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Sun open-source license could mean Solaris-Linux barrier (News.com)
News.com
looks at compatibility issues between the GPL and Sun's CDDL, which
may be used on the Solaris operating system.
""The CDDL is not expected to be compatible with the GPL, since it contains requirements that are not in the GPL," Claire Giordano of Sun's CDDL team said in its submission. "Thus, it is likely that files released under the CDDL will not be able to be combined with files released under the GPL to create a larger program.""
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Duh. Posted Dec 3, 2004 0:14 UTC (Fri) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] Anyone who thought Solaris would actually release this under a license that would allow other OSes to constructively borrow would have to have a fairly optimistic (completely naive?) view of Sun's intentions. This is a publicity stunt, not much more.
Duh. Posted Dec 3, 2004 0:52 UTC (Fri) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] And in any case, how would this be different from the current situation?
Of course at least some portion of suns source code is likely covered by the BSD license.
Duh. Posted Dec 3, 2004 5:34 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Of course at least some portion of suns source code is likely covered by the BSD licenseProbably nothing that wasn't in 4.4-BSD. If Sun has made changes you can be sure they've changed the licence.
It doesn't matter Posted Dec 3, 2004 5:57 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Any good ideas in an open-source Solaris (or even a source-available Solaris whose license terms are too restrictive to call open source) can be copied by Linux and vice versa, as long as they aren't patented. Copyright only protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.There are standard techniques for legally doing the idea-copying. Programmer A can study the source code and write a report on the algorithms and implementation techniques. Programmer B, never having seen the original source code, can then make a new implementation relying only on the document. The paranoid can have a lawyer review the document to make sure that it is just a description of the source, and doesn't copy significant chunks of the source itself. The lawyer can also serve as a witness that the re-implementation was done in a legally sound manner.
It doesn't matter Posted Dec 10, 2004 18:47 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I don't think you have to go even that far. It's a technique used by the paranoid, but not necessary. The same programmer can read the original code and write the new code. To be a copy, he would have actually to remember the lines of code and type them in verbatim, which is unlikely for a program of any size. It's also quite unlikely that he would end up with the same lines by chance in such a way that a court would find it more likely than not that he copied them. And for that matter, you could look at the subject code and then deliberately write entirely different code to execute the same algorithm. I do that anyway, because I hate most other programmers' code. The truth is that there's not much OS software out there worth copying, unless you're going to copy an entire package bit for bit. Worth studying, yes. Copying, no.
Duh. Posted Dec 3, 2004 8:32 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] BSD OSes cant borrow literally from Linux either. So your point? Anyway, as another poster pointed out, ideas are not encumbered by licences, so they can still cross OSes (and already have - where do you think the slab cache in Linux kernel comes from?), patents not withstanding. Also, if one contributes some original work to OpenSolaris, one always has the option of dual-licensing it. Anyway, it isnt even known whether this Mozilla Public Licence derived CDDL licence will be the licence under which OpenSolaris is released, so your claims of this being a publicity stunt and nothing more are premature, this constitutes a submission of a draft licence to OSI, no more at this time.
Duh. Posted Dec 4, 2004 0:49 UTC (Sat) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] >this being a publicity stunt and nothing more are premature<
just what else do you think it is a givaway session get real it is a stunt and nothing else at all Oh and i forgot they are hoping that the Linux community will donate some code to them well they need it so i have heard
CDE yes well nuff said..
