment for
the same thing, funny deal there!).
The question here is: the indemnification The SCO Group offered SUN
weights less than smoke: What indemnification can you get from a bankrupt
company? None, that is the answer.
Or may be they didn't want to but needed so badly
Sun's money to follow
their lawsuit against IBM that they were willing to sell their souls
(and IP) in the hope of a big win against IBM. Who knows?
That interpretation is much closer to the truth. Except they didn't sell
"their IP", as The SCO Group had none of UNIX copyrights, none of UNIX
IP, they just bought from Novell the UNIX distribution business, but
not the UNIX IP.
One thing is certain, Caldera/SCO should be thanked
for allowing opening
of so much ancient -and modern- UNIX source code. Their war against Linux
OTOH is another issue.
Caldera/The SCO Group did no have just title to change the license on the
intellectual property they did not own and which they were not allowed to
re-license with different terms under the "Assets Purchase Agreement"
signed between Caldera and Novell. Therefore, any and all relicensing
done by Caldera of ancient or modern UNIX code is void and null. Unless
Novell comes after the fact and endorses such open-sourcing. Absent Novell
action, The SCO Group actions changing the UNIX license are void.
Novell action in that sense has not happened up to the day of today.
From: "Gregg C Levine"
<hansolofalcon(a)worldnet.att.net>
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.
From: Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced. They released
OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.
What? Care to show proof? What do you mean by the mention of "OpenUNIX"
in the same paragraph where you say "SCO was trying to get everything
opensourced"? That "OpenUNIX" is proof of the "opensourcing" done
at
The SCO Group?
What??
They had reached an agreement with
every one and were about to release everything a the big expo in Jan/Feb
east cost. It was to be a joint IBM/SCO announcement, when IBM suddenly
decided against it and were addamanly now doing everything to stop it.
Those are not verifiable facts. Rumors and hearsay make no history.
I am grateful to SCO for their attempt to make
UnixWare/OpenUNIX
opensource. I just wish it had succedded.
What attempts? Vaporware is nothing to be grateful about.
--
Pepe
pepe(a)naleco.com
18 Jul
18 Jul
2:22 a.m.
New subject: IANAL. Kimball has ruled
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.
4:30 a.m.
New subject: IANAL. Kimball has ruled
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:22:15PM -0700, Bryan Cantrill wrote:
The history is made by people and their actions, people are not isolated
beings but they are social. Therefore, history is always about politics.
The code of Unix did evolve because of the politics they
creators/vendors were engaged with (I'm talking about political
economy). The actions which created and evolved Unix had political
goals, sometimes for academic gain, sometimes for commercial gain.
I don't think Unix as a phenomenon can be understood without
understanding it's politics.
You happen to have a different view on the political angle of Unix.
That's fine. You also don't hold a totally impartial stance on Unix
politics, as you are affiliated to one of the Unix parties. But I don't
think it is fair to try to suppress the political views one doesn't like,
or to try to suppress the political expression of history altogether..
It is as much "historical Unix" the political history of Unix, as it is
the code history of it.
--
Pepe
pepe(a)naleco.com
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... 
2:40 a.m.
New subject: IANAL. Kimball has ruled
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Pepe wrote:
No, It was the name choosen to spearhead the new opensource movement of
Caldera after purchase of SCO divisions from the OLD SCO. There were only
3-12 people outside SCO that new about the soon to be released email list.
It was an NDA list, sadly I can not reproduce the copies because of the
idiot that over wrote over 750 GB of disk with "DIE SCO DIE SCO". I was
not backing up NDA stuff. But if you can get the Forum Presenations from
the year Caldera purchased SCO assests and the next one you will see their
agenda to OpenSource everything clearly stated. Ransome Love if my memory
is correct was CEO at the time.
You were not there and did not live through what was happening. I was. I
know others were as well. It was not vaporware. It was also part of the
new United Linux. SUSE was there, as well as the other members of the
colliation. It was a sad day when it all happened. It was to be part of
the big announcement of United Linux.
--
Boyd Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
ZENEZ 1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah 84047
From:
"Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde(a)cnb.csic.es>
From: Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced. They released
OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.
