Solaris 11 Source Leaked

http://0xfeedface.org/blog/lattera/2011-12-19/solaris-11-source-leaked

by rbanffy • 15 years ago

64 21 15 years ago

mindstab• 15 years ago

> I'm sure FreeBSD and IllumOS developers alike are researching the legality of incorporating the leaked code.

There isn't any legality. Do you remember the waste of time and money that was the SCO case against IBM for possibly incorporating SCO unix code into Linux. This leak is a leak of stolen IP and no one can legally use it, very plain and simple.

This won't hurt them much other than to embarrass them a little.

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

I'm not saying it's the case, here, but beware of the trojan horse, full of heavily funded IP lawyers itching to sue (and/or correspondingly spend) your project and perhaps you into oblivion.

Such releases can actually pose a risk to open source if and when OS developers have to "prove" their lack of exposure vis à vis the "clean" nature of their own work.

That all aside, I'm not exactly in Oracle's camp. RIP Sun -- warts and all.

bcantrill• 15 years ago

Well, it depends if the CDDL has been stripped off the files or not. If the CDDL has been stripped off and replaced with anything that denotes that the source is now a trade secret, then yes -- it's stolen IP. But if the CDDL is still there, the situation will be murky, and I would hope that Oracle would clarify it one way or the other. Remember, this is not simply a proprietary system, it's a system (1) that was open source not very long ago (2) that was closed without a public announcement of any kind and (3) for which an internal commitment was made to make the source code available after Solaris 11 shipped. [1] Point is: this isn't SCO by a long shot.

[1] http://smartos.org/2011/12/15/fork-yeah-the-rise-and-develop...

bediger• 15 years ago

This leak isn't "stolen IP". At best, the leak might constitute infringement, which is not theft by any measure. We won't even know whether it infringes or not if and until it goes to trial, and a judgement is rendered. You can't inspect for infringement, it must be determined at trial.

Even the idea of "Intellectual property" (assuming that's what you meant by "IP") is a bit suspect. Although this leak probably (but not certainly, see above) constitutes copyright infringement, lots of independent invention goes on, far more than the "IP" people want to admit.

The "property" part of "IP" is on very weak moral grounds, as in the US, the grant of a state-sponsored monopoly on seom material is only in effect to give a larger public domain for later common use.

So it would appear to not be "plain and simple", but rather extremely murky and costly to figure out, so nobody can use the leak without a lot of consideration.

rbanffy4• 15 years ago

OTOH, we can check whether Oracle's source contains misappropriated code from other open-source products.

The nasty part is that it's now much harder to say you never had any contact with Solaris 11's source code. I, in particular, will stay away from this file - I am more than happy with Linux and OpenIndiana and see no reason to use Solaris 11.

Seriously. I don't even know what's new.

trotsky• 15 years ago

I'm glad the source has leaked. It serves Oracle right. They've proved that all they care about is greed.

What a dick, I hope he doesn't make a living doing anything related to software.

I'm sure FreeBSD and IllumOS developers alike are researching the legality of incorporating the leaked code.

Yeah, that's clearly not going to be happening.

dman• 15 years ago

I agree, this does not end up helping any open source products at all. In fact this increases the chances of companies using FUD to target the OSS solaris efforts.

sixothree• 15 years ago

What do you expect from someone who can't be bothered to change away from the default Drupal theme.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

Flame bait, content void post. If you are interested, "solaris11.tar.bz2", ~104MB. Not more information on the linked source or the linked source's sources either.

vondur• 15 years ago

I thought most of the source code was open via OpenSolaris?

wmf• 15 years ago

Oracle stopped publishing their changes a while ago.

twoodfin• 15 years ago

The linked presentation looks like a great, opinionated piece of OS and Sun history. It's too bad Google Video went away, since being able to easily download presentations like this for offline viewing was a useful feature.

_csoo2• 15 years ago

If you're complaining about the legality of incorporating the leaked code, you aren't ready for a world where free software rules. The end game of free and, to a lesser extent, of open source software is to live in a world where copyright and patents no longer apply to software. Basically, software will be treated like mathematics.

Incorporating the leaked code if it is indeed highly useful brings us closer to that world. It's forced expropriation but I think we need some of that, especially since companies like Oracle are trying to limit how much open source software they produce.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's an outlaw version of FreeBSD or IllumOS that's released over Freenet or Bittorrent or patches are encrypted and traded over IRC if the leaked code proves to be very useful. In fact I would hope that that happens.

laconian• 15 years ago

Said outlaw software would be considered utterly radioactive by any corporation. It wouldn't get legs, especially when there are so many free alternatives that are unburdened by their illegal provenance.

_csoo2• 15 years ago

That's okay. Free/open source software in general is still considered to be utterly radioactive but there's enough developers out there willing to work with and on it that it isn't a problem. There's no reason why we should let corporations direct what we use and work on all the time ;)

bri3d• 15 years ago

A better link would have been http://openindiana.org/pipermail/openindiana-discuss/2011-De... (OpenSolaris mailing list thread) or even http://news.softpedia.com/news/Oracle-Solaris-11-Kernel-Sour... , which is at least a somewhat-researched article, instead of the current awful blog post, which contains both baseless speculation and no original or useful information.

rbanffy4• 15 years ago

Thanks for posting the links.

adamleventhal• 15 years ago

It's a thorny legal issue, all right. I'll need to refer to the case of Finders v. Keepers.

Solaris 11 Source Leaked

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