pete
Duh. Posted Dec 4, 2004 3:46 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] NB: I am a Sun employee. The below are my personal opinions, based in no small part on opinions held before having become a Sun employee. I dont speak for Sun. just what else do you think it is a givaway session Why, yes, that pretty much describes it. How else would you describe Sun spending a lot of time and money[1] on opening up Solaris under an (as yet undisclosed) OSI-approved licence? hoping that the Linux community will donate some code to them No, that isnt what Sun hope. Sun hope that those who care to (eg customers, academia) will be able to look, tinker and modify away on Solaris to their hearts content, and maybe do cool stuff, who knows. Indeed, source had always been available to major customers and academia anyway, just not under an "Open Source" licence, so essentially all thats changing is that source will be more widely accessible and under a non-proprietary licence. As for donations of code, who bought StarOffice and open-sourced it and provided the resources for its continued development? Who paid for the GNOME HID studies and contributed towards the improvements that went towards making GNOME 2 a marked UI improvement over GNOME 1? (and who continues to contribute to GNOME?). And NFS? RPC? Who's paying for a developer to rework Linux autofs? Who pays me to work (at this time) mostly on Free Software? (and how many others would? ;) ). So Sun doesnt like RedHat, so? They are a direct competitor on the OS/software side, what were you expecting? Should Sun instead be singing the praises of RedHat? And is this the same RedHat which has drawn incredible amounts of flamage from parts of the Linux "community" for discontinuing RHL and selling only expensive RHEL? I thought RedHat were "evil" for doing that?[2] And do you think RedHat work on Linux for the good of their health? Are RedHat a registered non-profit organisation? No, they're a for profit corporation and they work on and improve Linux because their customers pay them to, as Sun do with Solaris - no more, no less either. I am a committed Free Software advocate. I donate to the FSF when I can. I wouldn't work for Sun if I thought they were evil and secretly trying to undermine Open Source/Free Software. I work there, I know they're not, I know they're the only company on earth that has stayed 100% dedicated to Unix and kept flying the flag, even while almost every other vendor was off touting the fallacy that Unix was "legacy" and WindowsNT was the future. It's because of that dedication, to some part at least, that there ever remained a healthy Unix market for the nascent Linux to grow into! Sure, Sun have to adapt to a changed market. It's no longer the 90s, open-source has truly arrived and the price insensitive "Open Systems" market of large corporate and institutional customers is gone, or possibly rather eclipsed by a far broader, very price-sensitive, Unix-(inc Linux)-as-commodity market. All companies must adapt over time to survive, and I'm pretty convinced Sun are already well on their way to doing so. Why not wait a year and pass judgement on what transpires, rather than condemn now based (almost certainly) on your presumptions of what will transpire? CDE CDE was a common Unix thing. Yes it was ugly. Sun's own OpenWindows and OpenLook (gosh, there's another thing Sun gave to the greater Unix community.. I used to use OLWM on RedHat 4.) were much nicer, imho, but CDE became the standardised Unix desktop and hence Sun shipped it too. However, if you run Solaris 10, you surely want to use the pretty JDS/GNOME 2.6 desktop instead ;). --1. And a certain sum of money Sun paid to a certain company a while was precisely to buy out all rights to Solaris, as McNealy has stated recently in an interview. Spending money so as to be able to allow the first ever open sourcing of a modern and relevant Unix(TM) is an admirable thing in my book. And note the TM please - all the other Unix(TM) vendors rolled over, let their own Unix(TM) rot and adopted Linux - Sun did not. They stayed 100% commited to Solaris, whether you'd rather that Sun too had rolled over and adopted Linux or not, that commitment at least deserves some respect. 2. And no, despite being a Sun employee, I dont think RedHat are evil. They're a competitor to better and beat. Competition is a good thing, competition is what has defined Unix - look where lack of competition (on a technical basis at least) has gotten a certain other OS (lack of competition on a business level obviously has huge benefits). Having 3 families of open-source Unixen (Solaris, Linux and the 3 BSDs), each with a slightly different focus, to compete against other is a good thing, and each and every one of those Unixen will benefit from it, and hence, collectively, will Unix.
Duh. Posted Dec 3, 2004 11:22 UTC (Fri) by sereciya (guest, #26422) [Link] > This is a publicity stunt, not much more.
Thank you. The emperor really doesn't have any clothes on!
With those who are familiar with Sun's previous Java development
At best, Sun is acting like a confused teenager.
