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Sun Mulling GPL for Solaris
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat May 01, 2004 08:08 AM
from the but-not-anytime-soon dept.
from the but-not-anytime-soon dept.
comforteagle writes "According to this article in InfoWorld, Sun Microsystems is considering open sourcing Solaris by changing licenses to the GPL. What kind of impact would this have on those of you considering opting out of Unix for Linux? Red Hat and others have openly targeted Solaris users to switch." By the end of the article, the change seems rather unlikely to happen, but it's still interesting to see what changes this could bring about.
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Sun Mulling GPL for Solaris
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Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @05:03PM)
Way back in the 1980's, I worked on a number of projects that had teams building their software on a number of different kinds of small computer systems. The teams using Sun workstations often got a bit of flak for using a system with a fairly high price/performance ratio. But the Sun-based teams invariably had the last laugh.
What happened was that debugging would frequently lead into parts of "the system", i.e., system libraries and/or the kernel. When we asked the vendor for details of the low-level software, the answer would reduce to "We can't tell you; it's proprietary". The proprietary, closed-source parts of the systems were brick walls that blocked progress.
With Sun (SunOS or Solaris), if we couldn't get an immediate answer from Sun, we would just ask on one of the Sun newsgroups. Usually an answer would come back within hours, most often from an engineer within Sun. Very often, they would include a chunk of the source code as an explanation.
The result was that the teams developing on Suns would get answers to their technical questions, and would have a functioning product long before any of the other teams. There's a real advantage to having a working, marketable product, even if it's more expensive than a competitor that doesn't work yet.
Over the years, this Sun advantage has evaporated. It has slowly become more difficult to get accurate details on the inner working of Solaris and other Sun libraries and tools. They have gone the protective, proprietary route. And their market is slowly being eaten by linux, for exactly the same reasons as above.
It's possible that what is happening inside Sun is that the people who understand this are starting to be heard again. If they can make the innards of their system as open as it was 20 years ago, they stand a good chance of recovering their business.
Alternatively, if the protectionist factions inside Sun prevail, they could also start up a linux-based line. This would be a bit of an expense, but no more so than their switch from SunOS to Solaris (i.e., from BSD to Sys/V) 15 or so years ago. If they did this, a Sun linux would probably wipe out Solaris over a few years, for the same reasons of faster development times on an open system.
The cheapest would be to open-source Solaris. This would get them back into the good graces of software developers, and would restore their earlier status as a system on which you can bring a debugged, reliable product to market very quickly.
And it would probably be better for all of us, since it would avoid the growing threat of a linux "monoculture". The unix part of the industry has always been better off because it isn't a monoculture, and thus isn't susceptible to the virus/worm-type attacks of the "market leader".
But there are those elephants hiding in the middle of the room: patent and copyright. Can Sun legally open-source all of Solaris? If they try it, can they withstand the legal might of an SCO with behind-the-scene Microsoft support? Stay tuned
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 14 2004, @05:03PM)
Yeah, you're probably right. The linux landscape is the metaphoric "herd of cats".
But still, we should be aware of the potential problem, and we should discuss it. It's similar to how we shouldn't be too smug about the linux (and *BSD) security question. In both cases, we're muuch better off if we constantly harp on such problems, and point fingers at potential problems.
In the case of the monoculture, there is indeed a real potential for problems in the business arena. The business world has always favored a monoculture, as a way to simplify decision making (which can be costly in both money and careers). In the corporate linux market, RedHat has a strong lead, and there's a serious possibility that they could end up ruling the linux business world.
RedHat deserves a lot of credit and support for what they've done. But "winning" and vanquishing their competition could make them a target for the virus/worm plague that has infected the Windows user community. Granted, writing such software for linux is much more difficult than with Windows, but it's not impossible that a single distro would have an exploitable hole. Then we could see half the banking system or half the credit industry going offline simultaneously.
So we should be preaching to the business folks about the dangers of putting all their corporate eggs in the RedHat basket. We should teach them that part of the reason for all the Windows problems is the monoculture. They should intentionally use different distros, configure them differently, run different DBs, etc. They should look for ways to tailor their systems to their environment, so that they aren't too similar to other computers.
