1997 Fools: SUN PRESS RELEASE
From: Shaggy <zjgordon@iupui.edu>
Subject: SUN PRESS RELEASE
To: Da List <linux-newbie@vger.rutgers.edu>
(C) 1997 Reuters
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mountain View CA. At a early morning press conference at its coroporate
headquarters at Mountain View, California, Sun Microsystems announced that
it has hired Linus Torvald's as Senior Development Manager for Sun
Microsystems Solaris Operating system. In a recent press conference
annoucing Mr. Torvald's joining Sun, Sun Chief Executive Officer, Scott
McNealy, stated, "We're quite honored to be joined by the kernel
programming legend that Linus is". The "kernel" is the heart of all UNIX
operating systems. McNealy also stated that, "...in the spirit of Mr.
Torvald's dedicated work on the free UNIX clone, Linux, we at Sun
Microsystems have decided to release, in its entirety, the source code for
our Solaris operating system and instead, copyright the Linux operating
system". Sun also stated that the trademark "Linux" had been applied for
with the United States Trademark Office. The previous and disputed
copyright holder, William R. Della Croce, Jr. was unavailable for comment.
Linux was originally created by Linus Torvalds at the University
of Helsinki in Finland. It soon became one of the most popular free UNIX
variants, being freely redistributable and freely available on the
Internet. The Linux operating system, though initially based on the Intel
processor platform, it was eventually ported to the Motorola 68000
series, Apple Power Macintoshes and Sun Sparc series. Said McNealy, "So
impressed were we with Linux's development on our Sparc and UltraSparc
platforms, we decided it would be in the best interest of our user base to
take advantage of the work that Linus and his Internet-wide team of
developers accomplished...quite frankly, Linux outperformed our own
product [Solaris]".
The far-reaching effect of this news has yet to determined by both
developers of Linux and end users. Because Linus Torvalds is not the sole
developer of Linux, Sun announced that it was preparing "compensation"
packages to all documented contributors to the Linux kernel that would
possibly include Sun Microsystems stock and other offers. Sun also stated
that until September 1, 1997, it would not activate new licensing costs
for current users. License prices were not available a the press
conference.
Sun plans to market the product with the new name Solinux,
keeping with the helio-centric naming convention adopted by Sun. A new
development division has been formed by Sun solely for the further
development of Solinux. CEO McNealy stated, "We are so dedicated to the
continued development of Solinux that we are not using any of the
development staff for our Solaris product to prevent 'code
contamination'".
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