Sun Considers Releasing Solaris In Segments

VoidOfReality writes: "Check out this article on Infoworld about the open source release of Solaris 8. It seems Sun is running into some problems they forgot to think about when they initially announced the release." Hey, at least they're teaming up with Collab.Net to make it happen.

Comments

Complaints re licencing

[dmsmith]

I see quite a few complaints here about the fact that if you change the source code of Solaris you need to submit it for "evaluation". Every body seems to be forgetting that SUN still has to support, through traditional channels, even a free/open/whatever Solaris. Do you really think Linus would allow people to mess around with the source to Linux, and release the result as being Linux, if he had to personally organise the support? I don't think so. So while this may not be an OSS poster child, don't forget the reasoning as to why it would be getting done this way.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the OSS model and the lines of code comment wasn't exactly a good thing to say (although I can appreciate where he is comming from... but that's a different story).

-- David Smith
C:\ is the root of all evil.

Re:BSD - SCSL

[Kiwi]

I find myself in the strange position of defending Solaris, being a long-time Linux user who is just starting to really learn Solaris at my current job, and still considers Linux superior in many ways.

With Linux running on pretty much all of the commodity hardware these days (not as much as NetBSD, though, I think), I think it stands to become the standard Unix.

I agree that Linux will eventually overtake solaris. However, there are a number of areas where Linux is still playing catch up compared to Solaris:

• Solaris scales better. Mainly becuase its SMP performance is better than Linux's.
• Solaris threads better. Last time I looked, Linux could not properly do core dumps with a multithreaded process.
• Solaris has kernel crash dumps. Linux's kernel crash dumps are not ready for prime time. In other words, you can find out exactly why Solaris crashed.
• Excellent support. Just in case you are not a Solaris kernel guru, you can call up Sun and they can get someone who can tell you why your Solaris box crashed. Sort of like getting Linus Torvalds on the phone after your Linux kernel crashed.
• Solaris has better NFS support. To put it mildly.
• Solaris has a much bigger mindshare among the corporate suits. In fact, I had a hell of a time getting a job as a UNIX sys admin because Solaris people do not consider Linux sys admin experience real UNIX experience.
• Solaris is well documented. With Linux, often times the source code is the only documentation you get.

I notice that Solaris people often have had little or no exposure to Linux--a lot of people go to college see a lot of Solaris and very little Linux. I am amazed at the number of Solaris people who don't know their head form a hole in the ground when it comes to Linux.

I believe that Linux will eventually overtake Solaris, especially with SGI, IBM, and soon SCO backing it, but Linux is not there. Yet.

- Sam

Re:unacceptible

[be-fan]

I don't think you are in the position to decree it "unacceptible" just because it doesn't meet your ideals. Sun has already said that Solaris is not "Open Source." They are simply opening the source. In better days, this would be considered open source, but in these days of fanatical OSS people, saying something is Open Source essentially means it is usable in other people's projects. They are not opening it for YOUR benifet. They are opening it for the benifet of Solaris users who can now work on making it better. This justifys them not opening it all at once because,
A) They have legal problems which prevent them from opening the whole thing,
B) They don't need to. They release the parts that they own and the ones that need working on.
They are not opening this for the benifit of the OSS community, and they never made a claim they did. They are simply opening pieces to allow people who want to see the code (not steal it!) easier access to it.

Re:Why don't they let their users decide what to d

[be-fan]

You know what I'd like to see from IRIX? The 3D pipe! Though DRI is as yet untested in major 3D applications, I'm pretty sure whatever SGI's got is 50X better. (Afterall, they've been working on it for a decade now.)

Re:For Reference

[be-fan]

Thanks also for pointing out the fact that Linux + Mozilla + X + GNOME + Apache (which is comparable to Windows 2000 which includes IE and IIS) is just as bloated as Windows 2000. Do the math
Kernel - 3 Million lines
Mozilla - 3.5 Million lines.
XF86 -1 12! million lines
GNOME (including ORB, window manager, etc.) ~10 million.
Add all this together and you get ~ 28 million lines. Not that far away from Win2K and its 33 million lines.
In comparison BeOS has 1.5 million lines. True, it doesn't compare at all to the above two OSs in terms of features, but still. Notice something else. Linux is really selvete if you don't add in X (bloated) and GNOME (bloated.) I think Linux running with a simple windowing system/window manager (maybe embedded KDE?) would clock in at a managable 10 million lines or so.

