Sun today announced the largest single release of patent innovations into the open source community by any organization to date, marking a significant shift in the way Sun positions its intellectual property portfolio. By giving open source developers free access to Sun OpenSolaris related patents under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), the company is fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons.
Sun Grants OSS Community Access to More than 1,600 Patents
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Has anyone had a chance to look at the terms and conditions of this new release of IP?
-gc
be carefull with Sun’s Gollum-Sméagol sindrome
They gave them to the CDDL community. There’s a big difference. IBM’s patent grant is for any code base under an OSI approved license. Sun’s patents can only be used by people playing in Sun’s playground. I would have to say that Linux is a very big open source project but none of the patents are freely licensed to the Linux community.
To say that they’re “fostering open innovation and establishing a leadership role in the framework of a patent commons” is quite misleading IMHO. If they wanted to “foster[] open innovation” and “establish[] a leadership role” then they should have followed IBM’s lead and let any open source project use those patents freely.
Bruce Perens wrote the following on Slashdot.org:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=137327&cid=11478992
————
by Bruce Perens (3872) <bruce.perens@com> on Wednesday January 26, @08:07AM
I confirmed with Sun’s PR person for this release (at Byte Communications), that the patents are only for use with software under the CDDL license and the OpenSolaris process. The patents can be enforced against GPL software, including Linux. In contrast, the IBM grant was for any OSI-accepted license.
Bruce
Basically, Sun released these patents to themselves. If you (yes, ALL seventeen of you) use them when you develop OpenSolaris under the CDDL you’re benefiting from this PR move.
For everyone else, it’s a non-event.
Compare with IBM who says you can use their patents for any purpose under any OSI-approved license.
Am I wrong or OSI recently approved Sun’s CDDL license? At least, it’s listed as one of open source licenses on OSI website:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php
Yes it is, except that some of the kids posting so far in this thread seem to think Open Source == GNU/Linux.
No matter what the anti-Sun zealots say, this is nice stuff from Sun. ISeems like all the nay-sayers are proven wrong on this one! CDDL is approved by the OSI, making it an open-source license. The GPL seems to be a lot more strict than this license. At least you can use CDDL code in a proprietary program without beign forced into using the CDDL for the entire program
And on a related note, my UltraSPARC machine will arrive tomorrow
.
>>Yes it is, except that some of the kids posting so far in this thread seem to think Open Source == GNU/Linux.<<
Not trying to get into an argument here. But I think what everyone else here is saying is simply that these patents are only a benefit to those developing on opensolaris. They didn’t get confused as to what open source was, just that this does not greatly benefit all of opensource(at least not to the extent IBM move did). If it’s true that sun released these patents basically just to themselves it really does not matter if their license is approved by OSI. The previous statments here are still true.
Though to clarify to I’m not saying that what sun has done is bad. Or that they are deserving of any great criticism for their actions either.
This move by Sun will just mean duplication of the work that is being done on Linux. Being that Linux already has a vibrant community of developers behind it, OpenSolaris is going to have a very difficult time playing catchup. Sun has to offer people a compelling reason to switch back. I don’t see one yet. Heck, these guys were trying to kill Solaris on x86 not too long ago!
Of course, there was no way Sun could really release the Solaris code under the GPL. For sure, that would have really killed Solaris, as any useful parts it has would merely be adopted into the Linux kernel, and everyone would move on. Redhat and IBM must be laughing their butts off.
I don’t really see a way out for Sun. Linux is just getting too big, and has too much momentum behind it.
Scott McNealy is going to have to grab that old penguin suit out of the closet again and get used to wearing it! If Sun is forced to get the Linux religion again, it will be pretty funny to see the reaction from the FOSS crowd on the web.
Isn’t this announcement still significant for developers of MPL and BSD licensed software? Or am I not understanding how CDDL is compatible with other OSI approved licenses?
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9125:200412:dmcacncfa…
Sun wont let me just take their stuff and make mine better!!! Waaaahhhhhhh!!! Waaaaaahhhhhh!!!
What a bunch of crybabies. Some of you wouldn’t be happy if Sun gave away everything and sent you all a fat check to boot. Good grief people. Get over it. With some of the nonsense I read online from the so called “Linux community” I truly fear the day when Linux becomes the dominant OS. You bunch of kooks will be worse than Microsoft is now. Talk about all your base…
I’m not replying just to the couple troll posts above, but to everyone here and at Slashdot who are judging the CDDL and OpenSolaris.
Just as Microsoft hates competition, it seems some of the Linux folk do, too? Why does it bother you so much that the CDDL exists in parallel with the GPL? Do you also scorn the parallel BSD communities? Most of the comments bashing Sun are so childish and so filthy with raw bigotry that it is sickening. If you can’t appreciate that OpenSolaris is a win for all of FOSS, GPL or no, then just don’t post. Your comments aren’t even worth the $0.0000001 worth of storage space at these websites.
