[LUAU] solaris day

[Jim Thompson]

On Jun 14, 2005, at 6:12 PM, Tim Newsham wrote:

>> The CDDL is yet another reason why the OSI (started by Perens,  
>> Raymond and others to "re-brand" Free Software) was a really
>> bad (and dangerous) idea.
>>
>> I complained to Larry Rosen (who approved CDDL as an OSI-compliant  
>> license) and others about this back at TPOSSCON.
>>
>> I'm concerned about "Free as in speech".  Its not clear that the  
>> CDDL permits software Freedom.
>>
>
> *shrug* They come in all flavors.  I don't mean to start a licensing
> war, but all licenses have some restrictions or other (and hence
> not strictly "free").  The only truely free IP is in the public  
> domain.

sadly, not even "public domain" can establish free IP since it can  
still run afoul of patent encumbrances, etc.

I used to claim that the only "free IP" was that which was still in  
your head, not reduced to practice, but then the courts
in Texas blew that one out of the water for me.

I'm tempted to emote on the very term "intellectual property", but  
the lawyers have had their day, and the courts support the concept,
so I won't here, but try me next time we're splitting pizza and beer.

> I have my favorite and licenses I care less about.  I'm glad to see
> sun grant access to their sources, no matter how you want to
> categorize their license.  Would I want to use it in a product?
> Probably not, but it will be useful the next time I need to know
> EXACTLY how something works.

Sure, its useful for some purposes, and Sun has an interesting body  
of code.   You may not know this, but many of us
attempted to push Sun's management into this move (or something even  
stronger) back in the early 1990s.

If you want to see how something works, even Microsoft's "shared  
source" will allow you to do so, and yes, Open Solaris
is much more available (and therefore "open") than Microsoft's  
respones (shared source).

Alll in all, what Sun is doing is good, but it could be (and needs to  
be) better.

jim