IBM Derides OpenSolaris as Not-So-Open 168
MaverickFire writes "OpenSolaris isn't a true open-source project, but rather a "facade," because Sun Microsystems doesn't share control of it with outsiders, executives from rival IBM say.
"Sun holds it all behind the firewall. The community sees nothing," Dan Frye, the IBM vice president who runs the company's Linux Technology Center, said. Sun could do "simple things" to build a real OpenSolaris community if it were serious about doing so, Frye said. "They would push their design discussions out into the forums, so people can see what's going on," he suggested." I talked to one of the OpenSolaris developers at the project's LWCE booth in the "dot-org ghetto," and though it wasn't in response to this article, he pointed out that OpenSolaris takes contributions from all comers, has active public mailing lists, open IRC channels, and several online communities, so Frye's description seems at least overblown.
Not Open? (Score:3, Insightful)
Welll...yes (Score:4, Insightful)
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Any proprietary software vendor "takes contributions from all comers" - especially when they free.
Check Apple and you will also see "public mailing lists, open IRC channels, and several online communities".
In other words he claim openness in a sense of Java: look openly but do not touch. Wanna touch it? A
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This is utterly untrue.
For example, Microsoft - arguably the prototypical proprietary software vendor, and the one most often accused of stealing ideas - explicitly states [microsoft.com], and I quote,
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In other news, vendor A doesn't want you to buy into vendor B's products. News of the day!
First post (Score:3, Insightful)
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Open AIX?
Isn't the whole idea to improve the Open Source gene pool?
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It's just too bad IBM makes such kick-ass hardware, otherwise AIX would have died a natural death long ago.
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You mean, as in, Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
And not just there. Have a look at most Apache projects too, for that matter.
There's a reason why SCO went after IBM. Well, ok, a second reason, beside the obvious "because SCO is on a pump and dump scheme." Like most lies, SCO's "IBM took our IP they had used in AIX and put it into making Linux enterprise-ready" is based on a small grain of truth, although in this case one irrelevant to t
Re:You mean, as in, Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me soothe your concerns, in fact Sun without OpenSolaris dwarfs IBM in terms of OpenSource contributions, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions more code in RedHat was donated by Sun than any other commercial company IBM and RedHat included. This excludes Sun's donations such as OpenOffice and it also excludes a huge amount of IP donated by Sun in the form of properly documented standards Patents and interfaces that most of the other commercial donators to OpenSource had to be dragged kicking and screaming to.
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With the OO.o code, they are probably in the running with IBM (I'm not entirely sure, eclipse was a big code drop) and maybe even Red Hat. But I don't believe they "dwarf" Red Hat even then, and they su
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You originally said "more code in Red Hat than contributed by Red Hat", very few of the above are shipped by Red Hat. I guess some more bits are in Fedora, which you could incorrectly call Red Hat. I'm very suspicious of "NFS V3/RPC" given that the Linux code is almost all in Ke
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You seem to not be reading the facts I'm trying to educate you with. PAM was reimplemented (Ie. what is in Linux didn't come from Sun). The slab memory allocator is in the Linux kernel, and again didn't come from Sun (AFAIK Sun have never contributed anything to the Linux kernel). Given that the "list" you did provide was inaccurate, I'm hardly inclined to assume "plus lots more" is the truth.
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As I was saying that's pretty much the only contribution Sun has made. (Of course, it wasn't actually written by Sun, Sun open sourced it for a specific business purpose and conflict with Microsoft, and they are still having trouble letting go).
Java - Gone
Sun didn't contribute Java to the open source world; in fact, they have been trying hard to prevent open source implementations. The Java implementations that run on my Debian box were painstakingly developed clean-room implementations,
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The question is not whether Sun releases stuff under open source licenses, the question is whether they are making contributions.
Let's take NFS. NFS source code remained proprietary and Sun was getting licensing fees. The open source community eventually had to create their own, independent NFS implementation. I don't know whether NFS v1-3 ever was open sourced by Sun--it certainly isn't being used by most open source desktops or serv
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Sun open sourced NFS, RPC, and libc while IBM was still pushing Microchannel.
