Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com) [LWN.net]

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 14:55 UTC (Wed) by thomask (guest, #17985) [Link]

I'd save your "thank you" until they put Java under the GPL and disclaim all IP rights to it, if I were you.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 18:09 UTC (Wed) by davecb (subscriber, #1574) [Link]

thomsak writes: I'd save your "thank you" until they put Java under the GPL...

With Solaris, it's unlikely if MS would want to create a Windows-only fork and be able to advertize it as standard (;-))

--dave

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 22:13 UTC (Wed) by jdz (guest, #23768) [Link]

Think about that. Suppose MS did create a Windows-only fork of a GPL'ed Java: If they wanted to distribute it, which obviously they would, they would have to distribute source code too. It's the GPL, after all.

In addition, the viral effect of the GPL would be a knife in their gut. However, if it was a BSD style license, I could see your point.

All that aside, THANK YOU Sun! As wonderful as a more libre Java would be, Solaris is a huge step. They are in no way obligated to open source anything, yet, they are doing exactly that with a whole operating system.

-jdz

Sidebar on how to mess up a GPL'd language

Posted Jan 20, 2005 6:22 UTC (Thu) by davecb (subscriber, #1574) [Link]

jdz wrote:Suppose MS did create a Windows-only fork of a GPL'ed Java...

The MS-Java would be safely open source, but what about it's dependancies? All MS has to do with any language to tie it to their monopoly platform is to change the code it generates to prefer using .NET primitives. Then the freedom of the GPL is irrelevant: the only place where you can use MS-Java is Windows.

And changing it back to use something sane on Linux isn't helpful, as MS isn't going to adopt those changes on their new, widely distributed, Windows-friendly MS-Java.

Consider the example of C++ and C#: C++ was way too portable, so C# "fixes" that, as well as introducing a Java-clone's syntax...

--dave

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 15:10 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

I said that, and the "Thank You" is still sitting safely in the escrow account. Nothing has really changed in the intervening time. I can't remember if they had produced the CDDL at that time or not. At any rate, not a single line of code has been delivered to date. (Yes, I know. These things take time.) Sun refuses to comment on, let alone commit to, the license they actually intend to use. The license that they seem most likely to use allows them to keep as much of the OS binary only as they please. (Yes, I understand that there are surely parts that they are not at liberty to release as FOSS.)

I am watching, however, and the "Thank You" funds will be delivered at the appropriate time, the amount being dependent upon the value of what is released.

-Steve Bergman

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 20:41 UTC (Wed) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

It's absolutely time to say thank you. I used to work at Sun, we do business with Sun (so salt this appropriately), we have some amount of insight into their thinking about this issue. I'm just one person with one opinion but from what I know, which includes conversations with Jonathan Schwartz, they are trying really hard to play nice with the open source world.

I think they have spent more than $10M researching all the issues and trying to come up with an answer which will play nice with the open source community. Yeah, I know, they want to benefit from having a community of people looking at and working on Solaris. That's obvious, they are running a business, they have shareholders, they need to do things which make business sense. But I've been privy to some of the discussions and while the business issues are a requirement the overriding goal they have is to create a community in the open source world which is focussed on the cool technology in Solaris. They are very proud of that and I think when you go look you will see why. There is some good stuff there that is well ahead of the open source world. It's worth a look.

They *know* they need to play nice to get you to look and they are working hard to play nice. I'll bet you 100:1 odds that Jonathan Schwartz will read this entire thread, he cares about you guys which is pretty damned amazing. A president and COO of a $15B company who listens to the open source community? Really listens? You think that the CEO of IBM is reading this? Dream on. Sun is. They are trying. They'll make some mistakes but they are trying and I think it's cool, it's a return to their roots.

It's easy to be cynical and think it is all about money. And in part it is. But I think that Sun has realized what a big force the open source community is, they have realized that they used to be a huge part of that force, and now they are trying to come back in a nice way. Maybe I'm wrong but if I'm right they deserve respect and appreciation. They spend more in a year on development than Red Hat has ever made. Think about that. That's a lot to put on the line.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 22:46 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> They spend more in a year on development than Red Hat has ever made. Think about that.

Gee, a Sun lover and here we go - Red Hat are immediately bad. Don't you understand that Red Hat has people in many, many open source projects and has overhauled many parts of GNU/Linux that used to suck? Doesn't that count for anything?

Oh, I forget. Red Hat must be bad because it's in bed with IBM. OK, sorry, my bad :-(

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 19, 2005 23:10 UTC (Wed) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

Excuse me but I'm a long time Red Hat supporter. Bob Young, one of the
Red Hat founders and former CEO, credits a paper I wrote with influencing the creation of Red Hat, you can read it here: http://www.bitmover.com/lm/papers/srcos.html
We remain friends to this day, he's one of our business advisors, we have an excellent relationship.

I'm no Red Hat hater, I've worked with them for years, for example chkconfig is in Red Hat because I explained how it worked in IRIX and why it was cool. Erik Troan picked up the idea and ran with it. I'm friends with many of the early Red Hat people, they've had dinner at my house and vice versa.

Red Hat is not bad and in no way did I mean to imply that. This topic has nothing to do with Red Hat, at least in my mind.

What I was saying, which you could have seen if you had thought before flaming, was that Sun is trying to do good. I never mentioned Red Hat. So take a chill pill and try and imagine that maybe, just maybe, it was just a plug for some people who are trying to play nice. Can you imagine playing nice? It means that you act in good faith and you assume other people are acting in good faith until they demonstrate otherwise.

Round of applause for that reply, and...

Posted Jan 20, 2005 2:11 UTC (Thu) by leonbrooks (guest, #1494) [Link]

From a furriner's PoV (ie, I don't work for or regularly use or otherwise have a known vested interest in either Sun or Red Hat or any of their direct products), Sun seems to be constantly of two minds.

