On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 4:30 AM, William Hay <[email protected]> wrote: > That might be excessively paranoid. IANAL but I don't think owning > copyrights entitles one to revoke licenses already granted by your > predecessors in title. If that were possible don't you think Oracle > would have used that to shut Univa down? Oracle fit the model of > big,evil corporation much better than Univa. >
I see Oracles relation to Grid Engine as an elephant is to a mouse (which, despite what comics and cartoons may lead you to believe, are not natural enemies). An elephant can destroy a mouse, but in general it doesn't care a wit about the rodents well being, and mostly ignores it. I think that analogy reflects reality up to this point. Univa is not an elephant. It could be seen as more feline in nature ... or it could be seen as the mouses mother (yes, the analogy breaks down here). Univa started off acting more like the later when it distributed Grid Engine as open core-- and then it stopped. Not releasing source code is common when the code was never open in the first place (no one ever expects Microsoft to release unencumbered product code to the public, or even its friends ... if it has any). But, Grid Engine under Sun was open source, and developed an open source community. There was at least the hope, if not the expectation that the next steward would continue that community. That's not what Univa did, though. > The announcement Univa has made public today will allow us to do that > directly for Oracle Grid Engine customers. Most noteworthy it will also > remove confusion around Grid Engine as the transition has re-united the > full intellectual property including trademarks and all copyright which my > team has built over so many years. This encompasses code under the > SISSL, the proprietary Oracle code and other assets like documentation, > the certification and test suite, diagnostics tools and similar. I understand how trademark and copyright works (though my initial email might indicate otherwise). But what does the above mean? If I were to document the event model used between the qmaster and the execd processes and request that Dave Love post that to the Son of Grid Engine site, am I in violation of trademark, patent, or copyright (I don't think the SISSL covers documentation or educational material)? Am I allowed to say such work covers Grid Engine operations? For that matter, what about the _current_ documentation, mailing list archives, and howtos, that Dave Love posts on the SoGE site? Can he even call his fork of the Grid Engine source code "Son of Grid Engine"? Doesn't that name cause "confusion around Grid Engine"? If Univa goes open core again, develops a community edition and a developer community in general, allows and encourages patches and additions to the Grid Engine core, welcomes documentation in formal and/or wiki format, and acts like a steward to the Grid Engine code base and community then, yes, Univa taking full control of the Grid Engine trademark, copyright, assets, documentation, certification, test suites, diagnostics tools, and similar is a fantastic change. Really, it's great! We all could unite around the Univa Grid Engine moniker (though, obviously, I can only speak for myself). Otherwise, I'd prefer the elephant. It never seemed to notice us. John. _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] https://gridengine.org/mailman/listinfo/users