Re:Too many lines of code.

[be-fan]

You do realize that these days, Linux + X + GNOME is only slightly less bloated than Win2K? It is certainly more bloated than NT4. That's best case. The nominal case is Linux + X + Mozilla + KDE + GNOME. Why? Well, first, Mozilla because the 33M line count in Win2K includes IE. Second, GNOME because I use the GIMP. Third, KDE because I need KDevelop. Both these apps are critical, and unfortuneately, I often have to run them at the same time. With these loaded, Linux easily clocks in at 35+ million lines, being MORE bloated than W2K.

Re:Moderation...

[be-fan]

People often read newest first, thus, when they got to yours, they've seen so much belly acheing about Sun (who, by the way is not claiming that Solaris is Open Source(TM), but simply that they are opening the source) that they decide to take out their agression on you.

Re:more like you don't understand

[be-fan]

You do realize that the Linux source tarball that contained every thing that the Win2K tarball contained (Kernel, Web server, file and print servers, GUI, window manager, desktop environment, advanced media APIs (a la ALSA)) would clock in at a LOT more than Window's 30 million lines?

Why is this bad?

[softsign]

So why is everyone so miffed anyways? If Linux is the better OS as everyone must know by now, why do we even need to see the Solaris source?

Or is it conceivable, that maybe... just maybe, Sun has had one or two good ideas about how to implement Unix in the decade that they've been developing SunOS and Solaris.

Why is it so fashionable to rip into Sun so much around here? Solaris has a kernel that's generations ahead of Linux, their name is synonymous with reliability and scalibility and it - along with DEC and HP-UX - pretty much held the fort for Unix while Linux was still gestating.

Development doesn't occur in a vacuum. There isn't just a black and white wall dividing Linux users from the rest of the world. Isn't it possible that the Linux community benefits from the leagues of programmers/engineers who were first exposed to commercial Unix at work and decided to volunteer their expertise - developed using Solaris et al - to the Linux community?

No, Sun isn't scared their marketshare will disappear the day after they release their source. I doubt if any Sun employee loses too much sleep thinking about whether or not Richard Stallman approves of the SCSL. Most importantly, I don't think anyone at Sun is going to break into tears at the hissy fits some people are throwing over this.

Grow up and realize that Linux can still benefit greatly from understanding what makes Solaris. Whether or not Sun gives you the 10 million lines of code as a whole package or in logical segments really doesn't make a lick of difference. And you know it.

--

I was going to moderate, but then...

[trims]

...I saw some of the massive ignorant egos strutting around, and couldn't just let it pass. So I post.

:-)

Look, people, Sun will never OpenSource Solaris. I do take issue with them (in particular, the marketing 'droids) initially toutting Solaris as being OpenSourced, but they have backed off this - you will note that everything in their current campaign talks about a "Free Source License" and similar terms. Yes, some people may confuse it with the Free Software movement, but face it people, 99% of people associate the word free with cost (as in beer), and not with libre (as in GNU).

Also, look at what Sun is trying to target. Essentially, they make money on hardware and services for Solaris, and no money on the OS (even when they charge for it, it's insignificant in the scheme of things). By using the SCSL, there are the following benefits:

• Sun gets a new revenue stream from people wanting to make use of customized Solaris (embeded OSes and such, primarily). By opening Solaris under the SCSL, Sun makes it alot easier for VARs to evaluate using Solaris as a base technology, and the VARs save lots of money on R&D costs.
• Many people get to see how an industrial-grade OS is written (warts and niceties, both). Academics may very well use chunks of it for teaching purposes, and in general, you get a better-informed developer community. This helps both Sun and the Sun-oriented developer community.
• Sun retains control over Solaris branding and standardization. All the problems Linux has over standardized distros and kernel levels is avoided. The *BSDs do the same thing - one organization has veto power over what goes into the OS.
• You do get bug fixes. Yes, Sun doesn't have to incorporate them into the next release of Solaris, and redistribution is limited - but see below for some notes about redistribution of such fixes.
• Sun retains it's Intellectual Rights. Yeah, I know we'd all love it if we could get our gubby mitts on some of the nice stuff in Solaris, but honestly, I can see why Sun isn't interested in it. There's no real payback for them that the SCSL can't provide. Remember, Sun's goals are different than the OpenSource movements.

