From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by neteng.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id IAA68885 for ; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:20:45 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: Received: (from majordomo-owner@localhost) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) id IAA81095 for linux-list; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:19:43 -0800 (PST) mail_from (owner-linux@relay.engr.sgi.com) Received: from sgi.com (sgi.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.37]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id IAA10101; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:19:40 -0800 (PST) mail_from (shaver@netscape.com) Received: from netscape.com (h-205-217-237-47.netscape.com [205.217.237.47]) by sgi.com (980327.SGI.8.8.8-aspam/980304.SGI-aspam: SGI does not authorize the use of its proprietary systems or networks for unsolicited or bulk email from the Internet.) via ESMTP id IAA09171; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:19:40 -0800 (PST) mail_from (shaver@netscape.com) Received: from tintin.mcom.com (tintin.mcom.com [205.217.233.42]) by netscape.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA09057; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:19:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from netscape.com ([205.217.243.67]) by tintin.mcom.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.03) with ESMTP id F9GW0N00.PEM; Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:19:35 -0800 Message-ID: <37024AC1.AE5D79E9@netscape.com> Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 11:18:09 -0500 From: Mike Shaver Organization: mozilla.org diplomatic corps X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.3-5 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ariel Faigon CC: Alan Hoyt , SGI/Linux mailing list Subject: Re: Port to R3000 Indigo References: <199903300853.AAA52093@oz.engr.sgi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk Ariel Faigon wrote: > Now, if it were entirely in my hands, I would have gladly published > some source code. The problem is much more complex than that. The > IRIX source code includes licensed code from many external commercial > sources, AT&T SVR4, Sun, Xerox, etc. each surrounded by its own complex > licensing terms, so the lawyers need to look into this lest SGI > becomes liable by just making some "innocent goodwill" happen. > > I know it sounds lame, and I as much as anyone, hate this, but > this is reality, and it isn't simple as it may appear to some. > It requires a lot of legal (inspection and clearance) + engineering > (sanitize and clean up code) time which I'm not sure we can afford > on a global scale. Just to leap unnecessarily to Ariel's defense, I'll tell you that once _all_ of Netscape, from Jim Barksdale on down, had decided to release the source to Communicator, it tooks 3 months of about 70 engineers to clean it up fully. That meant removing code that had crypto elements and code that was licensed from other companies. Communicator is a 4-year-old product. There are (well, were) still people around who were a part of just about every deal that put code in there, and could tell you where all but about 15 lines came from. Now, we have people at Netscape (excuse me, AOL) who left SGI 8 years ago, and still have code in the IRIX kernel[*]. The effort required to sanitize the IRIX kernel and X server and the like would surely eclipse our experiences. No Small Task. It is quite pointless, IMHO, to rail at Ariel about this; he and his band of merry men have been fighting the good fight within SGI for years, long before it was cool for a Unix company to do Linux. If you really want to help, I think the best thing to do is flank SGI: make sure that the sales and marketing folk know that SGI's support for Linux on their older hardware is significant to you as a once-and-future customer. (Where they should certainly be led to interpret ``significant'' as ``affecting future purchasing decisions''.) If you have friends on the board of SGI, maybe give them a call too. =) [*] grep XXXbe /usr/include/sys/*.h; that's brendan@mozilla.org. Mike -- 588472.19 72598.35