I think you’re missing the point – it’s not about competition, it’s about software patents. These patents haven’t been released under a license that would prevent legal action against someone whose software happens to violate those patents (whether this was knowingly or accidentally).
It is not “a win for all of FOSS”, because these patents aren’t free (as in speech).
In the meantime, try not to take Sun-bashing post too personally. From your comment, one could almost think you are a sun employee (it doesn’t help that you used an anonymization service to post it, either).
What if Freescale makes a deal with Sun? We are focused on Pegasos hardware with Freescale CPUs for Blastware precisely because we see this as the best way for Sun to unsettle the attempted IBM power.org domination. We need something new and it is coming….
I don’t think that it’s competition as much as the reasoning behind the license. The GPL has the basic idea that you can get the software you need and use it for what you need from the FOSS community, so long as others are allowed that same privilege. It’s things like leeching off of the generous contribution’s of others without you being your self generous to others that I personally take issue with.
GNU is not the definitive open source license…
There are many others which are widely accepted and very popular within the open source community:
-BSD
-MIT
-Apache
-MPL
The GPL is intentionally viral so the blame does not lie with CDDL for this incompatability. There is a whole lot of other OSI approved licenses, some from IBM that dont play the GPL game.
This leads to an argument or troll war between the BSD and GNU camps which is downright tacky. Accept that this is the way things are and we will all get along.
On the other hand it is the prevocative of Sun to do what they want with their patents, I am thankful that they have released them for use with CDDL code. It would be a nice gesture however if they made an explicit declaration with regards to use with other OSI approved licenses much like IBM has done with their 500.
<<Most of the comments bashing Sun are so childish and so filthy with raw bigotry that it is sickening.>>
I don’t see a single comment “filthy with raw bigotry”, just people politely pointing out how meaningless a gesture this is.
<< If you can’t appreciate that OpenSolaris is a win for all of FOSS, GPL or no, then just don’t post. >>
You should be ashamed for posting such nonsense. OpenSolaris and the patent grant are benefit ONLY OpenSolaris CDDL license efforts. There are no benefits to “all of FOSS” as you claim.
I don’t see a single comment “filthy with raw bigotry”, just people politely pointing out how meaningless a gesture this is.
Then you clearly haven’t been following the fora on osnews
or slashdot for very long.
The most common style of comment on osnews and slashdot,
whenever a story about Sun Microsystems is posted, is a
rant which is one of “Why don’t they opensource (ie, GPL)
Java?” or “Sun is evil, IBM is goodness and light.”
There’s really not much in between. Do some research.
<<It would be a nice gesture however if they made an explicit declaration with regards to use with other OSI approved licenses much like IBM has done with their 500.>>
They did make an explicit declaration. The license threatens to sue anyone using patent material under any license other than the CDDL. I don’t argue that it isn’t their right to do what they’ve done but it’s important that people don’t think Sun (with this action) has done anything helpful to the existing FOSS community – especially when compared with what IBM has done.
Hey tough guy,
If you feel so strongly about what you have to say, why do you have to hide behind an anonymizing service? Would that be because you are being paid to say what you say?
Nothing is so violent to you like reason and reason says that this is nothing but a propaganda move.
Why will SUN not follow the lead of IBM and release these patents to anyone who is working under an OSI-approved license? What has it got to lose? Why wouldn’t this be good for open source?
Good going SUN. I hope Solaris can become better on x86 to kick Linux. I love solaris, its really a very fine OS.
The fact that the CDDL is OSI approved is absolutely irrelevant in this conversation. This is about Sun’s patent grant to the “open source community.” The fact of the matter is, Sun released their patents to themselves. I guess it’s great that Sun has said that they won’t sue people working on their project for patent infringement, but really, how does that help the open source community? It seems to me that if they really wanted to help the open source community they would have contributed their technology that helps the entire open source community, not just the people that want to play in Sun’s sandbox.
This is the entire problem that people are having with Sun’s “open source contribution.” Open source is about cooperation. Yea, it might be competitive sometimes, but people do cooperate. The BSDs and Linux all feed off of each other. But now Sun comes out and it’s all about splintering the open source community into the “Sun camp” and the “Linux camp”. And people wonder why people like Bruce Peren’s thinks that this entire effort is a ruse by Sun.
“And people wonder why people like Bruce Peren’s thinks that this entire effort is a ruse by Sun.”
He’s a smart guy but was also employed by HP, a company who would like to see Sun not succeed. I’d read his posts for nuggets of info but be wary of an overall bias.
