Sun's Project Kenai [LWN.net]

Sun Microsystems has launched Project Kenai, a hosting system for free software projects. This announcement talks about why the company felt the need to create another hosting service. "Kenai is a recognition by Sun that, as the largest open source company in the world, we need to take control of our own destiny. We need a place to nurture and grow our open source communities that we ourselves can control; we need to demonstrate credibility in building on top of more traditional LAMP/SAMP web stacks (not just Java EE); and we need to show viability of Sun technologies and hardware for next-generation web applications."

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Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 11, 2008 14:51 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] (4 responses)

Sun is "the largest open source company in the world"? Will wonders ever
cease.

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:58 UTC (Thu) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, but it is open source!

But .. it is running Rails on Jruby with "Perl, Python, and other various bits of Apache-based bailing wire help integrate Mercurial, Subversion, Sympa (mailing list software) and Bugzilla into the mix as well."

Ugh, I for one would wait for Launchpad to open source before I would role my own. Lauchpad is mostly Python all the way and btw I hate Bugzilla!

Godot

Posted Sep 11, 2008 18:10 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sure glad Linus didn't say that something like that back in the early 90s.... "I for one would wait for ~~Launchpad~~ Hurd to ~~open source~~ run before I would ~~role~~ roll my own."

Godot

Posted Sep 18, 2008 22:27 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

It's not a million miles away from

> I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 11, 2008 20:05 UTC (Thu) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

Well, Red Hat is smaller, IBM is bigger but more of a service company (plus AIX is closed-source), so.. actually, yes, they are.

Thank you Sun for OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and OpenOffice. May Fortress be with you!

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:00 UTC (Thu) by ajb (subscriber, #9694) [Link] (6 responses)

"open source communities that we ourselves can control"

Hmm. I suppose that's not what they meant to say, but...

Sun's misunderstanding

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:52 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

> we need to take control
SUNW, JAVA, CTRL?

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 12, 2008 1:38 UTC (Fri) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] (2 responses)

It is amazing what you can make a quote say when you remove its context (in this case, the rest of the sentence).

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 12, 2008 14:31 UTC (Fri) by ajb (subscriber, #9694) [Link]

I think that sentence is genuinely ambiguous; that's actually what I thought it meant on the first read through.

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 13, 2008 9:52 UTC (Sat) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

The sentence can be read to suggest what he sliced. It was very poorly considered PR.

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 12, 2008 13:10 UTC (Fri) by skitching (guest, #36856) [Link] (1 responses)

It's the most honest statement to come out of Sun for a long while.

Sun's "open" JCP process for java-related projects is just a joke. Have a look at the license for the "open specs" that come out of this sometime.

There's a very clear pattern of behaviour from Sun. They claim to be open, but manage projects and licenses in such a way that they *do* indeed ensure that any open-source community is one that they completely control. OpenOffice, Solaris, Java, Java "community" process specs - identical behaviour. It can only be deliberate.

And their open-source-closed-community approach is doing major damage to truly open projects. Abiword and koffice suffer due to open-office. Open-source implementations of JCPs suffer in comparison to sun's projects. Sun would love Linux to suffer against "open" solaris, but that hasn't worked out.

Sure, some of this code is good; OpenOffice has produced significant benefits in the short term. But when a commercial company has total control of a number of significant "open source" projects, that's not a long-term recipe for success.

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 18, 2008 21:51 UTC (Thu) by robilad (guest, #27163) [Link]

No project suffers because of some other open source project.

Free software is not a zero sum game.

More hosting places is good

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:13 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link] (8 responses)

It's good to see more hosting places available on the 'net. When Sourceforge first burst onto the net there was precious little alternatives to roll your own. Now we have SoureForge, Savannah, Google Code, github and now Kenai.

I suspect modern distributed version control systems are making it a little easier for small projects to host there own stuff but there is still a place for the all your can eat web-space/mailman/version control service. And competition is good...

More hosting places is good

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:43 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (7 responses)

There's also Launchpad, which I think might be the only one of these with clear plans to go open source in the near future (but I am not familiar with all of the others, so maybe some of them are also open source or going that way).