So excuse me if I find your claims fatuous.
Re:You mean, as in, Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever hear of, oh, NFS. No? How about RPC? These Sun contributions to open source predate IBM's involvement with FOSS by a long time. Heck, they even predate the whole FOSS movement. Except for the University of California, Berkeley, I doubt any institution has ever given as much or as freely to open source as Sun has, as early as it did, or technologly that has done more to contribute to the developments that ultimately led to the Internet. And they have continued to support open source (and open standards) throughout their history.
Get your facts straight next time.
You also said:
Then WTF are you doing posting here? You obviously haven't looked into it. Yes, OpenSolaris is mostly OpenSource (there are a few closed bits, but they are not necessarily critical bits anyway). And guess what? Just because Sun has control of OpenSolaris, doesn't mean you can't download the whole source tree and fork it and start your own project. (Some folks have already done this, check out the PPC port of Solaris, or the port of Debian userland to the Solaris kernel, for example.) That is what Open Source means.Somebody mod the parent down, please!
rewriting history (Score:2)
Wow, that's some creative rewriting of history. In fact, NFS was proprietary for many years. I'm not sure at what point Sun did or did not release NFS source code, but it hasn't been relevant to the Linux world because (1) Linux already had its own NFS implementations by the time Sun released it, and (2) Sun's licenses were likely unacceptable.
Furthermore, both NFS and RPC we
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We're not discussing the merits of NFS for its own sake, we're discussing whether Sun has made useful contributions to open source. As long as NFS was hot, Sun kept it closed source. And that's pretty much a pattern with Sun: they usually open source stuff only once it's been reimplemented anyway and/or has become useless.
So I suppose Ope
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Yes, you're right: Sun is a commercial entity and they can do with their software whatever they damned well please. However, that doesn't deprive the rest of us to warn people that Sun is misprepresenting what they're doing and that Sun is trying to screw them over.
I can tell you that about the only thing Linux has ov
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But even OpenSolaris is a very new development. What I'm getting at is: IBM was putting its money where its mouth was, _long_ before Sun.
*cough* *hach* *retch*
Bill Joy. vi. BSD [wikipedia.org]. SunOS [wikipedia.org]. Tcl/Tk. OpenOffice.org, Solaris...
And, by the way, Sun was instrumental in beating down SCO with a big stick in order to get Solaris open-sourced....
Although this is slashdot and we don't like Sun here.
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Sun has been contributing to open source for a VERY long time and has a huge number of notable OS contributions.
NFS
RPC
OpenOffice
Solaris
Glassfish
Netbeans
UltraSparc design
Java coming...
Sun also contributes to GNOME, Mozilla, X.org and Perl. Sun contributed heavily to RedHat.
And given that Solaris and Java both contribute Sun's 'crown jewels', th
Ah, the straw man. How cute. (Score:2)
Ah, the mandatory straw man. How cute. I never said that IBM was "cool", or whatever straw man you feel like dismantling today. I just said that it supports Linux and F/OSS in general.
Sun, for better or worse, has been until _very_ recently just
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AIX has contributed most of the valuable bits and pieces of AIX to Linux already and they have contributed extensively to Linux.
Open sourcing AIX would make no sense; it would be an attack on Linux and open source, just like open sourcing Solaris was a deliberate and calculated attack by Sun on Linux (coordinated with Sun FUD and Sun sham licenses).
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Open sourcing AIX would fragment the open source UNIX world because it would add yet another UNIX-like OS to the open source world. It would also place more of an obligation and burden on IBM to contribute to it, when they'd much rather focus on Linux.
Maybe you don't remember, but the reason why UNIX was having such problems was fragmentation. Open source foes often accuse open source of being fragmented. Open sourcing a piece
The key paragraph (Score:2)
Hey guys (and gals), they're trying to get our vote!