And I assume you:
a) Have not read the article
b) Have not read the CDDL terms
c) Do not know that SUN released 3x more patents than IBM
d) Are unaware that there are more opensource licenses than
either the GPL(Linux) or the CDDL(OpenSolaris).
e) Are clearly ignorant than SUN has released far more code
under open source (GPL even) than IBM.
But if you need Bruce Perens to do the thinking for you, then by all means do it.
But enough of this whole bitch and moan fest. Truth of the matter is that SUN did not have to release a single iota of their IP, how some of you think that it is your god given right to get SUN’s technologies for free is beyond me. And some of you think that there is an agenda behind SUN’s release of patents and that somehow IBM’s offer is some kind of “altruistic” virginal pure action. Grow up kiddos… jeez!
B.S.!
CDDL is OPEN SOURCE (open source.org)
grow up and stop spreading FUD
oh geez. sometimes it seems people spend all their time criticising everything they can possibily find without any positive information. I’m glade a lot of you out there are sensible human beings that actually have lives. Why can’t someone just have a peaceful debate and express opinions without being so mean? ohwell.
You people that keep saying linux will kill solaris and stuff, can’t you just lay off with some of this stuff? Open source is about peaceful innovation and creation that benifits all. Just becaue the CDDL is not compatible with the GPL it’s some evil thing.
At the end of the day it’s just politics and I personally think that 99% of all politics is crap.
atleast some company did something. i dont trust ibm, as if they care about the common person
it also seems sun encourages distros based off opensolaris:
—– Original Message —–
From: “Jonathan Schwartz” <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: opensolaris
> yup…
>
> [email protected] wrote:
> > does this mean i can start my own solaris distro?
Listen buddy,
Why don’t you tell me why these patents were not released to the whole of the open source community, irrespective of whether the license used is MIT, Apache, BSD or GPL?
This is a self-serving ploy. It helps nobody but SUN and those of us that have been around long enough can clearly see it for what it is. Putting the word “Open” in front of everything doesn’t make you open. Being a member of the open source community means playing by its rules, such as collaborating where possible and not creating unnecessary legal hurdles.
It is clear to me that SUN’s employees have been told to swarm the forums to spread SUN’s propaganda. Well, it’s not going to work because every person who is capable of reasoning can see through this.
Release the patents to the whole of the open source community and you send the right message. IBM did this. Novell said that they will use their patents to protect any open source software developer who is attacked in a patent suite. Those are real and meaningful actions. Instead, what Sun is hoping for is to have a run around the idea of “divide and conquer”. It isn’t going to work.
I give SUN another two to three years of these shenanigans, after which they will again declare their love for all things Linux.
Yes CDDL might be an open-sourced approved license but Sun removed option 13 from the MPL, which is the license from which they derived their own. Why? Because the MPL allows the relicensing of a piece of softare under a GPL compatible license.
The CDDL isnt compatible with the GPL or the BSD, the two most popular licenses used in the F/OSS community.
This is a patent grant for those who use the CDDL, unlike IBM who released 500 patents for use by ANY OSI approved license.
Now I’m not saying that IBM is the “good guy” but…
*starts mumbling about the lesser of two evils*
<QUOTE>
And as such, the CDDL doesn’t seem to be compatible with the BSD license as it enforces releasing of the source code (CDDL#3.1). Presence of a viral component (CDDL#3.2) won’t help to this either. See also my posting on Slashdot about this.
</QUOTE>
[NetBSD mailinglist]
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-advocacy/2005/01/26/0002.html
I’m the original “world doesn’t revolve around Linux and GPL” Anonymous Coward (there were a couple mimics later on…not me).
1) I am not employed or hired or paid by Sun to spread propoganda. I just am pretty tired of the people slamming Sun for no other reason than animalistic hatred. If you people don’t like CDDL, then at least express yourselves maturely. I’m still serious about the losers out there not posting, you people don’t help at all.
2) The people who do work for Sun have a —.sun.com in their post. Pretty clear. And they tend to be fairly mature in their discussion. Not really propoganda, IMO.
3) “Putting the word “Open” in front of everything doesn’t make you open.” — OpenSolaris is 100% Open whether you like it or not. Just because it isn’t GPL doesn’t make it less Open. Get over it. You don’t even ever have to use or look at OpenSolaris, ever, if you don’t want to.
4) “It is clear to me that SUN’s employees have been told to swarm the forums to spread SUN’s propaganda.” — See point 1 and 2 above.
5) “Release the patents to the whole of the open source community…” — Sun probably has legal reasons for not going further than just the CDDL grants. If all of other Sun’s activities haven’t satisfied you, then you are probably a lost cause, anyway. I guess it doesn’t mean anything that Sun has been working for years polishing up Solaris so that it can be legally OpenSolaris without losers like SCO barking up their shorts. I guess if you were given the crown jewels of England, you’d still ask for a Bentley, too. Sigh.
