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Unix Operating Systems Software Sun Microsystems

Solaris 10 to be Open Source 432

Posted by CmdrTaco from the here's-hoping-people dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It looks as though Sun is going to open source their new Solaris 10 operating system. It seems to include eveything except some device drivers. They plan to model the Darwin and Fedora projects. Sounds very interesting."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Solaris 10 to be Open Source More

Solaris 10 to be Open Source

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  • Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:49AM (#10245344) Homepage Journal
    Can anyone explain why someone might choose to use Solaris over Linux other than for legacy reasons?

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Perhaps if you needed support for 32-core chips [slashdot.org]?

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Negatyfus ( 602326 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:55AM (#10245407) Journal
        Won't many of the features that make Solaris great be ported to Linux before you can say "Holy GPL, Batman!" Or did I misunderstand Sun trying to model the Darwin/Fedora way?
        • The article doesn't specify a license.

          I suspect they're just going to let you see the code, but not necessarily copy IP from it.

        • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by dunstan ( 97493 ) <dvavasour@i e e . o rg> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:21AM (#10245638) Homepage
          There's more to implementing stuff in your kernel than just lifing a bit of source code from elsewhere.

          The way the Solaris kernel is so scaleable across over 100 processors is not some clever hack, it's taken years of refinement of the kernel. I'm not a kernel hacker, but you won't just be able to lift bits of Solaris kernel code and drop them into a Linux kernel.

          What I would expect to see fairly quickly is a "GNU/Solaris" distribution, where (as many of us have been doing for years) you get a Solaris kernel and basic libraries, and then put a GNU based set of tools on top of it. Couple this with the Niagara processors and you have an awesome edge appliance.

          • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by secolactico ( 519805 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:29AM (#10245709) Journal
            What I would expect to see fairly quickly is a "GNU/Solaris" distribution, where (as many of us have been doing for years) you get a Solaris kernel and basic libraries, and then put a GNU based set of tools on top of it.

            Solaris is a sweet OS, but what I which the most is something like the FreeBSD port tree to be done for solaris. Sun already has niftly package tools, but a port collection would take care of dependencies and make updating easier.

          • GNU/SunOS, not Solaris (Score:5, Interesting)

            by DeadVulcan ( 182139 ) <dead.vulcan@nOspam.pobox.com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:39AM (#10245812)

            If we're going to get pedantic, then it should be "GNU/SunOS," not "Solaris." To put it into Linux terms, Solaris is the distribution that's built on the SunOS kernel, just as Mandrake (for instance) is a distro that's built on the Linux kernel.

          • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by joib ( 70841 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:04AM (#10246070)

            The way the Solaris kernel is so scaleable across over 100 processors is not some clever hack, it's taken years of refinement of the kernel.

            Well, I'd guess that Linux with the various SGI patches that run on the SGI 512 CPU systems aren't "some clever hack" either, for that matter if that's what you're trying to imply. It's the result of years of work SGI put into making IRIX scale that has been ported to Linux.
            • That said, sgi propack linux will not scale to 512 CPUs on a general purpose oracle/SAP workload. Those beasts run because the apps are highly tuned to the environment. Those are distributed compute apps that spend a lot of time in the application and threading library, and very little code in the operating system.

              Linux, especially 2.6, has much better thread granularity than 2.2 did, but it's not as parallel as irix or solaris.

              Solaris and irix both evolved slowly to run on those huge boxes. First you thr

              • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

                by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @12:23PM (#10247042) Homepage
                ANY application that scales to 100 cpus will be highly tuned to the environment. You don't code an app for 2 or 4 cpus and have it magically scale to 40 or 80.

                Now if you are talking about applications that depend on an underlying application server then things get even trickier. First, the appserver needs to be able to scale to the given number of cpus. THEN, the application needs to be written to scale to that level.

                Oracle didn't scale on Sun E10Ks period.

                It has problems scaling on 15K's as well.

                This is likely why Oracle is pushing clustering now. Solving n smaller problems is probably easier than solving one really monsterous one.

                An Oracle database can already run quite effectively on Linux across 120-240 cpus. Those cpus just won't all be in the same chassis.

                • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

                  by DragonWyatt ( 62035 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:12PM (#10252651) Homepage
                  Sorry sir, but your post was a crock of crap. Had to be said.

