A Sun engineer on Linux [LWN.net]

A Sun engineer on Linux

Posted Sep 24, 2004 8:48 UTC (Fri) by arasila (guest, #20891)
In reply to: A Sun engineer on Linux by einstein
Parent article: A Sun engineer on Linux

Very interesting... Sun takes a wad of cash from microsoft, and lo and behold, they turn up the volume on their anti-linux FUD. They are sounding more and more like sco.

Since the fiaSCO incident I haven't much liked Sun; but anyway I don't see any "FUD" in this article. It's very much true that certain design choises of Linus are annoying big hardware vendors. And that you can't link non-GPL code to Linux kernel -- that's very bad for the companies developing hardware drivers with lots of licensed IP, patented technology, etc.

I'm not saying that Sun's approach is right or even a good one -- just that the technical points made in the article make sense and are logically sound. In particular, from a cynical point of view, it makes sense for Sun to adopt a GPL-incomptatible license to prevent the "edge" of Sun's technology from slipping into Linux.

A completely different issue is, will the strategy succeed. Linux has many years lead as an Open Source project -- building a community is slow. Also, Sun has much talent in annoying people and creating distrust -- as demonstrated by the reaction to this article. But Helix/RealPlayer project was also trashed by LWN readers and it has yet been somewhat successful.

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