As far as I'm concerned Sun is *irrelevant*; I would much rather
Furthermore, I would recomend against our Open Source developers cross-licensing with Sun. They both want our help and still
My $0.02
If one Sun product isn't Open Source, why should the other be? Posted Dec 4, 2004 10:32 UTC (Sat) by sereciya (guest, #26422) [Link]
Here's a big surprise: Suns McNealy says, "Java wont be open source".
"...I can't see what will be solved by adapting such a license..."
What's to keep them from saying the same thing for Solaris?
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 3, 2004 14:29 UTC (Fri) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] It would have helped this discussion greatly if LWN hadn't chosen to excerpt the two mostincindiary sentences from the story with no context at all.
I don't think Sun set out to make the CDDL incompatible with the GPL. The CDDL is based on the
Sun has posted a list of changes from the MPL at http://www.sun.com/cddl/
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 3, 2004 15:05 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] >Interestingly, no one cries foul about Apache, PHP or OpenSSL.
Maybe that's because they're not the large company with lots of marketing dollars that's been saying nasty things about the GPL for quite a while now, and has close ties to a malicious and greedy monopolist. Maybe it's because although they aren't GPL-compatible they at least know how to get along with their neighbors.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 3, 2004 16:49 UTC (Fri) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] This is about the level of comment I was expecting. It's a pity that LWN has degraded so.
How, exactly, has sun said "nasty" things about the GPL? I can't find any evidence of this. In fact,
I'd like to point out that no one attacked IBM for releasing Cloudscape under the Apache License,
As for their settlement with Microsoft, what about it, exactly, upsets you? I see a lot of griping
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 0:54 UTC (Sat) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link] To answer some of your questions, you may wish to mosey on over to the Register, who posted a piece about Sun just the other day.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/02/sun_microsoft_par...
"We've discovered the two companies are more similar than different, especially on the value of intellectual property," said [Sun CTO] Papadopoulos. Sun's decision to license Microsoft protocols allows it to boast the best Windows interoperability in the business, leaving free software developers high and dry.
If Sun would love the free software community so much, they would work on creating better, stronger, faster and free-er protocols and implementations, as opposed to working with MS to validate their proprietary stuff.
Sun likes to spread FUD about the GPL: http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/43922.htm?DE=1 "GPL would fork Java!" another cool quote: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1573433,00.asp "After observing that open-sourcing Java under the GNU General Public License (GPL) "is not off the table," he added that one problem Sun has with the GPL is that it encourages forking. He pointed to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as an example. "There is a fork in the Linux world: Red Hat and the others." Specifically, on the server side, "Red Hat has pretty much forked the distribution. This has given Red Hat tremendous gains for now, but ultimately it's an impediment in the growth of Linux."
Note the clever juxtaposition of the key FUD stuff "Forking, GPL, RedHat, impediment to growth. " of course, Solaris does not have that issue.
As for looking glass, that is a total red herring - they GPL'ed some of the most useless technology currently being hyped: "lookey here, I will steal 3 quarters of all your system resources, so i can turn a window on its side, just like a book. Ooooh, isn't it shiney and pretty". It is perhaps one of the most pathetic modern attempts at a 3d interface I have seen in my entire life. GPL'ing looking glass has as much impact as GPL'ing a modern implementation of "Hello World in C++"
It is telling that most of your examples revolve around Sun using Open Source, as opposed to supporting open source. And hold your horses before you wheel out OpenOffice.org as "The Bestest Example" of Sun's angel status within the Open Source community. Sun has a long history of misleading the Open Source community in these matters, and OOo is no different. They would turn the whole OOo situation around in a heartbeat - check out this:
http://www.openoffice.org/press/sun_release.html - somewhere near the end, you will find "In addition, Sun also announced today the new OpenOffice.org Foundation, which will initially be modeled on other successful open source projects and will consist of a project management committee, source code maintainers, and developers. Sun will hold a equal membership position in the OpenOffice.org Foundation project management committee."
I, like many others, have experienced Sun's Open Source Love first hand, and I have come away less then impressed with the whole organisation. At the very least, I can respect Microsoft for their consistent stance, and their willingness to stand up for what they believe is right. Sun can't even do that.
