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Talk to Sun's 'Open Source Diva'
Danese Cooper is Manager of Sun's Open Source Program Office. A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results. She's a frequent speaker at IT industry events and conferences, and is, without question, Sun's staunchest internal Open Source advocate. Sun is moving toward Open Source in fits and starts, and Danese is behind a lot of that motion. Feel free to ask her anything you want (one question per post. please) about the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, and how she goes about trying to change that. We'll post her answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions within the next week or so. The only question she can't answer is whether/when Java might be Open Sourced. I already asked her, and she replied, "Sadly, I have no news on that..."
to be a woman in such a male dominated field? How do you keep ahead of the game?
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Is Sun moving to put more resources into the
OpenOffice initiative?
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
I would like to know what you think of the antitrust situation with Microsoft, and how it would/could positively affect the open source market nowadays.
Much appreciated.
And they said zombies weren't real!
In light of this do you believe that it is possible to make money from open source/free software alone or does a company need a hardware arm like Sun?
This might seem like a thinly veiled attack in the form of a question, but it doesn't appear the StarOffice has really made a dent in Microsoft's ownership of the office suite market. Did Sun waste their time and money on this project?
While it's true that a lot of "attractive/sexy" work can be done via open source methods, there's still some areas that traditional programming models (i.e., closed source) still function better (even though ESR says otherwise in The Cathedral & the Bazaar ). What, in your opinion, is the proper balance between open source and closed source methods Sun should strive to?
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
The popularity of Linux, *BSD, and other open source operating systems has continually increased over the last 10 years, and in many cases, it is replacing the proprietary technology offered by traditional UNIX vendors.
Does Sun feel at all threatened by the increasing awareness and usage of other open source UNIX-like operating systems? Does Sun feel open-sourcing their software is a necessary step to compete with the free operating systems and software?
How does it feel to work for the only company ever pushed out of a market by Open Source Software?
Um, I'm pretty sure Sun *has* grasped the concept, but it doesn't suit their busines model.
But, for a question, how about "What is the general understanding of OSS at Sun?"
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Since Solaris X86 is not going to be supported any more, is there any chance of getting that 'donated' to the user community?
I appreciate that there's a fair chunk of intellectual property in there (and probably a fair amount of overlap with Sparc), but it'd be nice to see.
If I understand Sun correctly, they are, predominantly, a hardware company. They make most of their money on hardware sales and services to support that hardware.
Why, then, would it be in Suns best interest to move towards open source when that movement could lead customers to a move away from their hardware?
Thanks,
But how is the internal climate?
Stephan
I work for a very large company (fortune 100), and we are, very slowly, moving towards using open-source programs like Linux, Apache, etc. The IT department likes and supports these applications, but it's very difficult to convince management that these applications have the same stability and reliability that commercial applications do. What is the best way to approach management to help evaluate open soruce solutions to the problems we face?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
When I try to explain open source to people who are pure capitalist, I have a hard to time explaining what can be gained. For people who are used to the concepts of Copyright and Patents, the idea that you can create value and profit from giving away ideas seems counter intuative.
How do you explain Open Source to people driven by profit in a persuasive way?
With the recent announcement of no x86 Solaris 9, do you forsee aditional problems within Sun as more projects (potentially) move to 64-bit chip archetectures? (I mean to exclude external factors such as the potential that the consumer chip market may to fail to transit toward 64 bit chips.)
Do you like Japanese imports?
Lastly, what will Sun's biggest challenges be in moving forward with Open Source Software in the future?
A list of licenses follows for reference...
The GNU General Public License (GPL)
The GNU Library or "Lesser" Public License (LGPL)
The BSD license
The MIT license
The Artistic license
The Mozilla Public License v. 1.0 (MPL)
The Qt Public License (QPL)
The IBM Public License
The MITRE Collaborative Virtual Workspace License (CVW License)
The Ricoh Source Code Public License
The Python license (CNRI Python License)
The Python Software Foundation License
The zlib/libpng license
The Apache Software License
The Vovida Software License v. 1.0
The Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
The Intel Open Source License
The Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)
The Jabber Open Source License
The Nokia Open Source License
The Sleepycat License
The Nethack General Public License
The Common Public License
The Apple Public Source License
The X.Net License
The Sun Public License
The Eiffel Forum License
The W3C License
The Motosoto License
The Open Group Test Suite License
Amazing magic tricks
There has been some speculation that Sun is uncomfortable with certifying JBoss as a J2EE-compliant container. Mark Fleury, president of the JBoss team, has said "Sun quoted a price for that certification suite that is beyond the current financial resources of the JBoss team." Is there any possibility that Sun will relax these certification fee requirements for open-source initiatives such as JBoss, especially when they meet the technical requirements as specified by Sun?
- Rev.I was wondering what contributions of the OpenOffice group actually made it into StarOffice 6.0 beta? Did only contributions make it in or is 6.0 based off of OpenOffice code?
