Christopher Mahan writes: > How hard would it be to reimplement the binary parts? Are there > patent issues?
Those who know the issues usually can't talk about them in any detail. That's actually a good thing, as it leaves you untainted to take on one of those helpful tasks. ;-} In general, though, the issue is that the source code itself was purchased by Sun from some third party and our agreement with that third party does not give us the right to place the source itself under the CDDL. There's not very much code that's actually in this state, but it's not zero. In the ON consolidation, I count around 4000 total currently closed files (including makefiles, readmes, and whatnot) versus 53876 that are on the open side. Most of that consists of special platform bits, so likely isn't even very relevant to the conversation. I'd also like to see an open reimplementation of libc_i18n. I doubt, though, that this nugget is holding back hordes of projects from using and contributing to Open Solaris. For what it's worth, there are external legal reasons why certain things may always be binary-only. For example, the special firmware used to control the radio signaling in 802.11 drivers is usually subject to governmental authorizations (homologation and other compliance testing), and thus can't really be published as source, no matter what you do. I think that means that the binary content of any useful and non-trivial open source operating system is going to be non-zero. At least until someone GPL's the airwaves and telephone system, I suppose. ;-} -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