One the one hand, they're funding and otherwise contributing seriously to projects like OpenOffice and GNOME; on the other, they quite often damn Linux with faint praise or come across as gratuitously scornful of other competitors, notably Red Hat.

I should also note that however much Sun appears to be fumbling various items at this point, overall they seem to be avoiding doing the typical-of-Microsoft thing, merely saying "nice doggie" until they can find a big enough rock.

With this all in mind, would it be fair to say that most of Sun is trying really hard but some of Sun still doesn't quite "get it"? Or if that's not fair, then how much of the existing image might be due to misreporting? And what should be done to correct it?

A question on Sun's business

Posted Jan 20, 2005 3:34 UTC (Thu) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

Hi Larry,

first of all a disclaimer: this is a genuine question, I'm assuming everybody is playing nice :-)

I read on Joel Spolsky's site a funny comment about Sun's business strategy, and wether it makes sense or not:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

If you find the article boring, jump to "Headline: Sun Develops Java", that section should be understandable also in itself.

Joel's observation seemed reasonable to me, but (as you have seen Sun from a much, much closer position than me) what do you think of it?

Thanks, Massi

P.S. If you find this discussion is for any reason inconvenient on this thread, but nevertheless are willing to answer me, feel free to drop me a mail at "massi AT ximian.com".

Joels article

Posted Jan 20, 2005 8:53 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]

Joels article appeared fairly reasonable, other than repeated statements that GNU's philosophy and the GPL are anti capitalist. It's hard to accept an argument claiming others don't understand the GPL by an author who apparently doesn't either. Of course, that could be because Joel is trying to sell some proprietary bug tracking software, which is by his own definition a commodity, with many substitutes, including open source and free substitutes having much lower initial entry prices. Freshmeat alone lists 127 projects in their Software Development::Bug Tracking category. Some of those projects being free or open source licensed may be reducing demand for FogBugz, producing a FUD reaction from Joel with regard to the GPL.

- cameron

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 8:51 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

"I never mentioned Red Hat. So take a chill pill and try and imagine that maybe, just maybe, it was just a plug for some people who are trying to play nice."

You did mention Red Hat in the previous post. I quote "They spend more in a year on development than Red Hat has ever made."

"They *know* they need to play nice to get you to look and they are working hard to play nice. I'll bet you 100:1 odds that Jonathan Schwartz will read this entire thread, he cares about you guys which is pretty damned amazing."

Then let him read this. I do not appreciate his lies on Redhat not being LSB compliant or calling it a proprietary distribution

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 15:11 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

OK, so I got accused here for "flaming" and "not being able to play nice". I was under the impression that you were the one that started flaming by throwing accusations at IBM and Red Hat. Never mind, that isn't important.

What I'd really like to know is this: how on earth did you pick Red Hat here to compare to Sun in terms of how much each spends on development? Red Hat only recently became a company of some size, while Sun has been bigger and for longer, with many more employees and developers. How could have Red Hat contributed more than almost all of their code? I don't understand...

I'm not sure what to say to "I never mentioned Red Hat". How did I quote that from your text then?

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 10:19 UTC (Thu) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

You need to get a little perspective on the size of Sun's donations to the OpenSource community and Red Hats.

Last time anyone counted Sun had donated more source to the Red Hat distribution than anyone else except FSF and ironically rather more
than Red Hat.

Despite the marketing from IBM (1 billion spent on OpenSource) Sun handly exceeds IBM as well.

This was way before Sun's announcement that they are releasing Solaris as Open Source.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 5:22 UTC (Thu) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link]

Hi Larry,

You write: "They *know* they need to play nice to get you to look and they are working hard to play nice."

That may be, but where they have fallen down is *appearing* to play nice. As others in this thread have stated, one day it's nice, one day it's some nasty comment, or faint praise for Linux. I'm not sure what it would take for them to win people over at this point (probably opening Java, amongst other things), but the difference with IBM is impressive. IBM has not by a long shot gone over entirely to open source. No way, no how. And yet, they have managed to garner themselves a far nicer image with the open source community than Sun has. Sun ought to study how they managed to accomplish that.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 9:23 UTC (Thu) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

I agree, Sun could learn a lot from how IBM goes about things (so could I for that matter). IBM has done a great job of creating an open-source friendly image.

So here's a question: if you ran Sun and you wanted to play nice what steps would you be taking to turn around the perception of Sun?

I'd be really interested in what you or anyone else has to say on that topic. Creating a positive impression is pretty difficult, we created a whole company so we could help the open source guys, you'd think we'd be heros but instead we're the bad guys because of how we had to license our products. I'm not the guy to answer the "what should sun do" question given how poorly I've managed our PR. So what would you do? How do you run a business with business goals and play nice?

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 11:07 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

If I were Sun and really wated to improve my image with the FLOSS community, I would try to project a consistent "work with" attitude wrt the rest of the community. I would stop trying to brand RedHat as a proprietary software vendor(!), and I would stop bashing them.

"Consistent" is a key word. Sun has had a surprising degree of difficulty in projecting a consistent attitude about anything, lately, though that does seem to be improving. And it's not just that they are a corporate entity made of of people with varying opinions. IBM has many times more employees and has done a pretty decent job with consistency.

The sudden about face and chumming up with Microsoft (whether it's real or just a PR thing) has not helped their image either. It gives the impression that both companies see FLOSS as the common enemy, at the same time as Sun is trying to say "we love FLOSS". Like so much that has come out of Sun, it just doesn't make sense. (Again, consistency.)

Much depends upon just what they release as open source and under what license. Also, they need to realize that it is going to be an uphill battle building a community around Solaris' source, and that nothing short of full commitment on their part is going to wash. (Yet again, consistency.)

