Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Sun Considering GPL For OpenSolaris

Posted by kdawson on Mon Nov 13, 2006 05:31 PM
from the it's-spreading dept.
Sun Microsystems Java Programming
narramissic writes, "At an event today to formally open-source Java, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and CEO, and Rich Green, the company's senior VP of software had an exchange in which Schwartz put Green on the spot about using GPL for OpenSolaris: 'Are you averse to changing the license, Rich Green?' Schwartz asked. 'Certainly not,' Green responded, prompting the Sun CEO to fire back in a half-joking manner: 'Will you GPL Solaris, Mr. Green?' 'We will take a close look at it,' Green said, adding that it was possible that the familiarity and comfort level many developers have with the GPL may result in Sun adopting it for OpenSolaris." Another note about Sun's decision to use the GPL for Java comes from reader squiggleslash, who writes: "According to Jonathan Schwartz, the decision of Novell and Microsoft to '(suggest) that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid' is what prompted Sun to finally come down on using the GPL for Java. So I guess every cloud has a silver lining."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Sun Considering GPL For OpenSolaris 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Money Pressure (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SpaceLifeForm (228190) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:34PM (#16830312)
    Remember, SUN makes money on hardware.
    Novell and Microsoft do not.
    • Remember, SUN makes money on hardware.
      Novell and Microsoft do not.

      Yep. Microsoft doesn't make [xbox.com] any [microsoft.com] money [microsoft.com] from hardware sales [zunescene.com] at all. No siree. Not a dime. And Novell never made anything from hardware sales either [everything2.com].

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by DAldredge (2353)
        Other than their keyboard and mouse operations all Microsoft hardware operations operate in the red.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by ak3ldama (554026)
              You have to read between some of the lines here. Schwartz has said (i'm not sure if it was his blog or some videos they put up recently) that through open sourcing Solaris, they have opened the doors for more potential customers. He says they are now seeing licenses purchased for boxes that came from IBM, HP, Dell etc. My view is that these customers would have been too scared to go with Solaris unless they open sourced it, because in the past Sun had abandoned Solaris on x86.
      • They lose money on the majority of their hardware businesses.

        I think the only thing they make money on is Windows and Office and mice and keyboards.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Chosen Reject (842143)
        You would have done better by never mentioning the Xbox, which has put MS over $4 billion in the red. I have no numbers to back my next statement up, but I am guessing they have not sold enough keyboards to make up for that amount.

        Also, the Zune has not yet made a dime for MS, and I've seen rumors that it is also being sold at a loss.

        In addition, Novell has not sold hardware for a long time. In fact, they haven't done it since they became a profitable software company.

    • Which *version* of the GPL (Score:5, Informative)

      by YA_Python_dev (885173) on Monday November 13 2006, @06:23PM (#16831032) Journal

      More interesting than this, IMHO, is to note that for Java they choose to use the "GNU GPL v2 only" (plus Classpath exception) license, not the more common "GPL v2 or any later version".

      This is what the Java FAQ says about it:

      Q: What about GPL v3? Have you considered using that license?
      A: While Sun has been working with the Free Software Foundation as an active participant in the development and review of the GPL v3 license, this license is not yet complete. It is Sun's strong desire to complete the open sourcing of its Java technology implementations in a timely manner, so we made the decision to use an existing, established license paradigm rather than wait for GPL v3 to be completed. Using GPL v2 does not indicate anything negative about GPL v3. Sun continues to be very actively and positively involved in this new license's development.

      And, from this InfoQ article [infoq.com] about the GPLed Java:

      GPLv3 was not chosen since it is not finished yet, but when asked if Sun will move to GPLv3 an official said "at this point we don't know what the final license will be."