And we should be on the lookout for other such developments. We want a herd of cats, not a flock of sheep, to help prevent the single points of failure that results from widespread use of a single distro. If we make serious sales to the non-tech world, we should fight the widespread desire to have a single "one size fits all" computer that everyone is pressured to buy.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.teaparty07.com/)
And hire different admins and DBA for all of the different systems? As well as some good project teams when they need one DB to tie in seamlessly with another DB?
Our systems are different enough as we use different technologies over the years, I can't even imagine the nightmare if we went out of our way to use different software and configs for all the boxes, not to mention having to seperately test all patches in a _massive_ lab environment.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I think they can, they've bought very extensive rights about SVR4 from AT&T years ago. And they got based for paying SCO some money some time ago. So I expect they have all the rights to open source Solaris, at least the SVR4 parts.
I beg to disagree - Solaris cotains a lot of code from entities other than AT&T/USL/SCO (even though they have unlimited rights to use the code, i.e. no royalties due to SCO - they don't have the rights to distribute the code to others). One example would be the PostScript code in xsun.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I definitely agree that Sun probably has people on both sides of the issue internally. For example, they provided the source code for Solaris 8 and the Java libraries but not Solaris 9. Also, the Solaris 8 source had some curious omissions, which are probably the parts that have licensing issues (OpenGL, SCO-cruft, etc.).
So, what would be very likely, based on prior behavior, would be for Sun to possibly release _most_ of Solaris under GPL minus the parts their lawyers are still unsure of. This would still be a big win for developers, who can benefit from debugging at nearly all levels. I've already benefited from having the Java source, GPL or no, and fully understand what those developers in the 1980's must have felt like.
Solaris 9/x86 can be obtained for $0 (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 03 2002, @01:00AM)
It's pretty fussy about hardware etc, though, and very obviously not the equal of Solaris/Sparc.
Re:Solaris 9/x86 can be obtained for $0 (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thecatflap.co.uk/)
Sol x86 has never quite shaken off the bad reputation it gained around v2.5.1, when it sucked. So far as stability goes I'd take it over Linux any day, and if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it, it's at least as quick.
As for GPLing it, as a user, I couldn't care less, as a skeptic, I don't believe it.
Re:Solaris 9/x86 can be obtained for $0 (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thecatflap.co.uk/)
I make my living from it, if that's what you mean. I'm not employed by Sun though.
1. Why is linux unstable
It isn't, and I didn't say it was. I just think Solaris has the edge.
"if you give it decent hardware and know how to manage it
I make this point because a lot of
I also feel a lot of
Re:Always Wanted to Try It (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://mattdm.org/)
1. pretty nicely on expensive hardware, but I wouldn't choose it over Linux. (And in my job, I *do* basically have that choice.)
2. not really, no. The x86 version was available "free as in the cost of media" for a while, and it was a sad, sad joke.
Anyway, the article is pretty full of silly FUD, like this choice tidbit:
That's ridiculous of course, but more importantly, the only way in which it really makes sense is when you're still thinking about developing *propriatary* apps. If you can just recompile, pretty much *anything* that runs on one Linux distro will run on another. But if you're stuck in a shlepping-around-binaries mindset, yeah, there may be some difficulties.
Basically, they're still as clueless as ever. And we're certainly not going to see what Sun really needs -- an open source Java.
Re:Multiple versions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Always Wanted to Try It (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to the original AT&T UNIX license which thankfully prevented companies like Sun, HP, IBM, SCO, SGI, DEC, BSDi, etc. from forking...
Re:Always Wanted to Try It (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wondering. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just wondering. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just wondering. (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't matter. In SCO's eyes the whole thing is a "derivative" anyway.
switching (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday July 04 2005, @03:43PM)
Really, if *BSD or a Free Solaris or anything else come up with live cd's or start-me-up installers, I might as well try them to test for performance and stability. Since KDE runs in any Unix-like system, "switching" is not quite a problem for me.
I just want the best desktop environment available today and that's KDE. What it's running on top of, I don't care.
Re:switching (Score:4, Informative)
though i suppose it probobly isn't that easy to do
so you know if you realy don't care what its running on...
Re:switching (Score:4, Insightful)
The WindowsXP panel is even worse in that regard. (However, both the KDE and Gnome control panels share a weakness that isn't their fault: they don't control the underlying OS, filesystem, or even X server, so they can't let the user adjust those things with any assurance)
Now Mac OS X... there's a desktop environment I can worship for its elegance and functionality.