<< I am not employed or hired or paid by Sun to spread propoganda>>
I (for one) don’t believe you. Every time you put up some lame Sun propaganda (“filthy with raw bigotry”, “OpenSolaris is a win for all of FOSS”, BSD is compatible with the CDDL) and it gets shot to pieces, you change the subject instead of responding. Classic astroturf technique.
<<at least express yourselves maturely>>
There haven’t been any anti-Sun comments along the lines of juvenile name-calling you’ve made such a fetish of (“childish”, “brainless”, “losers”). You’re making Sun fanbois look _really_ bad.
“There haven’t been any anti-Sun comments along the lines of juvenile name-calling you’ve made such a fetish of (“childish”, “brainless”, “losers”). You’re making Sun fanbois look _really_ bad.”
My original comment was in the context of all the discussion forums. There are only a couple childish brainless losers above in this particular discussion. I just had to vent. Let’s put this to rest.
I wonder when IBM will opensource AIX?
“”And people wonder why people like Bruce Peren’s thinks that this entire effort is a ruse by Sun.”
He’s a smart guy but was also employed by HP, a company who would like to see Sun not succeed. I’d read his posts for nuggets of info but be wary of an overall bias. ”
Well, there you’re wrong. Bruce has been self employed for the past 2 years. His bias is that he basically created the open source definitaion and doesn’t have the blinders on that so many people here do. If Sun wanted to help the open source community, way didn’t they license these patents for use under any open source license?
Good job not paying attention to a word I said. I know the CDDL is an open source license, never said it wasn’t. I never said that Sun needed to open source anything. I appreciate their contributions. Not one of those things change the fact that Sun didn’t contribute any patents to the open source community. They contributed them to the OpenSolaris community. Is this concept really so difficult for people to understand? So, at the moment, IBM has released 500 patents to the open source community. Sun has released 0 patents to the open source community and 1600 to the OpenSolaris community. This has nothing to do with the GPL, CDDL or any other license. I’m going to have to say that when one company releases something freely for everyone and someone else releases something freely only to members of their own club, it’s pretty obvious who is doing it altruisticly and who is trying to pull a fast one.
This whole patent thing is a PR gesture, and is not really material. The only software available under the license they have given is OpenSolaris, and their patents must be used by software using that license.
This is not an effort to help the OSS community, this is to get the community on board to develop an OS for Sun, and have all the benefits received by Sun. By saying these patents are not available to Linux (don’t ask me where I got this), they are basically excluding one of the largest and the most visible of all open source projects. I do not think that this was by chance but rather by design. One might be tempted to think they want to be able to copy al the features in Linux they do not have and disallow Linux to get features they have.
“B.S.!
CDDL is OPEN SOURCE (open source.org)
grow up and stop spreading FUD”
Did you read what I wrote? Sun didn’t contribute patents to the open source community, they released them to the CDDL community. The fact that the CDDL is open source is irrelevant. The CDDL is a brand new license that has exactly one project released under it so far, a Sun product. Thus, Sun didn’t release their patents to the open source community, they released them to the CDDL community. If they were released to the open source community, they would be licensed like IBM’s patents, to anyone using an OSI approved license. Not to anyone using this one Sun license which, btw, only covers one Sun product. Like I said, it’s nice of them to say up front that they won’t sue contributors to OpenSolaris, but that is a far cry from saying, “here open source community, these are patents which we won’t sue you for using”.
Oh, and just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it FUD. There is no fear, uncertainty or doubt about what I’m saying. It’s the flat honest truth of the situation.
IBM publicly stated several years ago that they had no intention of open sourcing AIX. It would be too time consuming to unencumber it from third party code and patents. Instead, they publicly stated that they would donate the technologies in AIX necessary to get Linux to the same level as AIX. The first piece they donated was JFS. They’ve also put substantial work into threading, LVM, scalability and porting Linux to Power and zSeries systems.
Why is CDDL *NOT* open source….OSI says it is!
Who else has to bless the terms of code release into the ‘wild’? Is it FSF aka GNU err what….?!?!
Just because code is released under a non-GPL license doesn’t make it any *LESS* open source as long as it meets the OSI guidelines.
For example, there is Mozilla (Firefox/Thunderbird/etal), OpenOffice, MySQL, PHP, Apache, and many more open source projects, but they are not GPL licensed? Yes, you can see, add, copy and redistribute code for (some of) these projects….but you can not mingle them! Does that make them less “open source”.
I always thought the goal of open source was to provide freedom of use, access of source code, ability to make changes/improvements to previously released code and then freely distribute that modified code without fear of copyright and intellectual property issues. Where does CDDL preclude these ideals?
