Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris [LWN.net]

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 10, 2007 18:58 UTC (Sat) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

The incompatability between CDDL and GPLv2 is a design goal. They _want_
a license that prevents Linux from using Solaris code. If they wanted to
use Linux, they'd be using Linux. Remember the internal sun politics
yanking Linux from "the java desktop" and replacing it with Solaris?
There's been a 5-way civil war going on inside Sun for years now (which is
more complicated than I want to go into here), and the Solaris faction
just wants to _survive_ at this point.

Linux is eating their lunch, so they want Solaris to copy its' advantages.
But they do NOT just want to contribute the Solaris code to Linux. Open
sourcing was a move to _defend_ Solaris against loss of market share to
Linux. So Solaris MUST be under an incompatible license. (True or not,
this is what motivates their decision-making process.) Sun is trying to
compete against Linux and hold (or even gain) market share against it.

Unfortunately for them, CDDL was seen as "sun community license take 2",
with perhaps a lesson or two learned from the Apple Public License and
IBM's long-ago attempt to do their own license, and external uptake was
close to zero. (Modulo Jorg Schilling, who worships Solaris already.)

GPLv3 is tailor-made for Sun. It's blessed by the FSF and totally
incompatible with Linux. This is EXACTLY what Sun wants, of _course_
they're moving to it. As soon as the Linux developers formally said "we
are never moving to GPLv3" Sun's ears perked up and it joined the FSF in
chanting "my preciousss" towards it...

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 10, 2007 19:12 UTC (Sat) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Actually Sun has been involved in the GPL v3 process from the beginning, they didn't just jump on it because Linus dislikes it.

I think the fears of Linux borrowing their code are overblown - the basics are so different you can't just yank code from one to the other anyway. The licenses don't have to be compatible for one group to look at how the other one is doing things and then code their own version. But there does seem to be some fear there, and Linus being anti-v3 can only help in terms of Sun using it.

From what I gathered from the blurb, it sounds like many of their current developers are knee-jerking against the idea - this isn't a surprise really. Some people like to be the big fish in the little pond. But if Sun wants to make that a bigger pond, they'll have to attract an audience outside of the group that's happy with things as they are.

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 10, 2007 20:31 UTC (Sat) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Well OpenSolaris includes "the core kernel, libraries and commands".

Although the Linux kernel will not be GPL v3, I would expect that other parts of the OS will be.

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 10, 2007 21:12 UTC (Sat) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

Well, yeah, GNU will be going v3 for sure. Linux wont' do that soon, if ever. A v3 Solaris would be compatible with GNU, but not Linux, and that's probably their best strategy - if hardware support can be drastically improved, GNU/Solaris could easily replace GNU/Linux as the defacto standard, putting Sun in a great market position.

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 11, 2007 7:50 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

One thing to keep in mind also is that the OpenSolaris folks obviously don't have a problem with the CDDL otherwise they wouldn't be OpenSolaris developers.

So since they have no problem with the CDDl then why would they care about GPLv3?!

It's like asking a dedicated Java developers if they have a problem with Java being propriatory or asking X.org developers if they would want to go GPLv3.

I can pretty much garrentee what sort of response you'd get. It doesn't nessiccarially mean thats what is (or not) the best thing for Sun or Solaris itself though.

Linux is nailing Solaris to the wall in terms of market performance and without GNU it wouldn't be possible.

Gaining built in GNU support and licensing compatability with those developers who currently favor Linux over Solaris is going to provide the best way to move Solaris/OpenSolaris forward. It's just make sense.

Proprietary Java

Posted Feb 11, 2007 10:00 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Yeah, true. I used to troll in a Spanish Java forum; to annoy people there all you had to do was to ask Sun to free their implementation, and then they all repeated like parrots that it had no advantages, that it did not matter to anyone, that Microsoft would make incompatible versions, that the sky would fall upon their heads if they did.

Now, when Sun announced they were going to release Java 7 under the GPL most of them were just astonished and didn't say anything; the rest congratulated Sun on having such a great vision and generosity and warm hearts. It was amazing to watch!

Most people don't care for consistency, they just want a cozy environment. Sad but understandable.

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 11, 2007 17:09 UTC (Sun) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]

I think it's funny that you totally discount the possibility that a user of a system might want it to be open. As a professional java developer, I am thrilled that it will be opened, because this will result in many improvements, including support for under-supported platforms and support for unusual configurations. For example, Sun didn't ship a 64-bit applet plugin for Linux; this is because of the variety of issues with shipping a compiled 64-bit blog to plug into a browser; the problem isn't that hard but Sun didn't want to deal with it. Now that Java is open, this issue will finally be resolved, and similar issues will also be resolved. Also users will finally be able to fix bugs in a more timely manner than Sun. And finally, for embedded developers, there are a range of possibilities when you have the freedom to alter the core platform in a way that suits you.

I mean, you can't say that, just because someone tolerates the status quo, doesn't mean they don't want it to change.

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 12, 2007 0:37 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

""I mean, you can't say that, just because someone tolerates the status quo, doesn't mean they don't want it to change.""

That's right.

But when somebody _chooses_ to join that statis quo, then that is different. It's one thing to get sucked into it, but it's quite another when somebody volenteers for it.

If they had problems with licensing of OpenSolaris then they would be Linux developers, not OpenSolaris developers. :-)

Plus another thing is that CDDL is a Free software license, by FSF/RMS's definition of the word. The question is one of licensing incompatability, not of freedom on the GPLv3 side (OpenSolaris folks probably like that CDDL allows them to use the code in propriatory software, were the GPLv3 would not)

Recommendation: no GPLv3 for Solaris

Posted Feb 12, 2007 15:55 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

I don't think the point was that developers in general don't want that, it was that the developers working at any given time on a given project are likely to be the ones that don't have a problem with the license that project is under.