OS X has taken major steps backwards, favoring eye-candy over functionality. Many of those problems are extensively documented in HCT and Mac-head journals... the most blatant problem, of course, is the travesty called "The Dock".
Re:switching (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday July 04 2005, @03:43PM)
Sure, the default setup is bad. The Panel (not the control panel, the taskbar-cum-start-menu thing) is a mess, Keramik is a classic exercise in bad taste, and I don't particularly like those icons.
I moved the Panel to the top, got rid of the taskbar - replacing it with the wonderful KTicker, who keeps me up with Slashdot news when I can't waste the time, and watches for my keywords in other RDF sources - changed the buttons to submenus with the tools I need, and added a quickbrowser.
The quickbrowser is a bliss. This should have been the default interface for browsing files since the beginning. I have my work files organized by directories (that can be created on the fly when saving'em), and gretl [sourceforge.net] my way into academic fame. For text editing, I use LyX.
Did I mention I love the PIM tools? My screen's always chock full of KNote yellow-stickers, TeaCooker helps me not to burn food, and Korganizer helps me not to forget deadlines.
I mean, except for LyX and gretl, these tools are all standard in a KDE install. You can imagine what the optionals are. I'm just dropping out of an underpaid internship where I had to do some work with Windows, and it was just a pain after experiencing KDE.
Sad but true - Linux excels precisely in UI, though it loses in performance and hardware support and other things they've boasted.
education (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:education (Score:5, Informative)
For personal/evaluation/educational/etc uses, it already is [sun.com].
Can they even do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be an absolutely brilliant strategic move.
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.afp548.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 28 2002, @11:31PM)
It could be an absolutely brilliant strategic move.
Could be. It could also be the end of the line for them, as other Linux developers take all the interesting bits from Solaris and port them to the Linux kernel--then you get all the stability etc of Solaris, but with Linux. Then Sun has not much left to offer but nice support plans.
Come to think, GPL of Solaris would allow Sun to build their own Linux and include the good bits of Solaris in it; maybe that's their plan.
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://mirror.cs.vt.edu/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 13 2004, @11:24AM)
And really, really nice 64bit hardware. But, you're right, that's going to have major competition [amd.com] in the years going forward.
I like sun. I think there will still be a niche market for them for quite some time (they're not dying, blah blah). But, I do think they need to innovate something. If they open solaris, it's going to keep a lot of people on solaris that might have switched and just been willing to deal with mediocre hardware, but it will also probably mean that a lot of stability could find its way into linux. So, yeah, you're right. This + something new and cool could be a good business move.
~Will
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Solaris Internals by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall is the one I was thinking of. I'm pretty sure there are others, as well (Amazon shows a couple about performance tuning below the listing of Solaris Internals).
The documentation bundled in the Solaris box set also gives lots of clues about what's under the hood (e.g., tunable parameters, inter-process communication, kernel debugger, virtual memory etc.).
I'd have to say that Solaris is definitely among the most open of the proprietary UNIX systems.
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 04 2004, @09:33PM)
Come to think, GPL of Solaris would allow Sun to build their own Solaris and include the good bits of Linux in it; maybe that's their plan.
Re:Can they even do this? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://jargon-file.org/)
Part 2: A while back, Sun bought a broad license to Unix from SCO. Exactly how broad nobody knows, but SCO at one point publically said that it immunizes Sun from the sort of lawsuit they launched against IBM. Since that involved IBM GPLing what SCO claims is System V code . .
Again, the exact terms of Sun's license are not known, so this is speculation. But it is intriguing, isn't it?
never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:never happen - oh yeah? I see it differently (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't see Solaris OS being majorly profitable for Sun either - they sell hardware too and if an open-source Solaris led to more end-user interest in their hardware it's easy to see it leading to an increase in revenue for Sun.
Even if it didn't, more Unix code in the wild would mean better performance for all OSS operating systems, once the predictable legal/licensing issues had been sorted out, (preferably by the assassination of Mr D.McBride and all his staff).
I can't see a GPL'd Solaris being harmful to Sun. They probably couldn't re-licence enough of the code to make competing distributions appear anyway.
