Sun: Falling Down the Rabbit Hole
Sun has invited us all to their tea party. Bring money. Their new Linux distribution, named -- apparently without intended irony -- MadHatter will cost you $50-$100 per employee (not per user) per year. Can't wait? It'll be ready for you in September.
I certainly feel like Alice sometimes in the SCO mess. Don't you?
They hope to sell 50 million of these. If they do, I'll eat my hat. Scott McNealy has a word for you:
"Don't touch open source software unless you have a team of intellectual property lawyers prepared to scour every single piece [of the open source code]. We offer indemnification, but many suppliers do not. A lot of companies are going to get very disappointed as we move forward. It will become a very challenging intellectual property issue."
Who's "we", Kimosabe? Coming out of the closet, Scott? Let me get this straight. You would like to make money from Linux. Gobs and gobs of it. But you would like to kick sand in the face of the creators of the software you wish to make your money from... am I missing something in this business plan? More on his vision, or hallucination, here. Watch what you do in your Wonderland, Scott. You might find yourself getting really, reeeeally small.
Eben Moglen has written a new position paper for OSDL. The actual pdf is here.
There is an interview with me on Linux Online. They wanted to ask me why I do this and other questions. So, I explain. Yesterday, it was The Inquirer.
More on Caldera contributions to Linux. Greg T. Hill decided to look under the covers of 2.4.19 and here is what he found, with some explanation, in case you still aren't convinced that Caldera officially contributed to the Linux kernel knowingly:
Just a simple "grep -r 'Caldera' /usr/src/linux/*" and "grep -r 'caldera' /usr/src/linux/* on kernel sources for 2.4.19 (patched for SGI's xfs) turns up all of the following
/usr/src/linux/CREDITS:S: Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH
N: Stefan Probst
E: sp@caldera.de D: The Linux Support Team Erlangen, 1993-97
S: Caldera (Deutschland) GmbH
S: Lazarettstrasse 8
S: 91054 Erlangen
S: Germany
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/tlan.txt:(C) 1997-1998
Caldera, Inc.
*first copyright listed
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/smp.tex:The author wishes to thank
Caldera Inc.
( http://www.caldera.com )
The author wishes to thank Caldera Inc. ( http://www.caldera.com ) whose donation of an ASUS dual Pentium board made this project possible, and Thomas Radke, whose initial work on multiprocessor Linux formed the backbone of this project.
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/CMI8338: b. Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 b. Caldera OpenLinux 2.2
Use LISA to load the cmpci module.
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c: * (Original development of Linux SMP code supported by Caldera.)
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/tlan.c: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
*first copyright listed
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/tlan.h: * (C) 1997-1998 Caldera, Inc.
*first copyright listed
/usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/advansys.c: AdvanSys driver in the Caldera releases.
Erik Ratcliffe < erik@caldera.com > has done testing of the AdvanSys driver in the Caldera releases.
/usr/src/linux/net/ipx/af_ipx.c: * Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc.
< greg@caldera.com >
* Portions Copyright (c) 1995 Caldera, Inc. < greg@caldera.com >
* Neither Greg Page nor Caldera, Inc. admit liability nor provide
* warranty for any of this software. This material is provided
* "AS-IS" and at no charge.
*
/usr/src/linux/net/ipx/af_ipx.c: KERN_INFO "IPX Portions Copyright (c) 1995
Caldera, Inc.n"
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/Configure.help:# LocalWords: caldera
Preload
Preloading slowdowns schoebel uni NBD nbd prog
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/slip.c: * from Jim Freeman's
< jfree@caldera.com >
* Matti Aarnio : Dynamic SLIP devices, with ideas taken
* from Jim Freeman's < jfree@caldera.com >
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/drm/drm_context.h: * 2001-11-16 Torsten
Duwe
< duwe@caldera.de >
* ChangeLog:
* 2001-11-16 Torsten Duwe < duwe@caldera.de >
* added context constructor/destructor hooks,
* needed by SiS driver's memory management.
/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/maestro.c: * v0.15 - May 21 2001 - Marcus
Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
* History
* v0.15 - May 21 2001 - Marcus Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
* Ported to Linux 2.4 PCI API. Some clean ups, global devs list
* removed (now using pci device driver data).
* PM needs to be polished still. Bumped version.
/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/sonicvibes.c: *
Meissner
< mm@caldera.de >
* 18.05.2001 0.30 PCI probing and error values cleaned up by Marcus
* Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/esssolo1.c: *
* 15.05.2001 pci_enable_device moved, return values in probe
cleaned
* up. Marcus Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
* 22.05.2001 0.19 more cleanups, changed PM to PCI 2.4 style,
got rid
* of global list of devices, using pci device
data.
* Marcus Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
/usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/nm256_audio.c: *
19-04-2001 Marcus Meissner < mm@caldera.de >
* Ported to 2.4 PCI API.
usr/src/linux/fs/freevxfs/vxfs_olt.c: printk(KERN_NOTICE "vxfs: please
notify hch@caldera.de n");
1:44:12 PM 
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