SCO to restrict GPL’d Solaris

Computer World ^ | 2004-06-09 | Rodney Gedda

[N3WBI3]

Less than one week after Sun Microsystems’ chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz pledged to open source its Solaris operating system, The SCO Group has stated that licence restrictions prevent Sun from contributing its work to the GPL (General Public Licence).

Solaris is based on Unix System V, the source code to which has since been acquired by The SCO Group.

The SCO Group’s marketing manager Marc Modersitzki said although the company can't discuss specific details of its licence agreements, it is confident that Sun will be very rigorous in complying with its Unix System V licence as the company defines its plans for open-sourcing any part of Solaris.

[N3WBI3]

It will be interesting to see what SUN wants to do with this. Maybe another derived works fight from our friends at SCO..

[glorgau]

Methinks that SCO is going to run out of lawyer feed (money) fairly soon. Unless, of course, the lawyers pursue it pro bono.:-)

[ShadowAce]

SCO Ping

[snooker]

Solaris is based on SunOS which was based on BSD, ask Bill Joy.

BSD is not encumbered with the ATT license.

[Boundless]

> Solaris is based on SunOS which was based on BSD ...
> BSD is not encumbered with the ATT license.

That's what I thought, too. But the question arises, why
does Sun have a license from SCO?

Open-sourcing Solaris, by the way, is not new. It's been
available under the Sun COSL (Community Open Source
License) for years. It's not that "open" a license, but
the people who have signed up for it are not also AT&T
licensees.

So if Sun's GPL move has a SysV problem, then the earlier
COSL move did also. SCO might have a point about that, but
not a legal case (not without Novell authorization anyway).

But then we have this mysterious Sun-SCO license, which
may be newer than, and distinct from, any Sun-AT&T license.

If Sun was foolish enough to enter into any contract with
SCO, they will soon regret it. SCO may twist the words
to at least open some sort of suit.

But meanwhile, back at BSD. If the open non-Sun-authored
parts of Solaris are indeed BSD, and not SysV, then SCOs
actions may have an unintended consequence - they may
finally reveal the details of the BSDI-ATT settlement,
which might reveal that SYsV in fact contains no protected
IP.

The Microsoft actions againt Lindows may only end up
destroying the bogus MS trademark on Windows. The end
result of the SCO barratry may likewise be merely the
total destruction of proprietary Unix.

[snooker]

"That's what I thought, too. But the question arises, why does Sun have a license from SCO? "

Sun bought a bunch of hardware drivers to add to Solaris. The drivers are dynamically loadable and easily replaced.

Sun has a total license to use SYSV, they got that from ATT. I think this is the single point SCO is focusing on. Sun only used the SYSV calls, not the kernel, which remained BSD.

Sun has not said they will GPL Solaris, only make it open source. They may use the BSD license model or ???

Could be a bad bounce hiding in that ATT-BSD pile. BSD is unencumbered and available free. So another way to look at it is if SCO is successful in killing Linux, FreeBSD lives on. Almost all Linux software is available for BSD right now.

I think the final outcome of SCO-Linux-MS is that OS software support will be subscription, and OS software development will become an open process. This will level the playing field for all.

BTW, I heard the Sun press talk where Schwartz went over all this.

[B Knotts]

SunOS 4 was BSD-based.

SunOS 5+ (Solaris) is SysV-based.

It says right there on the console: "UNIX (r) System V Release 4.0"

[snooker]

When Sun got their ATT license it gave them the rights to use the SYSV label and branding. This was tied up in the ATT license and eventually the X/Open Companys use of the UNIX trademark.

I believe what you are seeing is this old Branding. The latest retail box I got from Sun Solaris 9 doesn't mention SYSV.

Wait one, I will look further ... re-boot Solaris 10b55
On the latest Solaris 10 beta that I just loaded up, there is no Sys-V mention. It just says Solaris and Sun. Not on the Solaris 9 boxes either. The copywrite notice in the front of the Solaris 9 manual says derived and licensed from Berkeley BSD systems and the UNIX trademark licensed from the X/Open Company Ltd. I just looked.

At one time you had to be SYSV branding or you couldn't do business with the feds. But it looks to me the recent branding Sun is using has dumped all that. The only mention is BSD in the manuals. Looks like Sun has done some cleaning.