Re:never happen - oh yeah? I see it differently (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.afp548.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 28 2002, @11:31PM)
I can't see Solaris OS being majorly profitable for Sun either - they sell hardware too and if an open-source Solaris led to more end-user interest in their hardware it's easy to see it leading to an increase in revenue for Sun.
Essentially, Apple's strategy. And not really surprising, since Sun essentially does what Apple does--sell proprietary hardware with a tailored OS.
Question is: has that strategy paid off for Apple? And Sun has more to lose: they have a strong position in the server room, that Apple never had, so Sun would be trying Apple's consumer level strategy out but with their own Enterprise products--results may vary.
Re:never happen - oh yeah? I see it differently (Score:4, Informative)
For the period ended September 30th, the two cash cows of Client (i.e. Windows) and Information Worker (Office) produced operating income of $2.48 billion on revenue of $2.89 billion, and $1.88 billion on $2.38 billion respectively.
MSN lost $97 million on $531 million, CE/Mobility was out $33 million on $17 million revenues (always a good trick, this kind of stuff), and the home of Xbox, Home Entertainment, dropped $177 million on revenues of $505 million. Business Solutions, which includes Navision and Great Plains, and is a sector Microsoft hopes will contribute great things in the future, lost $68 million on $107 million.
If this isn't a load of hot air... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.oldos.org/)
1) It would lend more credence against the SCO argument. "It's my unix and I'll GPL if I want to..."
The bad thing is that I'm gonna be looking at
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
Solaris For All! (Score:3, Interesting)
Like RedHat, though, a lot of it would come down to support. If Sun offered an inexpensive support package to compliment it, then that would get more people downloading it.
Very Good (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://thisnukes4u.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 07, @08:45PM)
Wrong month, guys. (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of impact would this have ? (Score:5, Funny)
KFG
I'll believe it when I see it. (Score:3, Funny)
Why it should not and won't happen (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/)
2. Solaris includes many products that Sun has incorporated over the years. Most of them would likely have to be replaced, since I doubt the contracts involved allow Sun to just GPL the whole mess.
3. They would just be asking to have SCO add them to the list of companies targetted for a "tainting" suit, though honestly Sun may not care.
In the end, I think it would make far more sense for Sun to open source their SMP code by working with IBM on modifications to Linux. Sun+IBM could probably get Linux deployed on both of their very-high-end boxes in short order.
The SMP stuff is, as far as I know, most of what's left that Solaris does better than Linux, so what's the point in open sourcing the whole OS anyway?
Re:Why it should not and won't happen (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://jargon-file.org/)
Or can they?
Conveniently enough, SCO's licensing rights are broad enough it can release UNIX under the GPL without Novell permission (and they did for V7), and Sun bought a very broad license to UNIX from SCO a few years back.
While exact terms have not been disclosed publically, from SCO statements about Sun's license in the IBM case, it would seem at least possible SCO has already sold Sun a set of rights so broad Sun could GPL all the UNIX in Solaris.
Again, not certain, merely possible.
Solaris user (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't mind if Solaris opened up. It wouldn't be a huge deal for me - I'd still pay Sun for "premium" support, and I'd still only use official Sun versions of things. Heck, I need someone big to blame if and when things go really wrong. I pay Sun to be that target.
I use Sun/Solaris because (1) I have the budget to, (2) it works, (3) I only have one vendor to deal with, and (4) there's no compelling reason to change right now.
If Sun can get something out of opening Solaris - great! If open source developers can improve the world by the opening of Solaris - great! But at least in terms of my current position, it won't have direct impact on me.
choice quotes from Schwartz (Score:3, Interesting)
With friends like these ...
He's quite right, you know (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 03 2002, @01:00AM)
(a) Businesses don't want more source code. Well, to be strictly accurate they don't want to have to manage, worry about, maintain, etc more source code than they have to. I think that given the choice, most intelligent CIOs would definitely say "sure, we'd love the source and rights to use it" - but would probably prefer not to have to actually do much with it, and face the burden of maintaining changes etc.
OSS alleviates this to some extent by permitting changes to be submitted back upstream, but this only works if you have the resources to engineer you changes "properly" and not break anything else (even stuff you don't use or care about).
