[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Jose R. Valverde]

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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:

> 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 (though
seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to allow open sourcing 
via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess they thought it would 
play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware as an 'enhanced' or 'better
product' than open solaris. It also fits within Caldera's previous opening
other ancient UNIX.

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.

But then comes the last sentence: the issue of opensolaris damage to the 
closedness of SVRX was not brought up at trial. May be it wasn't the time
and place, or may be Novell reasoned that it does not matter to them to
offer one open source system (linux) or other (solaris). I'd also guess
given Novell involvement in SuSE that they would have liked to open
SVRX all along but didn't dare to because of possible complains by
existing licensees (like IBM or HP) who might see their licenses as
oblivious, and -most probably- because it was never very clear whether
all code could be open or belonged to them (sort of like Linux going to
GPL3: it's difficult to identify all contributors and ask their permission).
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.

BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed
code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway, but it might 
also be that they were waiting to see the case unravel. In any case, we
now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great
thing to know.

My kudos to SCO. They were bolder than I thought. Even if -IMHO- their
strategy against Linux was misled, their willingness to support open
solaris deserves respect.

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?

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.

				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

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Gregg C Levine]

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Hello!
Good to know.
However that's only valid for those individuals who are still running older
versions of Solaris.

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.

The fact that we can login on to a Sun system the same way we can logon to
an emulated PDP-11 running the Seventh Edition of UNIX is clearly meant to
be that way. (BSD2.11 included but not presumed.)

Besides, those zealots at SCO only wanted to go out of business making all
of us look foolish, I am very glad that it backfired and they are the ones
looking foolish, because in the end it ruined the work habits of a lot of
good people, and destroyed a lot of good software as well. (Not the stuff we
discuss, related in function however.)
--
Gregg C Levine hansolofalcon at worldnet.att.net
"The Force will be with you always." Obi-Wan Kenobi
  


> -----Original Message-----
> From: tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org [mailto:tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org]
On Behalf
> Of Jose R. Valverde
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 4:18 AM
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
> Subject: [TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled
> 
> 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:
> 
> > 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 (though
> seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to allow open sourcing
> via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess they thought it would
> play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware as an 'enhanced' or
'better
> product' than open solaris. It also fits within Caldera's previous opening
> other ancient UNIX.
> 
> 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.
> 
> But then comes the last sentence: the issue of opensolaris damage to the
> closedness of SVRX was not brought up at trial. May be it wasn't the time
> and place, or may be Novell reasoned that it does not matter to them to
> offer one open source system (linux) or other (solaris). I'd also guess
> given Novell involvement in SuSE that they would have liked to open
> SVRX all along but didn't dare to because of possible complains by
> existing licensees (like IBM or HP) who might see their licenses as
> oblivious, and -most probably- because it was never very clear whether
> all code could be open or belonged to them (sort of like Linux going to
> GPL3: it's difficult to identify all contributors and ask their
permission).
> 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.
> 
> BTW, nobody seems to have complained about portions of SVRX contributed
> code being in opensolaris, so maybe nobody cared anyway, but it might
> also be that they were waiting to see the case unravel. In any case, we
> now know SCO has assumed the defense of OpenSolaris, which is a great
> thing to know.
> 
> My kudos to SCO. They were bolder than I thought. Even if -IMHO- their
> strategy against Linux was misled, their willingness to support open
> solaris deserves respect.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> 				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
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 11:55:53AM -0400, Gregg C Levine wrote:
> 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.

