[illumos-Developer] trouble getting SUNWspro

[Christopher J. Ruwe]

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On 25/08/10 20:02, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> "Christopher J. Ruwe" <cjr at cruwe.de> wrote:
>
>> I am NOT a lawyer, I have, however, graduated in Business Administration and
>> have some founding in property rightss.
>>
>> As Mike Geerdts wrote, one difficulty lies in section 2 of the license:
>>
>> 2. Permitted Uses.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> (b) reproduce and distribute the Software (and also portions of Software
>> identified as Redistributable in the documentation accompanying Software),
>> provided that you (i) distribute the Software or Redistributables bundled
>> as part of, and for the sole purpose of running, OpenSolaris code;
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> The part relevant is, imo, 2b i: ... as part of [...] OpenSolaris code.
>> According to http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/trademark_faq,
>> OpenSolaris in a trademark of Sun, Inc.
>>
>> - From http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/trademark follows (under Names
>> of the official binary and unmodified distributions), that**
>>
>> "Sun has named the official binary distribution OpenSolaris. If you
>> redistribute this official binary distribution from the OpenSolaris Community
>> without any modifications (no sub-setting, no super-setting) under a binary
>> license that allows you to do so, you do not need to change the name. If you
>> construct the distribution out of a different set of packages, however, you
>> may not use OpenSolaris for the name of the entire distribution."
>> **
>> So, arguing that Illumos is a modification of OpenSolaris codebase, one may
>> not use the term OpenSolaris for Illumos. Arguing further, that Illumos is
>> not OpenSolaris, it is not permitted to bundle the compiler with Illumos.
>> Also, the purpose of the compiler is to compile Illumos, so it's "sole
>> purpose" is to run code other than OpenSolaris code, i.e., Illumos code.
>
> Well, we as the community dod already decide that noone is allowed to name a
> distro "OpenSolaris". Sus did ignore this and I believe that this is not
> important. We still may use the name "OpenSolaris" in a descriptive way, so
> calling Illumos a OpenSolaris based code base is OK Calling distributions
> that are based on Illumos "OpenSolaris based" is also OK.
>
> I did work on the next SchilliX distro today, so I may be too dense not to
> properly read the license text. In any case if we are allowed to redistribute
> the compiler for OpenSolaris codde, this should also apply to distros based on
> the OpenSolaris code.
>
> Jörg
>

I would be careful about that. While I concede Jörg Schilling has a point on
"OpenSolaris based", that is not what the license text is about.

Legally, one might need to disambiguate, as "distribution based on
OpenSolaris" is not the same as "OpenSolaris distribution". With Illumos, an
intersection of OpenSolaris code + a set of code replacing non-free
OpenSolaris parts is distributed, so it is a subset + some bits.
The OpenSolaris trademark faq explicitly ruled out a "sub-set", which would
also include "subset + bits"

Also, please note that the license text refers to "developing and running an
OpenSolaris distribution". While one might call Illumos, an "OpenSolaris
based distribution", it differs very probably enough from OpenSolaris code
that it cannot be called anymore an "OpenSolaris Distribution". OpenSolaris
distro $\neq$ distro based on OpenSolaris .

Furthermore and considering the intermediate future, it is difficult to
asses/define/etc. when Illumos code will differ so much from OpenSolaris code
for Illumos to literally constitute a fork.

While I still cannot be definitive, I would be due to arguments one could
make against be very careful about redistribution of the Sun Compiler.

Regards and cheers, Christopher

- -- 
Christopher J. Ruwe
cjr at cruwe.de
Timezone CEST = GMT + 2h
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