Better go back to your cubicle - Mr. McNealy may be around soon....
(apologies for the stream-of-consciousness rant, but it is 1:00 AM here, and I am knackered....)
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 1:24 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] If Sun would love the free software community so much, they would work on creating better, stronger, faster and free-er protocols and implementations, as opposed to working with MS to validate their proprietary stuff. Here's a list of Sun protocols: can you say "the dot in .r00tk1t"? I'm really glad to see they're concentrating on desktop software so I don't have to kick it off my servers. ;-)
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 1:37 UTC (Sat) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] There have been flaws in many of these protocols, yes. But you also have to consider the age ofsome of them (NFSv2 is almost 20 years old). And many of these protocols suffer from problems in implementations, rather than in the design. NFS can be made secure, for instance by using RPCSEC_GSS. You also seem to be inferring that Sun has a particularly bad security history, which isn't the case -- they're no worse than, say, SGI or IBM in that regard.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 1:54 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Well, I was just trying to contrast Sun's loudness about its technology leadership with its historic record, which is not impressive, especially design-wise -- regardless of implementation. But it must be said that for instance NFS and NIS do have their obvious nice sides as well. Good ideas, wrong design though.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 2:26 UTC (Sat) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] How is their technology record not impressive? They invented NFS, NIS and PAM; they were thefirst OS to have dynamic linking. They played an important role in System V development. This isn't to say that IBM, et al. haven't made major contributions, they have, but so has Sun. I don't understand why you spare no opportinuty to trash Sun, quite often baselessly.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 9, 2004 12:49 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] SunOS the first OS to have dynamic linking? SunOS predates Multics? :)
(OK, so it *did* originate the ELF shared library scheme and symbol versioning, for which thanks are definitely due: a comparison to most other OS's independently-invented attempts at dynamic linking shows that Sun definitely thought their design through here.)
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 1:31 UTC (Sat) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] It's telling that you use the Register as your first "source." All the reg article says is that bothcompanies value intellectual property. This isn't news - we already knew that. Sun has decided that it's best to try to interoperate with Windows, since they are the dominant desktop platform. I don't see the problem with this. Rather than spending money on Samba, which (by definition) will always be a reactive project (and which could soon be obsolete, if the TSCB takes off), they decided to just license the protocols directly. Not everything Sun does has to benefit the open-source community (just as not everything IBM does benefits it).
As for the alleged GPL FUD, I just don't agree. I don't see how what Schwartz said is FUD (I don't
I also disagree with you on Looking Glass. It's a useful experiement. It offloads most of the
As for Sun using, instead of supporting, open source -- have you noticed that Sun is about to
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 6, 2004 3:11 UTC (Mon) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] > As for Sun using, instead of supporting, open source -- have you noticed that Sun is about to release their entire operating system under and OSI-approved license? No other commercial Unix company has done that. IBM hasn't. SGI hasn't. HP hasn't.
Well, duh. Why bother going through the trouble to pay SCO/Novell for the right to release "real" Unix code when you can port your modifications to Linux for much cheaper, and get basically the same result in the end?
(The answer, by the way, is "so we can keep selling our high-end high-margin servers". But that didn't apply to SGI, IBM, or HP -- and given how many x86 products Sun sells these days, it's not obviously a good idea for them either.)
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 7, 2004 1:02 UTC (Tue) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] This just doesn't make any sense.
