When you buy a company you inherit both their assets and it's obligations. And I use both in a sense that goes beyond merely dollar. The Sun brand and goodwill associated thereis would be one such example. Sun made a public commitment to open source Solaris. Oracle is morally bound to honor that commitment. Whether OpenSolaris generates profit or not is immaterial but that is does not, for all practical purposes, seems to some to be justification for free discharge of the obligation to honor Sun's promises. Corporations want to enjoy the benefit of being a 'legal person' but don't want to pay the requisite dues. If Oracle did not want to inherit the moral obligation to follow thru on Sun's commitment to open source Solaris, Oracle should have let Sun go bankrupt before stepping in. However, in my mind, while that may have absolved them of some of their financial commitments, it wouldn't necessarily follow that such would absolve them from the moral obligation to compl ete the full open sourcing of Solaris.
But hey, we don't seem to give a damn about morals and obligations anymore and _any_and_all reprehensible behavior seems to be justified so long as it turns a profit. Yet look where all this greed got us? I guess being on the brink of total economic collapse wasn't enough of a wake up call..... -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