                  There's this thing called "fork and exec" which has been out for awhile, which very easily enables an application to scale to N CPUs. Apache for example, will nicely scale to lots of CPUs assuming the underlying OS efficiently does copy-on-write, thread/process management, etc. Solaris does.

                  If you believe "Oracle didn't scale on Sun E10Ks period", check out the site called eBay. It's the only way they are able to handle the massive workload...

                  Oracle is pushing clustering now for the reason a previous poster gave- Cheaper hardware means more $$ for licensing, with a static budget.

                  Lastly your claim about Oracle scaling effectively across 120-240 Linux CPUs appals me. Are you claiming that RAC can be deployed to 30-60 quad-CPU boxes? 15-30 8-CPU boxes? You may be interested to know that 9i RAC degrades in performance beyond 3 nodes- a 3 node cluster performs better than a 4 node cluster. Oracle themselves tout RAC more as an "accessibility" technology that removes single points of failure, rather than a scalability approach. Heck, there are even companies [polyserve.com] that sell third-party tools [polyserve.com] to make RAC more scalable...

                  In conclusion, I do not believe you have any clue with regards to the subjects you are addressing in your post.

            • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

              by justins ( 80659 )

              Well, I'd guess that Linux with the various SGI patches that run on the SGI 512 CPU systems aren't "some clever hack" either, for that matter if that's what you're trying to imply.

              I imagine the above poster only meant to imply that there won't be any quickie code transplants from Solaris to Linux, regardless of the license. Your example is also an instance of this: you can be sure that SGI's Linux changes to run on 512 CPU machines aren't transplants of IRIX code. =Not only because it's a totally differen

          • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by flaming-opus ( 8186 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @12:15PM (#10246937)
            Absolutely. The general methods for creating a scalable OS have been known to the linux kernel folk for a long time. It's just a lot of work, and requires some difficult design choices. Multiprocessor scalability usually comes at the expense of single cpu performance.

          • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

            by jedidiah ( 1196 )
            > The way the Solaris kernel is so scaleable across
            > over 100 processors is not some clever hack, it's
            > taken years of refinement of the kernel. I'm not a
            > kernel hacker, but you won't just be able to lift

            You don't keep up with the news either. SGI has already augmented the Linux kernel to allow it to scale as much as Solaris can, more actually.

            This clearly shows that the Linux kernel is now in the condition where enterprise grade features can be dropped into it nullifying any competitive adva
        • " Won't many of the features that make Solaris great be ported to Linux before you can say "Holy GPL, Batman!""

          It works the other way too, now that Solaris is going open source, and if its GPL say, then Solaris can port things from Linux and the rest. I suspect Sun thinks it will get a lot of developers to this for free for them ;).

          The problem is that Sun is late to the party, yet again, and is playing catch up. I think they waited too long but what choice do they have...

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:53AM (#10245380)
      Major commercial programs like Oracle, DB2, WebSphere MQ are supported on Solaris/sparc, but not Linux/sparc.

      If you've got sparc hardware, x86 stuff is a downgrade path you don't want to follow.

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by greed ( 112493 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:56AM (#10245974)
        If you've got sparc hardware, x86 stuff is a downgrade path you don't want to follow.

        Depends a lot on what you're doing. SPARC might be OK at high-throughput jobs, but IA32 and PowerPC just smash it to little bits for things that are less sequential.

        Also, Solaris' local filesystem (UFS) gets the pants beat off it by EXT3 (and, to a lesser extent, AIX JFS2). Even if you turn on journalling, which makes for a nice speed boost on Solaris 8 and up.

        In fact, for local file I/O, you're better with Solaris on IA32 than Solaris on SPARC.

        I'm not actually sure what SPARC hardware is good for these days. Every time I benchmark something, it loses. Granted, our best SPARC machine is an 8-way UltraSPARC-III 1.2 GHz. So maybe a faster SPARC chip might keep up with PowerPC and Intel a little better.

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Informative)

        by thomasa ( 17495 )
        QUOTE
        If you've got sparc hardware, x86 stuff is a downgrade path you don't want to follow.
        UNQUOTE

        Unless you want to talk about cost. If your software only runs on Solaris and your customers are balking on buying because of the high cost of Sun servers, you certainly want to investigate porting to linux.

