Sun's use of GPL and/or debian source

[Alan DuBoff]

Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote:

> You are making the assumption Sun did any work.  There is a good chance
> that the sources they used had the debian/ build info because quite a
> few sources ship that way from the upstream or are easily available from
> the upstream in this way.

That could be the case, but I have a feeling that Sun did make some minor
changes to get things working with Solaris.

> Beyond that, this is the double edged sword of Open Source.  Companies
> are allowed to use the code for their own ends as long as they follow
> the letter of the license involved.  Licenses which protect against this
> are marked non-free.

Yeah, I think after looking into it, that Sun has done it the correct way.
They have kept the tools seperate and all of the libraries seperate. They have
done it the way it is outlined in the GPL/GPL_FAQ, keeping the proprietary
code seperated from the GPL code. I'm sure their legal department went over it
with a fine tooth comb...

I don't have a problem with what Sun is doing, but I needed to sort it out in
my head. Sun has been helping the community also, like OpenOffice for instance
which is currently in development for most all major systems, Mac OSX
included. That cost them one heft penny and it seems most people will gain in
the end, Linux included. They also recentely gave their T3 array code to
LinuxCare to port over onto Linux I've heard, and that will probably help the
Linux community out as well.

When I saw the debian directories on Solaris I just a bit taken...:-/

-- 

Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.