(b) If you write for RH9 or RHEL3, your app will not run on a stable release of Debian. Not if it's a GUI app that uses any GNOME/KDE libs, needs a recent QT, etc. It can be made to run by either packaging it with a lot of extra libs (see Ximian's RH8 builds of Evolution for an example of this approach), spending a lot more time to make it handle varying versions of libraries, or forcing the user to update their distro or libraries themselves. None of these are attractive.
I see this as a real issue, but not a distro one. It's actually more about _versions_ - the rapid change of OSS, including APIs etc for major libraries and toolkits, is the root of the issue. OTOH, the same thing keeps "ugly" decisions from hanging around, and permits much more rapid advancement.
I'd like to see a cleaner way of running multiple versions of things in parallel (within the package management systems), as a work-around for this issue.
(c) Also quite correct. Many open source apps do not follow established standards, and often the file formats, protocols, etc are defined largely or entirely by the source code of the app. While these protocols/formats are definitely open, they're not open standards and there's usually not much chance that other apps will work with them.
It's true that you do have more chance of enchancing other apps to work with the formats/protocols, time and money permitting, or enhancing the OSS apps to work with the protocls/formats of your choice. It's also true to say that many apps don't support standard protocols or formats because there is no standard in that application domain, or it's crap. These things do not change the truth of his statement.
Well duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
They would be able to dip in to all of the device drivers that Linux has today. That would happen first.
What would happen second is the standard cross-polination; anything that's substantially better in either one (think scheduler, VM etc) would be copied from the better one to the worse, improving it. How much Linux might take we won't know until we've seen the code. But I'm certain that Sun would benefit the most from access to those device drivers.
Please put down your flamethrower when I say... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 10 2002, @04:09AM)
Please don't flame me for bad-mouthing Linux, I'm a diehard Linux admin myself but I still think Linux has much to catch up in enterprise computing.
We've a Linux cluster which has a critical bug in mounting the share disk which has filesystem. Sometime when one node down the mount point is not released to another node which is supposed to take up the process, thus result in critical failure.
This is all kernel problem(or limitation), and we don't have problem with non-fs type disk(raw disk). Therefore we must use raw disk where possible in cluster, but we don't have choice when some apps require a filesystem(e.g. like infracture database in Oracle's forsaken Real Application Cluster (RAC). Good name huh)
The engineer who diagnosis this problem told me they've no such problem with similar setup with solaris so they THOUGHT it's okay in Linux. Ahem, there goes millions dollars for paying their great product(*cough* Oracle RAC *cough*).
I expect more of such problems could be solved when those companies specialized in enterprise bringing back good stuffs to Linux, and GPL.
Re:Please put down your flamethrower when I say... (Score:5, Insightful)
You say: I expect more of such problems could be solved when those companies specialized in enterprise bringing back good stuffs to Linux, and GPL. Isn't that exactly what Sun would do if they GPLed Solaris? Bring good enterprise stuff to the open source space?
Re:Please put down your flamethrower when I say... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 10 2002, @04:09AM)
No. I don't think so, and that's not what I say or imply.
The bug I metioned, more specifically, associates with the failure in release the control of mounted fs when the node took control of infrastructure database of Oracle 9i RAC. The bug exists in Linux's version but not in Solaris version. It doesn't make Solaris superior than Linux, otherwise we wouldn't choose to deploy Linux Cluster. (This is also in response to the retarded Anonymous Coward who replied to your post)
This is hardly the Linux kernel maintainers' problems. They just can't address all unforeseen problems - they're simply human. It must the be those apps developers who build things on Linux fixing their own problem, by making patches to the problem they encountered and submit back to the community such that they could be free of trouble in the future release. That's how community would work with those enterprise players.
That's what I say. I know it's not your intention to put words into my mouth. Thanks for giving me chance to repond to your post with an open question.
Microsoft will never consent to it (Score:5, Funny)
(ring ring) ..."
scott: "hello?"
bill: "what the fuck are you doing?!"
Scott (sweating, scared): "well I, err, I just, thought.
bill (slow calm and menacing): "yes?..."
scott (smiles): "I'm going to fire the fucking idiot who aired this dumb idea in public."
bill: "have a nice day."
scott: "yea, thanks bill. Thanks."
