Sun: Patent use OK beyond Solaris project (News.com)

Exactly. Corporations are not people - they are entities with nasty habit of suddenly changing mind (take a look on Caldera=>SCO if you need proof). Thus the only way to deal with them is to keep an eye on their stance in public but only fully trust papers.

If Sun will say "oh, we in fact intended to grant patents to all open-sources projects and we'll rectify this omission in two months after additional consultations with lawyers" - it'll be something even if not much (we know by now that Sun is company with MPD). If Sun just says "we have no intention of suing open-source developers" - then it's less then nothing. I do not think I'll rejoice even if IBM will voice such a claim (and IBM is more sane corporation without MPD), but Sun ? Gosh. You can not trust them. Period.

Sun is strange company: it can help free software greatly (no sarcasm here) and then turn around and hurt badly it in the very same day. So nothing short of paper is counts here. Sun can produce great technology (and did in the past) - no doubt about this. But can it produce great community ? This is doubtfull: you do not grow communities while changing your stance twice per day!

I totally agree with the comments above that the statement in itself is not worth much. However, flaming Sun for not doing what is best for us does not help either Sun or us!

It might be a good idea to just respond in a bit nicer manner, like:
Thanks Sun for this gesture, however as long as this statement is not on paper it doesn't help us much. Could you please do so?

FreddyH

Intentions change, however.

(Anyway, the bindingness of such vague verbal promises may vary according to jurisdiction.)

The legal doctrine of promissory estoppel kicks in where one person makes a promise about something and another person acts in reliance on that promise.

Indeed. However, I'll reiterate that the only direct quotes in that article say that Sun has no intention of suing open-source developers, not that they wouldn't do so in the future. A more cautious person might even go as far as to point out that the expressed lack of intention to sue (which is even not the same thing as intention not to sue) doesn't include distributors or end users. (And no, IANAL.)

FWIW, I am hopeful that they'll do something decent and binding after they've thought about it a bit more. Sun has a history of doing the right thing sometimes, after all. But I'm not holding my breath.

I'm not saying that you're wrong about the estoppel (IANAL!), just reminding you that a company like Sun or SCO can throw a serious monkey wrench in the open-source works even without winning a lawsuit, but rather with its threat.

If you (and Sun) happen to live in a jurisdiction whose laws recognize promissory estoppel. If you happen to live in a "consideration" jusrisdiction, you've got nothin'. Yes?

Their support of OpenOffice/StarOffice, GNOME and other FOSS projects can be easily put down to a percieved need for those to fill gaps on Solaris (CDE? Hah!). In those cases, they appear to have understood what Open Source is all about and played the game well.

Then we turn to OpenSlowloris and they seem to have slightly miscued. If they'd used the GPL for that, they could borrow drivers from Linux with relatively little effort (adapt the interface and tweak a few of the core functions, at least some of which could be done with macros or an interface layer), which would greatly expand their hardware support in short order.

Swapping back any major features (their "crown jewels") from Slowloris to Linux would be much more difficult for the Linux people because they're tightly bound to the underlying OS structure, and that's the only SlowLoris components I can see any Linux people wanting. Despite this, Sun seem to be treating Linux as a kind of corporate enemy, selling their servers with it only because of customer demand rather than because they want to.

Sun are similarly irrational about Java. They'd expand the uptake of Java enormously if they made arrangements (escrow or the like) to show the community that they really, truly had no plans to ever take Java through corporate or financial dark valleys.

If they stopped treating Linux like an enemy, and went to wholeheartedly, unequivocally supporting FOSS across the board as SGI have, I would trust them a great deal more as a company and I suspect many others would too.

Companies can decide at any time to change the business that they are in. At one time, SCO was in the Linux business and the proprietary Unix business. It has now decided that the lawsuit business has more potential for profit. Sun could make a similar decision, and its shareholders might even demand such a decision if OpenSolaris is unsuccessful and Sun's business continues to decline.

Now, I'm willing to respect Sun's sincerity; I just want them to put it in writing.