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sneezinglion ( 771733 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:53AM (#10245389)
      Well let me see: 1. Familiarity. I have used solaris much much more often than linux in my work. 2. Maturity. Solaris is a very mature product with a long history and alot of tech support on the web. 3. It looks better on your resume if you say you know solaris, then it does if you say Linux....at least where I work it does. 4. Stability. Linux is stable yes, but stable like a wine glass, not stable like a plate.

      • Random thoughts about wineglass v plate stability (Score:5, Funny)

        by Mr_Dyqik ( 156524 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @12:02PM (#10246794)
        A wine glass has three distinguishable stable states (upright, upside down and on its side), and a plate only has two (upright and upside down).

        It takes a lot more effort to get an upside down plate the right way up, than it does to get a wine glass on its side the right way up.

        Does this mean it's much easier to get a titsup linux box up and working again than a titsup Solaris box?

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:2, Informative)

      by jsoderba ( 105512 )

      Scalability, stability are the main reasons. There are also some cool features like DTrace that aren't available in Linux.

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:58AM (#10245443)
      Err, that's easy:

      It's faster (approx. 30% : Sun to challenge Linux to a benchmarking duel shortly with Solaris 10)
      It has N1 Grid Containers
      At $99 It's cheaper than any enterprise Linux distro.
      It scales better.
      *Even* More secure than Linux
      It's standard
      Solaris 10 runs RH Linux apps efficiently
      etc. etc. etc.

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by d_force ( 249909 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:24AM (#10245659)
        *Even* More secure than Linux

        *Whew*.. I'm glad you cleared that up. Because, for the life of me, I couldn't find any adequate metric that defines security using an agreed, quantitative metric within the Information Security industry.

        Oh wait, that's right, there is none.

        Shoo! Go back to marketing.

        -- dforce

        • ROFL (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          *Whew*.. I'm glad you cleared that up. Because, for the life of me, I couldn't find any adequate metric that defines security using an agreed, quantitative metric within the Information Security industry.

          Oh wait, that's right, there is none.

          Shoo! Go back to marketing.

          Guess what stood before that, as it was modded up as insightful.

          a) Linux is more secure than Windows
          b) Solaris is more secure than Linux

          If it had been a), this would be at -1,troll or -1, flamebait. But I guess it got +2, Irrational pro-L

        • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Informative)

          by cowbutt ( 21077 )
          Because, for the life of me, I couldn't find any adequate metric that defines security using an agreed, quantitative metric within the Information Security industry.

          Oh wait, that's right, there is none.

          I'd say that the time of recess between the general community being aware of a vulnerability and a workable patch being available is a pretty good measure. But, according to this article [archive.org], In 1999, Red Hat's "at risk" time was half that of Sun's (presumably then-current versions of Solaris), and a third o

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by caluml ( 551744 )
        *Even* More secure than Linux

        I don't know. Linux has iptables, PaX, Grsec, Selinux, etc. I still see Sun boxes around without SSH on them - either client or server.

        If I had to choose between a Solaris install, or a Linux install, on it's own, with a live IP address, I'd choose Linux every time.
        If I had to choose a box to give shells out on, I'd choose Linux.
        In fact, I can't think of anything that I would choose Solaris for.

        But then again, I'm a lot better with Linux.

        • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Informative)

          by secolactico ( 519805 ) * on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:38AM (#10245807) Journal
          If I had to choose between a Solaris install, or a Linux install, on it's own, with a live IP address, I'd choose Linux every time

          A Solaris install on the Internet on its own would probably get rooted before the hour ran out. At least it would if you were to choose a full install.

          I use solaris on most of my servers, but before entering production, you have to patch the hell out of it (last time I checked, the Solaris 8 patch cluster was like 50MB), install ssh, if needed, and close a bunch of services that are activated by default *and* reactivated upon patch application.

          I usually play it safe and install ipfilter, just in case.

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Allen Zadr ( 767458 ) * <Allen.Zadr@g m a i l . com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:00AM (#10245453) Journal
      For most of the world... It's not one or the other, it's both. Solaris is a strong OS, despite losing some market share in the last 8 years. Open Source projects benefit from being listed on the solarisfreeware web site. As an admin I've always had a tendancy to use and support whatever project has the largest cross-platform capability.

