this is a different SCO

this is a different SCO

There is still an implied patent threat against anybody who works on non-Sun open source projects.

Well, I don't see why you would think that. Sun have no history of filing patent infringement claims, rather they've been on the receiving end of them (Kodak most recently, and there's an anecdotal (and possibly apocryphal - i have no idea if it's true) story of how IBM tried to shake them down for patent royalties early in their history; when Sun engineers destroyed the patent claim point by point, IBM's lawyers response was along the lines of "Do we have to go back to Armonk and find which of our other 20k patents you might be infringing on?"). Several Sun execs are on record, most particularly Jonathan Schwartz, stating that Sun has no intention of using patents other than defensively.

So I don't quite understand this comment. Is there a patent risk to Free and/or Open Source software? Sure there is, just as (unfortunately, in my personal opinion) in developing any software. Is there a risk Sun is going to go mad and launch patent litigation against Free Software? I doubt that very much, there's just nothing in Sun's corporate history and outlook to suggest that Sun would. IBM OTOH do have some history of litigation, but oh wait, they donated all those useful patents to open-source, and promised not to sue anyone involved in the Linux kernel (not free or open-source software generally, please note). Further, Sun sell Linux (eg JDS) and ship lots of open-source software (GNOME, OpenOffice, Samba, Apache, Webmin) - not only ship, but contribute to as well. Sun are quite pro Free/Open Source Software, and have a strong interest in not damaging the ecosystem.

What's even worse is that yet again Sun is using a bizarro license instead of one of the established licenses like BSD, MIT, GPL and so forth.

Firstly, Sun release software and contribute to projects under lots of different licences - as appropriate. Sun LGPL'd OpenOffice. They employ GNOME hackers to contribute to both GPL and LGPL GNOME projects. I contribute regularly to a GPL project. Sun contribute to Xorg -> MIT licence. Licencing is very much a pragmatic thing. (And, btw, I consider the GPL a very pragmatic licence :) ).

Secondly, the GPL was very seriously considered as the licence for OpenSolaris, I believe. But as you point out above, software development these days carries patent risks (Kodak, etc.). The Free Software community knows this too, indeed one of the key questions for drafting GPLv3 is how to tackle patent risk. The GPL, for pragmatic reasons, simply couldn't work for OpenSolaris. 1. Mixing proprietary modules with OpenSolaris would become potentially a grey area, and Sun wanted to be able to allow ISV's to provide binary modules (BSD spirit I guess, and it makes business sense), eg because the ISV either can not or doesn't want to ship source. That's pretty similar to how people are using binary kernel graphics/DRI drivers on Linux today, except the binary module vendors potentially are, and the 'repackager' sites that distribute these as RPMs or deb's even more so, are in a grey area wrt GPL. Sun preferred to avoid the grey area and use an MPL licence. As the MPL obviously needed to be modified (it's quite a netscape specific licence), Sun decided to tackle the patent litigation problem. Quite nicely imho, hopefully the GPLv3 will use a similar trick. They also spent a good bit of lawyer time on making the CDDL as generic as possible.

Which means yet again that improvements will flow into Sun's little open source island but none will get out. It is a net negative.

No offence, but I suspect you've bought the FUD without actually reading the CDDL. It isn't Sun's open-source island, if you think it is, I hope you're not reading this with an AOL-open-source-island Mozilla derived browser :). It's open-source full stop. Sun will have no power to 'take back' code licenced under the CDDL, Sun will have no power to stop people dual-licencing code under CDDL and whatever else. Also, code released under the CDDL can be mixed quite freely with code under other licences, the CDDL doesnt stop that. (The GPL OTOH /does/ prevent a lot of mixing, that's just the way it is.). Code released under an open licence is not a net negative.

BSD and Linux people will have go out of their way not to see that code.

Why? You've gotten this view, I suspect, from posts by a certain gcc/glibc hacker (who happens to work for a certain competitor of Sun - bear that in mind ;) ). There's just no basis for this opinion. Firstly, you can't infringe copyright by looking, looking is fine as long you don't copy. Though, obviously, it is easier to demonstrate you didn't copy if you can show you never looked, but looking and reimplementing is not a copyright infringement. There is no evidence that OpenSolaris and the CDDL are some kind of evil-genius venus-fly-trap designed to catch unsuspecting Linux hackers. I personally (very much a personal opinion) find the idea that Sun would sue anyone for looking at CDDL'd Solaris code and reimplementing it in Linux or BSD or wherever absurd. There are already plenty of reimplementations of Solaris features in Linux and glibc (slab cache allocator, NFS, RPC) and I note a distinct lack of lawsuits..

Secondly, if it is patent infringement you're worried about, well not having looked doesn't protect against patent infringement suits, indeed not having known doesn't protect you. Whether you have or have not looked is simply irrelevant to patent infringement. And again, Sun sueing open-source for patent infringement would be very strange (Sun ship lots of it, including Linux..).

new found respect for MS

Well, MS violated a licence on Java. After years of trying to gain judicial redress, Sun got a settlement out of it. If someone does significant wrong to you, there's nothing bad in ultimately being compensated for that wrong. Part of that settlement included MS cooperating with Sun on interoperability issues. If you have a mixed Solaris and Windows environment (and how many companies don't have Windows machines in their server room these days?) this is a good thing. Executing on better interoperability requires some kind of decent working relationship.

Let's see binding promises not to threaten FOSS projects in any way and perhaps we can change our minds about Sun giving millions to SCO.

I wish I were a Sun exec and I could give it to you in writing. I'm not, and I can't however. I can though point you to the text of the CDDL which requires all contributors to grant all patent rights relevant to contributed code to all developers/users of that CDDL licenced code. But I guess that isn't enough, as it doesn't match the far better promises made by all those other "good" FOSS companies. IBM's commitment to not sue the Linux kernel for violating patents on tamper-proof screws or gel-packs: aye, granting rights to all your relevant patents to OpenSolaris and any future derived CDDL projects just doesnt compare.. ;)

And the SCO millions, well that's pretty much what it cost to ensure Solaris could be open-sourced, according to Scott McNealy. The timing was unfortunate. That's simply the cost of GNU/OpenSolaris.

I know it's quite chique to be anti-Sun, or least Sun-sceptical, but if you look past the FUD, and actually look at what Sun have done and do wrt FOSS, and what Sun execs actually say, you might find there isn't much basis to a lot of it. You don't have to like Sun - yeah, Sun are very commited to Solaris, Sun have spent a lot of time on it, and Sun don't intend to replace Solaris with Linux+glibc, for good reasons. Strangely, the BSD folk, who are as proud of their work as Sun are of theirs, dont seem to want to switch kernels+core userspace either - but at least be fair to yourself in how you assess these 'fashionable' opinions.

--paulj

(Paul Jakma, FSF 'member', Sun employee, Free Software contributor, as are many of his colleagues. Opinions above are very much my own, and based on information stated in public, eg in the press or blogs.sun.com.)