What? Care to show proof? What do you mean by the mention of "OpenUNIX"
in the same paragraph where you say "SCO was trying to get everything
opensourced"? That "OpenUNIX" is proof of the "opensourcing"
done at
The SCO Group? What??
No, not rummors or hearsey. I was in the meetings where it was discussed.
There were the IBM reps, SCO reps and a few others. This was just prior
to the big show. The next day IBM came in and said they would not
opensource the stuff. All the press released were trashed and then the
battle began.
They had reached an agreement with every one and
were about to release
everything a the big expo in Jan/Feb east cost. It was to be a joint
IBM/SCO announcement, when IBM suddenly decided against it and were
addamanly now doing everything to stop it.
Those are not verifiable facts. Rumors and hearsay make no history. I am grateful
to SCO for their attempt to make UnixWare/OpenUNIX
opensource. I just wish it had succedded.
What attempts? Vaporware is nothing to be grateful about. 
8:10 p.m.
New subject: IANAL. Kimball has ruled
A few corrections:
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:55:14 +0200
Pepe <pepe(a)naleco.com> wrote:
So is yours: think of Linux and GPLv3: that's an impossible move because
there's no way to track contributors. Same happens (to a lesser degree
perhaps) with SVRX.
I never said it wasn't silly or wrongfully founded, but you must
acknowledge it was bold.
That 'them' refers to Novell, which is the subject of all the paragraph.
Novell gets Linux and OpenSolaris if they reach an agreement with Sun.
That argument applies equally to HP, IBM or any other. However...
Certainly any company that outsources system management must pay
for it, be it to Sun, RedHat, IBM or whomever.
If you have competent sysadmins, then you can get all maintenance
in-house and save a lot on support.
And you may not care. But Sun's clustering, DTrace, ZFS, Grid, and many
other technological offers are worth for real performance. I don't
argue most people do not care about them and are happy with Linux or
Windows.
Me... I've used Linux since 0.1 believe it or not, and the bulk of my
systems are Linux. But I also keep xBSD, Tru64, AIX and Solaris for
those special cases where Linux falls short.
Of course nobody can read someone else's mind. But just as SCO announced
everywhere their war on Linux, Caldera announced everywhere their intent
to progressively open source UNIX. At least you should give same weight
to both series of statements (bearing in mind they were done by different
CEOs).
You guess Sun was worried about non-ATT code in SVRX?
No quite. The SVRX
code in Solaris (if any; and certainly there is plenty) is certainly 100%
ATT-derived, and any non-ATT code in the SVRX code that The SCO Group
passed on to Sun had (by a mere matter of time) to be added to SVRX
after ATT relinquished the original SVRX code and quite after Solaris
branched out of the UNIX System V Release 4, and therefore any non-ATT
(or non-ATT-licenseable) code inside The SCO Group's SVRX certainly is
not inside Solaris, so no worries there.
I don't quite get your point, but had access to some old versions of
Solaris under NDA, and believe me or not, it hasn't changed that much
(although it has changed a lot). As far as I remember, SV is not 100%
ATT: a large part of it (the majority according to some) was developed
by Sun. It would surprise me if in their joint agreement Sun hadn't
safeguarded themselves to keep some control on their code.
Not only that, there is/was code that didn't belong either to ATT nor
Sun there. Tracking all that and getting agreements would have been a
nightmare for Sun. And Sun had been after open sourcing Solaris since
the late UNIX Wars and early Linux times, see Larry McVoigh's
http://www.bitmover.com/lm/papers/srcos.html
Finally, probably a good part of the deal with SCO was due to
Sun's interest in many SCO device drivers for x86
You forget the The SCO Group was fully engaged in a
total FUD campaign,
whose ultimate goal was to cut off Linux support in the Enterprise via
fear, uncertainty and doubt, and whose collateral goal was to make
plenty of money selling bogus Linux licenses and suing everybody in
sight (IBM and The SCO Group's own customers, of course).
I don't believe anybody sane would engage in deceptive action at that
level consciously with such big players as IBM. From all the history
of the cases it seems rather that this is a case of a change of
management to unknowledgeable, ambitious managers who paid too much
attention to the UNIX department on the Company and then had to put
a straight face to defend what resulted to be an untenable position.