You may or may not be able to “mingle” CDDL code with other open source projects (depending on your/or your lawyers’ interpretation of the license), but who really cares?!?! You can’t “mingle” many of the other OSI recognized “open source” projects together any way. And why would you? Shouldn’t these projects stand on their own? GNU/Linux and OpenSolaris already have may shared components, but you have the choice of which components you choose to use (beyond the kernel). And why whould you want to merge the kernels? You haven’t merged BSD with Linux, so why would you merge Linux and Solaris? It wouldn’t be GNU it would be GIU (GNU IS UNIX).
Don’t we want seperate but equal status for all open source projects? Stressing the *FREEDOM* points of licensing/use/modification/distribution (that is what OSI does). If you require all open source to be this license or that license, don’t you dictate a standard that contradicts the foundation of open source movement itself (and FSF/GNU)?
And finally, I think this points to part of the issue at hand, and maybe alittle *NIX envy (it’s not how big your *NIX is, but how you use it;) : (please, no flames, just an observation)
GNU/Linux = GNU NOT UNIX
OpenSolaris = IS UNIX
But the goal is the same. No ‘Blue Screen'(reboots), true reliability and scalability, open standards operability, and all at no charge for the right to use/modify/distribute!!
Conspiracy theories aside, CDDL seems pretty open source friendly to me! It’s not really copywrite or copyleft, but it is definitely not copywrong!
IMO
SFORSTER
I agree with some posters here in that this move by Sun looks like to me an obvious attempt at PR and creation of noise in hopes of swaying developers from other OSS projects to Opensolaris to help Sun catchup to where it has fallen way behind. But the news blast lately of OpenSolaris along with attaching “open” to Solaris is akin to what Apple did a few years ago with it’s OS and Darwin core but I don’t remember this much resentment towards them at the time. Maybe because Linux didn’t have such a religious following back then for them to come out of the woodwork to voice their resentment?
Anyway, Sun can do WHAT THEY WANT darnit! Don’t like it, go download the latest Fedora iso (or whatever). If it doesn’t end up working out for Sun, so be it. If if does, so be it as well. Your cryin and complaining but not paying is meaningless to a company who has a BUSINESS to run…
Now back off to my BSD camp. So much more civilized.
sun didnt release their patents to the open source community, they released them to *their* open source community. that doesnt make this pointless, and at the same time they most definately are not santa claus here. they released a ton of patents to a bunch of projects noone really uses.
… if you live in Europe. However, if you live in software-patent-enforcing countries, this means that you will NOT see much Solaris code in Linux any time soon. Software patents just make things so complicated! I find it really stupid that the SAME product is covered by copyright AND patents.
Sun: Red Hat is Linux.
Sun: CDDL-ed OpenSolaris *is* Open Source, the rest is just collateral damage.
It is all in the definition of things and Sun did release 1600 patents to Open Source if they define themselves to be Open Source.
I’ll stay with GNU.
The fact that the CDDL is OSI approved is absolutely irrelevant in this conversation
This is false. The fact that the CDDL is OSI approved is entirely relevant to this entire discussion.
The fact of the matter is, Sun released their patents to themselves.
This statement is also false. The CDDL contains an explicit patent license for code released under the CDDL. To release Solaris under the CDDL Sun was required to grant the patents they’ve obtained for Solaris. The OpenSolaris code is governed by the terms of the CDDL. You as a developer / businessperson are allowed to use the source and are indemnified against larger IP claims in software you develop based upon the CDDL licensed code, just as long as you abide by the terms of the license.
I guess it’s great that Sun has said that they won’t sue people working on their project for patent infringement
It’s not that they will not, they cannot. Based upon the terms of the license, they would have no claim against a licensee.
More to the point, though, the CDDL does not force you to work exclusively on OpenSolaris. You can take parts of OpenSolaris, modify them, and include them in larger works for which you’re not going to release all of the source. (commercial or otherwise) As long as you publish the modifications to the CDDL licensed source in your project, you’re set. You could license the entire project under the CDDL, but all that is required is that you make modifications available.
You should check out the license FAQ:
http://www.opensolaris.org/faq/licensing_faq.html
And the license itself if you’re really curious:
http://www.opensolaris.org/license/cddl_license.html
Sections 1.11, 2.1(b), 2.2(b), and section 3 are most pertinent to this discussion.
but really, how does that help the open source community?
It sounds to me like you’ve confused “community” and how it applies to various open software development projects. There is no one open source community, “the open source community,” is really an incorrect generalization. There are many communities of developers who work on a variety of open source projects, many are governed by different licenses. So, to say that you don’t understand how this “help[s] the open source community,” is really an attempt to state something specific, without actually stating it. Perhaps this patent grant doesn’t serve your interests in particular; however, it’s by no means a benefit that is exclusive to Sun. This helps the open source community building effort that Sun has undertaken for OpenSolaris.