Anyhow, as you say, competition is good. It also shows that open source software projects are increasing in number in a healthy way.

More hosting places is good

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:27 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link] (6 responses)

Launchpad has clear plans to become opensource? I must have missed that announcement.

Oh and if you want a completely open source hosting service - take a look at fedorahosted.org

More hosting places is good

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:31 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (5 responses)

Shuttleworth committed to opening it within a year:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/07/23/mark...

Hopefully he'll be good to his word.

depends

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:57 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link] (4 responses)

They're still using and pushing bzr for no good reason (except it's "theirs" and historical, I guess).

Folks from both Canonical and Red Hat we cooperate with have had enough grief due to ever-changing (still inefficient compared to git) repo format... just as myself with bzr's broken concept of branches :-(

depends

Posted Sep 11, 2008 18:20 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (2 responses)

"For no reason", that's a little far-fetched. One nice point in favor of Bazaar is that it's written in Python; if I were to go hacking on a DVCS, I'd pick Bazaar just for that reason. It also explains why quite a lot of plugins were written for it fairly quickly.

I didn't read the Bazaar source code, but if it's anything like other projects of theirs, then based on Storm, it's very elegant Python. In fact I learned a few tricks from the Storm codebase that have been useful in my work.

depends

Posted Sep 11, 2008 21:21 UTC (Thu) by cyperpunks (subscriber, #39406) [Link] (1 responses)

> For no reason", that's a little far-fetched. One nice point in favor of
> Bazaar is that it's written in Python

Mercurial is also Python and in contrast to bazaar is just work, bazaar is sloooowww. For some strange reason is Sun MySQL trapped in closed source Launchpad https://launchpad.net/mysql .

Will hopefully move to Kenai and Mercurial real soon now.

depends

Posted Sep 12, 2008 4:07 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link]

I didn't know Mercurial was also written in Python, thanks for the info.

launchpad and bzr

Posted Sep 12, 2008 8:23 UTC (Fri) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]

I suspect it's because it is meant to have broad support for other repos. After all the concept behind launchpads use of bzr I believe is to make it easy to fork the upstream repository for distro type work. Your comment suggests it doesn't work quite as advertised?

Personally I'm a git person although it does have some limitation when importing big CVS repositorys. I would like to see more hosting sites support git though.

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:20 UTC (Thu) by lolando (guest, #7139) [Link] (5 responses)

I especially like section 4c:

> You hereby grant to the Hosts and all Users a royalty-free, perpetual,
> irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive and fully sub-licensable right and
> license under Your intellectual property rights to reproduce, modify,
> adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute,
> perform, display and use (the last for research or evaluation purposes
> only) Your Submissions (in whole or part) and to incorporate it in other
> works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all
> subject to the obligation to retain any copyright notices included in Your
> Submissions.

First Google grants itself a license to everything that goes through their browser, now Sun does the same for everything that goes through their forge...

Pardon the old reference, but all your everything are definitely belong to us, and I don't like it very much.

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 16:04 UTC (Thu) by MiguelAtWork (guest, #53380) [Link] (1 responses)

As far as I can see that section grants everybody the same rights, not just Sun. So how do you get "all your everything belong to us" out of it?

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:14 UTC (Thu) by lolando (guest, #7139) [Link]

Okay, so it belongs to everyone if you like. Still, I can't host GPL code in there (well, I can, but since it'll also be licensed under this BSD-like clause, there's not much point).

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:31 UTC (Thu) by rriggs (guest, #11598) [Link]

Sun really needs to note in a very obvious place that their Terms of Use conflicts with the intent of some popular software licenses, such as the GPL. Not doing so will be clear cause for confusion and anger the first time someone makes use of these terms to fork and close off otherwise GPL'd software.

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 20:12 UTC (Thu) by peppertech (guest, #53871) [Link]

If you're going to quote something, it would be nice if you quoted the whole thing instead of just the one part that you think will support your cause.

Let people make informed decisions with the full story....

