[brendangregg]

I may be able to help explain one factor that hasn't been mentioned, and might be related:

Imagine that at a previous company you worked for - and one where you signed a standard confidentiality agreement - you were privy to a sensitive legal matter.

After you leave the company, there is much public speculation about that legal matter.

You can weigh in, and share the sensitive legal details that you were privy to - that are not publicly known. Would you? Should you? Can you?

Does this help explain?

I doubt anything new is going to be found by continuing these discussions. I can say what will be found going forward - exciting new observability made possible by DTrace on Linux.

[gillianseed]

>I doubt anything new is going to be found by continuing these discussions.

Agreed, and just to make something clear, me believing that Sun did indeed create CDDL to be incompatible with GPLv2 is not something I hold against Sun at all, contrary I think it was the 'right' thing to do given their circumstances as a company, had I been a shareholder I would have been angry if they gave away technology 'crown jewels' to their main competitor.

On the other hand, wearing my Linux user hat I really want to have this great technology at my disposal :) (something which is now thankfully being rectified by things like DTrace / ZFS on Linux)

Anyway, as I said, this is what I 'believe', it doesn't mean it is the _truth_, I've just yet to come across anything factual which would make me think otherwise.

[brendangregg]

From Bryan Cantrill, father of DTrace - which was the first code to be open sourced under the CDDL - said this on HN:

> the reason the GPLv2 was rejected is actually very simple: the strong copy-left left way too much ambiguity for our IHV partners.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4357507

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, was asked this question in 2005 and replied:

> “So if the Linux kernel were to implement DTrace, Sun wouldn’t employ the patents against them?” “Knock yourself out.”

http://radar.oreilly.com/2005/11/oscon-jonathan-schwartz-int...

Jonathan did not say "it's valuable technology that we've invested in creating, and we would defend that intellectual property."

What Jonathan did say was in line with his open source vision. There were many interviews at the time about it; eg:

> With the Java platform I'd guess we reach 20 to 30 percent of the Internet every day (powering the games kids play online, the intranet application at a bank, etc.). Each of these constituents may think about Java in different ways, but in each case Java "sells" my brand. If you believe that brand is central to the next wave of Internet monetization--and I believe it is absolutely central--then the more people that know my brand, the more benefit inures to me.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9757417-16.html

If people are interested in continuing to research this for whatever historical reason, you'll find Jonathan gave many interviews about Sun's open source strategy. It's great for everyone, and Linux, that he succeeded in open sourcing what he did.