It seems to me that if they really wanted to help the open source community they would have contributed their technology that helps the entire open source community, not just the people that want to play in Sun’s sandbox.
This is an audacious statement. It’s akin to telling Red Cross volunteers, who have just rescued you and your family from a natural disaster that, “If you really want to help people, you should solve world hunger.”
Given that one of the frequently aired sentiments of OpenSolaris is a supercilious skepticism about Sun’s succees in creating a community behind OpenSolaris, perhaps these actions have a deeper motivation?
Don’t you think it’s reasonable for modifications to OpenSolaris code to be made available to everyone who chooses to participate in its development? And, more importantly, for those who choose to build projects or products based upon OpenSolaris to be free from patent infringement lawsuits?
These issues have been mis-represented. The patents were relased by the grant in the CDDL when OpenSolaris was released. Developers who take advantage of the technologies in OpenSolaris may do so, and as long as they abide by the provisions in the CDDL, they’re granted rights to the patents and indemnification from litigation. This means that as a developer you’re free to use CDDL licensed code without fear of being sued for a patent infringement. This also means that if you release code under the CDDL you grant others the right to use patents that cover the code that is released.
Based upon the presentation of your arguments, it’s not clear to me why you object to Sun encouraging people to come, “play in [their] sandbox.” If you really are interested in seeing the entre open source “community” succeed, wouldn’t the success of OpenSolaris be desireable? Especially from the perspective of convincing other companies to consider opening other large pieces of proprietary software. (Read: Oracle, Veritas, Java, DB2, etc…)
Why don’t you tell me why these patents were not released to the whole of the open source community, irrespective of whether the license used is MIT, Apache, BSD or GPL?
I think it’s fairly obvious they don’t want their patent portfolio to be leveraged against them, at least by Linux. IBM has a vested interest in Linux as they chose to mostly dump AIX for it… it’s generous that they released the patents for use with any OSI license as opposed to the GPL, though.
There’s nothing preventing these patents from being used in MIT/BSD licensed operating systems, however, the CDDL is compatible with the MIT/BSD license as these licenses aren’t overly restrictive to the freedom of the end user like the GPL is. BSD operating systems can provide CDDL modules which use these patents if they so desire.
I’m seeing quite a “This doesn’t help Linux therefore Sun sux!” attitude around here though…
Linux zealots and Sun fans,
Can’t we all just get along??
Why waste your time and effort fighting each other, when you should combine forces and overthrow the big daddy, M$.
Bill Gts must be laughing off his pants, seeing all these bickering.
Like it or not, companies are around to make money. No matter how generous you think they are, e.g. donating patents to the open source community, their main objective is still to make money.
Here’s what I think. Sun realizes that it can’t go alone in order to capture back the market. It needs the help of a community to help develop the OS. So, it opens up the source, and lets people use it freely. Sun is not the only one that benefits. The public, businesses, people like you and me can use the OS for free. An OS that took years and hundreds of millions to develop. So, it’s a win-win situation.
IBM understood this strategy a long time ago. They knew how the OS trend is going to be.
Do you really think they want to dump AIX? Do you really think that the big honchos at IBM love linux? They will drop linux the minute there’s a new OS that is more profitable. Don’t forget, they just dropped their PC business, even though Thinkpad is the best-selling laptops ever.
They know that they can’t beat the crowd, so they join them, and transferred most of the technology to them. It’s about dollars and cents. Why fight the crowd when you can leverage on them. Give them the patents, dedicate 600+ engineers, big advertisements that they love linux, etc. The amount that they give away is nothing compared to their profits, that’s in billions.
HP may also have noticed the trend, that’s why HP-UX is virtually dead. Or maybe they want to concentrate on making digital cameras, MP3 players, home PCs etc.
Sun is the only stubborn one that still wants to have it’s own OS. It does not want to abandon it, because they know that it’s the best.
A good analogy would be this. Sun is like the traditional shoe maker, who insists that everything has to be hand-made. All the workers are master craftsmen, who sew each and individual thread to the perfection. IBM, HP and Dell are like those that implement machines to do mass production. The quality may not be as good, but they are able sell the shoes at a lower price and higher volume. The traditional shoe maker knows that if he doesn’t follow the trend, his shop will soon close. So, he starts to use machines to make some of the non-critical parts, while the master craftsmen continue to do the rest. This way, the high quality can still be maintained.
Just my 2 cents worth.
“This helps the open source community building effort that Sun has undertaken for OpenSolaris.”
There is your key statement. This helps Sun try and build a brand new community, which currently doesn’t exist, around a Sun product. It does not help any of the currently existing open source projects. If your idea of “help the open source community” is equivalent to “create a new community which works on an open source project” then yes, they’ve helped the open source community. But then I’ll just go ahead and say that in that case, Sun is merely trying to co-opt “open source” to make Solaris look better when compared to Linux, since they’ve managed to completely avoid what the average community member defines as “help the open source community”. Not that that should surprise me, Sun executives have been trying to peddle the “Red Hat is proprietary” line around for months now, even thought that also flies in the face of the normal definition of proprietary.