      Well, how better to support a Solaris solution for your OSS project than to _run_ Solaris. More importantly, the issues in Solaris that have long dogged OSS projects (can only be compiled with gcc - must use OSS version of malloc, etc) can be found and fixed by debugging and recompiling now-open-sourced system libraries.

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cyngus ( 753668 )
      Solaris has the best threading model and threading support that I've seen in what I'll call a mainstream operating system. The entire system was designed really well, why? Because these guys built it to make a profit. Not to take a shot at Linux, but dinner is a much better incentive to make something that runs well (and thus sells well) than [kernel] hacker pride. At the end of the day Linux is built on surplus time and energy. Solaris was built by people whose job and living depended on making good s

      • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by avdp ( 22065 ) *
        Your theory has several gaping holes. Here are two of them:

        1. Microsoft hires a whole lot of people "whose and job and living depended on making good software" yet they produce mediocre software at best

        2. Linux is getting worked on by a whole lot of people "whose and job and living depended on making good software". In fact, right about every major kernel "hacker" is getting paid to do it these days (Linus included).

        The bottom line: getting paid to do something is complete unrelated to quality. At

    • Re:Solaris Vs Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ch_Omega ( 532549 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:19AM (#10245616) Journal
      Because I (probably) signed up for something at a conferance sometime in the ninethies, Sun sent me a Solaris 7 package, which i tried out just for fun, and ended up using almost as much as my Linux and Windows boxes, because I just liked the feel and consistency of the whole thing.
    • Cause your manager plays golf with a Sun manager ?

      And well, I know quite a lot of large telecom systems that run on
      Solaris, and only Solaris.
  • How many had seen this coming for a while?

  • Too little too late? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jarich ( 733129 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:51AM (#10245363) Homepage Journal
    Is this a desparate move of a company trying to regain relevance or a brilliant shrewd move?

  • Only good news, if it's really open (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chip Salzenberg ( 1124 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:51AM (#10245368) Homepage
    If it's truly an open source license, this is only good news--Linux and/or the BSDs will be able to use the best bits. If it's just a "shared source" head-fake like Microsoft has tried to pull with some of their stuff, well, then Sun will solidify their position as Grand Moff Tarkin to Microsoft's Vader.

  • Open Source, AMD Processors...? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nos. ( 179609 ) <andrewNO@SPAMthekerrs.ca> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:52AM (#10245371) Homepage
    What does SUN do anymore? If they're open sourcing Solaris, obviously they're looking to get the community involved in developing it. They're also starting to ship some x86 servers (Opteron and Xeon), so are we eventually going to lose the Sparc processors as well? What does that leave Sun with? Java?

    • Re:Open Source, AMD Processors...? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cmaxx ( 7796 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:22AM (#10245645)
      They do everything they used to do.

      Just cos they're taking advantage of what people want now (Linux, Opteron, Open Source) doesn't mean they're not also working on stuff that's cool that we don't know that we want yet, or even stuff that's not cool but is still worthy.

      This is where Sun, IBM, SGI, even HP, do more for us than Dell and Microsoft. Though at least, and I hate myself for saying this, Microsoft are trying.

      Cleary being first or having the best idea ever are no guarantees of esteem or profit - often the opposite, so kudos to Sun for slugging it out and continuing to bet on innovation. Ditto to IBM and AMD.

  • Except device Drivers... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaptRespect ( 586610 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:53AM (#10245379)
    "It seems to include eveything except some device drivers."

    So like linux it will work great if you could only find the drivers for your printer.

  • Can they do this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AnuradhaRatnaweera ( 757812 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:54AM (#10245392) Homepage
    Unlike Linux, Solaris is a derivative of UNIX. I am sure SCO will be keenly looking forward to the day when Solaris is open source. ;-)

    • Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dankrabach ( 793426 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:04AM (#10245484)
      Exactly what I am wondering. Solaris is a descendent from the ATT/System V branch of the UNIX(tm) tree, not the BSD branch. They license the UNIX, not own the copyrights. Wouldn't they need permission from SCO (or Novell? ) and possibly a whole bunch of other people/corps/entities to really Open Source this stuff? Feels like heat, still looks dark.......