Even if Sun were to take the time to port Solaris features to Linux, there is no guarantee that they'd be accepted. DTrace, Zones, multiple scheduling algorithms, on-the-fly multiple page size support, etc would all be highly invasive changes. Look how long it took SGI to get XFS into the mainline kernel, and they were fairly lucky - IBM didn't fare so well with EVMS and NGPT. SGI has also had some serious performance improvement code rejected by the Apache project. Just porting your code to an open-source project is no silver bullet. There is no guarantee the porting Solaris to Linux would give "basically the same result in the end." Now I suppose you could say that Sun could maintain their own patches for the features they wanted, but this would essentially be forking the kernel (but what the hell, nearly every Linux distro already does this). But I'm sure Sun would be villified by the Linux community (and lots of zealous LWN readers) for doing so.... I'm not quite sure what you're saying in your last paragraph. You seem to be saying that Sun is still supporting Solaris so that they can continue to sell SPARC-based systems. This doesn't make much sense. IBM has ported Linux to the mainframe and pSeries, and these are just about as "high-end high-margin servers" as you can get. Again, I see a rampant double standard here: IBM can do no wrong; Sun can do no right, and many members of the Linux community will bend over backwards, cross their eyes and stand on their heads if necessary to twist and distort everything Sun says in order to maintain their belief that Sun is "evil."
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 6, 2004 22:07 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] > As for Sun using, instead of supporting, open source -- have you noticed that Sun is about torelease their entire operating system under and OSI-approved license?
Please stop promoting this misinformation. Sun has released nothing and they will not commit to even stating what they intend to release and under what licence. They have made (lots of) noises about open-sourcing Solaris. They have proposed this as yet another open-source license. Just the facts, please. Everything else is just conjecture.
Understand that I believe that what they do with Solaris is their business.
But don't give them credit for that which they have not done, and may not ever do at all.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 7, 2004 1:05 UTC (Tue) by cajal (subscriber, #4167) [Link] Given that Sun now has full-time staff working on open-sourcing Solaris and that they've beenmaking such a public commotion about doing so for months, I think it's safe to say that they will, actually, go ahead with it. In fact, I know a few people who are part of the closed early trial for OpenSolaris right now.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 4, 2004 0:56 UTC (Sat) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] It is the Eternal Triangle M$ Corp
SCO SUN
they all have one thing in common they all are loosing out to Linux big time and all they scheme is to try and kill Linux off well guess what not a hope in hell.
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 9, 2004 12:52 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] You have a very strange definition of `eternal'.
(and `triangle'. Let's see, we have MS, SCO, MS's funded arms-length distraction puppet, and Sun, a company which has a *lot* to lose from MS, and is fighting to survive.
No, I don't see a connection.
Please *think* before you post.)
Many OSS licenses aren't GPL-compatible. Who cares? Posted Dec 3, 2004 20:09 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] It would have helped this discussion greatly if LWN hadn't chosen to excerpt the two most incindiary sentences from the story with no context at all. Those two sentences pretty much sum up what the article is about.
GPL compatibility is important Posted Dec 3, 2004 1:47 UTC (Fri) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] For more on the problems of using non-GPL-compatible licenses, see this essay: Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else.
Sun open-source license could mean Solaris-Linux barrier (News.com) Posted Dec 3, 2004 2:40 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] I wonder if any (a lot bigger and greedier) company might have broght any pressure to bear in this regard?