Oh, and if the Red Cross had the opportunity to save me, my family and everyone else in my neighborhood but decided to only save me and my family, I’d certainly appreciate it, but I’d have to wonder why they ignored the vast majority. So, yea, this patent grant is great for the people that live in Sun’s house, but pretty much meaningless for everyone who lives in their neighborhood. Since they had the opportunity to help everyone, though, and choose not to, I’m unable to see how you can convince me that this isn’t because they simply don’t want to have to compete with other projects (specifically, in this case, I would guess Linux).
I think you’re seeing more of a “why claim this helps the OSS community when, at best, it helps a small subset of that community” attitude around here. If Sun had been straight up and said “this patent grant is to help the OpenSolaris community enhance Solaris” I doubt you’d hear a word about it. It’s the grandstanding which has gotten people all riled up. And, what’s even more frustrating is, unlike yourself, most people can’t seem to see that this isn’t an OSS patent grant. This doesn’t help the OSS community at large. But they won’t stop arguing that it does.
All the negative sentiments are quite understandable.
Sun’s eratic actions around supporting GNU/Linux and trashtalking Red Hat and simultaneaously ticking of the GNU/Linux community by equating Red Hat to all of GNU/Linux didn’t do any good.
The doublespeak about Solaris being IP safe in contrast to GNU/Linux, around the start of The SCO Group farce, while saying Sun was commited to GNU/Linux isn’t forgotten either.
Sun destroyed their credibility with the community with their schizophrenic utterings and actions.
The party invitation came too late, nobody is interested anymore in going to a party of the local weirdo.
This helps Sun try and build a brand new community, which currently doesn’t exist, around a Sun product.
Not quite, but close: around a product which previously belonged to Sun. OpenSolaris belongs to the “community” while future versions of Solaris will be a joint effort between Sun’s Solaris development staff, and any community contributors. If you’re convinced that OpenOffice is a Sun product, then I understand your rationale, but otherwise, OpenSolaris doesn’t actually belong to Sun.
It does not help any of the currently existing open source projects.
That’s an overly myopic view of the situation. There are plenty of projects that could leverage OpenSolaris, and also lots of possibilities for people looking to start projects or businesses.
If your idea of “help the open source community” is equivalent to “create a new community which works on an open source project” then yes, they’ve helped the open source community.
Are you asserting that creating a new open-source project and building a community of developers around it is not helpful? If so, why?
Sun is merely trying to co-opt “open source” to make Solaris look better when compared to Linux
How does one co-opt “open source”? I don’t understand what you’re trying to argue here.
since they’ve managed to completely avoid what the average community member defines as “help the open source community”.
http://www.sunsource.net/projects.html
Is a list of Open-Source projects which Sun sponsors or participates in. None of the projects on this list help the community?
Not that that should surprise me, Sun executives have been trying to peddle the “Red Hat is proprietary” line around for months now, even thought that also flies in the face of the normal definition of proprietary.
Are you trying to argue that because Sun sees RedHat as competition, that they’re against open source? I think it’s pretty obvious that such a claim would be false.
Not quite, but close: around a product which previously belonged to Sun. OpenSolaris belongs to the “community” while future versions of Solaris will be a joint effort between Sun’s Solaris development staff, and any community contributors. If you’re convinced that OpenOffice is a Sun product, then I understand your rationale, but otherwise, OpenSolaris doesn’t actually belong to Sun.
Except that there is no community because OpenSolaris doesn’t even exist yet. As of right this second, Sun is trying to build a new community around a Sun product. You might want to try your argument again in a year or so.
That’s an overly myopic view of the situation. There are plenty of projects that could leverage OpenSolaris, and also lots of possibilities for people looking to start projects or businesses.
What does creating new projects and businesses have anything to do with current open source projects? And how, exactly, are projects going to “leverage” OpenSolaris? Seems to me that the projects which exist today that would most benefit from OpenSolaris are the BSDs and Linux. Yet Sun appears to be trying to make it as difficult as possible for those projects to “benefit” from OpenSolaris.
Are you asserting that creating a new open-source project and building a community of developers around it is not helpful? If so, why?
I didn’t say it wasn’t helpful, I said it wasn’t helpful to the current open source community. If Sun was donating this code to the open source community under a license which was compatible with majority of projects already existing then it’d be a different story. Right now, the only people that this seems helpful to are current Solaris users and Sun. Or would you like to explain how this is helpful to other projects?
Is a list of Open-Source projects which Sun sponsors or participates in. None of the projects on this list help the community?
