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

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

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

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...

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!

How open?

[Erich]

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

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.