Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

Sun Microsystems releases a few more details on its plan to release its Solaris operating system as open-source software, according to this article on NewsForge. "Bryan Cantrill, senior kernel engineer for Solaris, said that he's excited about his and his team's work going public. "Technically, this is not a problem to do this," he said. "I can assure you, the engineers in this room write some of the cleanest code in the entire world. We're proud to open it. We feel we were born to do this work. But I'm also sure we'll be revisiting a few comments in the code here and there -- I just thought of a particularly disparaging one I might have left in having to do with C++ unions," Cantrill said with a laugh."

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Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 17, 2004 21:21 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (1 responses)

The appearance of these various source-code releases is very exciting. When all is said and done, I hope this move brings about more co-operation between computer scientists, professionals, hobbyists, and researchers than ever before.

I believe that unity behind openness in the computer community may bring about some quantum leaps in humans' ability to understand how the world works, while closed, proprietary, patent-warring, and "copyright greed" are holding us back in very damaging ways that only historians for a hundred or two hundred years from now will understand well.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 2:13 UTC (Fri) by sidboyce (guest, #10891) [Link]

I shall play wait and see. They are still playing Solaris and I wonder if this will be no more than their previous source code releases with the liecense dolled up, yielding little freedom, so Sun gets cheap development, but having sole ownership. Remember, it's they who say Linux (or was it RedHat) is not open source, perhaps they will try to redefine the term.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 17, 2004 21:47 UTC (Thu) by cpeterso (guest, #305) [Link] (5 responses)

Why does the Solaris kernel have C++ unions? Surely he just means unions?

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 0:55 UTC (Fri) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link] (3 responses)

Unions can appear in C++ code but not make use of C++
features such as constructors and destructors. He might
have made some comment either expression frustration with
someone's use of unions in C++ code or with C++'s design
that doesn't allow those features for unions.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 12:45 UTC (Fri) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (2 responses)

Or he isn't the rocket scientist he thinks he is. The strange comment
(about C++ unions) makes me think he's more of a PHB (Pointy-haired boss)
than anything.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 21:24 UTC (Fri) by bmc (guest, #22430) [Link]

If you only knew me you would know how absolutely ridiculous the idea is that I'm a PHB... For starters, see my clarification on the misquote (which I saw someone else also posted -- thank you). Also, for accusing me of being a PHB, you are hereby ordered to read my AADEBUG paper from start to finish. ;)

(Suffice it to say that you would be lucky if you could find a PHB who could accurately define any of the words "postmortem", "object", "type" and "identification" -- let alone it means when they appear together...)

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 24, 2004 3:38 UTC (Thu) by foorilious (guest, #22539) [Link]

I've met Bryan (at SunNetwork), and I will testify that he could not be less pointy-haired or bossy. He does talk (and write example code) faster than any human should, though.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 17:52 UTC (Fri) by movement (subscriber, #871) [Link]

Bryan, was, naturally, misquoted.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 13:45 UTC (Fri) by JohnBell (guest, #12625) [Link] (3 responses)

"I can assure you, the engineers in this room write some of the cleanest code in the entire world."

I am sure your engineers are human beings, and not living manifestations of Cerebro. If nothing else, Solaris x86 is proof that there are clay feet to be found in the Sun cathedral.

Check your egos in at the door and release the code. Whatsamatta, chicken?

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 14:01 UTC (Fri) by frankie (subscriber, #13593) [Link] (2 responses)

Indeed Solaris/X86 is NOT Solaris/SPARC. It was the old Interactiv Unix,
so it has a different base code, a bit refreshed probably.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 18, 2004 17:54 UTC (Fri) by movement (subscriber, #871) [Link]

Did this idea just appear under your desk one morning or something?
Solaris is built from a common source tree for x86 and SPARC.

Sun reveals tidbits of Solaris open source strategy (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 21, 2004 8:46 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Someone else has posted same already, but you're so wrong it's worth correcting you twice.

Solaris is Solaris regardless of whether it's on UltraSPARC/SPARC64, x86 or (soon) x86-64. Userland is virtually identical. The Solaris kernel is a portable, essentially hardware-agnostic kernel, as you'd expect from any modern Unix kernel, other than, obviously, device drivers, and the really low-level architecture dependent stuff, particularly MMU related, which is abstracted from the rest of the kernel by way of the Solaris 'HAT' (hardware abstraction layer). Buy the Solaris Internals book if you care to know more.