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Maybe they are, but IBM is still on our side for this battle anyhow. IBM's big money comes from services, Sun's big money comes from expensive hardware. Even though Solaris runs on x86, Sun is basically trying to make Solaris a value proposition for it's hardware. If Sun doesn't have a distinct Solaris value, people will then start to switch to Linux on x86 much quicker. Sun is attacking this on two fronts. 1) Free solaris just enough so that tho
Re:The key paragraph (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently you've never priced Sun and IBM hardware. Sun's bottom end x86 server is $745, or $945 for a dual core Opteron. They're lowest end SPARC is $3145. IBM's bottom end x86 server is $1129. They're lowest end p-series is $2995 for a PPC970, for an actual POWER5 system it's $3399 and then you have to license the software on top of that.
Claiming that Sun is selling overpriced hardware just indicates that you really aren't in touch with the market.
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At any rate, your price comparison doesn't really address the GP's point, namely that Sun is a hardware company, and IBM is a services and consulting company. Sun's products are always going to be, like Apple, des
Good ol' IBM and why OSS is not meant for big comp (Score:1)
This is why I think opensource is not that good for conglomerates such as IBM, SUN, etc. because
Wow, you really don't get it! (Score:2)
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It is largely thanks to the collaboration of competing conglomerates such as IBM, Red Hat, Novell, (even Sun), Oracle, Intel, AMD, HP, SGI and others on the Linux kernel that has made it so fantastically capable. We wouldn't have the world-class portability, the performance, support for all the hardware under the sun, CPU/PCI/memory hotplug, multiple journalling filesystems, etc. without the abo
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IBM contributes heavily to Linux, whether it be financial contributions or intellectual ones. Linux isn't the whole of open source, but pegging IBM with "0%" is a big fat lie. IBM not only contributes to Linux, but they are even being sued for it(!) and fighting tooth and nail to their own benefit as well as the benefit of every Linux user out there.
I won't bother discussing Red Hat, Novell, Intel, AMD, HP, SGI or Oracle, since all of those companies are extern
Typical IBM FUD (Score:2, Flamebait)
What else would you expect from IBM? Their entire Linux strategy is based on the idea of luring people in with Linux and then signing them up for ridiculously overpriced "consulting services' that usually results in a recommendation to purchase their own proprietary hardware running AIX and ever more extensive service contracts and recurring revenue for IBM. They are now seeing customers running Solaris 10 on IBM hardware and more and more requests for Solaris 10 instead of their own stuff and its not a
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Really? Do you have any unknown info to share? Because if you look at their stock and corporate info, they are losing ground, not gaining.
That's not been my experience. (Score:2)
When I set up two HPC clusters using IBM hardware, they had no intention of recommending AIX. It was in their scope of work that we use RedHat, as it was what we wanted. And they eve
Just like Sun's other "open" products? (Score:3, Informative)
Sun should just do as AOL did and spin off their open source projects as a seperate company.
IBM is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Software is not about a development method but about a way of licensing software. Free Software can build in a community process and in a in-house process as proprietary software can be developed in a community or in-house. It's not the development method which makes something Free Software it's the license.
Sad to see that even such a big company with such a big "linux-centre" like IBM doesn't really understand Free Software.
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No, because OpenSolaris is Free Software, so everyone can use it, study it, adapt it and (re-)distribute it.
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Ignoring the question of why Sun would try to do that (some sort of exotic open source poison pill?), I suppose they could turn off the juice on OpenSolaris.org, but even that wouldn't shut down development. The code is in the open and it's under a license that explicitly allows people to use it and modify it. No one -- not even Sun -- could keep people from building their own distros, doing their own development, and bu
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I agree. The key for free software (to me) is not whether the developer(s) are engaging with a community to develop the software -- it's whether people in the community can freely fork the code and continue to develop it independently if they decide they don't like the way that the original developer(s) are going.
As long as Open Solaris is licensed in such a way, it's fine by me to refer to it open source.