      • Re:Can they do this? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JollyFinn ( 267972 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:24AM (#10246257)
        Hey didn't sun gave SCO couple of million bucks for something earlier...

        So this is something sun probably asked as a part of the deal... And SCO migh have asked them to be quiet for this for certain period of time. And this announcement might have been planned a LONG time ago...

    • Re:Can they do this? (Score:3, Informative)

      by obdulio ( 410122 )
      Sun bought an special license from SCO, that lets them do whatever they want.

  • I should have some patches ready soon after I see the source...

  • Don't get tainted (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:54AM (#10245402)
    Remember, if you hack on Linux (or plan to), you best not review the code.

  • Unix(tm) code? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martin ( 1336 ) <maxsec.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:55AM (#10245417) Journal
    I wonder how they'll handle the Unix(TM) code in there and all the various other contributed stuff from Samsung etc.

    I guess it's easier if they forget about CDE/X11 etc but it will be interesting to see what open source licence they use and how they handle 'other peoples' code in SOlaris 10.

    Of course they could have removed all the Sys V R5.4 code, but without doing this unsing clean room conditions SCO could have a wondrful time in court.

    Just wondering??????

  • Why use Linux then? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:56AM (#10245425)
    If this is indeed true, I don't see any real need for linux anymore. If solaris is going to run all linux apps and it is going to have features like dtrace and a 128-bit file system and it runs on x86 AND it's free, I'm moving.

    • Re:Why use Linux then? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Too Much Noise ( 755847 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:36AM (#10245787) Journal
      That will depend on your hardware. If Sun will control the license tight enough (Java-style, as they seem to imply) then ports to platforms not agreed by Sun will be forever-beta at best. Look at the bickering about Solaris on IA64; and in spite of their talks, I don't really see why they would regard Solaris on Power as more than a lab experiment (it's a competing hw platform after all, and Sun is selling hardware)

      Also, there will be the issue of 'controlled innovation', Sun's way or the highway. This has good parts and bad parts, as does anything, but it will not fit everybody's teacup - just as Linux does not right now.

    • Re:Why use Linux then? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:11AM (#10246146)
      You ever used Solaris on x86?

      I found it far pickier over the hardware than Linux (it doesn't seem to like AMD based systems much) - frankly, Solaris IMO is best suited to the architecture for which it was intended.

  • Open source != GPL (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @09:57AM (#10245429)
    Open source is one thing, but I'm wondering how useful to us Sun's move really is if the code will not be put out under a GPL-like or BSD-like license

    ... lately I sense that "open-sourcing" is more an attempt of big companies to get some work done for free and get some PR at the same time, BUT with little real use to the community as GPL'ing the code would provide. Am I right?

  • What does that mean? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jacoby ( 3149 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:03AM (#10245472) Homepage Journal
    I predict that the main thing of interest in Solaris to most people is the thread model. The main thing about Irix, IIRC, was the graphics capabilities and XFS, and SGI's opened XFS up and it's now ported over.

    On the other hand, isn't that part of why they call it Slowlaris?

  • Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:04AM (#10245485) Homepage
    I'm waiting to see the license terms before I celebrate.
  • Just because it's "open source" (as opposed to "Open Source") as in "you can read the source" doesn't mean it's Free. And that may be all they do: let you read the source. If they don't use the GPL or BSD or some other well known FOSS license I doubt this will really help them all that much. If they come up with their own license (which a company as big as Sun is wont to do) it will probably be quite complicated and your average hacker won't understand it.

  • A legal open source SysV derivative? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nonmaskable ( 452595 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:07AM (#10245520)
    I wonder if Sun (who helped fund SCO's attack on Linux) has worked this out with SCO in some way that we'll only understand when the license comes out.

    Otherwise, this is in violent conflict with the bizarre SCO derivative theory.

  • Vaporware wanring (Score:5, Informative)

    by linuxislandsucks ( 461335 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:07AM (#10245521) Homepage Journal
    Last announcement about this was proven false by Sun's own CEO statments..

    This will be the saem way with this announcement..