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 11:48 UTC (Thu) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link]

I agree with sbergman, it's a problem of having an inconsistent image, which I think is actually quite different than your own situation. Some people may not care for Bitkeeper's licensing, but that's the way things are - it's not a question of them not understanding where you are coming from, I don't think. I think the question of how does a small company like BK play nice is very different than how does Sun improve its image. BK doesn't have nearly as much room to move around in.

I think your question "how do you run a business with business goals and play nice" is interesting. Where "business goals" are presumably those of a public firm, to maximize the value, I think you are butting up against the open question of open source economics, which I do not believe have been explored nor explained sufficiently.

Saying "Sun ought to do this" is pretty presumptuous without having a better grasp of their financial picture (what *do* they make their money from these days, by and large?), but consistency would be an easy one to start with. Pick some portions of the free software world and go along with them - presumably ones that don't cannabalize your own high-margin sales too much. Openoffice is something they managed to get very little visibility for, despite it being a *huge* help to the open source movement. That was a mistake. What they evidently should not do is the "proprietary unix + their own chip" vendor - that seems to be a fading market where they are one of the last ones standing, but for how long? I think at some point they are going to have to develop an open source java strategy, but even that won't be enough if it's seen as a reaction rather than leadership.

This would be an excellent topic for the "free software business" mailing list (are you on that?). I'm getting bored of the patents discussion there:-)

Since Jonathan must be reading this...

Posted Jan 20, 2005 15:39 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> So here's a question: if you ran Sun and you wanted to play nice what steps would you be taking to turn around the perception of Sun?

I know the question wasn't directed to me, but I'll try anyway:

1. Release Solaris under the GPL and announce that Sun, "the Unix company", has plans to make the best of Linux and Solaris by merging all great Solaris bits into Linux and at the same time delivering all of that on ALL platforms. Strategic message: Solaris customers, you will be running your apps on Linux 10 years down the line, but Linux will have all the good Solaris bits, so don't worry. Linux IS the new Unix, only better.

2. Release Java under the GPL, while requiring anyone that wants to display Java logos (i.e. Sun trademarks) to undergo a stringent set of compatibility tests in order to obtain them. That's in order to preserve Java standards compliance, which is (rightly) very high on Sun's prority list.

Both of the above would greatly reduce multiplication of development efforts on Unix-like operating systems and Java, thus enabling both to become better and compete stronger with Windows on the desktop, not to mention achieve even greater server penetration.

At the same time, Sun can engineer some fine hardware - heck maybe even get into high quality Linux based notebooks, desktops and workstations. You know - pieces of hardware that work flawlessly with a Unix-like OS and that have been designed for it and by a company that really does have the expertise to do it. Kind of like what Apple does, only for all customers, not just consumers.

And let's not forget the best part. Sun are set to take over both Red Hat and IBM customers here, if they can show that they can provide superior Linux support on any hardware you wish to have, including Sun's. Just like Jonathan says - it would be easy to replace one supplier with another. Especially if the apps run on the same code base (i.e. Linux).

Since Jonathan must be reading this...

Posted Jan 21, 2005 1:26 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

And don't forget ... even if parts of Solaris *must* remain binary-only, for reasons of third-party contract, Sun can still release Solaris as GPL.

How come? Just like some commercial distros were (still are?) "buy once, install once", because they contain some non-GPL programs.

As the copyright *owner* Sun *can* release Solaris under the GPL but in a form whereby their customers can't redistribute "as is". Sun can distribute because the GPL doesn't apply to them - their customers can't redistribute "as is" because the GPL's "conflicting requirements" clause catches them - but they can rip out the proprietary bits, they can modify Solaris, and hopefully they can help rewrite all the non-distributable bits.

The only problem is (until Sun fix the "conflicting requirements" bit) that Sun can't just help themselves to other peoples' code - they would need a special licence to incorporate other peoples' GPL code.

Cheers,
Wol

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 21, 2005 4:35 UTC (Fri) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>I agree, Sun could learn a lot from how IBM goes about things (so could I >for that matter). IBM has done a great job of creating an open-source >friendly image.

Have they ? One of the most damaging events to the OpenSource community has been the SCO suit. IBM may of may not be at fault (thats for the courts to decide) however their reluctance to indemnify Linux customers after the SCO case was launched has had ripple effects which have severely damaged the adoption of Linux.

>So here's a question: if you ran Sun and you wanted to play nice what steps >would you be taking to turn arround the perception of Sun?

Release what they can of Solaris under OpenSource which they are doing.
Publicise their investment in OpenSource and publicise the real impact that Sun's 2 decade long standards push has had in creating a landscape in which OpenSource can flourish.

Schwartz has said that Sun has no interest in bashing Linux, why bash something which is akin to a social movement. Don't expect this to translate into Sun not bashing Red Hat they are commercial competition and perfectly fair game.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 21, 2005 5:18 UTC (Fri) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link]

SCO is nobody's fault but SCO's. IBM has admirably defended the Linux community against those predatory thieves. Of course they're not going to indemnify, do you think they are some sort of charity organization?

One of IBM's advantages is that they are so huge, and thus aren't really concerned with companies like Redhat as competitors (or even Sun in many ways), but even Sun has a market cap of something like 7 times what Redhat does. By bashing Redhat, they come across as weak and scared - what's this big company got to be afraid of, anyway? Leaders are recognized as such by forging ahead rather than spending their time picking on the competition. And Sun has, in the past, equated Linux with Redhat at the same time they bash Redhat. Perhaps their "attack ads" are effective, but as in politics, the result is not a positive image of the attacker.

As far as publicizing their involvement in open source, there are different aspects to that. One is simply giving away code, and that's fine and good, but another aspect is the people factor. Think of how many @redhat.com's there are all over open source mailing lists. That counts for a lot, even if the financial outlay is not as much as Sun's. Perhaps that is why big code dumps like openoffice and solaris are less effective in terms of making a lasting impression. If there were an "Alan Cox of openoffice" working for Sun, you can bet that more people would take note.

