Oops, must not use shorthand or GE will call me on that insignificant fact to derail the discussion.
Your point is that the Chinese get an OS for free. They can do that with OpenSolaris. And wouldn't you know it, they use Chinese on their web site to promote the open aspect. Go ahead, download a live CD of OpenSolaris and have fun, just like the Chinese can. Make some changes and redistribute, just like the Chinese can.
they could be sued by Sun for patent infringement, making forking of it very unlikely.
The CDDL grants a license for the patents. Forking is allowed. The only legal problem in forking is trademark -- "Red Solaris" probably wouldn't fly with Sun's legal department.
Open Solaris is only beta code, and not all of it is released under CDDL anyway, as there are portions that are still binary. Sun refers to Open Solaris on their own website as a "project" that provides "an open development environment", and "is not a product offering".
http://www.opensolaris.com/os/about/faq/general_faq/
And, despite your claims to the contrary, any attempted fork would leave them open to patent lawsuits. Again from Sun's website, read the language of section 2.1(b), patent protections are only granted to those using quote "original software", which would clearly not include any attempted fork.
http://www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html
Therefore obviously Solaris is not the same as Open Solaris, Open Solaris is not fully open and is only beta code, and if you try to fork it you could be sued for patent infringement.
Poor Chicoms will have to keep using the free copies of Linux you boys hand them on a silver platter.