As a side note, please note a couple of things about distributing mods to Solaris 8 (and using Solaris code):

1. You can redistribute diffs however you want. Context-diffs are a bit of a fuzzy area (are the context "included code"?), but certainly, output from normal diff solaris_file.h modsol_file.h is allowed. You don't have to go through Sun to distribute these changes. You own the copyright to the diff contexts, and can license it however you want (though it better be compatible with the end-user SCSL in order to be usable by others).
2. Fixed software containing Solaris code must be redistributed by Sun. That is, if the Solaris grep has a bug, and you fix it, and want to distribute the whole thing, you have to submit it to Sun, who will then redistribute it on their "secure" web site. Sun doesn't own your mods - you still do. They can't use your mod in Solaris(tm) until they get permission (and possibly pay) you to do so. The way I read things, you could even conceivably charge for the fix without owing Sun royalties, though that may be wrong (I'd have to have a serious lawyer re-read the agreement). But it has to be redistributed by Sun, not you.

Yes, the Free Solaris Source Code program isn't an OpenSource movement by Sun. It has it's uses, and for that I'm happy. It definitely is limited, but for those target markets, it's a Good Thing. Maybe someday they truly will Open Source Solaris, but only when Sun sees that the advantages for Sun to Open Source outweigh the benefits they get from SCSL.

-Erik

Re:It will all be worth it if...

[Frymaster]

A sparc10 has quite a bit of power actually.

My "second" computer at work is a sparc10 (first is the G4) and I admit it has "zip" for the specs, but, really, the overall level of performance would drive me crazy if I used it as my home machine. The bottom line is that I'm looking to get a fourth machine (1. G3/350, 2. 9600/233, 3. PII/300 laptop) so, frankly, price is the biggest factore. The sad fact of life is that x86 land is where the cheap boxes lie and since I already have a bit of a mac habit I can't really afford to get embroiled with another hardware architecture that has a $2000 entry level...

Oh, and as a Canadian I have to consider that killer exchange

Erp? They're sanitizing comments

[Chairboy]

"open source is fine when you are talking about hundreds of lines of code"

This is the rationale for not releasing it all at once.

What about Linux, is it really so amazingly efficient that it only takes a few hundreds of lines of code? I don't think so!

I imagine the real reason is that they want to check the code for comments that could get them in trouble. In our software, there are all sorts of comments about why he had to hack something or do something in a wacky way, and I don't imagine THOSE companies would be too wild about seeing their names in lights.

Also, there are parts that describe exactly why we're doing something one way instead of another because of some customer, and there might be cracks about the specifics. If we have it in ours, it's almost certainly in theirs.

Too bad, it would be interesting to read some of the more 'colorful' remarks in the source...

They just dont get it.

[jailbrekr2]

"One issue is getting it ready so that people can make sense of 5 [million] to 10 million lines of code. There are not many people who know what to do with 10 million lines of code. Freeware, open source is fine when you are talking about hundreds of lines of code," Anil Gadre, Sun's vice president and general manager for Solaris Software, told IDG News Service. "So one is an ease of use issue, and we have to try and make it friendly. The other thing we are finding out is that maybe people actually wanted certain parts and not the whole thing."

You are wrong Anil, very wrong. There is a man who knows what to do with millions of lines of code, and has been doing so for the last 10 years. His name is Linus Torvalds.

This whole paragraph outlines how Sun simply does not get the Open Source movement. Yes, they are trying. we have to give them that. But they really need to re-evaluate why they are doing it, and who they are catering to. This paragraph shows that, at this time, they just don't understand.

Re:They just dont get it.

[/]

Linus himself has admitted he doesn't actually know every line of code in the Linux kernel. What he does have is a good sense of aesthetic architecture, a knack for delegating roles by carving up the project into little fiefdoms, and the earned respect of an entire community, among other qualities. Sun is having trouble acquiring these things, and it's little wonder they're taking the approach they've taken, though it should be noted that there's no reason to forestall a source release for want of people who understand it when releasing the source is the very event most necessary for such knowledge to arise.