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by wikinerd (809585)
        This GPLv2-only licensing may create some practical problems in the future, but it is sensible from a business point of view, and I can certainly understand it. It's better to have their code in GPLv2 rather than not have it at all. We were given a gift, so let's not whine for a while.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Kjella (173770)
        It's not really that big a deal when a company decides to use GPLv2 only for a big product. That basicly means "GPLv3 isn't out yet, we'll consider it when it is." They have the power to relicense Java to GPLv3 with the stroke of a pen. I guess it still remains to be seen how they'll allow contributions, but it needn't be a problem in the future either.

        That is a sane position for a company. The trouble comes when you need to relicense hundreds if not thousands of small contributions, many of which you can't

  • That would be awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RLiegh (247921) * on Monday November 13 2006, @05:35PM (#16830318) Homepage Journal
    Sorry for the fanboyish response, but I think releaseing various parts of Open Solaris under the GNU license would lead to some great developments. As I understand it, that would enable a lot of features of the Solaris kernel to be imported into Linux and vice-versa.

    Of course, there'd be a problem with that whole "gnu's NOT unix" thing... ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)
      On the other hand, the CDDL is a Free Software license (according to the FSF and the OSI), and is not Copyleft (or 'viral' if you prefer), so I would consider it to be more interesting than the GPL. For everything I've tried, my Solaris box is nicer than any Linux machine I've used (although I really don't like the Solaris userland), so I don't really see what Solaris would gain.

      I think Sun made a very clever choice with the CDDL for Solaris. It's Free, and the Linux guys can't just take the best bits

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by RLiegh (247921) *
        >so I don't really see what Solaris would gain.
        Device drivers
        • The driver models used Linux and Solaris are sufficiently different that a port from one to the other is non-trivial. You could use the Linux driver as reference for writing a Solaris driver, but that's about it, and you can do that already (the *BSD guys already do that when Linux gets support first).

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by morgan_greywolf (835522)

      Sorry for the fanboyish response, but I think releaseing various parts of Open Solaris under the GNU license would lead to some great developments. As I understand it, that would enable a lot of features of the Solaris kernel to be imported into Linux and vice-versa.

      And I'm sure that there wouldn't be any little companies from Utah [sco.com] that wouldn't just LOVE to see that Unix code REALLY get imported into the Linux kernel.

      Where's those guys with their "itsatrap" tags when you need them?

    • If it were released under the GPL, it could be imported into the Linux kernel.

      I think this is awesome.

      I can't decide whether Sun has balls of spent Uranium or if they're just really disparate. Possibly both. But I really like this, and I hope their services and hardware businesses benefit accordingly.

      • Re:ZFS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EvilRyry (1025309) on Monday November 13 2006, @06:29PM (#16831132) Journal
        ZFS has some really awesome features. Pooling, snapshots (no, not quite like LVM), RAID-Z, and native compression and soon encryption.

        I'd love to see all this in Linux but I'm thinking even if it were GPLed there would be a lot of work to do to port it. And of course after its ported, the Linux devs would probably make a big stink about accepting it using lines like "a file system should only put files on a block device!" ZFS however is a different approach to storing files and in many ways much better.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by volsung (378)

              Yeah, I've been playing with Nexenta [gnusolaris.org] and was pretty impressed by the layout (and ZFS of course), but had a rough time figuring out what hardware was detected, how drivers are loaded, and so on.

              As for the Linux distros, I had to start thinking about them as branches in a family tree, rather than as one OS. There is the Debian lineage, the RedHat/Fedora lineage, the Gentoo lineage, ....

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drsmithy (35869)

        I can't decide whether Sun has balls of spent Uranium or if they're just really disparate. Possibly both. But I really like this, and I hope their services and hardware businesses benefit accordingly.

        Sun makes the vast bulk of their money from hardware sales and support. They have little (if anything) to lose from GPLing Solaris.

