Story: Sun has betrayed us all

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Firstly, we'd like to express our extreme disappointment with your decision to publish such a thoroughly slanted article without even contacting Sun for comment.

Sun can only characterize as irresponsible ZDUK's leader about our patent settlement with Kodak. Even as you acknowledge that you “don't know the details,” you nonetheless draw a host of unfounded conclusions with no facts to support them. In so doing, you paint an incredibly inaccurate portrait of Sun and its stance on both intellectual property and creativity in software.

Like every other public company, Sun has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders and a duty to conduct business in the best interests of them and our customers. In that light, Sun has chosen to settle a pending legal matter rather than litigate it further, at additional time and expense that could be focused on our core business.

Your conclusion from this is that Sun has "betrayed” the Open Source community. This completely ignores the fact that Sun is the second largest contributor to the Open Source community after UC Berkeley. We always have been committed to Open Source and we continue to be great believers in the creative value of that community.

At the same time, Sun believes firmly in the need to provide strong intellectual property protections, such as software patents, in order to assure that both individuals and companies will be rewarded for creativity and invention. Without that reward, no one would invest money, time nor the sweat of their brow to create the technology that today enriches all of our lives. IP protection is the armour that protects the vital organs of today's global economy.

Are there problems with today's patent systems and other intellectual property rules? Of course. No human system is ever perfect. We all need to work together, individuals, companies and governments, to deal with everything from “junk” patents to the blatant piracy of copyrighted work around the world.

But you don't junk the entire system, as you suggest, because a small part of it isn't working. That is the height of irresponsibility for every economy in the world.

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