Afraid of 10M lines of code?

[bit]

"One issue is getting it ready so that people can make sense of 5 [million] to 10 million lines of code. There are not many people who know what to do with 10 million lines of code."

I really don't think any participant of the obfuscated perl contest or anyone who can make sense of some particular pieces of free software can be afraid of that amount of code or more.

This is just a lame excuse not to release it all. People will work with those pieces they need to work with anyway. Why not let them make the choice themselves?

BSD - SCSL

[rothwell]

Funny how Sun's operating systems used to be open source. SunOS was BSD -- they even gave you a compiler and the kernel source. Bill Joy wrote the BSD license -- which later proved to his benefit when he founded Sun.

Now the latest incarnation of their OS -- Solaris 8 or 9 or 2.9 or 3.14159256 or whatever -- is "opening" a little, ahtough SCSL is hardly an open source license. It's more of a way to contaminate other companies' "clean rooms" -- you can peek at it, but can't change it. Once you peek at it, you're infected with Sun Intellectual Property and should be careful about "appropriating" their ideas in your own code. If you do change the Solaris source, you have to give it to Sun to lock in a vault at the bottom of the atlantic ocean right next to the secret underwater illuminati bowling alley. Okay, so maybe they'll actually include changes in the next release or patch or whatever -- let's say they do -- you still won't own copyright or anything about your code. You have to get permission from Sun to distribute your changes. With GPL, you at least retain rights to what you do. With SCSL, you become unpaid employees of Sun Microsystems.

I'm dogging on SCSL here, but there is at least one nice thing about it, if they ever actually release the source: people writing programs for Solaris can at least look in the code to see why the published APIs are acting all funny, or to see how to best interface with the Solaris VFS, etc.

That's more than we can say for Microsoft. Not a whole lot more, but more.

Solaris is a nice enough OS. I wish it had some Linux-type features, such as /etc/ld/so.conf. But it scales well, and these days the price is right (free for 8 processors). UltraSparc processors perform a little more poorly than current x86, PPC and Alpha processors, though, and Solaris x86 is kind of a joke.

With Linux running on pretty much all of the commodity hardware these days (not as much as NetBSD, though, I think), I think it stands to become the standard Unix. Companies are probably more afraid to contribute to BSD systems than GPL ones, because competitors can snatch up their BSD-licensed code and use it against them via closed-source products. With GPL, companies cannot take the code private, so the original developers' IP is protected better.

It will be nice to have Unix largely unified again. There will always be special versions -- that's part of the beauty of Unix. Cary's UniCOS and other variants for special hardware will probably exist for a long time, because they're designed to take advantage of specific hardware. But the alure of a single API -- write once, compile and run anywhere -- is very tempting. IBM's even making Linux available on its 390 machines. BSD includes linux emulation, as does Solaris.

Good times!

Re:BSD - SCSL

[Syberghost]

Excellent support. Just in case you are not a Solaris kernel guru, you can call up Sun and they can get someone who can tell you why your Solaris box crashed. Sort of like getting Linus Torvalds on the phone after your Linux kernel crashed.

Yes, but have you ever had them respond with anything other than "replace the CPU"?

As for Linus; you can't get him on the phone, but you can damn sure send an email that will get response from the appropriate kernel developers, include Linus.

--

It will all be worth it if...

[Frymaster]

... this results in a better Solaris for x86.

I admit it. I like Sun's stuff (boo, hiss and downmod now)... and let's not forget that they gave us a lot of cool and useful things (NFS anyone?).

My biggest hope for this is that it will result in an x86 version of Solaris that will perform comparably to the sparc rev. I would dearly love to have a full-on Solaris box in my bedroom, but the cost of Sparc hardware is just out of this world and is justifiable only for corporate budgets.

If sun gives the community some source and the community gives the world a Solaris that can run on my compaq Barbie/Hotwheels celeron box, I will dance in the streets (after rush hour of course)

Re:It will all be worth it if...