        Contrast this to, say, Microsoft, who makes most of their money from software sales. Clearly, GPLing their software would be financial suicide.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by johansalk (818687)
      No it won't, for the simple reason that Linus is "a bastard, and proud of it!". Just google "linus" and "solaris" and see how dismissive he is of it, calling it "a joke", just like he's been dismissive of the BSDs.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LizardKing (5245)

        Just google "linus" and "solaris" and see how dismissive he is of it, calling it "a joke", just like he's been dismissive of the BSDs.

        Which probably explains why it's taken Linux so long to start resembling the Solaris kernel in terms of architecture. Linux was a poor second to the BSD's in the early to mid 1990's because it was largely written by hobbyists who didn't have the resources or knowledge that had been fed into Unix over 20 odd years. Until 2.6, Linux was a poor second to Solaris because of L

  • Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:39PM (#16830378)

    This could be a bigger boon than a lot of people realize. The licensing differences between Solaris and Linux are one of several factors slowing them from adopting ideas and code from one another. OpenSolaris users could benefit from ease of importing more cutting edge features from Linux. Linux could benefit by having access to some of the cleaner implementation ideas from Solaris. I've felt for some time that much of what holds linux back is the unwillingness to adopt newer and better features out of a fear that a given distribution will be less compatible with others and because Linux is trying to wear many hats. Too many decisions are made to benefit its use as a server or make it easier to use on a portable, while leaving it behind others for a workstation.

    I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0racle (667029)
      And in the end one of them dies because they're exactly the same thing. I really don't see what the point of GPLing OpenSolaris would be.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dunstan (97493)
        As a long term Solairs SA, I can assure you that they're nothing like the same thing. While the OpenSolaris and Solaris Express releases are fluid, the GA release (at present, Solaris 10) is not. Sure, new functionality is added during the life of a major Solaris version (most recently, ZFS was added), but the existing published kernel API will not change. This means that device drivers and other software which links into the kernel (e.g. storage software) will continue to work.

        This is not a minor issue. Th

    • Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jericho4.0 (565125) on Monday November 13 2006, @06:18PM (#16830954)
      "OpenSolaris users could benefit from ease of importing more cutting edge features from Linux."

      Linux would get DTrace, ZFS, etc. Those techs are about as cutting edge as it gets. What would Solaris get?

  • Great, but will it change anything? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_humeister (922869) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:39PM (#16830380)
    It certainly removes one barrier. But look at Darwin. It's open source, but who else but a handful of people outside of Apple are working on it? So the point is not to knock the potential change. The point is will developers flock to Solaris as a result of this? Slowly but surely or not fast enough?

    • More cool stuff in Solaris? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot@kadin.xoxy@net> on Monday November 13 2006, @05:52PM (#16830576) Homepage Journal
      This is just my understanding, but Darwin doesn't have nearly as many 'interesting' features that don't already exist in Linux. There is some neat Solaris-only stuff that people have wanted to bring into Linux for a while, but have not been able to because of licensing problems, and the work it would take to clean-room it.

      The thing that I always hear talk about is dtrace (currently CDL, and tightly integrated with the Solaris kernel), but looking at the WP article [wikipedia.org] on it, apparently it's been partially brought over to BSD and OS X. Then there are also containers and that "self-healing" fault-isolation system, which I don't pretend to understand.

      Perhaps there are just as many cool, compelling features in Darwin that aren't talked about, and deserve being shared with Linux and other OSes ... but I've definitely not heard as much 'buzz' about them as you hear about some particular features of Solaris that are supposedly very neat.
      • There's nothing interesting in darwin. Anything neato that MacOSX does is done in a service, not in the kernel. Darwin's kernel is a combination of Mach and BSD called XNU. Mach is a pretty lame microkernel, as microkernels go... which is why the hurd is going from mach to L4. Of course, some would say the hurd is pretty lame, and that it deserves mach, but that's another conversation. The point is that there's no compelling reason to do anything with it, and many reasons not to touch it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by davecb (6526) *

      Actually, quite a number of folks who are my consulting customers use Darwin (really BSD) sources as the "reference copies" of programs they're adapting for their own use.