Solaris-Linux barrier Posted Dec 3, 2004 3:18 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] I wouldn't really think those "bigger companies" had a lot to do with it,except perhaps in a negative way. After all, look at Java. They seem even to this day to be entirely uninterested in open sourcing it. There's your "negative way"... in that we all know who it was that tried to co-opt Java early on. The thing is, Java could easily go dual licensed under strict GPL (thus no proprietary linking except to OS libraries and any distributed changes must be returned to the community) and a proprietary/commercial license, much like Trolltech with QT, and the MySQL folks have done, and it'd be equally effective at keeping the corporate "embrace and extend" pirates at bay, while continuing Sun's revenue stream from proprietary licensees unchanged from the current situation, since they couldn't make use of a GPLed Java anyway. Only Sun won't have any of it, still claiming it's because of the possibility it might be subverted. OTOH, Sun and MS have been very publicly "making love not war", lately. MS may be the one working behind the scenes to keep Java less-than-free. Still, IMO, Sun has from it's viewpoint all sorts of reasons to ensure Linux cannot at least directly benefit from any open source Solaris it may be doing. The signals all along have been that they consider themselves better than Linux and aren't interested at all in mingling with "the unwashed Linux masses", at least in terms of core kernel code. OTOH, it's entirely possible some portions of the Sun code will eventually make it into Linux-the-OS (aka GNU/Linux) if not into Linux-the-kernel. This could /still/ closely cooperate with the kernel, either thru userland, much like udev and libusb, or using a GPLed wrapper like NVidia's kernel modules. In either case, the userland or wrapped components could be other than GPL, yet link with the GPL licensed (as extended by Linus's license preface) kernel, unless the Sun license specifically forbade that. IOW, it couldn't be directly made part of the kernel, but it /could/ be made to work /with/ the kernel more closely than general userspace /normally/ does, because there's already accepted precedent for doing so. It would then be distributed as a separate package, much as proprietary drivers and libreware like udev is today. Unfortunately, that would mean many of us would /still/ continue to refuse to use it as "unfree", just as we refuse to use NVidia's proprietaryware and Sun's Java, as unfree. That wouldn't stop others with "more pragmatic" views from using it, however, again, assuming Sun's license doesn't specifically prohibit such things. Of course, for some applications, that would make things prohibitively slow... as a microkernel model always tends to do. In other cases, however, it might be usable, as are libusb and udev, today. Duncan
Solaris-Linux barrier Posted Dec 3, 2004 23:58 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Although I agree with the general idea behind your comment, I'd like to make one small remark: everybody has the right to choose a license for their own software, as much as consumers have the right to accept or reject it.So I agree with you that Sun would do very well to release Java under an Open Source license, but I see no point in holding it against them that they haven't done so, if only for the reason that it cannot be easy to adopt an entirely different business model. Time will tell whether Sun's apparent struggles with Open Source are genuine. I admit I am one of those who takes the more pragmatic stance (proud owner of a splendid Nvidia card here ;-). Hey, you don't have to be a vegetarian to condemn the bio-industry.
Solaris-Linux barrier Posted Dec 5, 2004 10:29 UTC (Sun) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > [E]verybody has the right to choose a license for> their own software[. ...] I agree with you that > Sun would do very well to release Java under an > Open Source license, but I see no point in holding > it against them that they haven't done so[.] Absolutely, they have that right. They just can't honestly continue making such big claims about wanting it to be "universal" as they do, because they are voluntarily cutting off that segment of the potential market that isn't commercially viable to port to, but would /gladly/ port it themselves if given the chance, making the language much more /truly/ universal. Ironically, MS' C#/Mono technology is more open, and as a result, getting ported to places the Java folks say there's not enough market there for them to reasonably port to. Therefore, C#/Mono may well eventually be more "universal" than the technology Sun keeps trying to bill as the "universal" language, Java. It's all Sun's fault if it happens, too, because you /know/ there's a lot of folks that would far /rather/ be working with Sun's tech than MS's. Oh, well... They can't say nobody said the open source folks didn't say as much... /begging/ them to open it. IBM for one, and as one of the big licensees, has been begging for it to be open sourced. (Of course the Sun license they want approved by OSI, presumably to release Solaris under, has now been announced. /. article on it, but I'll wait to see LWN's take on it, now that it's fully available for examination, b4 I really make up my mind. It does seem, however, that they /are/ deliberately making it GPL incompatible, closer to the Mozilla Public License. I see some opinion that it might be asking for creeping patent issues as well, but I'll wait for Jon's analysis and Pam's analysis from Groklaw b4 I worry much about it. In any case, I don't see it being a big thing for most, save for Sun users current and potential, anyway.) Duncan
Sun open-source license could mean Solaris-Linux barrier (News.com) Posted Dec 3, 2004 2:42 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] Hey---what happened to all that stuff about building a better, more robust, open-source community than the Linux one?