[Frymaster]

You're absolutely right, I overstated myself with the "perform comparably" line. Let's change that to "perform passably"... we are talking about chips that take twice as many MHz and 3 times the power to do the same thing....

Yes, there are used sparcs... but even a sparc10 is $400 and that's just got no power

Re:Interesting

[mindstrm]

Yes. The OS side of things is simply a tool for sun to use in providing solutions.

Unix just happens to be the base they work from.

People can rave all they want about how 'linux is better' or 'freebsd is better'.
Well.. better for what?
Better for learning/hacking on? sure.

Can your little linux/x86 box that you are planning on buying come close to touching what an e10k can do? Hell no.. not even remotely close.
My 350Mhz ultra-5 workstation probably crunches numbers better than a Ghz PIII.

aint skeert

[ArchieBunker]

Why should they be scared? Does linux or any open source OS scale to their 64 cpu E10k server? Nope. Last time I checked ultrapenguin was booting on a 16 cpu box, but thats a far far cry from being production ready. I have plenty of reasons to buy sun hardware.

1. reliability

How many IPX's and SS10's are being used as light mail and dns servers? How many 386's from the same era?

2. scalability

Can your Xeon box scale to 64 cpus? Redundant power supples? RAID support?

3. support

If you have a contract sun techs will be out that same day to diagnose problems. Now I know you are babbling about redhats support but its trivial at best. They even admitted its just for installation questions and not anything advanced.

4. product lifespan

Again, how many 386 linux boxes are being used as servers? My SS2 has been running fine since 1992. Can you say the same of your 486?

I'll mention it again, parts of the source code are copyrighted from other companies. Thats why they must check everything carefully before its released.

!seineew era sreenigne epacsteN

[cpeterso]

Having worked at Microsoft, I can assure that Microsoft developers swear in their comments. My roommmate's group was releasing some example driver code. He was handed the task of removing any comments that said BUGBUG, XXX, TODO, or stuff like "HP sucks!"

Re:Brand Name Games and other folly.

[Abigail]

From the Article: "I am happy to give someone Solaris source code and let them do whatever they want with it, if they don't use the name 'Solaris' when they are done," said Gadre. "

This sounds a lot like they want to protect their brand name more than anything else. That's understandable, given the time and money spent to create the brand name. However, managing the brand name means controlling closely the product and those who use the product. If means placing the product into certain niches and portraying it in a certain light. That's fine for a closed-source, proprietary product.

In order for open source Solaris to succeed, SUN has to be able to loosen the reins a bit and allow the community to take Solaris into places where the community feels it should go.

Let me get this straight. Sun is opening up the source of Solaris, and saying to the world "do whatever you want to do with it, just don't label it Solaris", and you still whine?. Not even Bill Gates is that arrogant. Have you written Knuth already? He has the same condition for the source of TeX. And do contact Larry Wall to complain as well, as one of the options of the Artistic License is renaming the resulting binary if you take the source code and with it what you wish.

SUN, if it really wants to release Solaris as open source, should require distributers to place their company names in front of it such that we'll see things as "SUN Solaris", "Red Hat Solaris" or "PPC Solaris" In that way we'll always be able to evaluate and distinguish between different releases.

And that's to SUNs benefit how? It would be a severe disadvantage to SUN. They either have to give up the connection between Solaris and Sun (which from a marketing viewpoint would be incredibly stupid), or have to deal with all the problems introduced by outside coders (which would be incredibly stupid from both a marketing and technical viewpoint.)

Solaris shines in some areas Linux hardly dares to dream about. SUN says "Here's the code. Study it. Learn from it. Use it. Just don't call the thing you use it in Solaris." And instead of grabbing the opportunity, you whine.

Words fail to describe that attitude.

-- Abigail

Re:Interesting

[Abigail]

Hopefully what will happen is the release of the solaris code will be sort of a cross-training event.

Yes, indeed. I'm a bit shocked that so many people here diss SUN because SUNs plans for making the source available doesn't fit the tunnelvision people here have of open source. Even if SUN would say "here's the source code - but keep your hands in your pockets, you can only look", it's an incredible opportunity to be taken advantage off. Solaris blows Linux out of the water when it comes to scalability, reliability and handling of heavy load. Being able to look at the source of Solaris gives others (not just Linux coders, also BSD, and even Microsoft) the opportunity to study how SUN deals with scalability and reliability issues; the gained knowledge can then be applied in your favourite OS.