      This is in part because of the good quality of the code, and the company which stands behind it. In part it is because of the larger BSD community who stands semi-invisibly behind Apple... some customers really understand the strength of community. And finally, for the license-paranoid, in part this is because of the use of the very old

  • Yeah sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Serapth (643581) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:40PM (#16830394)
    According to Jonathan Schwartz, the decision of Novell and Microsoft to '(suggest) that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid' is what prompted Sun to finally come down on using the GPL for Java. So I guess every cloud has a silver lining. If you believe that, want to buy some old dot com stocks I traded for some swamp land a few years back? Honest, ill give you a great deal!

    A company the size of Sun does not move that quickly, especially so far as legal matters go. Besides, there has been talk of GPLing Java before Christmas for months.

    Sun saw a chance to take a shot at Microsoft/Novell and they took it. Can't say I fault them, but its fairly obviously a lie.

    • Re:Yeah sure... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DragonWriter (970822) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:50PM (#16830534)
      A company the size of Sun does not move that quickly, especially so far as legal matters go. Besides, there has been talk of GPLing Java before Christmas for months.


      There's been talk of open sourcing it by Christmas, and reports that it might be under the GPL (and reports that it might be under a different license.)

      That does not prove, however, that the Novell/MS deal didn't prompt the final decision for Sun. Certainly, they'd already done the analysis and had a pretty good idea of the pluses and minuses of the various options. But certainly the Novell/MS deal remixed those slightly, and might have tipped things in the GPL.

  • To me this sounds like a simple off-hand comment and unlikely to happen.

    That said, can someone who is more familiar with the whole thing tell me: did has opening Solaris had much of an effect at all in any way? Has it stopped market share loss? Increased market share? Increased software availability? Has anything really changed?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by anlprb (130123)
      Depends on what you mean by anything. If you mean has there been a large takeup of drivers or features, no. But that does not have to do with the license. It has more to do with the snail's pace that Sun's development process follows. The whole CAB thing is interesting, but you cannot get a feature into OpenSolaris without it being sponsored by a Sun employee. It is still and if Sun has anything to do with it, continue to be, a very cathedral approach to things. Now, it does slow down development whic
  • Wow, if that ever happened, wouldn't it be ironic - I can imagine a future where linux has been effectively preempted by the mega corporations, while Solaris is fully GPL'd and becomes the default first choice for the typical savvy unix admin.

    In any case, I'll be getting to know Solaris 10 better in the coming months, but the GPL would just put it over the top.

  • SUN GPL'ing OpenSolaris? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh lordy, then what's the RMS fan club going to bitch about?
  • I support Sun GPLing Java and possible OpenSolaris. If I ever buy a rack server, I will make sure it's a Sun model.

  • Yeah Right (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tharkban (877186) on Monday November 13 2006, @07:20PM (#16831732) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, Right....I bet they'll GPL java before they allow that to happen. :)

    • Re:Another dumb move (Score:5, Informative)

      by xzvf (924443) on Monday November 13 2006, @05:55PM (#16830626)
      Sun does two things well. Rock solid hardware and excellent service. GPLing Solaris and Java allows them to limit resources spend on software development. In addition, GPL compatible Solaris and Linux will blur the lines between the OS as they adopt each other's best features. Linux and Solaris might become binary compatible. Sun can focus on selling hardware and services.

      • Re:Another dumb move (Score:4, Insightful)

        by PCM2 (4486) on Monday November 13 2006, @06:32PM (#16831180) Homepage
        Sun does two things well. Rock solid hardware and excellent service.

        Not to mention the fact that, although it is true that Sun is gradually open sourcing all of its software, most of what Sun makes it enterprise software. What company is really going to use Sun's RFID software to run a warehouse floor, or use Sun's identity management software to manage authentication and access control for an entire enterprise, and not get a support contract from Sun? Open sourcing this type of stuff probably doesn't impact Sun's sales negatively one iota. Open sourcing Java may be riskier, but I'm curious to see how it really pans out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi (14640)
      Where are they going to make money? Bake sales?