Nonsense.  Read bmap.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Bryan Cantrill]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 11:55:53AM -0400, Gregg C Levine wrote:
> Hello!
> Good to know.
> However that's only valid for those individuals who are still running older
> versions of Solaris.
> 
> 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 is, of course, absurd, and whoever told you that doesn't have much of
a grasp of the source base.  Yes, gobs of stuff has been rewritten --
but plenty of code dates from Back in the Day, especially in userland.  
For evidence of this, I point (as I often do) to troff, and files like
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/cmd/troff/n5.c,
which has had very little modification in the 18 years since The Merge,
and still contains comments like this gem:

  /*
   * The following routines are concerned with setting terminal options.
   *	The manner of doing this differs between research/Berkeley systems
   *	and UNIX System V systems (i.e. DOCUMENTER'S WORKBENCH)
   *	The distinction is controlled by the #define'd variable USG,
   *	which must be set by System V users.
   */

And those who know their history already know the punchline:  much of
that code isn't going to change because (1) it basically works and (2) the
engineer who wrote it -- Joe Ossanna -- is dead, having died of a heart attack
in 1977.  (This code is legend among Solaris developers; see, for example,
http://blogs.sun.com/eschrock/entry/real_life_obfuscated_code.)

	- Bryan

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

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[John Cowan]

Bryan Cantrill scripsit:

> but plenty of code dates from Back in the Day, especially in userland.  
> For evidence of this, I point (as I often do) to troff, and files like
> http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/cmd/troff/n5.c,
> which has had very little modification in the 18 years since The Merge,

Another example, at the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum, is cal,
which does exactly what it is supposed to and has not been changed
since at least 7th edition days, except to add a modest amount of i18n.
The GNU version has a few more options, as is typical, but still produces
exactly the same output as the 7th Edn. running under apout.

> and still contains comments like this gem:

Indeed, both ditroff and Plan 9 troff are directly descended from
JFO's code.  Only groff is independent, which just goes to show what a
heroic programmer (in a quiet way) James Clark really is (as do nsgmls
and jing/trang).

The Law of James Clark: If you think James is wrong on a matter of fact,
you have another think coming.

-- 
But you, Wormtongue, you have done what you could for your true master.  Some
reward you have earned at least.  Yet Saruman is apt to overlook his bargains.
I should advise you to go quickly and remind him, lest he forget your faithful
service.  --Gandalf             John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:12:05PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Indeed, both ditroff and Plan 9 troff are directly descended from
> JFO's code.  Only groff is independent, which just goes to show what a
> heroic programmer (in a quiet way) James Clark really is (as do nsgmls
> and jing/trang).

As a still-using-troff sort of person, I can vouch for James.  Wow.  
Cool stuff.  And groff really is mucho better than the original.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Michael Kerpan]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at bitmover.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:12:05PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>> Indeed, both ditroff and Plan 9 troff are directly descended from
>> JFO's code.  Only groff is independent, which just goes to show what a
>> heroic programmer (in a quiet way) James Clark really is (as do nsgmls
>> and jing/trang).
>
> As a still-using-troff sort of person, I can vouch for James.  Wow.
> Cool stuff.  And groff really is mucho better than the original.

Perhaps, but it's not as good as Heirloom Troff, which is based on the
"real" sources, but adds lots of groff's features PLUS adds a new font
system that allows for the trasparent use of unmodified Type 1,
Truetype and even OpenType (including all the fancy stuff) fonts AND
tweaks the various typesetting algorithms for MUCH nicer results.

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Boyd Lynn Gerber]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Jose R. Valverde wrote:
> 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 (though seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to 
> allow open sourcing via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess 
> they thought it would play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware 
> as an 'enhanced' or 'better product' than open solaris. It also fits 
> within Caldera's previous opening other ancient UNIX.
> 
> 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.

Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced.  They released 
OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.  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.  
IBM was the "big bad guy".  What I never could understand is how the roles 
got reversed and IBM the anti opensource and SCO the pro opensource 
changed places.  I was working with both groups and could not understand 
why IBM was being such a big pain.  Shortly after it came the SCO law 
suit.  I thought it was going to be about IBM renigging on making things 
OpenSOURCE.  I really can not understand just how the roles were changed 
so much.  It was my understanding that the SUN deal was to add to the big 
change and making things better for UNIX in general.  

I am grateful to SCO for their attempt to make UnixWare/OpenUNIX 
opensource.  I just wish it had succedded.