-- Abigail

How open?

[Erich]

Are we going to see NFS caching in Linux any time soon? It would make my life better...

Re:more like you don't understand

[gammatron]

100 MB isnt that much for the whole operating system, in fact I'd say that is pretty light. Tru64 5.0 base source is about 270 MB.
--

Collab.net

[Hard_Code]

Bellandorf announced Collab.net at JavaOne...but hadn't SourceForge been around for a while then? Why splinter? Why not just concentrate on what's already there?

So what's so great or different about Collab.net?

Here is what Sun said in Feb

[grue23]

I was up at Sun in Feb. for the platinum beta test for Solaris. At that point, here is what they said about the source code:

• It is not "Open Source", they are just trying to make as much source available as possible as a service to Solaris users to aid in determining bugs.
• The reason they are not immediately opening all of the source is that they have had 200+ subcontractors work on various pieces of the code. Some of these subcontractors are no longer in business so the legal issues pertaining to code release are hazy. Some of these subcontractors may not want source they developed published, and Sun is negoitating with those.

Why all the objections?

[davebooth]

lets look at it in a little more detail... What do they have to worry about in opening the source to Solaris....

• Loss of revenue Nope - Solaris is so close to free-as-in-beer already that in any situation but a huge corporate installation it cannot be a significant revenue stream when compared to their hardware.
  
• Support issues Here there IS a valid concern. If you call Sun support and tell them you're running Solaris version whatever they need to know exactly what you mean by that. It also works the same way if you're doing your own level 1 & 2 support with a little help from sunsolve. If its all open source then they lose that baseline so its reasonable to require that all mods are redistributed by them only - if they dont do this they are going to take a much bigger hit in the "poor support" area than they ever will by not sticking to the letter of open source.
  
• Protection of IP Releasing the source makes cleanrooming their features more difficult so if anything its easier to protect your IP in an open source environment.
  

All in all I think they are getting as close to "true" open source as it is practical for them to get, and as such I applaud it. If open-source means organisations with a huge investment of time and effort cannot be reasonably practical and pragmatic about how they participate, then they just wont participate at all and I really dont think thats what we want at all.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking

Solaris on Intel.

[be-fan]

Has anybody used Solaris x86 was a workstation machine? I was thinking about getting the Free Binary License, but was put of by the reports of Solaris 7 on intel being slow. However, I hear Solaris 8 is much faster on Intel, so would like to know how it performs. I'm not doing any server work, just playing around with it on the workstation.

Because they are scared

[Mullen]

"One issue is getting it ready so that people can make sense of 5 [million] to 10 million lines of code. There are not many people who know what to do with 10 million lines of code. Freeware, open source is fine when you are talking about hundreds of lines of code,"


Because they are scared.

How much money do you think they have lost due to Open Source software? They put down qmail (Saw it on the mailing list), they "improve" sendmail and bind. However, they lose money everytime an admin decides to install Linux or a BSD.

It is not only software they lose money on, but also hardware. Which is where the money is. Which is why they would slander Open Source software. Without that reason to buy their hardware, no one will. No software that only runs on their playform, no reason to buy Sun hardware.

But I am wandering.

We all know though, that is stupid of them to claim only a handful of people can read and understand the code in their OS (Which is true). But they forget that there are ALOT of us. Alot of people who are willing to take a piece and eat all the code they give us. Then we can take that code and improve on it.

Not only improve their code, but also write better documentation.

Plus, look at who is speaking for Sun. A person who makes alot of money off selling hardware. Not a programmer. Not hardware designer. Not an Open Source programmer.

Re:NFS caching?

[Erich]

Okay, you won't see this, but...

NFS caching is mainly for reading. It's most helpful when I have large amounts of programs served by NFS, and want to cut down on network traffic.

And, I mean, we currently have NFS caching, but only for memory. You can't assign 2G of hard disk space for caching stuff read off of NFS.

The way read caching keeps consistency is using leases on the data... the server will contact the client if the data changes before the lease is up, and if the server can't reach the other client then the client is not assured correct data after the lease expires.