Sun: Patent use OK beyond Solaris project

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um... sparkey, stick to simple arguements!

Sun (originally Stanford University Networks) started out selling workstations (hopped up computers) that were network centric. A friend of mine purchased one of the first 200 or so machines they sold! Because most of the founders (sans McNealy) were Unix guys and one of them could rewrite the OS in a weekend (SunOS was originally from BSD, long before Linux), they specialized in Unix workstations. Eventually they branced into servers for networks, but they have been a hardware company from the beginning.

They were initially located on one of 3 floors of some building, SGI was on another (this was on the Stanford campus). Eventually, they moved from BSD to SVR4 (Solaris 1 to Solaris 2). They were still a hardware centric company (see what offer for the most part) and a Unix house. Since they started with BSD unix, moved to SVR4 Unix, selling hardware that runs Linux is no big deal for them!

They also sell software (Unix based, mostly) and have deals with companies like Oracle. Other conmpanies have also developed tehir own implementations of Unix (SGI has Irix, IBM has AIX, DEC had Untrix, ...) and all of these companies started out as hardware companies filing a given niche (SGI for graphics, for example). All of the companies (that have not been bought or died off) now support Linux and some have BSD roots.

If you are going to try and refute known history (and I can also go on about Apple and Microsoft, among other companies, GNU, DARPA, etc.) I would recommend that you actually try and learn something about it!

Sun is doing this because Linux can sell Sun hardware and services, plain and simple! They have Solaris becasue it is theirs and thet can continue to improve it. They give things to Linux because it helps them also sell Sun hardware and consulting. The also have software that runs on Linux, so they have that angle covered.

Posted by: B.O.F.H.   Posted on: 01/31/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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