OSI Shake-Up and Sun’s Big Mistakes
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) announced Wednesday that their founding president, Eric S. Raymond, will step aside as OSI expands. OSI said Russ Nelson will succeed Raymond as president and that it intends to expand its role beyond its traditional stewardship of the Open Source Definition and the certification of open source licenses. OSI will establish principles of open source development and best practices, create a registry of software projects consistent with open source licenses, and add international perspectives and initiatives related to open source. Lawrence Rosen, OSI’s first general counsel and secretary and its one-time executive director, is also stepping aside as OSI has hired two new lawyers: Mark Radcliffe, a partner at DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, has been named OSI general counsel and Laura Majerus, a partner at Fenwick & West, will hold the new position of director of legal affairs. Michael Tiemann will become vice president and Danese Cooper will continue as secretary and treasurer. There are also reports that this shake-up may have been much-needed due to personality conflicts within OSI.
In that article, Danese Cooper is quoted, defending Sun’s recent CDDL license. Of course, Ms. Cooper, works for Sun, so consider the source. I’m thrilled to see Sun’s OpenSolaris and their recent patent pledge, but I’m not terribly surprised that Sun seems to be screwing this up. (How long have they been saying they’d open source Java?) First their patent pledge was unclear. Will Sun’s patents be licensed to all developers working under an OSI-approved license or merely to those contributing to the new open source version of Solaris? See Sun Solaris Patent Release Questioned; Daniel Ravicher’s Letter Re: Sun’s Patent Grant to Open Source Community (pdf); Richard Stallman, Sun’s no-op announcement; and Bruce Perens, The open-source patent conundrum.
We already know that the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL. Big Mistake #1. Now all the improvements of GNU/Linux under the GPL and any goodies from OpenSolaris under CDDL will have to live on opposite sides of Sun’s new artificial Berlin Wall. [ReaganVoice]”Mr. Schwartz, tear down that wall!”[/ReaganVoice] If the best parts of both operating systems could cross-pollinate, everyone would benefit. It also seems that Big Mistake #2 is going to be that Sun’s patent pledge only applies to developers working on projects licensed under the CDDL. So Sun is telling developers, “If you work for us, on our operating system, where none of your improvements can ever escape into the Linux kernel, then we won’t sue you. But, if you work on GNU/Linux, then watch your back, because we may bring a load of more than 1,600 patents down on your head.” If Sun really wanted to one-up IBM’s pledge of 500 patents, (Feast for open source as IBM opens patent pantry; IBM Pledges 500 U.S. Patents To Open Source In Support Of Innovation And Open Standards; Jim Wagner, IBM Pledges Patents to Open Source.) then they’d make the same pledge that IBM did and they’d guarantee that anyone working under an OSI-approved license has nothing to fear from Sun’s patents.
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