In other words, Sun can't open source Solaris, as announced/leaked last week (Jonathan Schwartz: "Make no mistake, we will open-source Solaris."). Not under the GPL and without reference to its Unix System V license with SCO, anyhow.

Sun has yet to comment today on SCO's statement, but Sun's Open Source Programs Manager Danese Cooper has in the meantime blogged very enlightingly on the whole subject of the Sun announcement - from Shanghai, by president and COO Jonathan Schwartz - in the first place.

"This whole business of 'leaking' information is fascinating to me," Cooper writes. "This story has actually been 'leaked' at least 3 times that I know of already: First by Anil Gadre all the way back in January of 2000 in the Wall Street Journal (so long ago that I can't find a link for it), then again in 2002 in interviews with Rob Gingell and most recently last December by Jonathan Schwartz."

"So, what's going on with all this leaking?" she asks rhetorically.

Here is her own answer to the question:

"At companies I've worked for I've seen executives 'leak' news when they wanted to test the waters, both inside and outside a company. You might ask why they don't just file a regular story? Well, leaks are interesting. It feels like you're learning something you're not supposed to know. In my experience executive 'leaks' are almost never unintentional, however.

In the old days at Apple (before Steve Jobs came back), MacWeek and similar magazines devoted whole columns to handling leaks put out with varying degrees of intention by product groups. In fact those columns were the best way for Apple employees to find out what was going on because internal communication was terrible. If your "rumor" got published the magazine sent you a coffee mug (which you could only use at home, although I remember one gutsy product manager who used his at work)! Reaction to well-placed rumors helped many an executive decide what to do. If the reaction was disastrous, it was only a leak after all."