[OpenIndiana-discuss] Legal Safety

[Gabriel de la Cruz]

You should have as much fear as if you are using linux.
I would say that US companies might have a larger probability of
getting in such a mad situation because of the intensive B to B court
tradition.

Anyway, SUN was the home of opensource, they cannot change the past.

living in the edge ;-)
Cheers



On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:26 PM, David Brodbeck <brodbd at uw.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Largo <splatter at proinbox.com> wrote:
>
>> Is OpenIndiana safe from patent lawsuits from Oracle?
>>
>
> Technically nothing is ever safe from lawsuits.  People can sue for pretty
> much any reason they want, especially corporations who have lawyers on
> payroll.
>
>
>>
>> Could it happen to a company using an Illuminos distro like OpenIndiana,
>> that one  day Oracle lawyers will knock on the door and demand that they
>> pay for a commercial Solaris license?
>>
>
> They could certainly try.  An interesting question is whether anyone would
> fight them, or just choose the cheaper option of paying up.  Even if you'll
> inevitably lose a suit if it's brought to trial, shaking people down with
> the threat of one can be pretty lucrative.
>
> Microsoft has been claiming for a while now that Linux violates MS patents
>> despite the fact that the Linux code has very little to do with Windows.
>> I have also heard Microsoft has tried to extort money from companies using
>> Linux,
>> in exchange for safety from MS patens lawsuits
>>
>
> I'd be interested in seeing references to that.  It's the first I've heard
> of it. I'd think they'd want to avoid the loss of goodwill.
>
> To me this all seems like speculation and FUD.  I'm not sure it's going to
> lead to a useful discussion.
>
> (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.)
>
> --
> David Brodbeck
> System Administrator, Linguistics
> University of Washington
> _______________________________________________
> OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list
> OpenIndiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
>