This has certainly been an interesting discussion, in any case. You're right to note that there is a lot of style in addition to substance... it's going to be useful in the future to know how to get the most out of your style and substance investments, so some analysis is very worthwhile:-)

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 23, 2005 15:54 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> By bashing Redhat, they come across as weak and scared - what's this big company got to be afraid of, anyway?

Heaps, actually. First, Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs on much more hardware than Solaris. This includes, IBM Power based thingies, the Itanium and, of course, much better support (more drivers) for x86/x86_64. Oh, and let's not forget that Solaris packaging system sucks big time, so when you have to maintain X machines, you're much better off with an advanced packaging mechanism like RPM and the tools that surround it. Did I mention that you don't have to go to Sun Freeware site to get your favourite tools - they are all already there with RHEL. And yes, you can get all Java stuff (if that's what you run) from JPackage site, in a nice RPM format.

So, Sun can have 128-bit ZFS (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers), they can have DTrace (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers), they can have support for 100+ CPU (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers) and so on. That really doesn't matter to most people, so they don't want Solaris and they don't want just Sun hardware.

They want ANY hardware (and I mean ANY) and they want good support for it (i.e. regular and easy patches and bug fixes). And that's exactly what Red Hat does better.

Icing on the cake? Red Hat Enterprise Linux, unlike open source Solaris, is really free software and EVERYTHING in it can be supplied by another vendor, at a drop of a hat, if you'll excuse the pun. This sort of makes sure that if Red Hat decides to not play ball at any point, there is a real choice out there in a matter of weeks. How is this going to be done with Solaris when bits of it aren't open source?

Sun are pissed with a reason - Red Hat are killing their business, no matter how much smaller they are. Sun are trying to fix that the wrong way, IMHO. The only real winner here is Microsoft - we have another Unix split and huge duplication of effort for no good reason whatsoever.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 24, 2005 3:28 UTC (Mon) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>Heaps, actually. First, Red Hat Enterprise Linux runs on much more hardware >than Solaris. This includes, IBM Power based thingies, the Itanium and, of >course, much better support (more drivers) for x86/x86_64.

Not really relevant, the target market is x86 and AMD64/EMT64 the rest is just a distraction. 99.9% of all Linux server installs are on x86 or a variant.

Drivers availability is also a Red herring if Sun was targetting Solaris at the desktop then you would have a point as it is Solaris has enough drivers to succeed as a server OS.

>So, Sun can have 128-bit ZFS (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers), >they can have DTrace (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers), they >can have support for 100+ CPU (needed by less than 0.01% of all customers) >and so on. That really doesn't matter to most people, so they don't want >Solaris and they don't want just Sun hardware.

You seem to be rather badly informed about the merits of ZFS and dtrace. Sun added 128bit support to ZFS so they didn't have to later but they don't make much of it.

Sun would argue that ZFS's real killer benefits are no volume manager, very simple administration, virtual immunity to data corruption, no fragmentation and very high performance.

Dtrace is a tool that Sun expects virtually every Solaris SA to either use of be aware of. Certainly the Linux and Solaris SA's who I have worked with and who have been exposed to Dtrace want it on all their platforms hardly a tool that less than 0.01% of the population require. Perhaps you should look at some of the favourable comments on dtrace on slash dot.

You missed out the new Solaris 10 network stack which is quicker than anything currently in the OpenSource arena.

You also missed out on the performance improvements in Solaris 10, Sun created a benchmark that tests all the OS functions where Linux was faster than Solaris, gave the benchmark and sets of identical x86 servers running Linux and Solaris 10 builds to the developers, fed them Pizza and Jolt Cola and told them not to come out of their cubicles until Solaris 10 was within + or - 5% for every function of Linux running on the same box.

And you may also have missed the fact that Sun bought Kealia and now has a bunch of very respectible AMD64 Servers and workstations which are doing rather well. Sun is currently the largest AMD64 server vendor. So guess what people do want Sun's hardware in the area where it matters to Red Hat.

>Icing on the cake? Red Hat Enterprise Linux, unlike open source Solaris, >is really free software and EVERYTHING in it can be supplied by another >vendor, at a drop of a hat, if you'll excuse the pun. This sort of makes >sure that if Red Hat decides to not play ball at any point, there is a >real choice out there in a matter of weeks. How is this going to be done >with Solaris when bits of it aren't open source?

Red Hat ES/AS is no more free software than Solaris x86, actually its less free than x86 which you can use for nothing you just have to pay if you want it supported. How do you think Red Hat funds their "great" support.

>Sun are pissed with a reason - Red Hat are killing their business, no >matter how much smaller they are. Sun are trying to fix that the wrong >way, IMHO. The only real winner here is Microsoft - we have another Unix >split and huge duplication of effort for no good reason whatsoever.

Sorry you have lost me here Solaris pre-existed Linux by a good period of time and so it would be perfectly fair for Sun to claim that Linux is just wasted duplication of effort. Sun also claims with some justification that the Linux distros have fragmented linux itself a point that I have some sympathy with being a user of SuSe and Red Hat.

Bottom line if you think that ZFS, Dtrace, Fireengine etc are of marginal interest to the customers who are currently buying Red Hat and SuSe then think again, dismissing them as you have is a huge mistake.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 24, 2005 15:29 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Not really relevant, the target market is x86 and AMD64/EMT64 the rest is just a distraction. 99.9% of all Linux server installs are on x86 or a variant.

Well, maybe it isn't relevant to you, but it sure makes a difference to IBM and HP. These people outshipped Sun in both Linux and Unix servers. So, it seems important that Linux runs on hardware that those two big companies supply. Why would they bother with it otherwise?