What does that list of projects have to do with OpenSolaris? That’s right, nothing. We’re talking about the Sun patent grant here, if you haven’t been paying attention.
Are you trying to argue that because Sun sees RedHat as competition, that they’re against open source? I think it’s pretty obvious that such a claim would be false.
Either I am expressing myself poorly or you are purposefully trying to deflect this argument. Sun has a history of distorting commonly used terms for their own purpose. For example, “Java is open source” or “Red Hat is proprietary”. Under the commonly used definitions, neither of those statements are true. To make them true, you need to subscribe to the Sun Dictionary. You can now add to that list “Sun donated patents to the open source community” because, again, they have twisted a commonly used term. The “open source community” refers to the meta-community which includes all open source developers and projects. Tell me how Sun gave patents to that community. Answer, they didn’t. The best you can say is they gave them to a non-existant community which they are trying to build around a project which hasn’t even been released yet. [sarcasm]Ah yes, I can see now how generous they’ve been to the OSS community.[/sarcasm]
I also find it curious that you didn’t try to explain to me how this isn’t a method for Sun to exclude their competitors using software patents. I mean, they could have done what IBM did and given the patents to everyone, but they didn’t. Why unless they are trying to prevent competition (I would say hurt competition, but they haven’t done that yet … I’ll come back and say that after they have).
Except that there is no community because OpenSolaris doesn’t even exist yet. As of right this second, Sun is trying to build a new community around a Sun product.
This statement isn’t true. Sun has already begun releasing parts of Solaris under the CDDL to form OpenSolaris. As stated on the OpenSolaris webpage, this process will continue as Sun unencumbers more and more of their code. The fact that the code has been released and is licensed under the CDDL, an OSI approved license, means that this code no longer belongs to Sun, but to a larger open-source community.
Yet Sun appears to be trying to make it as difficult as possible for those projects to “benefit” from OpenSolaris.
Read the License FAQ on the OpenSolaris website. I posted the link previously. This isn’t nearly as difficult as you make it out to be. Shouldn’t Sun be encouraging developers to use their technology to make OpenSolaris and future dervied products better, instead of taking the technology elsewhere where it wouldn’t provide any benefit to those doing community development around OpenSolaris-based technologies?
[T]he only people that this seems helpful to are current Solaris users and Sun
Sun doesn’t help themselves by releasing patents that they already own. Current Solaris users obviously don’t care about the IP issues surrounding Solaris, or they’d have been using another operating system. As I stated previously, this helps anyone who would like to integrate technology from OpenSolaris into a project that they have that could use it. This also allows people to take OpenSolaris and develop derivative works, different operating systems, or whatever, depending upon the need. Just because the technology can’t be ripped out and stuck right into Linux doesn’t mean that this isn’t helpful.
Either I am expressing myself poorly
I’m having a hard time understanding just what your objection is, and what the rationale for your arguments are. I’ve repeatedly posted links that call into question the factual basis upon which you’re making your arguments, yet you don’t seem to have any interest in reading the material.
Sun has a history of distorting commonly used terms for their own purpose.
All companies do this. It’s called marketing. Sun’s marketing department is renowned, even within Sun, for having a conspicuous lack of talent. I’d aplogize, but I don’t have any control over that situation.
The “open source community” refers to the meta-community which includes all open source developers and projects. Tell me how Sun gave patents to that community.
Just who “open source community” refers to is entirely a matter of context. I think it’s time you went back and read this press release. Nowhere does Sun claim to be giving these patents away for use in existing projects, rather the release implies that this allows developers to build new/different/interesting/whatever products around technologies from OpenSolaris. A few quotes, if you’ll permit me:
“Sun’s goal in offering access to these patents is to help facilitate innovation and help users get new open source products and technologies to market faster without having to obtain patent licenses from Sun.”
That’s a pretty clear statement of purpose right there. Observe the emphasis on NEW products.
“In removing the emphasis on intellectual-property rights as an inhibitor to innovation, Sun is leveling the playing field in key emerging markets and helping to revive an innovation system that is straining under a record number of patent filings globally.”
Translated: Sun would like to encourage small businesses to consider building technologies based upon OpenSolaris
“By gaining access to these Solaris OS patents, participants in the open-source community now have a tremendous opportunity to build unique and innovative technologies for a wide range of markets”
Notice this doesn’t say that ALL of open source benefits, but rather that participants who would like to take the opportunity to build unique and innovative technologies have an additional option to consider when doing their development.
Other parts of this press release, which are probably the ones you object to more, are still quite vague. It still doesn’t say *all* of the open source community.
This may not directly benefit Linux, but it’s excessive to say that nobody in the Open Source community benefits from this.
… I like you
You can say that Sun is trying to give a community to its patents, rather than give patents to a community, because there is not community around a CDDL license yet.