Many Open Solaris options (Score:5, Informative)
Belenix: http://belenix.sarovar.org/belenix_download.html/ [sarovar.org]
Polaris, Solaris for PowerPC: http://www.blastware.org/ [blastware.org]
Nexenta, the Solaris/Ubuntu mix: http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki/Nexenta_OS/ [gnusolaris.org]
And of course you can go straight to the official Open Solaris Communities page here: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/communities/;jsessi
Fight IBM FUD with Open Solaris Fact.
I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is just full of it. If OpenSolaris were not for real do you think they would have gone to the trouble of changing their source code control system from the in-house Teamware stuff to Mercurial (see this [selenic.com]).
No, that is the kind of wrenching and disruptive change that you do if you're really serious about pulling in developers outside the corporate WAN. If it were a facade they could have built a more impressive facade much more quickly.
Progress is slow on OpenSolaris because unlike Linux in 1991, Solaris is already a mission-critical operating system in many enterprises, and because they are trying to pull in non-employee contributions whilst maintaining quality. This is actually difficult.
Disclaimer: I was on the invite-only OpenSolaris pilot program and got some free t-shirts (none of which fit).
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And here's the opensolaris.org tools forum/mailing-list where the revision control decision was discussed. Besides Mercurial, several other tools were considered. This was all done out in the open.
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/forum.jspa?forumID =9 [opensolaris.org]
And here's an example of the ZFS team discussing the design of a new feature on the public forum.
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messag eID=47936 [opensolaris.org]
I think IBM's comments are really meant to impose FUD. If you look into the project I think you
I am an outside contributor (Score:5, Informative)
It is true that the development model at Sun is a bit more "Cathedral" than "Bazaar", and there are still some technical and administrative challenges to solve (for example they haven't figured out how to get folks to directly commit to OpenSolaris yet -- you have to hand off code to folks at Sun who integrate your code and walk it thru the process.)
Development of Solaris has always been a tricky thing, and historically has had huge amounts of "process" to get changes. This is because there are numerous quality safeguards, and committees that have been involved. There are famous questions that every project integrating has historically had to answer: (is it i18n safe, what interfaces does it expose? does it conform to various standards already established? is it portable to both intel and sparc? etc. etc.)
Part of the review process also has to uphold things like Sun's binary compatibility guarantee. In any respects, the _quality_ of Sun's Solaris product is much higher, I think, than what you find in say Linux, where churn is a lot higher and quality and oversight controls a bit less.
Anyway, it is possible to contribute to OpenSolaris now, though its a bit of a rough road right now. But they are making it better, and I expect it will be a lot easier in the next year or so.
IBM's problem (Score:2)
So they can't say "Sun is doing a good job at open-sourcing their own software" because then they'd be asked "so why aren't you doing the same?" - and because nobody likes to admit a competitor is doing a good job.
So we get these mealy-mouthed attacks instead.
Given that DTrace has been integrated into MacOS X into Leopard:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc?entry=dtrace_ on [sun.com]
FUD-tastic (Score:5, Informative)
Components of OpenSolaris are also showing up in other operating systems: DTrace [opensolaris.org] will be in the next release of Mac OS X [sun.com] and FreeBSD [sun.com]. Speaking personally as one of the DTrace engineers at Sun, it's been quite a pleasure working with both the Apple and FreeBSD kernel engineers -- pretty decent community for a "facade".
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Not for nothing, but... (Score:5, Funny)
What's the problem (Score:3, Funny)
Firewall?? (Score:3, Funny)
Trans.: "I know a techie word and I'm going to use it."
Ade_
/
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Still not open source (Score:1, Insightful)
"...he pointed out that OpenSolaris takes contributions from all comers, has active public mailing lists, open IRC channels, and several online communities, so Frye's description seems at least overblown."
With my apologies, if these things make something open source,
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Re:Still not open source (Score:4, Insightful)
You can take Solaris get the complete source. Make whatever changes you want, build your own distro and release it. Sun could decide it was all a complete screwup and shutdown opensolaris tomorrow and you'd still be able to continue to develop and release your derivative code. Sounds like open source to me.