> Sun would argue that ZFS's real killer benefits are no volume manager, very simple administration, virtual immunity to data corruption, no fragmentation and very high performance.

> Dtrace is a tool that Sun expects virtually every Solaris SA to either use of be aware of.

> You missed out the new Solaris 10 network stack which is quicker than anything currently in the OpenSource arena.

We'll see how much difference all that makes in real life. I wouldn't bet on it. People have been deploying Linux 2.2, for all different reasons than what you mention above, when its performance really sucked. My bet is they will continue doing the same.

> Red Hat ES/AS is no more free software than Solaris x86, actually its less free than x86 which you can use for nothing you just have to pay if you want it supported.

You mean "proprietary", right? ;-)

> Sorry you have lost me here Solaris pre-existed Linux by a good period of time and so it would be perfectly fair for Sun to claim that Linux is just wasted duplication of effort.

Is this another one of those "Jonathan/Scott things" where we're now all supposed to believe that Unix was open source from day one?

> Bottom line if you think that ZFS, Dtrace, Fireengine etc are of marginal interest to the customers who are currently buying Red Hat and SuSe then think again, dismissing them as you have is a huge mistake.

Hey, if they succeed, more power to them. I don't claim I know what's going to happen, I just THINK they are making a mistake by not joining the Linux community.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 25, 2005 4:46 UTC (Tue) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>Well, maybe it isn't relevant to you, but it sure makes a difference to IBM >and HP. These people outshipped Sun in both Linux and Unix servers. So, it >seems important that Linux runs on hardware that those two big companies >supply. Why would they bother with it otherwise?

I don't always agree with Torvalds but he has dismissed IA-64 as a waste of time. IA-64 is HP's future, that or they write off 5+ billion dollars worth of development.

That leaves IBM the only other major developer of alternative processor architectures which can support Linux. How many Z/Power/Linux boxes do you think IBM really sell.

The value to IBM of Linux is not really the market for boxes to run Linux but the oportunity to Consult on Linux deployments and the oportunity to sell DB2/Tivoli and WebSphere on Linux. Don't misplace any of this for altruism or a deep rooted support for OpenSource.

>> Dtrace is a tool that Sun expects virtually every Solaris SA to either use of be aware of.

>> You missed out the new Solaris 10 network stack which is quicker than anything currently in the OpenSource arena.

>We'll see how much difference all that makes in real life. I wouldn't bet >on it. People have been deploying Linux 2.2, for all different reasons >than what you mention above, when its performance really sucked. My bet is >they will continue doing the same

Why do you think Linux made such an impression in Investment Banking as an example, sure commodity hardware was a catch but a lot of it was Linux being new, cool etc.

Well guess what Sun are doing with Solaris 10, throwing everying that is really new and really cool into their new OS. Trust me people out there running Linux/Solaris shops are really interested in dtrace/ZFS even more interested because you can run all this cool new stuff on the same hardware that you currently run Red Hat AS.

>> Red Hat ES/AS is no more free software than Solaris x86, actually its >>less free than x86 which you can use for nothing you just have to pay if >>you want it supported.

>You mean "proprietary", right? ;-)

No not at all, you have to remember that Sun pretty much single handed created the environment that allowed Linux to develop. When I first started in this business open was not a description anyone in their right mind would have applied to HP or IBM they only drunk the Open Cool Aid because Sun's sucess forced them to. Why you you think early Linux was rather similar to SunOS ?

Guess where XML came from or most of Corba (Spring), XFN, PAM, etc etc there is a huge list of technologies that you take for granted which were either developed by Sun and donated, or in which Sun had a guiding hand.

And sadly this is mostly boring basic plumbing, not nearly as photogenic as writing a stripped down kernel in your bedroom but much much more usefull.

>> Sorry you have lost me here Solaris pre-existed Linux by a good period >>of time and so it would be perfectly fair for Sun to claim that Linux is >>just wasted duplication of effort.

>Is this another one of those "Jonathan/Scott things" where we're now all >supposed to believe that Unix was open source from day one?

Where on earth do you think SunOS came from, heard of Bill Joy, heard of BSD ???

This is just a cyclical development, BSD started off pretty much free. Sun realised that you could make money out of providing a commercial implimentation of BSD at a time when HP, IBM, Prime and Apollo thought that MPE, MVS/VM, PrimeOS and AEGIS were the only OS's that a customer would ever want.

Now the cycle has come full circle, Red Hat have realised the same thing that Sun did 20 years ago but the name of the kernel has changed from BSD to Linux.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 25, 2005 19:37 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Don't misplace any of this for altruism [by IBM and HP] or a deep rooted support for OpenSource.

On the other hand, Sun are open sourcing Solaris (which has always been open source, as we all know :-) because of the love of open source. Yeah right! They are absolutely forced to do it or they'll make Solaris completely irrelevant. It's as simple as that.

Again, my point being: given they REALLY decided to make Unix open source, why not simply roll all this development effort into one thing and make the bast Unix-flavoured OS there ever was. And then make a pile of money on an even BIGGER MARKET. I just don't get that. They seem to have a desire to do "their own thing" no matter what. Even if that means less money for their own business.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 26, 2005 6:07 UTC (Wed) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>> Don't misplace any of this for altruism [by IBM and HP] or a deep rooted >>support for OpenSource.

>On the other hand, Sun are open sourcing Solaris (which has always been open >source, as we all know :-) because of the love of open source. Yeah right! >They are absolutely forced to do it or they'll make Solaris completely >irrelevant. It's as simple as that.

You seem like many people in the Linux community to have mistaken style for substance. There is no commercial entity on the planet that has donated more code and IP to the OpenSource community than Sun. These donations have directly benefited Linux but have also benefited many other platforms as well. Remember OpenSource is rather more then Linux as Richard Stallman would be happy to testify to and the reality is that rather more OpenSource code is deployed outside the Linux environment than in it.