Try to put yourself in Darl's place: you make a decision based on the
promises of some head of department and sue IBM and the world. Then
little by little your move is proven wrong. What can you do? Yes,
say sorry, close the company, fire all workers and get punished for
admitting to a scam. Or you can put a straight face, defend that
you do actually believe the unbelievable -and look as a stupid
instead- and try to save the company, the workers and your skin
until you can find someone else to take the hot potato.
I don't say that is what's happening, but it certainly looks like.
Sun needed desperately to find a way to stop losing
money, and that
meant making themselves again desirable to the IT market. Sun mayor
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.
In the dot-com bubble Sun was _the_ Internet company. They had a
strong name and their view of the future was right. Plus, see the
"The Sourceware Operating System Proposal". Plus, they had already
tried half-opening Solaris 8, and the experience, well received,
proved not enough.
They might have been desperate, but open sourcing solaris was a
decision taken long, long before. Maybe they took advantage of
SCO's Linux war, but SCO clearing up SVRX for them was the move
they had been forever praying for since they helped build SVRX.
Do not forget Sun had been an open source company from its
beginning selling BSD. The UNIX wars damaged them heavily,
and after a short interlude of closedness in the 90s the
company culture was bound to retake over.
SCO thus was willing to take any risks regarding
third parties with respect
to opening up SVRX derived Solaris. That was very bold and valiant
Your ingenuity here is shocking.
Ridiculous. With Solaris the Enterprise has a growth path to big iron.
With UnixWare the Enterprise has a "growth" path from the PC to a bigger
PC.
Not only did Unixware at the time have better SMP support, and Himalaya
clustering, and many things above Linux, but Monterey goal was that
Unixware would run on IBM's big iron. And last I looked IBM produced
far more big iron than Sun.
Thus SCO move
benefits them twice as now they have two open source OSes,
and should any contributor to SVRX code complain of the open sourcing
SCO would have to take the blame and has already assumed all
responsibility.
So, what two "opens source" OSes does The SCO Group have?
"Open"-Server
and "Open"-Unix (aka Unixware)? Amazing! BTW, nobody seems to have complained about
portions of SVRX contributed
code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway
Nobody cares about OpenSolaris. If you are going to go with Solaris,
open or not, you are going to be paying much more for year-on-year
support to the vendor than the Solaris license costs, so whether it is
open o not is moot for the Enterprise.
The question here is: the indemnification The SCO
Group offered SUN
weights less than smoke: What indemnification can you get from a bankrupt
company? None, that is the answer.
The law may have something to say regarding Sun's role as a possible scam
victim of a Novell representative (SCO).
Caldera/The SCO Group did no have just title to change
the license on the
intellectual property they did not own and which they were not allowed to
re-license with different terms under the "Assets Purchase Agreement"
signed between Caldera and Novell. Therefore, any and all relicensing
done by Caldera of ancient or modern UNIX code is void and null. Unless
Novell comes after the fact and endorses such open-sourcing. Absent Novell
action, The SCO Group actions changing the UNIX license are void.
That's not true as we know now from the outcome of the ATT BSD settlement
and the rulings on that case. A lot of code was published without copyright
at a time when that meant public release. The issue was never actually
resolved in court, but you can bet that most probably code up to SysIII
is unprotected.
Again, a risky decision by then Caldera, but this one with smaller risk.
From: Boyd
Lynn Gerber <gerberb(a)zenez.com>
Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced. They released
OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.
What? Care to show proof? What do you mean by the mention of "OpenUNIX"
in the same paragraph where you say "SCO was trying to get everything
opensourced"? That "OpenUNIX" is proof of the "opensourcing"
done at
The SCO Group?
What??
What attempts? Vaporware is nothing to be grateful about.
Don't let your bad experience with Microsoft spread to all vendors. Some
have managed a long history of delivering on their promises, and Caldera
at the time was one such.
Personally, I think if they had stuck to Ransom Love and endured the
harsh times for a couple of years until the "boom" of Linux they would
have managed a lot better. Not to mention they could have unified UNIX
at last. But there's no way to know now.
j
--
These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!
José R. Valverde
De nada sirve la Inteligencia Artificial cuando falta la Natural
6000
days inactive
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4 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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Boyd Lynn Gerber -
Bryan Cantrill -
Jose R. Valverde -
Pepe