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News: Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org

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  1. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org (15 messages)

    • Posted by: Fred Bloggs
    • Posted on: January 26 2005 08:09 EST
    Following IBM's lead Sun is opening up a large number of its patents for FOSS-based projects. Sun is releasing more than 1600 pattents around the Solaris OS, under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).

    No news on the license model for this yet that I can see - could be interesting to see how this develops though with patents being a very hot issue in Europe right now.

    The press release is here:
    http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-01/sunflash.20050125.2.html

    Visit http://www.opensolaris.org
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    Threaded Messages (15)

  2. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Now it seems that several enterprises fights to help the most to open source projects.
    I think this will reach the limit when Microsoft was damaged enough and the benefits from software had fallen too much.
    Then some enterprises will regret it.
    My two cents...

    Jose R.
    Najaraba
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  3. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Are you saying that "the benefits from software" are reduced by open source? What do you mean?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  4. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Maybe I have written a too much short phrase.
    What I mean is that open source will limit the benefits of the enterprises at the long period.
    Now, the adoption of open surce is growing, but it will reach a limit when present enterprises decide that they have used it enough. now they use the open source as a way to compete with the others.
    This is a good idea, as the competitiveness in software market will grow, but it will finish when other enterprises will control the most importants open software projects.
    (I think)

    Jose R.
    http://najaraba.blogspot.com
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  5. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    "Are you saying that "the benefits from software" are reduced by open source? What do you mean? "

    I for one think opens source is the worst business model ever constructued. It will work for a few,for a while, but free software (as in free lunch) will eventually die as the industry realizes that revenue is what actually drives the industry.

    Support related income is way to low to sustain growth.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  6. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    "Are you saying that "the benefits from software" are reduced by open source? What do you mean? "I for one think opens source is the worst business model ever constructued. It will work for a few,for a while, but free software (as in free lunch) will eventually die as the industry realizes that revenue is what actually drives the industry.Support related income is way to low to sustain growth.

    There will always be a need for "new" software. Even if Linux (or Solaris 10) reached perfection, Mozilla completed, Java and all it's appservers open sourced, MS Word released under the GPL, and SAP and Oracle put in the public domain, we'd still need applications to run on the appservers, monitors to control our networks, custom applications to do our day to day work, tools to access our data, etc. And if all software that we ever thought we'd need were open sourced, and millions of monkeys checked in millions of patches until every single one of them worked perfectly, we'd invent new things to do with software.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  7. RE: Let the open patent wars begin[ Go to top ]

    The Sun CDDL license is incompatible with every other open source license. This means only projects that also use the CDDL can take code from other CDDL projects.
     
    But it also means CDDL projects can't take code from projects using other open source licenses.
     
    I think Sun just hammered the first nail on the OpenSolaris coffin with that one. By releasing OpenSolaris under such a restrictive license, they've practically uninvited everyone outside of Sun that would ever want to contribute.
     
    It's like the rich fat kid bringing all these toys to the public playground, and immediately putting rules into play, so that only rich fat friends of the rich fat kid can play, leaving all the other kids out of the game.
     
    How stupid is THAT?!?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  8. RE: Let the open patent wars begin[ Go to top ]

    I stand corrected (already!?!)

    Someone emailed me at this sourceforge account, to say that the BSD, MIT, or Apache licenses are not technically compatible with CDDL (which is what I meant), but since projects which use the BSD, MIT, and Apache licenses don't place any restrictions whatsoever in how their code is used, it is posible for a CDDL-licensed project to take code from a BSD-, MIT-, or Apache- licensed project.

    But I am correct in that the CDDL license prohibits any CDDL-licensed code from being used in ANY other open source project that is not CDDL-licensed. That means only CDDL-licensed projects can only contribute code "freely" with other CDDL-licensed projects (if you want to call that freely, that is.)
    Reply to this Reply to original

  9. RE: Let the open patent wars begin[ Go to top ]

    <blockquoteBut I am correct in that the CDDL license prohibits any CDDL-licensed code from being used in ANY other open source project that is not CDDL-licensed. That means only CDDL-licensed projects can only contribute code "freely" with other CDDL-licensed projects (if you want to call that freely, that is.)
    That's the same requirement as Section 2b of the GPL. Are you saying that the GPL is not "free"

    Rob
    http://www.robsite.org
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  10. RE: Let the open patent wars begin[ Go to top ]

    That's the same requirement as Section 2b of the GPL. Are you saying that the GPL is not "free"

    You observation is astute. Prepare to be flamed as a result.

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy
    Tangosol, Inc.
    Coherence: Shared Memories for J2EE Clusters
    Reply to this Reply to original

  11. RE: Let the open patent wars begin[ Go to top ]

    The Sun CDDL license is incompatible with every other open source license. This means only projects that also use the CDDL can take code from other CDDL projects.

    That's also true about the GPL. While there are a lot of anti-GPL people around here, you can't argue that a vibrant community has been built around it, to say nothing of the quantity (and sometimes quality) of the code. It is no exaggeration to say that open source would not exist as a measurable thing without GPL software. Maybe somethine else would've come along, but we'll never know. Even venerable alternative open source licensed products such as FreeBSD and Apache are dependant on gcc, the gnu tools, and Linux.

    Now, I'm no GPL zealot, and will gladly use any product that gets the job done (as long as I don't have to pay for it ;), I'm just pointing out that a similarly restrictive license is not necessarily bad. However, when you have another mutually exclusive license when there is a de facto standard one with an enormous amount of shared codebase, it doesn't really make sense, but who am I to dictate how someone else releases their code. I can hope to use my GPL infrastructure and applications with Sun licensed open source, and integrate BSD/Apache/Perl style licensed product with either.
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  12. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Was wondering... under this new Sun Open source licience, does it allow some of suns features to find their way into Linux distos or does it rule that out? If it does this may be bad for sun in the Long run.

    Cheers

    Smythe
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  13. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Was wondering... under this new Sun Open source licience, does it allow some of suns features to find their way into Linux distos or does it rule that out? If it does this may be bad for sun in the Long run.CheersSmythe
    Reply to this Reply to original

  14. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Was wondering... under this new Sun Open source licience, does it allow some of suns features to find their way into Linux distos or does it rule that out? If it does this may be bad for sun in the Long run.CheersSmythe

    I am by far no expert on the matter, but it looks to me that CDDL'd source can only be included in projects that are CDDL. Section 3.1 of: http://www.sun.com/cddl/cddl.html

    Mike
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  15. open source -> microsoft[ Go to top ]

    The only reason open source exists as large of an "industry" as it does is because of Microsoft's market share.

    If there were three or four (or more) big players in the market of nearly equivalent size, then the open source model would fade away into the corner... as would outsourcing to countries where engineers get paid $5/hr.

    Gigantic corporations that corner an entire market hurt everyone (financially among other ways).

    For example, Microsoft giving IE away is a predatory practice and the ONLY way to compete with it is open source (like Firefox), and it takes a long time of continually chipping away at it. Most people would probably be happy paying a nominal fee for Firefox but not if they don't have to. Microsoft is hurting consumers by their 'free' products too -- now that Firefox is out a lot of people can see what a piece of crap IE really is.
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  16. Sun opens up more than 1,600 Patents, and opens opensolaris.org[ Go to top ]

    Sorry meant "this may be bad for Solaris..."
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