>Again, my point being: given they REALLY decided to make Unix open source, >why not simply roll all this development effort into one thing and make >the bast Unix-flavoured OS there ever was. And then make a pile of money >on an even BIGGER MARKET. I just don't get that. They seem to have a >desire to do "their own thing" no matter what. Even if that means less >money for their own business.

Why would you want Sun to saddle the OpenSource community with a ludicrous engineering effort ?

Do you really think that it would be feasable to trainsmash merge Solaris and Linux and end up with a better OS at the end of the day.

If you do you really should think again, the history of UNIX is littered with failed attempts to do exactly what you suggest OSF being the prime example of failed attempt to cherry pick the best of a number of OS's to create a super OS.

The reality is that what you appear to want would be doomed to failure hence the merits of the CDDL.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 26, 2005 12:11 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Why would you want Sun to saddle the OpenSource community with a ludicrous engineering effort ?

Well, let me repeat what I said in another post related to this article:

"Strategic message: Solaris customers, you will be running your apps on Linux 10 years down the line, but Linux will have all the good Solaris bits, so don't worry. Linux IS the new Unix, only better."

When IBM started moving JFS into Linux, they started with a snapshot of code from OS/2. When they moved RCU into Linux, they started with a snapshot from probably Dynix or something like that (uh, oh, Darl maybe reading this ^H^H... too late :-). Ditto NUMA and other stuff. And gee, it actually worked out in the end. I'm sure it looked as a "ludicrous engineering effort" in the beginning.

> If you do you really should think again, the history of UNIX is littered with failed attempts to do exactly what you suggest OSF being the prime example of failed attempt to cherry pick the best of a number of OS's to create a super OS.

That would be the history of UNIX, as you said. The history of Linux does tend to be a little bit different, no? Maybe due to some requirements in its licence that goes something like "share and share alike". Hmm, don't know, could that be it? Is that why we can see all the IBM, HP, Intel and SGI bits of code in the vanilla kernel? Is that why there is no proprietary version of Linux kernel? I mean, apart from Red Hat's :-)

As to the rest, the main fact behind this whole licensing deal is this: Solaris ISN'T open source, that's why it's being MADE open source. Otherwise, what are we discussing? Big thanks and well done to Sun for contributing a lot of OTHER stuff, but that isn't the issue here.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 27, 2005 6:34 UTC (Thu) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>"Strategic message: Solaris customers, you will be running your apps on >Linux 10 years down the line, but Linux will have all the good Solaris bits, >so don't worry. Linux IS the new Unix, only better."

Why say someting that is clearly not supported by the facts ?

As an example Solaris scales rather better than Linux so do you imagine that you can extract the scalability component from Solaris and just add it to Linux. Of course you can't because it involves engineering everyting from the IP stack to the VM, Filesystems, threading etc etc.

>When IBM started moving JFS into Linux, they started with a snapshot of >code from OS/2. When they moved RCU into Linux, they started with a >snapshot from probably Dynix or something like that (uh, oh, Darl maybe >reading this ^H^H... too late :-). Ditto NUMA and other stuff. And gee, it >actually worked out in the end. I'm sure it looked as a "ludicrous >engineering effort" in the beginning.

Filesystems are hardly a good example, most OS's and that includes both Solaris and Linux have very clearly defined interfaces to allow you to plugin alternate filesystems into the OS this is because most OS's support
a relatively large number of them.

And remeber you were the one dismissing ZFS so why would getting easy access to a Solaris ZFS filesystem be of importance.

>That would be the history of UNIX, as you said. The history of Linux does >tend to be a little bit different, no? Maybe due to some requirements in >its licence that goes something like "share and share alike". Hmm, don't >know, could that be it? Is that why we can see all the IBM, HP, Intel and >SGI bits of code in the vanilla kernel? Is that why there is no >proprietary version of Linux kernel? I mean, apart from Red Hat's :-)

Well sort of but the HP bits are largely Itanium support the IBM bits are largely JFS and the SGI bits are largely XFS. These are all components that are in fact eminently substitutable and less like say a VM which isn't.

And sadly the history of Linux despite what Linux advocates may think is very very similar to UNIX. Horribly similar in fact.

Engineering is after all engineering and people developing OpenSource kernel code are not better at it than people working for Sun, HP or IBM and commercial interest is commercial interest.

SunOS started as a commercialised UNIX based on BSD which was largely free, HP-UX started from the same place. Commercial interest and differing internal goals led to both OS's diverging something that it mirrored in the Linux community with the emergence of the commercial Distributions led by Red Hat.

You even had the equivalent of the OSF (Oppose Sun Forever) in the creation of United Linux which could equally been called ORHF (Oppose Red Hat Forever).

>As to the rest, the main fact behind this whole licensing deal is this: >Solaris ISN'T open source, that's why it's being MADE open source. >Otherwise, what are we discussing? Big thanks and well done to Sun for >contributing a lot of OTHER stuff, but that isn't the issue here.

Sorry but that is incorrect OpenSolaris is OpenSource because it is based on CDDL.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 27, 2005 15:38 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Sorry but that is incorrect OpenSolaris is OpenSource because it is based on CDDL.

I'm sorry, Solaris wasn't open source. That's why Sun just released it as open source (they call this NEW thing OpenSolaris). Which part of this isn't clear? Solaris (or should I say, parts of it) are NOW BEING MADE open source. It wasn't like that just a few months back (actually, you won't be able to download all released code until Q2 2005). Unless you're trying to rewrite history here... I guess you're just intentionally being difficult, or you're trying to play a meaningless word game (Solaris v. OpenSolaris).

> As an example Solaris scales rather better than Linux so do you imagine that you can extract the scalability component from Solaris and just add it to Linux.