***********************************

4. THINGS YOU SUBMIT TO THE SITE. This Site offers many opportunities for You to contribute Materials to the kenai.com community. In addition to the other terms found here, the following terms apply to any Submissions made by You ("Your Submissions").

a. You Take Responsibility for Your Submissions. You warrant that You have all rights needed to provide Your Submissions to the Hosts for posting to the Site in accordance with the Terms and to grant the licenses set forth in sections 4.b and 4.c. You agree that You will make all reasonable efforts to ensure that Your Submissions: (i) do not infringe, misappropriate or violate the intellectual property rights or privacy interests of others; (ii) are not confidential or trade secret information, or subject to Your privacy interests; (iii) are not inaccurate, harmful, obscene, pornographic, defamatory, racist, or otherwise objectionable to a reasonable User; (iv) do not violate any law, ordinance, or regulation of any country, state or locality. YOU AGREE THAT YOU, AND NOT THE HOSTS, ARE FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR SUBMISSIONS AND THAT YOU, AND NOT THE HOSTS, ARE LIABLE FOR ANY AND ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF THEM.

b. Source Code Submissions. You agree that any source code You contribute to a Project will be submitted under, and subject to, the license posted for that Project. If no license is posted, You agree that Your Submission will be governed by the Apache License, Version 2.0, which terms can be found at http://opensource.org/licenses/apache2.0.php. You acknowledge that You are responsible for including all applicable copyright notices and licenses with Your Submissions, and that You assume the risks of failing to do so, including the potential loss of Your rights to Your Submissions.

c. Other Submissions. (This Section 4.c applies to all Submissions other than source code contributed to a Project, which is governed by the preceding section.) The Hosts do not claim ownership of Your Submissions. However, in order to fulfill the purposes of kenai.com, You must give the Hosts and all Users the right to post, access, evaluate, discuss, and refine Your Submissions. In legalese: You hereby grant to the Hosts and all Users a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive and fully sub-licensable right and license under Your intellectual property rights to reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display and use (the last for research or evaluation purposes only) Your Submissions (in whole or part) and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the obligation to retain any copyright notices included in Your Submissions. All Users, the Hosts, and their sublicensees are responsible for any modifications they make to the Submissions of others.

PRIVATE PROJECTS. With respect to a Project that is designated as "Private," the preceding license is limited to Users who have access to the Project, and such rights may only be sublicensed to other Users with authorized access to the Project.

d. Other Licenses/Terms. Some Projects are governed by their own terms regarding Submissions and may require You to sign agreements (such as a Sun Contributor Agreement) assigning and/or licensing Your rights in Your Submissions. In all such cases, and to the extent there is a conflict, the terms of those Projects and agreements take precedence over these Terms.

e. Privacy. You consent to the collection, processing and storage by the Hosts of any personal information provided by You in accordance with the terms of Sun's Privacy Policy, which is available at http://www.sun.com/privacy. You agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations, and the terms of Sun's Privacy Policy, with respect to any use by You of any personal information in connection with this Site.

Lovely terms of use, too

Posted Sep 11, 2008 20:33 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

note that google corrected that license within a day of it being pointed out.

Mercurial

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:52 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (2 responses)

It's also a recognition that no other comparable sites use Mercurial,
which Sun seems to have chosen for everything on Kenai.

Mercurial

Posted Sep 11, 2008 15:53 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Sorry, not everything there. It also handles Subversion.

Mercurial

Posted Sep 11, 2008 17:19 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Someone pointed out that Bitbucket is a Github / Launchpad / Gitorious / Kenai / whatever style hosting site for Mercurial.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 12, 2008 7:16 UTC (Fri) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] (8 responses)

Yet another site that doesn't accept OpenID <http://openid.net/> for login, but instead requires users to create more sets of site-specific authentication. There are *millions* of users who already have an OpenID, and could therefore use it to long into this site if they'd had the good sense to enable it.

Why would a site targeting tech-savvy folks open its doors in 2008 while still having the barrier to entry of insisting that everyone create yet another userid and password that only works on that site?

