From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: tfb@tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw) Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 21:41:50 +0100 Subject: [TUHS] Bell Labs Holmdel site coming down In-Reply-To: <200605192016.25862.wes.parish@paradise.net.nz> References: <1147916526.446bd0ee65cc6@www.paradise.net.nz> <5980.80.75.66.29.1147941368.squirrel@www.gradwell.com> <200605192016.25862.wes.parish@paradise.net.nz> Message-ID: On 19 May 2006, at 09:16, Wesley Parish wrote: > Three - there is usually a group of people willing to do this sort > of work - > voluntarily - as the Groklaw example shows us, so it's often more > an inertia > thingee than anything more serious. > I think this is off topic now, but the issue is that the company that signed the license agreements is the entity that is liable to be sued. So it is their responsibility to ensure that they are safe from that. That pretty much means it will cost them money, because *their* engineers and legal people will have to check things, and demonstrate to the satisfaction of the officers of the company (who carry the can if they get sued) that it's OK. This doesn't mean it can't happen (as said in another branch of this, people within Sun have tried it before) but it does mean it's competing with other stuff for resource. Would Sun (say) improve their chances of survival by to open source SunOS 4 (which, although people romanticise it now, actually sucked, even at the time - it was only being better than early SunOS 5 and being a long time ago that make it seem nice) or to open source Java? Or by doing neither? Sorry for the rant, I'll shut up now. --tim