You obviously haven't been paying attention to what I wrote in almost all of my posts. But I'll be patient and I'll explain once again. Imagine RCU (as an example). You know, the patented IBM thingy, which is not a filesystem (as if that mattered anyway). This thing was put into the Linux kernel to increase scalability. It came from another operating system initially. This required some work to port, but it eventually clicked. Which part of this isn't clear? Why do you think that bits of Solaris could never be ported to Linux? Is this some kind of magical property of Solaris' C code? Please!

How on earth did all this people contribute to the Linux kernel when they wrote the original code for something else? I think they must have had alien help or something, otherwise it's completely impossible, at least according to you.

I'll just repeat one of the main points that I'm trying to make and then I promise I'll shut up. In this particular case, Sun are newcomers to open source by contributing something that already exists (and multiples of it) in open source space, no matter how large their other contributions are. Being otherwise experienced in open source (by their own admission), it is particularly sad that they have chosen to ignore the most popular equivalent product and instead of contributing to it (in order to share development cost with HP, IBM, Intel, SGI, Red Hat, Novell and others), they have chosen (on purpose), to isolate themselves into their own CDDL world. They have every right to do so, of course. But IMHO, they are making a very big mistake which will not have an effect on their business that they desired. ZFS, DTrace, FireEngine and other high end features aside, this will not be (IMHO) sufficient to overcome huge effort that EVERYONE ELSE is putting into Linux, the versatility of Linux, the platform support and other features (both in terms of code and development model) that OpenSolaris and Solaris won't have. They will have to pay for all the development themselves, which isn't going to make the final product (whatever they are planning to sell) cheap.

But hey, if you want to believe otherwise, feel free to do it.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 28, 2005 8:18 UTC (Fri) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>I'm sorry, Solaris wasn't open source. That's why Sun just released it as >open source (they call this NEW thing OpenSolaris). Which part of this isn't >clear? Solaris (or should I say, parts of it) are NOW BEING MADE open >source. It wasn't like that just a few months back (actually, you won't be >able to download all released code until Q2 2005). Unless you're trying to >rewrite history here... I guess you're just intentionally being difficult, >or you're trying to play a meaningless word game (Solaris v. OpenSolaris).

Not at all the meaninless game is yours, the whole thrust of your posting has been that Sun is actively trying to destroy OpenSource. The fact that Sun has made huge donations to the OpenSource community such as OpenOffice you grudgingly accept which leaves the last sticking point or the last tree to clutch being Solaris not being OpenSource, it will be or rather all that Sun can release will be. And the bits that Sun arn't releasing are the bits they can't such as 3rd party device driver code. Much like the SuSE desktop I use which requires a non OpenSource NVIDIA driver.

>> As an example Solaris scales rather better than Linux so do you imagine >>that you can extract the scalability component from Solaris and just add >>it to Linux.

>You obviously haven't been paying attention to what I wrote in almost all >of my posts. But I'll be patient and I'll explain once again. Imagine RCU >(as an example). You know, the patented IBM thingy, which is not a >filesystem (as if that mattered anyway). This thing was put into the Linux >kernel to increase scalability. It came from another operating system >initially. This required some work to port, but it eventually clicked. >Which part of this isn't clear? Why do you think that bits of Solaris >could never be ported to Linux? Is this some kind of magical property of >Solaris' C code? Please!

You seem to have missed the point entirely, RCU effects a tiny component of the kernel and its impact is limited. Linux still only really scales well to 8 CPU's the last commercial benchmark SGI ran on an Altix 3000 running Linux showed a whopping 13x throughput when you went from 1-28 CPU's and trust me that isn't good scalability.

The reality is that getting an OS to scale with mixed workloads is not about changing one component of the kernel as in RCU but instead you have to modify the whole of the kernel, most of your libraries and your device drivers.

I could not myself have chosen a better example of why you don't have a point if I had tried, thanks.

>How on earth did all this people contribute to the Linux kernel when they >wrote the original code for something else? I think they must have had >alien help or something, otherwise it's completely impossible, at least >according to you.

They didn't, the origional Linux kernel was written a very small number of people and since then donations from SGI, IBM and HP have largely consisted of modular sections of code such as filesystems or small specific code improvements such as the IBM example you refer to.

>They will have to pay for all the development themselves, which isn't >going to make the final product (whatever they are planning to sell) >cheap.

Well even without the economies of programming scale you seem to think might benefit Solaris (though I have my doubts) Solaris is very cheap anyway.

As an example Solaris x86 is currently free if you don't want support, Red Hat isn't and even if you do want 24/7/365 support Solaris is still cheaper than Red Hat.

So the economy of programming scale that you seem to think has an influence on the cost of Linux in fact doesn't.

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 28, 2005 18:50 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Just a quick rebuttal, no need to make my point again. And I also promised I'll shut up in relation to it.

> [...] the whole thrust of your posting has been that Sun is actively trying to destroy OpenSource.

My words: "They will have to pay for all the development themselves, which isn't going to make the final product (whatever they are planning to sell) cheap."

Also my words: "And then make a pile of money on an even BIGGER MARKET. I just don't get that. They seem to have a desire to do 'their own thing' no matter what. Even if that means less money for their own business."

Meaning, they are hurting themselves and I'm really sorry to see that.

> The fact that Sun has made huge donations to the OpenSource community such as OpenOffice you grudgingly accept [...]

With my own words: "Big thanks and well done to Sun for contributing a lot of OTHER stuff [...]".

Yep, grudge, for sure :-)

> Linux still only really scales well to 8 CPU's [...]

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2...

"This result, derived from initial internal testing, marks a significant milestone for the industry: Early Itanium 2-based SGI® systems built on the innovative SGI® NUMAflexTM shared-memory architecture, have proven that Linux can scale well beyond the perceived limitation of eight processors in a single system image."

Ah, those SGI people. Bloody liars if you ask me ;-)

> Solaris is very cheap anyway.