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 12, 2008 17:56 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (7 responses)

why should every website be forced to implement all of the hundreds of possible authentication mechanisms out there.

of those 'millions' of openid users, how many of them would actually use it on Sun's site?

there are so many 'Modern Web Standards' that it's impractical or impossible for any one site to implement every one of them.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 13, 2008 3:58 UTC (Sat) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] (6 responses)

> why should every website be forced to implement all of the hundreds of possible authentication mechanisms out there.

I don't see how that's relevant; implementing loads of different authentication mechanisms isn't what I proposed, and would indeed be defeating the point.

I proposed that they implement *one* authentication mechanism: the one that is by far the most popular, free, clearly-specified, well-supported, vendor-neutral, and user-centric single-sign-on system we have.

Fortunately, they have a suggestion-box mechanism, where someone has already proposed this; I added my support to that proposal. I hope others will do the same.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 13, 2008 13:26 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

no, you are complaining becouse they didn't implement the one authentication mechanism that you prefer (they did implement an authentication mechansim, and they would still have needed to becouse not everyone uses openid)

if they complied with your demand why should proponents of other authentication mechansims not have the right to demand that they implement the other standards as well?

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 13, 2008 15:29 UTC (Sat) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] (4 responses)

> no, you are complaining becouse

I've already said why I'm complaining. Please don't attempt to put contradictory words in my mouth.

> they did implement an authentication mechansim, and they would still have needed to becouse not everyone uses openid

That's one of the great things about OpenID: even those who aren't one of the millions of internet users that already have an OpenID can get one easily, from any of dozens of providers.

In other words, only a subset of new visitors would need to create new authentication credentials; the rest can use their existing OpenID. That's far better than *everyone* who wants to use the site being forced to create yet another set of authentication credentials that's specific to one site.

> if they complied with your demand

Again, please stop attempting to put words in my mouth.

> why should proponents of other authentication mechansims not have the right to demand that they implement the other standards as well?

They should have the right to request it (I don't know anyone who demanded it). I'm making the case that OpenID is openly-specified, freely-implemented, widely-provided, massively-available, and user-centric enough to be the only sensible choice.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 14, 2008 16:32 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (1 responses)

Using the same identity all over is madness, security-wise. Convenient, but still mad.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 14, 2008 22:25 UTC (Sun) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> Using the same identity all over is madness

Non sequitur. There's nothing about OpenID that prevents you from having distinct identities. The important difference is that you, the user, get to decide which identifier to use in each situation.

As for security: as well as being free to choose which identifier to use in each context, OpenID allows the user to choose who provides the authentication. This is far better security (since those who *want* to choose strong authentication can do so without any change in the replying party) than offered by any proprietary or single-site authentication.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 15, 2008 3:32 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

what you don't accept is the fact that OpenID is _A_ standard, you seem to think that it is _THE_ONLY_ standard.

as for the option of going to someone else and giving them the right to my identity for other sites, I don't trust anyone that much. the status-quo of each site having it's own sense of identity is far safer.

Sun's Ignorance of Modern Web Standards

Posted Sep 15, 2008 4:09 UTC (Mon) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> what you don't accept is the fact that OpenID is _A_ standard, you seem to think that it is _THE_ONLY_ standard.

You continue to demonstrate inability to understand what I actually write. I have several times now stated why I think OpenID is the right standard for cases like this, and *not* that it is the only standard. I can't help you further if you persist in trying to reinterpret what I write.

Sun's Project Kenai

Posted Sep 14, 2008 15:32 UTC (Sun) by mheily (guest, #27123) [Link]

> Oh noes! Sun is giving away free hosting services to GPL and other open-source projects. This proves how sinister and evil they are, those proprietary bastards!

Seriously, I don't understand the constant negative reactions to anything good that Sun does. When proprietary companies like Sun and Apple start using and embracing open source, we should applaud their efforts and try to help them succeed.

Don't forget that Microsoft is trying to leverage its desktop monopoly to take over the market for server operating systems. Their proprietary, non-standard crapware is the biggest threat to Linux and all other POSIX-compliant software. The communities around Unix and Un*x-like operating systems must hang together, or we will surely hang separately.