(ring ring)
scott: "have someone in marketing killed and his hands delivered to Bill Gates"
lackey thug: "It's done."
Re:Microsoft will never consent to it (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.geeklawyer.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 04 2003, @04:17AM)
NeWS (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.scarydevil.com/~peter/ | Last Journal: Monday September 26 2005, @06:53PM)
Re:NeWS (Score:4, Informative)
(http://r00tkit.com/)
Just what we need. (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday July 22 2004, @03:51AM)
Re:Just what we need. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.hyperlogos.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 18, @08:19PM)
Specifically, Solaris is the bundle of SunOS and the X Window System. In the olden days that meant SunOS+OpenWindows (SunOS4, or Solaris 1.x) and now that means SunOS+CDE or SunOS+GNOME depending on the vintage of SunOS5-based Solaris.
We really don't need the majority Solaris' userland tools. All we want is some stuff in the kernel, and occasional user-space tool which is required for changing options and/or utilizing that kernel functionality.
With the amount of FSF-copyrighted GNU+GPL tools the average person puts on a Solaris system to make it enjoyable to use, it might as well be called GNU/Solaris already.
GPL'ing Solaris to gain the Linux kernel & dri (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://itheresies.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 28 2004, @12:06AM)
In comparison to Linux, the range and quality of hardware drivers available to Solaris is pitiful.
If Sun manages to get out from under the SCO claims on the old AT&T code base and does manage to GPL the Solaris kernel then Sun would be free to port any and all GPL'ed drivers and Linux kernel code to Solaris.
The other alternative would be to add a WINE like MS-OS compatable driver emulation layer, to load XP compatable hardware drivers. In comparison to Microsoft XP, performance would suck. There is no reason why Sun, just like WINE could not have the layer running in user space instead of the kernel, which means that Sun could still use a GPL'ed Solaris kernel and not break the terms of the Linux GPL.
Boon for Linux, death for Solaris (Score:4, Interesting)
Thus we'd be given a nearly useless, incomplete operating system. If the Sun-owned Solaris code is truly GPL'ed, the Linux folks would pick all the good bits out of this carcass and discard the rest.
Thus nobody would use OSS Solaris, but Linux might be improved here and there. So, I highly doubt Sun will truly GPL their code.
(Apologies to Linus Torvalds for comparing him to a vulture.)
Too little too late (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://michael.bacarella.com/ | Last Journal: Friday November 01 2002, @06:19PM)
You don't just sprinkle "open source pixie dust" onto a project and see instant revitalization. GPL'ing Solaris is worth little if Sun still thinks like a proprietary software company.
Open source is about the long-term. Open source projects take years to become truly useful, but when they reach maturity they are more useful than any proprietary software offering because open source fosters a development culture that focuses solely on technical achievement. Contrary business motivations like lock-in and forced obsolescence are anathama, and no doubt Solaris is full of it.
This is the same reason I think MacOS X isn't worth using, there's source code but the development mentality is entirely different from Linux's, and all of the things that make using Linux convenient are not the high priority, MacOS X very much feels like a proprietary UNIX with some familar utilities added. Maybe some day it'll be more usable.
Maybe after 5 years of GPL Solaris it'll become usable. Unfortunately, GPL Solaris is in greater danger of forking because Sun would try to impose its direction on it instead of simply serving as a guide.
This could be disaster for linux, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it:
Solaris itself is based on BSD software.
The cost of supporting both linux and solaris would be much diminished. Interlopy between desktop (linux) and server (solaris) would be very clean and tight.
Does Sun make a living on selling software? Does it make a living on selling hardware?
NO! It makes a living selling complete systems, business solutions, and then providing support for them.
What does the clients care if Solaris is GPL'd or not? The only place you'd get Sun's support and hardware is from SUN! Why the hell would you want to run your infrustructer with Solaris on 400 dollar walmart machines?
Sun is losing out customers now, but doing something like this will enable them to retain those they already have and then open themselves up to more possiblities, more chances for long term survival instead of ending up a legacy support mechanism ala SCO.
Plus solaris is so complex anyways, only Sun would be in a position to support and improve on it for several years, while you have all the development base that has evolved around Linux and BSD to help out with bugs and evolutionary improvements. Like Linus to Linux Sun will always have the final word on what direction Solaris is going.