More robust community Posted Dec 3, 2004 13:58 UTC (Fri) by The_Flatlander (guest, #19245) [Link] >> Hey---what happened to all that stuff about building a better, more robust, open-source community than the Linux one? <<
Forgive me, I mena you no insult, but I think you have misaprehended Sun's meaning. When they said "better, and more robust" you seem to believe they meant they would make the community "better, and more robust." This is simply not the case. What they meant was, they hoped that the community could make Sun's *software* "better, and more robust", and they'd be tickled pink if you'd get started on that right away, because meanwhile Linux is eating their lunch.
I hope it is clearer now.
The Flatlander
It is only a question of realizing who accrues the benefits.
Don't make GPL another monopoly Posted Dec 3, 2004 5:40 UTC (Fri) by gregwilkins (guest, #515) [Link] Just because a license is not GPL compatible does not make it a bad license. The apache 2 license for instance has GPL compatibility issues.
The license should be evaluated on it's own terms to see if it meets the
Saying that everything has to be GPL compatible because GNU/linux is just
There is huge advantage in having the source code available. If you are
It would be even better still to be able to mix and match between all
Don't make GPL another monopoly Posted Dec 3, 2004 6:08 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] The reason to make your license GPL-compatible is precisely to be able to mix and match. That said, some of the GPL incompatibilities are because of legal minutia: hopefully GPL v3 will fix the incompatibility with the Apache license, for example (it's such a tiny nit that people disagree as to whether the licenses are incompatible or not; the Apache people say there's no problem, the FSF's lawyer says there is a problem). There's no real relationship between the "be compatible with the GPL" argument and the "surrender to Microsoft" argument. There's a connection in the sense that network effects mean that it's to your advantage to be connected to the largest continent, as opposed to being stranded on a tiny island. But choosing your own weird license ends up serving neither the developers (who have to write all of their own code) nor the users (who find it more difficult to extend the program).
Don't make GPL another monopoly Posted Dec 3, 2004 17:04 UTC (Fri) by uriel (guest, #20754) [Link] The Apache 2 license is one of the worst licenses I have seen in recent times; it's really sad to see a project that had one of the most free and simple licenses out there go and sell their soul to a bunch of lawyers...
Thank god that at least we can count on Theo having some integrity and not falling for such tricks...
Remember: licenses are like software; they should be KISS!
Don't make GPL another monopoly Posted Dec 3, 2004 23:45 UTC (Fri) by huaz (guest, #10168) [Link] Agree.
People who wrote the code get to choose their licenses. And it's great gift to the open source community that Sun has chosen at least ONE open source license. What's so much rant about it? Why do all these purists never know to say at least a "thank you"?
Linus Tovalds is using Bit Keeper which is close-sourced. And I strongly agree with his opinion that which license people choose for THEIR software is entirely their choice and whoever complain about it are just stupid.
Linux has borrowed many things that Sun invented in Solaris and contributed to the community.
Don't make GPL another monopoly Posted Dec 4, 2004 23:35 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] > And it's great gift to the open source community that Sun has chosen at least ONE open source license. What's so much rant about it? Why do all these purists never know to say at least a "thank you"?
Errr, in case you haven't noticed, Sun has not chosen any open source license at all. All they have done is add yet another incompatible license to the mix. They decline to comment on whether this is the license under which they would like to release Solaris 10, or any Sun product for that matter.
They also have not released a single line of Solaris under any nonproprietary license and decline to comment on just how much or how little of Solaris they intend to release under an OSS license if they ever do.
I'll put my "Thank You" in an escrow account, if you don't mind.
Market motivators Posted Dec 3, 2004 19:26 UTC (Fri) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] Sun know that unless users can build on Solaris they will go elsewhere. Unless Sun can protect and promote the current niche in which Solaris is competitive, the high-end hardware business that depends upon Solaris is then more or less dead. So they have every reason to trade declining license revenues for better support revenues. It's unlikely the license they choose will prevent further BSD code getting into Solaris. Sun also have little business reason for letting Solaris code get directly into Linux without clean-room conversion of algorithms using new implementations. The question for Sun to answer is then whether the cost of allowing Solaris code into Linux is less than the business benefit to them of enabling Linux code to get into Solaris.
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