Contrast this to Linux. You can contribute patcehs to Linus. You can discuss it on IRC. You can subscribe to email lists. You can take the source and build your own. And Linus undeniably has private discussions with developers whom he has established working relationships with about the development of Linus' kernel. Additionally you cannot directly check your code into the mainline Linux kernel. Sounds about the same as the OpenSolaris development process to me.
So what's new? (Score:1, Troll)
It's interesting to see IBM taking jabs at Sun, though. Perhaps those new Niagara CPUs have some PowerPC salesmen worried.
The Jabs Surprise Me (Score:1)
Typically, in recent years, IBM has been pretty classy about not disparaging competitors while Sun seemed to spend most of their waking hours trash-talking just about everyone.
When I see one company diss-ing another I tend to think less of them and I assume they are speaking from a position of weakness (which is what I have thought about Sun for years). So when I read this I tend to think like you are, is IBM worried about something?
Only 1 open source os needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
So bugger off *BSD. Very open-minded of him
I'm somewhat of a Blue Fanboy BUT (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure they've ported some of the technologies and added the opensource toolbox to AIX (imagine an RPM that can be installed on AIX and interfaces with the existing AIX package system).
Why is there no JFS2 for Linux? Why can't I mount a JFS2 filesystem on the SAN on my Linux machine? Why has the AIX lvm not been ported to Linux or why has IBM not contributed to the Linux LVM2 the ability to import AIX volume groups along with the requiste filesystem support on Linux? Why the hell don't I have lsdev, lscfg, lsattr for Linux? That alone would save me alot of effort.
Look the ODM is not the greatest thing since sliced bread but AIX has other good ideas that IBM should contribute instead of bitching about OpenSolaris. Shit they just want to sell more pSeries boxes anyway
Lock customers into Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM is a big champion of Linux now, but it wasn't all that long ago that they were issuing stern warnings to those who foresake the safety of proprietary software about the dangers of getting "locked into open source."
IBM would probably happily lock people into Linux... whatever, exactly, that would mean... if they can figure out how to do it and can see an advantage to IBM in doing it.
DTrace in OSX (Score:2)
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Tp.
I'm not sure Sun knows about their own OSS efforts (Score:2, Informative)
Far from authoritative (Score:1)
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Re:Hypocrites... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also IBM isn't such an offender, they've contributed a lot to the kernel, apache, and many many many oss projects; Which is something i personally value a lot more then opensourcing OS/2 forinstance
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Like Eclipse, for instance!
But then you've got to count (Score:2)
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I've read a number of open source licenses, and I don't remember any of them saying a thing about designing in the open. They all have different requirements, but they usually require that the source code be open (to different degrees). OpenSolaris is that. OpenSolaris is open source, and they are okay in
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And Linux NEEDED a word processor, not LaTex. And Sun provided one.
(This *doesn't* excuse their subsidizing SCO...but it *IS* a large contribution to Linux, even i
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:4, Interesting)
As you said, consumers have been clammering for IBM to OSS OS/2. (Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock) We're still waiting.
What would be interesting to keep an eye on is if OpenAIX or OpenOS/2 show up anytime soon. If they do, it could be indicitive that this FUD is all part of IBM's plan to promote their own OSS projects. Another thing to consider if this happens, is if they would have been released without Sun taking action first?
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-uso.
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:5, Interesting)
Between OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and their work with GNOME, Sun has made plenty of solid contributions to OSS. Now they're supposedly opening the source for Java, which is the one thing everyone's been screaming about for the past five years and -- IMHO -- the only thing that keeps Sun relevant anymore.
I don't give a rat's ass about Sun, but they seem to be trying. Some douche from IBM doesn't need to be getting in their face because their OS code isn't open enough when IBM won't put AIX or OS/2 out there at all.
And the comment about there only being room for one open source OS is total bullshit. I hope his opinion doesn't represent the majority of IBM's staff.