> As an example Solaris x86 is currently free if you don't want support, Red Hat isn't and even if you do want 24/7/365 support Solaris is still cheaper than Red Hat.

My words (which you in fact quoted): "They will have to pay for all the development themselves, which isn't going to make the final product (whatever they are planning to sell) cheap."

This "whatever" is the expensive Sun hardware and whatever else they care to come up with. Someone has to pay all those salaries. That would be Sun customers, I'm afraid. Unless we're talking in terms of the "new economy" here :-)

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 23, 2005 15:36 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> Don't expect this to translate into Sun not bashing Red Hat they are commercial competition and perfectly fair game.

Does that also include the idiotic notion that "Red Hat is proprietary", when not only you can download and build from source, but there are binary distros out there that did that already? For a smart guy, Jonathan can sometimes say really weird things... And pretend that they're true ;-)

Sun license gets open-source nod (News.com)

Posted Jan 20, 2005 11:12 UTC (Thu) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

What has always ammused me about the battering that Sun gets from the OpenSource community is that in essence the mistrust of Sun boils down to style rather than substance.

Sure Sun has pops at Red Hat, why shouldn't they Red Hat is a commercial entity and competitor and in terms of substance has contributed rather less to OpenSource than Sun.

Lest you forget Sun is the largest commercial supporter of OpenSource in terms of what it has donated, streets ahead of IBM, HP and Red Hat.

And Sun's donations are incredibly wide ranging from the simple insistance that people use published standards (incredibly helpfull to the OpenSource community) through encryption technology, graphics, office, networking and a whole host of other donations.

Sun's crown jewels is Java and they have made a reasonable though not universally lauded fist of making it available to all and sundry.

Comparisons with IBM would suggest that unless they are prepared to do something similar with their SW crown jewels DB2 then all comparisons are off.

Thanks for nothing?

Posted Jan 20, 2005 10:16 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link]

"Sharing code between the CDDL and the GPL isn't permitted, Sun believes, which means the two programming communities won't have a common base of software they can share."

So SUN is once again attacking the free and open source software communities?

- cameron

Thanks for nothing?

Posted Jan 20, 2005 11:17 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

At first, I was disappointed that the CDDL was not GPL compatible, though to be honest (if they do use the CDDL for Solaris) it's a better license than I was expecting them to present. I really was not expecting it to qualify as a true OSS license.

After thinking it over some more, I realized that being able to cut and paste actual code between the two OSes would be of little value. The two OSes are surely so defferent in their internals that literal copying of code would be mostly useless. The main advantage of open sourcing Solaris will be cross-pollenation of *ideas* not code. If I understand the CDDL correctly, GPL'd software would be granted the right to use patented ideas that are incorporated into the released portion (however much or little that turns out to be) of Solaris. Isn't that the most important thing?

However, I'm no kernel hacker and my understanding is surely limited. I would be interested in Larry's opinions on this issue.

Thanks for nothing?

Posted Jan 27, 2005 17:16 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> The two OSes are surely so defferent in their internals that literal copying of code would be mostly useless. The main advantage of open sourcing Solaris will be cross-pollenation of *ideas* not code.

Careful there! Sun own 1600 patents (i.e. patented software ideas) that CANNOT BE PORTED to anything that isn't under CDDL. So, the main advantage, as you put it, does not exist at all. In fact, a person developing Linux kernel SHOULD NOT EVEN LOOK at Solaris source code once it has been released, or it can face intentional patent infringement charges. I believe in the U.S. this leads to harsher pentalites than regular, non-intentional infringement.

Second, however different the code bases are (and there is no doubt they are very different), a starting point used to DERIVE code often helps. That's how many features that exist in Linux today started. For instance, it took IBM many, many releases to port OS/2 code to the Linux kernel, but it eventually worked. It would have taken significantly more time if no original code was present. It was similar with some other technologies. This is completely not possible with CDDL licensed Solaris and GPL licensed Linux, so there is no starting point advantage either.

Bottom line, whoever decides to work on this open source code will be working for Sun for free (by this I mean $0 hourly rate :-) and won't be able to distribute a fully functional operating system due to third party drivers that are binary only and not covered by CDDL. In terms of getting anything out of this code, other than for something that is under the CDDL, is a complete pipe dream.

On the other hand Jonathan, if one selects "proprietary Red Hat Enterprise Linux" distribution, one can end up with things like this:

http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/

I can testify that White Box Enterprise Linux not only boots, but works just fine and it has ALL drivers included, not just some. But, it has a big disadvantage of being "proprietary" ;-)

Thanks for nothing?

Posted Jan 27, 2005 17:19 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

> For instance, it took IBM many, many releases to port OS/2 code to the Linux kernel, but it eventually worked.

I meant JFS here, of course.

Thanks for nothing?

Posted Jan 24, 2005 8:45 UTC (Mon) by htd (guest, #27388) [Link]

>Sharing code between the CDDL and the GPL isn't permitted, Sun believes, >which means the two programming communities won't have a common base of >software they can share."

>So SUN is once again attacking the free and open source software communities?

CDDL is based on the Mozilla Open Source License and you would not describe Mozilla as an attack on the free and Open Source communities.

Bottom line, the Solaris source code released under CDDL has just the same right to be described as Open Source as code released under GPL. The fact that Sun is releasing access to the Sun patents implimented by the code they are releasing under CDDL is also of huge benefit.

Lets face it most people unless they were hugely naive never expected the benefit of Solaris being Open Sourced as translating into the ability to cut an paste vast swathes of Solaris kernel code into Linux. It might seem attractive at a 30000 foot level but is much much less practical at a kernel engineering level.

And you attempt to make the point that Sun is once again attacking the free and OpenSource community. Odd Sun has done more than any other major computer company to foster the free and OpenSource communities that you think they are attacking.