  • So let's see here... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rincebrain ( 776480 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:11AM (#10245549) Homepage
    1) Open Source 2) ???? 3) Profit! First Microsoft, now Sun. I never thought I'd see the day I had to compare Sun to Microsoft, in terms of gimmick...but it seems that I was wrong. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, incidentally. Unfortunately, most companies are too pigheaded to realize that, while open sourcing a project costs little and can reap great benefits, there's a difference between, let's say, a proprietary crap license that doesn't allow integration with other OSS, and a BSD or GPL variant. Microsoft's stance on the GPL, for any who were unaware: "The GPL's viral nature poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization that derives its products from GPL source..." - Craig Mundie, "senior vice president of advanced strategies at Microsoft" Source [microsoft.com]

  • Contradiction of the Sun--Microsoft Agreement (Score:3, Informative)

    by NZheretic ( 23872 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:20AM (#10245630) Homepage Journal
    Sun Microsystems' latest SEC 10Q filings [sec.gov] includes a copy of the April 1st ( I kid you not! ) technical agreement made with Microsoft [sec.gov].

    The Non-disclosure terms for any protocols that can interoperate with Microsoft's Client or Server software would seem to restrict a lot of functionality from being released under an open source license by Sun..

  • Too little too late? OPENSTEP and Mac OS X nicer? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WillAdams ( 45638 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:25AM (#10245669) Homepage
    Okay, maybe I'm biased (I've used a NeXT Cube as my main system for over a decade now), but we finally got back a Sparcstation 5 here at work, and I've just finished installing OPENSTEP 4.2 on it.

    I'm looking forward to running

    - tetex (not sure which version, trying to find a version w/ otp2ocp which doesn't crash)
    - Dmitri Linde's InstantTeX and TeXView Hyper w/ hyperlink support
    - Cenon (a NeXT-era CAD/CAM program making the jump to DTP illustration on Mac OS X, OPENSTEP 4.2 and Linux running GNUstep, see http://www.cenon.info )

    and a couple of other nifty quad-architecture things, (the Lighthouse office suite) or stuff I can manage to get compiled.

    Under Solaris we used this box to run Miles 33 (a proprietary typesetting system), which I couldn't even tell was taking advantage of Display PostScript --- is there something nifty I could do with this under Solaris that I'm not seeing?

    How 'bout Linux?

    William

  • Trademark conflict on the way? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by flinxmeister ( 601654 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:26AM (#10245678) Homepage
    Sun intends to include a software addition called Janus with Solaris 10, which will enable Linux applications to run on Solaris unchanged. If Janus isn't ready for the Solaris 10 deadline, Sun will release the addition shortly after, Weinberg said.

    Isn't Janus the name of the Microsoft DRM scheme?

  • The $20,000 question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iqvoice ( 155695 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:37AM (#10245793) Homepage
    So does this mean that Sun is going to give up trying to squeeze $20,000 from me just for upgrading my 10-proc Ultra Enterprise from Solaris 7 to Solaris 10?

    Reality Check available here. [sun.com] Heh!

  • i hope SOME people just get stuff in there (Score:4, Interesting)

    by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:56AM (#10245967) Homepage
    Hopefully this means more porting user-end apps (desktop stuff) over to solaris. In my experience, it's a lot more stable than linux -- probably the only thing that compares is FreeBSD, and even that is a maybe. Combine that with a more desktop friendly software set, and it's not a bad combination. KDE, XFCE4, xmms, mplayer, etc. The Live Sun Java Desktop was just Not As Good As It Could Have Been. A desktop that functions as well as Knoppix but from Sun? That would be cool. (maybe not a moneymaker, but certainly cool).

    I would love to be able to practice more admin stuff on Solaris. With the exception of production servers -- which are not ideal "hey, i wonder what this does" testing conditions -- I don't have access to any Solaris boxes; I'd like to run it on a laptop but drivers are a fucking nightmare (yes, i know there are solaris sparc laptops like SPARCle but I don't have that kind of money to just toss around.)

    My job at a university entails working with Solaris and migrating everything that's ON solaris OFF it, over to linux or BSD or windows or "anything but solaris". Management has lost faith in SUN in general and solaris specifically, and they want it gone gone gone. This is good for me, because I get to practice doing Cool Shit with linux and FreeBSD (FreeBSD being the only distro I've tried that doesn't require setting up stupid sunlabel partitions and lots of tweaking to get right: slap the CD in, install it, tweak it a bit and then forget about it. Even my beloved Debian wasn't that easy on a sparc arch machine.) At the same time, I'd still like to get more familiar with the Solaris way of doing things, for sundry reasons (more impressive skillset, more theory and better understanding of the internal workings of the OS, etc.)

