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To: antiRepublicrat

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.


174 posted on 03/13/2006 12:07:07 PM PST by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle

Why is it a bad thing for you or the ChiComs to be able release your own versions of a Finnish operating system?


175 posted on 03/13/2006 12:09:25 PM PST by Redcloak (<--- Not always a people person.)
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To: Golden Eagle
Sun refers to Open Solaris on their own website as a "project" that provides "an open development environment", and "is not a product offering".

I guess you didn't download and run that OpenSolaris live CD link I gave you. Sun itself doesn't offer a whole package, but a live CD was up a few days after Sun released the code to the general public. Such is the nature of open source -- receive, modify, re-release, wash, rinse, repeat.

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.

You are interpreting it incorrectly. Read the definitions. That section is saying that the Initial Developer (Sun in this case) grants a patent license for the software initially released under the CDDL (their OpenSolaris). The Original Software is the starting point, and 2.1(a) allows modifications from it -- which could result in a fork. The case where Sun revokes the patent license under this license is where a contributor removes code covered by the patent (in which case the revocation is moot).

China faces LESS legal risk in using OpenSolaris than in using Linux, since they can easily take a huge chunk of OpenSolaris, tightly link it to their code, and re-release the whole thing without releasing their code (except for actual modifications to the OpenSolaris code itself).

Sun is currently in China, and it is pushing OpenSolaris hard, organizing user groups, giving seminars, pushing it to universities, and even getting awards from China's major open source magazine. They're building quite the community of Chinese open source developers over there.

So, to sum it up from your POV: Chinese can have Linux, bad. Chinese can have OpenSolaris, good.

The only thing I can figure from this is that I was wrong, you aren't against open source. You are just against GPL software, especially Linux. But your arguments are irrational since your main objections to Linux apply to OSS software you have no problem with, such as OpenSolaris.

192 posted on 03/14/2006 11:40:47 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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