However all signs point to no, that Sun still doesn't get "open source" and "free software" stuff. So far they think people want a Linux OS with a bunch of closed source liscencing restrictions tacked on the top of it.
They don't realise that one of the major benifits of free/open software is avioding crap like that and that's what it makes it appealing to lots of people.
(not all, I realise that some people don't give a damn about freedom as long as they get their paycheck, but there still are people who realy care and understand that unbridled closed source liscencing can be like a ulcer that won't heal to a large infrustructure. Causing pain and extra costs and restricting the potential of a orginization.)
Re:This could be disaster for linux, but... (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday May 05 2003, @06:46PM)
Um, no it isn't.
SunOS was based on BSD code. Solaris was a clear and distinct cut over, using SysV code.
(Keeping in mind that SunOS=SunOS 4.x=Solaris 1, and Solaris=SunOS 5.x=Solaris 2/7+)
This could be a brilliant move (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.axiom-developer.org/)
Linux is good, it is very good. But it is not as good as Solaris in a lot of situations - Solaris has been in high end trenches and mission critical situations for a lot longer than Linux. An open sourcing of Solaris under GPL means several things:
a) Linux can benefit from Solaris
b) Solaris can benefit from Linux
c) Extensive code review of Solaris by the world probably won't hurt efforts to further improve security.
TREMENDOUS positive PR for Sun from an often ambilivant open source community, and a rush to make sure all important open source software runs flawlessly on Solaris (harder to test now since fewer people use it)
Problems to be delt with:
a) Making sure they have the legal rights to open source everything (of course)
b) Export restrictions? Not sure how this plays out for Solaris - since Linux is out there already I can't imagine the use of restricting Solaris (which is probably also out there, just not legally) but the government is known for a lack of common sense in such cases.
c) Fear of management that giving up ultimate control of all versions of Solaris will somehow be harmful.
Issue a) was one of the major problems when considering opensourcing BeOS - don't know how Solaris stands on such an issue.
But I think on the whole it's silly for Sun to try and compete with Linux head to head with a commercial OS - what's the point? Sun sells hardware and complete solutions, and generally does very well. If they can say "well, Solaris is GPL just like Linux, incorporates features X,Y, and Z that users generally cite as reasons they want Linux, and is proven and stable to boot" they get to just support Solaris again, and not have to worry about figuring out Linux. If that makes Solaris more widespread, what harm does that do Sun? It's not like Microsoft is going to pick up Solaris and incorporate it. Infighting among Unix like systems I think is fairly pointless in this day and age. Linux has made high priced commercial Unix licenses non-viable. So for companies like Sun, who sell hardware and solutions anyway, why not go with the flow on this one?
Netscape... Mozilla (Score:3, Insightful)
This could very well be Sun Microsystems assuring that their product line lives after they do.
They scrapped the Sparc V processor, and let Microsoft start marketting the MSVM again.
Can't happen because of other companies (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.thejemreport.com/)
A while back I had a phone interview with the product manager of Solaris. I asked him if Solaris would ever be Free Software (or at least open-source) someday. He said that you can get the Solaris source if you need it, but it can never be under the GPL or similar Free Software licenses because they use so much code from other companies that contain trade secrets and otehr things that Sun hasn't the right to "give away." He specifically listed Kodak as one example because Solaris 9 includes code that Kodak wrote and licensed to Sun -- it had something to do with color matching or something like that.
I guess they could GPL Solaris minus the third-party proprietary code, whatever it may be, but then you're not getting the real Solaris anymore.
Novell ran into this problem when they bought the rights to the UNIX SVR4 source. There was some talk at the time of making it GPL, but there were so many agreements with vendors like Intel and Sun that prohibited opening up the code that it was impossible to accomplish.
Sun should have opened up Solaris years ago, if it were possible. Then people could have manipulated the source according to their needs and Sun would have sold more hardware as a result. Solaris adds value to Sun hardware -- that's its sole purpose -- and Sun missed the chance to really capitalize on that.
-JemRe:Why doesn't Unix die? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it works.
Reunification (Score:5, Insightful)
We use AIX (AIX Isn't uniX) at work, but Big Blue keeps making noises about replacing it with Linux.
Too many flavors.