--
Boyd Gerber <gerberb at zenez.com>
ZENEZ	1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah  84047

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Wilko Bulte]

Quoting Boyd Lynn Gerber, who wrote on Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:33:12AM -0600 ..
> On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Jose R. Valverde wrote:
> > 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 (though seeminglymay be wrong) from them. Why they decided to 
> > allow open sourcing via Sun instead of Unixware is their choice. I guess 
> > they thought it would play better for them to sell a 'closed' Unixware 
> > as an 'enhanced' or 'better product' than open solaris. It also fits 
> > within Caldera's previous opening other ancient UNIX.
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced.  They released 
> OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.  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.  
> IBM was the "big bad guy".  What I never could understand is how the roles 

** lawyers **

that is the keyword here :)

Wilko

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Michael Davidson]

Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb at zenez.com> wrote:

> Caldera/SCO was trying to get everything opensourced.
> They released OpenUNIX 8.0 which was UnixWare 7.1.2.  
> 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 
> nowdoing everything to stop it.  IBM was the "big bad guy".
> What I never could understand is how the roles got reversed
> and IBM the anti opensource and SCO the pro open source
> changed places.  

It wasn't as simple as that - I was there (at SCO) at the time and,
while it is true that the Caldera management at the time they
acquired SCO's UNIX business (Ransome Love) was in favor of
open sourcing everything it never came even close to actually
happening. The main reason was that both SCO UnixWare and
OpenServer were heavily encumbered with lots of bits of third
party code and their associated licensing agreements and it
was, for practical purposes, impossible to either negotiate 
agreements with all of the third parties or remove the code in
question,

As for why Caldera/SCO changed their position - that is simple.
It happened overnight when the management changed and
Darl McBride replaced Ransom Love.

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[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Pepe]

> From: "Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde at 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:
> 
> > 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.

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.

> 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 at 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 at 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 at naleco.com

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[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

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

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Pepe]

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 01:22:15PM -0700, Bryan Cantrill wrote:
> 
> > 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...

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 at naleco.com

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Boyd Lynn Gerber]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Pepe wrote:
> > From: "Jose R. Valverde" <jrvalverde at cnb.csic.es>
> 
> > From: Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb at 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?

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.
 
> 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.

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.
 
> > 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.

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 at zenez.com>
ZENEZ	1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah  84047

[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Jose R. Valverde]

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	A few corrections:

On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:55:14 +0200
Pepe <pepe at naleco.com> wrote:
> 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.

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.

> 
> 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!

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.

> 
> > 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.
> 
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.

> 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 at 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??

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).

> 
> 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
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[TUHS] IANAL. Kimball has ruled

[Michael Davidson]

Jose R. Valverde wrote: 
 
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. 
   I am not going to comment on Darl's sanity. 
 
I think that you will find that Darl's problem was paying too little  attention to the people who actually understood what was going on, not paying too much attention. 
 
He certainly didn't appear to pay much attention to this: 
 
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/IBM-459-22.pdf 
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 think that it was more a case of suing IBM and the world based on what  you (at the time)  sincerely believed and hoped *must* have happened, and then spending  several years and legal theories unsuccessfully trying to find any evidence for it. 
 
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. 
   One promise that, at the time, Caldera had never delivered on was making  a profit. 
 
Caldera did some good things in the Linux world but they were a  distinctly second tier player. 
 
Their decision to buy SCO' s UNIX business was a bad one, based largely  on emotion not on good business sense (I know this, because I was one of the people that  helped sell it to them). 
 
At the time Caldera had no revenue stream but still had some cash from  their IPO, SCO had a rapidly declining revenue stream, and bunch of mostly 10 to 15 year  old technology which was still in reasonable shape but which wasn't going anywhere. Somehow (with  SCO's help) Ransom Love convinced himself that the deal made sense and that (most important  of all, because it appealed to his ego) he could succeed where everyone else had failed and  somehow unite UNIX and Linux and build a successful business out of it. 
 
Sadly none of that turned out to be true and, had  Ransom Love stayed as  CEO I suspect that the company would have been out of business by the end of 2003 at the  latest. 
 
md 
   
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