This criticism may be IBMs way to apply pressure (Score:2)
I think this statement from an IBMer is much less about OpenSolaris than it is about Java.
And yes, Java is a huge matter for IBM (unlike Solaris).
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Keep in mind they're already in enough legal battles over intellectual property licensing. While SCO's claims regarding IBM and Linux may be trollish, the impression I get is that SCO WOULD actually have significant legitimate claims against an "open source" AIX.
The end result is that rather than opensourcing AIX (which would be a rather pointless endeavor as the impression I get is that IBM is "sunsett
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If you talk to IBM about their P series boxes, you get rather the opposite impression. They talk about all sorts of very cool technology - technology they have no intention of transitioning to Linux.
Alex
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IBM are being utter hypocrites.
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Sun.
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But, maybe not in the way you mean.
Sun's own tools have driven more people to install GNU software on a Solaris machine than any other thing has caused people to migrate to Open Source.
Back in the day, a Sun which didn't have GNU tools was not very useful.
Cheers
Back in the day? (Score:2)
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't really prove their commitment to open source in general beyond their commitment to making profit. Which is not a bad thing.
Yes, quite a few. Red Hat, SuSE, Novell, and even Sun, to name just a few.
How does IBM's contributing to the Linux kernel compare to Sun open sourcing an entire OS?
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Not to mention having made such things as OpenOffice and NFS available. Oh, and that whole well-used language (which is now being open sourced) that a lot of projects are built on.
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They may be changing their stripes, but the deliberate GPL incompatibility of the CDDL makes me wary. I'll believe it when I see
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Do you say the same about Mozilla?
The CDDL is just the MPL rewritten to be more of a boilerplate license, rather than needing to be changed for each project. It may not be the best license around, but if you believe SUN is being disingenuous by using then CDDL, I think you need to hold all users of the MPL to the same standard.
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Mozilla is tri-licensed, so your comments are wide of the mark.
The MPL itself was a new work, a creation. It was perhaps foolhardy in some respects, but it is difficult to presume that a group crafting a license will perceive the full longterm results of their creation. The CDDL was created years later with full understanding of the relevant problems. Moreover, the CDDL was specifically created to be used with the OpenSolaris release, which is a type of open UNIX release. The preeminent open unix implem
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:4, Insightful)
IBMs donated some AIX features to linux and MS has some say in what happens to OS/2.
While I warmly thank Sun for their massive donations to free software, I wish they'd just STFU until they actually Open Source something. Most of the criticism they get is for flip-flopping on open source.
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Like OpenOffice (LGPL), OpenSolaris (CDDL - OSI Approved), and Project Looking Glass (GPL) just to name a few? You're quite right, they contribute heavily to Free, OSS software.
This statement does not jive with your previous statement. Either Sun releases Free, OSS software (in which case they have a right to be heralded) or they don't (in which case they should STFU). Sinc
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I should have said:
I wasn't disputing Sun's contributions to Open Source, just saying perhaps they should hold off announcements until they're actually ready to like, you know open source something.
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Unfortunately, it has little to do with the issue at hand. OpenSolaris is fully released, and has several distros based on it. So this rant of one IBM executive is completely baseless and probably intended to promote IBM at Sun's expense.
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Agreed - and of course it's intended to promote IBM at Sun's expense.
Isn't it crazy that IBM, who's contributions to F/OSS (whilst large & also warmly thanked for) are dwarfed by Sun's contributions are able to get away with this?
The reason I suspect is Sun's flip-floppiness & skittishness when it comes to F/OSS - they contribute much, but also help spread a litlle anti-F/OSS FUD, etc. IBM'
Re:Hypocrites... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I too feel i has been quite long enough (since, what, 1998, 1999) since IBM announced it would make a Linux port, then dithered that it was too complex, then I heard the REAL reason was that other parties with too much vested interest in deterring a renaissance of SmartSuite denied or threatened IBM out of the act. I suspect that too many stock-holding ms acolytes inside IBM are blurring the vision, muddying th