    I slapped the Sol10 beta on a single-proc netra that we found lying in a gutter begging for change, and it wasn't too bad. Of course, I haven't used it for more than 10 minutes, but that's the price you pay for having fun at work, I guess.

  • Point? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @10:58AM (#10245992)
    From what little I've seen of Solaris, it seems that it's basically a Unix-like OS based around a monolithic kernel and conforming more to the System V way than the BSD way; but up to now it has been closed source.

    The operating system on every PC I own is also a Unix-like OS based around a monolithic kernel and conforming more to the System V way than the BSD way. And it always has been, and always will be, Open Source.

    AFAICT the main difference is that Solaris has earned itself the reputation for slowness by insisting to write everything to disk before saying ready, whilst Linux never writes anything to disk until one of the following happens: (a) a process asks for more memory and RAM is full of cached disk data. (b) shutdown. But default caching policy -- which almost certainly can be changed -- is no more an adequate criterion for judging an operating system than shoes are for judging a sexual partner.

    I, for one, like to think I have some principles. I prefer manual methods over closed-source software. As it happens, I have reached a position where I can exert some influence: I instituted an almost total GNU/Linux migration in the company where I work There is only one department which is still using Windows, and that's accounts -- for reasons beyond my control, namely to be compatible with Group Head Office's legacy systems. I can't be the only idealistic young IT manager in the world. As awareness of Open Source -- and its benefits -- grows, closedness of source is becoming a criterion for rejecting a software product.

    But the real point runs much, much deeper. Sun aren't stupid.

    Closed source, however much its proponents bluster, is going to become a thing of the past soon anyway. Remember it was James Watt who put one of the nails in the coffin of Slavery. Sometimes, a technology comes along that enables, or even forces, great political change. Decompilers are going to kick off big-style any time soon, and will do for closed source what steam engines and electric motors . The problems of decompilation are, mathematically, very similar to those of shape recognition (and the US authorities are spunking their pants over systems claimed to be able to recognise a face in a crowd from a photograph taken from a different angle; it's Not Quite There Yet though). Now, I can buy something barely half the size of a DVD box that can decipher my handwriting -- and it does so using just a piddly little low-power RISC processor. Scale up the power a lot, and re-render the image ..... it's surely a matter of tick-tocks before someone has a workable decompiler together. OK, so you might not get back your variable and function names, unless the compiler left them kicking around some spare blocks at the end of the binary; but these are things we can put up with.

    Like it or not, in a few years' time, all software, to all intents and purposes, will be open source. And Sun know they're better off inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent getting pissed on.

  • I'll believe it when ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HP-UX'er ( 211124 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:08AM (#10246118)
    ... I have my hands on the install media, while reading the license it comes with. Sun says _many_ things. They rarely follow through, and when they do, it always falls short.
    • ... it will be as open source as Java is... and that is only mildly open... I do have to wonder. IfSun were to actually GPL (lol) thier source, where would that leave the SCO lawsuit ( not that that's going anywhere ). Sun competes with SCO on x86 along with Linux and BSD.

      I still think it will not be GPL, but some Java type license.

      Closed source is slowly becoming a thing of the past and even MS knows this. Which is why the are doing thier patent thing. So if Sun does open source their OS what will th

  • Solaris is dead (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Maljin Jolt ( 746064 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @11:50AM (#10246654) Journal
    Or rather undead. The good thing is the Sun realises about it. Opening closed source is a positive way to afterlife for software.

  • there's absolutely no evidence... (Score:3, Informative)

    by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @12:14PM (#10246922) Homepage
    ...that they'll GPL their source, or use a license anywhere close to the GPL. From the article is sounds like they're going to 'share-source' their stuff in the Microsoft fashion, then use doublespeak to call it 'open source'.

    I doubt anything they call 'open source' will legally be able to be used in Linux.

    Max

  • Free or Open (Score:3, Informative)

    by latroM ( 652152 ) on Tuesday September 14, 2004 @03:33PM (#10249119) Homepage Journal
    The question is: will it be free or is it only "open".

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