Sun Looks To GPL3 For Java, Solaris

daria42 writes "Sun is leaning toward changing the license for Java and Solaris to the GNU GPL version 3. The article has some insightful comments from Sun boss Jonathan Schwartz. '"Will we GPL Solaris? We want to ensure we can interact with the GPL community and the Mozilla community and the BSD community," he says.'"

Re:Has this any implications for the Linux kernel?

[kripkenstein]

I'd be interested to see if this might result in things like zfs being ported natively to the Linux kernel (rather than the current FUSE-based solution).

Well, based on TFA, that won't happen: :

Using GPLv3 for Solaris likely would preclude Linux programmers from using Solaris software, and vice-versa. That would make it difficult for Solaris to benefit from hardware support built into Linux, or for Linux to benefit from performance tools built into Solaris.

And indeed, since Linux will stay GPL2, it can't utilize code from OpenSolaris, which will be (perhaps) GPL3. However, TFA is wrong about the other direction. Some 40% or so of Linux source code is licensed under "GPL2 or above", which means that OpenSolaris could use it, as I understand the issue.

Re:Interesting point

[jrumney]

The LGPL covers situations like file formats or codecs that you want become standard even in proprietary software. Using BSD for such a case allows unscrupulous companies to create their own incompatible Vorbis+ codec to lock users into using their own software. LGPL at least ensures that if they use your code to do this, they have to provide the source so that other implementations can provide compatibility.