[Nottingham] Sun's financial support for SCO (12% of SCO's revenue)

[Robert Davies]

On Thursday 18 Sep 2003 08:57, Jon Masters wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Robert Postill wrote:

> The information I have suggests that the SCO deal relates purely to some
> drivers used in Solaris x86 probably because they needed them in a hurry.
> SunOS itself does not use code which needs licensing from SCO however
> Solaris does because it is based on SysV.

Presumably if that is the case, Sun will shortly strongly deny being the 2nd 
licensee.  Most drivers for Solaris x86, would have been either part of 
original source rights, or purchased and ported long ago from SCO, as part of 
Solaris x86 effort (AT&T SysV rel 4 supported x86).  The price involved seems 
rather high for the rights to a few new drivers.

SunOS <=4, Solaris 1 with BrokenWindows was BSD based, SunOS 5+ / Solaris 2+ 
were result of  Unix International alliance with AT&T.  Let's be clear, Sun 
purchased outright permanent source license rights, (as did IBM) and they 
have no reason to pay repeat license fees on Solaris for Sys V rel 4 code.

I wondered if Sun were covering potential legal liabilities for the Sun Linux 
Java Desktop, better known as mad-hatter, that they are launching.  They 
might have felt compelled to 'insure' mad-hatter due to timing of case, and 
concern over what pitch to make to corporates.  Perhaps (speculating) Sun 
Linux will be marketed as a 'SCO safe' product.

On the SCO exec's, they have only sold about 2% of the company according to 
Linux Jornal coverage, probably their statements about having to sell to 
cover tax liabilities have some truth behind it, so I don't think they're 
going to be caught doing crude insider trading.

Rob