On Fri, 28 Jul 2006, Martin Bochnig wrote: > Is it also a "matter of resources" that you don't allow (even > non-commercial) distributors to redistribute a closed binary for > /dev/fb for the older framebuffers developed by SUNW themselves > (probably no 3rd party NDA's affected)? > And what is with the shared Studio C++ runtime required by almost everything > :
Dunno about the frame buffers, but perhaps libC contains 3rd party IP, and Sun's license to use it prohibits redistribution by other parties? I believe that's one of the reasons why you and I are not allowed to redistribute the Solaris ISOs we can download for free from Sun's web site: Sun is allowed to distribute it, but others are not. Sensible? NOt really, but as Casper (and others) has said, that's one of the prices paid for developing stuff as closed source. I'm sure Sun is doing their best to open up libC (or at least allow redistribution), but if the owner of the IP won't play ball, it's out of Sun's hands (apart from Sun re-writing the bits that are closed)... -- Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member President, Rite Online Inc. Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638 URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
