[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[bmc@eng.sun.com (Bryan Cantrill)]

> 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. 

I think you meant to say "I don't care 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.

I have already responded regarding this, but you would be wise to remember
Hanlon's Razor (especially when dealing with my particular company):  "Never
attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
For all its faults, there is little malice at Sun -- and I have no further
comment. ;)

	- Bryan

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Bryan Cantrill, Sun Microsystems Fishworks.       http://blogs.sun.com/bmc