      I'd imagine from selling computers, the same as they've always done. I don't think OpenSolaris is a profit center for them now, so GPL'ing it shouldn't cost them any profits (at least, not directly).


      GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it.


      Ever hear of an a little OS called Linux? It's done fairly well under the GPL...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Shaman (1148)
      Earth to NineNine: they haven't charged for Solaris or Java all along. They are a services and hardware company. If Solaris technologies move to Linux, then Sun has only to be sure that their hardware is the best supported Linux product to make a go of it. This is smart, good business and it's about time Sun figured that out. OpenSolaris won't be closed because for now it's got a lead on SPARC hardware as well as some features which are unique to Sun but over time it is obvious to all but the most cluel

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by RAMMS+EIN (578166)
      Surely you're toking, mister Nineman.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Mr. Hankey (95668)
                The point here is that you can't make money selling GPLed software, without tying it to some other product.

                The dual license isn't another product. It's another set of terms through which another entity can distribute copies of your product, presumably with a different set of restrictions.

                What you have to lose from the GPL is the likelihood of ever selling your software. What you have to gain is the relatively remote possibility that other people will be nice enough to improve your product for free.

                You hav
    • ``Also though it is slightly off-topic I also think that Java under GPL would not benefit as much because the model of contribution is really not as easily understood as the OS world.''

      With all the complaints about the Java community process being slow and bureaucratic, and the free Java implementations lagging behind in features, I think having a good, open source Java implementation is a Good Thing in it's own right.

      Also, I don't know what you mean by the model of contribution for Java not being as easily

    • Re:GPL DTrace for teh win! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by [tsa] (183282) on Monday November 13 2006, @07:34PM (#16831854)
      Hm...

      When you can get an open-sourced carrier-grade OS like (Open)Solaris at no cost,
      why still Linux?

      OpenSolaris surely currently lacks a lot of (x86) hardware support, no drivers
      for widespread hardware, etc. - but as more and more users actively use and
      support OpenSolaris, more and more vendors will provide those.

      What I don't like about Linux - Linux (and a lot of Linux software), that is - is
      the neverending story of changing APIs - use something, update something else - Oops.

      I have a Linux system here, with at least three different versions of, e.g., BerkeleyDB.
      1.85 compat, 3.something, 4.idontknow. API changes, incompatibilities, you name it.

      Ever tried to compile popular Linux software on another Un*x? Whenever I encounter some
      piece of GPL-licensed software, I can almost guarantee it won't compile on Solaris, Tru64, .. - without spending hours for #ifdef'ing and patching the source.

      You want DTrace? Zones? Use Solaris. Is there any technical reason (no politics, please) where
      using Linux actually offers any benefit?

      (Yes, "smc" and all those java-based admin utilities suck. But commandline-based alternatives
      do exist.)

      This is not a flamebait. Serious answers will be appreciated.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by adrianmonk (890071)

      Sun is in trouble, and according to FSF Lawyer Eben Moglen's (wild) allegations in his talk at a recent Free Software Foundation Associate Members [fsf.org]hip meeting, they previously (2005?) took a bribe from Microsoft to keep OpenSolaris incompatible with the GPL

      Wow, I would really like to see some evidence of that. As it stands, it's just an absurd claim with no support. Having (over a period of 15+ years) used Sun equipment and software, and having worked with the company as a customer, and having

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Khopesh (112447)

        Wow, I would really like to see some evidence of that. As it stands, it's just an absurd claim with no support.

        I put the "wild" preface there for a reason. The FSF is a great organization, but sometimes they are a bit nutty. Eben has some heavy insight into things from a legal and IBM perspective, and is tied directly to important figures in these matters. He likely heard a rumor or two and pieced it together as something far larger than it was. I have no sources other than what I heard at that meetin

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.