Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
Though Sun executives have been cool on the GPL in the past, Schwartz said there was "not a lot" preventing Sun from releasing Solaris under the GPL. It would offer support contracts as an option, in a model similar to that of Red Hat Inc. "We view the GPL as a friend. Remember, (Sun) was built off of BSD and the BSD license," he said, referring to the open-source Berkeley Software Distribution license." (Thanks to Jingmin (Jimmy) Zhou)
Posted May 5, 2004 1:03 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 5, 2004 1:48 UTC (Wed)
by neoprene (guest, #8520)
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Corporations with billions don't need a "free" OS, and people in general don't need to be held hostage by billion dollar corporations and their monopoly strategy and lousy products. "I just find that kind of comic," he said. "Open standards are all about enabling more competition, not about enabling CIOs to have more source code. They don't want more source code," he said. The GPL is about empire-prevention, the source code is the mechanism. UNIX forked partly because it was made into a closed source and proprietary, by various empire builders. Did he actually try this? Perhaps he should try "man alien" ?? "DESCRIPTION That souce code comes in handy if "alien" don't work, you can "./configure && make && make install" . Has he never tried this? As usual, SUN don't know which leg to stand on. There will always be a place for big expensive IT products and services, SUN should think about how to define their place in changing marketplace. Things can change rapidly and there is no need to diss the GPL, soon it may be the only game in town.
Posted May 5, 2004 1:17 UTC (Wed)
by ajax (guest, #7251)
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Now, SunOS is BSD-based so it might be releasable under the GPL.
Posted May 5, 2004 7:42 UTC (Wed)
by stuart (subscriber, #623)
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No this is just Sun doing the headless chicken thing. I think, though find it hard to believe, they are running scared and have no idea where to turn to. Hence an article like this full of, for want of a better word, drivel. Stu.
Posted May 5, 2004 9:32 UTC (Wed)
by lyda (subscriber, #7429)
[Link] (1 responses)
Really, that's my only reaction, why? Sun needs to GPL Java, not Solaris. We already have so many freely available unix-like OS's that they're practically crawling out of our ears, but we don't really have a decent freely available JVM. I think Java would enjoy more success if it had a freely available JVM to run on. Hell, Sun could release it under the GPL and sell another version with better optimisation. Whatever. Of course, as a developer who abhors Java I'm quite happy with the current state of affairs.
Posted May 5, 2004 18:36 UTC (Wed)
by foobarbaz (guest, #21396)
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I suspect that will change soon. The way I understand it, IBM bought a
Posted May 5, 2004 15:04 UTC (Wed)
by xose (subscriber, #535)
[Link]
Solaris brings UNIX SYSTEM V code, (C) by Bell Labs
Wow, is he really this clueless?
Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
"Maybe we'll GPL it,""We're still looking at that."Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
Ohh sure. This would be bitter pill for Sun to swallow, going to the lowly "bathtub of code" -Linux in lieu of big-iron 64 bit hardware/software. The growth potential for big-ironhardware may have lost its luster. Oh no...now that Google is getting Public money perhaps they can upgrade to real computers/OS like Sun's. :)
"What worries us about the GPL is its capacity to encourage forking, because what's happened in Linux is that Red Hat has forked. Not in the sense that the kernel is different ... It's forked because if you write to the Red Hat distribution, you can't go and run on Debian."
alien is a program that converts between Red Hat rpm, Debian deb, Stampede slp, Slackware tgz, and Solaris pkg file formats. If you want to use a package from another linux distribution than the one you have installed on your system, you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and install it."
IIRC, Solaris is based on AT&T's SVR4, if so Sun has no say in the matter .. Solaris must remain proprietary.Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
I'm afraid the comments from Jonathan Schwartz just read as utter and complete FUD to me. They're inconsistent: Refusing to sell Windows with its computers because that's supporting the competition.....and bundling Suse isn't?Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
Why?Sun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
May 5, 2004 9:32 UTC (Wed) by lydaSun considers GPL license for Solaris (InfoWorld)
> Sun needs to GPL Java, not Solaris. We already have so many freely
> available unix-like OS's that they're practically crawling out of
> our ears, but we don't really have a decent freely available JVM.
10 yr license from Sun in 95-96. That license is cheap, renewal is
expected to be not, so they have a major financial incentive to do a
JVM. (But who knows, mebbe GNU Classpath or GCJ will beat them to it :-)
IMPOSIBLE!
Solaris is UNIX