Also, will Sun try this year to combat the misconception that buying Sun means spending big bucks on hardware?
After all the $999 Netras and Sunblades have played well in Unix-only houses but the common IT professional still seems to think they have to beaucoup bucks to be a Sun house?
_____________________________________
ACK
What are the internal resistances (from upper management, for example) that you face on your daily work to promote Open Source inside Sun?
What arguments are people that work with you using to counter-attack your proposals? And do you feel (or know) that this is also how other big companies react inside their offices to Open Source in general?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
She has a common surname. Here's the correct search, which returns 212 results.
What were the motivations and decisions regarding the decision to leave the x86 market? And, does Sun see it's move as a "capitulation" to the Open Source OS's that currently reign on the x86 platform?
does this mean i am 38 times more popular than Danese?
Does she have a middle name? A search for just my first and last names returns 68,000 results, and just my first name returns 10,400,000 results (my co-worker has me beat - his first name returns 11,400,000)
All those google returns for 'danese cooper' aren't about the Danese Cooper in question. Neither are all the returns for my name (though the first 3 are me)
Do you think companies use Open Source as a political statement to say that they support individual consumers freedom? By allowing individuals to see how a product works and to contribute back to it. Or are companies finding that Open Source can give them an economic advantage over closed source in the software industry?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Me, too. Me, too.
This is the only thing that interests me, and I've often felt the way to keep the Microsoft wolves at bay was to Open Source Java, which I feel would push it much further than Sun can. Keeping a lid on Java may be the best gift to Redmond in terms of .NET acceptance, not that having hoards of PHB's saying, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft", hurts their efforts.
If I had a question, which she may be demurring on already, it would be, "What's the big obstacle? Or is it one of those Committee things, where nobody will accept respobsibility for standing in the way and points fingers at the Committee"? I'll understand, if in the interests of preserving her position she can't answer that, either.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For a corporation, whose primary goal is to make money, what are the motives for going open source/FS? A number of companies seem to be using it for PR purposes rather than as a way to make money. How are you planning on bringing in more revenue by going open source and not just use it as a 'loss leader'? Or, since Sun is a hardware company, are you planning on using it primarily as a 'loss leader' for more hardware sale ala IBM?
Articles keep comparing J2EE and .NET. One of the unquestionable advantages of J2EE in an enterprise environment is its cross platform capabilities (specifically the ability to run on powerful high-end UNIX servers). With the Mono project building an open source, cross platform, .NET compatible framework, do you have any fear that the .NET style framework for web services might become more of a competition to J2EE than without the Mono project? Would Sun ever consider supporting Mono to enourage interroperability between J2EE and .NET components, or is this an example of an open source project potentially damaging Sun?
A Google search of CmdrTaco gets about 12,000 hits. I guess we know who would be on top in that relationship!
Go revscat. I'd love to see JBoss in a position to market to suits higher up in companies - until they have certification, thats a steep hill to climb.
How does Sun percieve open source and organization like apache and oasis in the context of cooperation and competition when it comes to protocol and java standards. An example of this might be jdk and webservers. At what point does Sun percieve open source and organization as a threat to Sun's own products?
Don't wait till Sun is finally "ready" to make the Java Platform Free Software. Use what we already have today.
) and you have a great programming language integrated with a free desktop environment.
The GNU Classpath project (http://www.classpath.org/) brings us the standard Java runtime libraries (except Swing, but see below). And they have recently merged with GCJ (http://gcc.gnu.org/java) which allows you to compile your applications to native code. You can even mix and match interpreted Java bytecode, with native compiled Java libraries and C++ code (http://gcc.gnu.org/java/papers/cni/t1.html)!
Then you use the GNOME java bindings (http://java-gnome.sf.net/) or the KDE java bindings (http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/java/
There are even free J2EE things out their such as JBoss (http://www.jboss.org) and Jakarta (jakarta.apache.org). Sun now even includes parts of that project into their own (proprietary) Java platform releases!
Not having any idea how you look, I'm curious: As one of the few high-profile she-nerds, do you find geeks coming on to you often? If so, what approaches seem to be the most common?
I'm wondering if Sun is planning to build compilers for other languages to Java Byte Code.
.net and Java is that Microsoft is promoting the use of multiple languages comiling to their byte code while Sun has always focused on only using Java to compile to the byte code used in the VM.
It seems that the bigg difference between
If Sun had done the same several years ago I think they could have attracted more developers because developers tend to be prejudiced about their coding languages.
So, is Sun planning to embrace other languages or keep Java as a focus?
Thanks
Will you support JBoss and Tomcat for the Java community?
For independent individuals to become J2EE experts, they need a web container to train on. The only inexpensive solution is Tomcat and JBoss (both open source solutions). And JBoss is the first to support the newest version of EJBs (2.0).
I would find it in your best interest to support both projects. What does the future hold for Sun, Tomcat, and JBoss?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I prefer OpenOffice over MS Office because the filter/sort functions work better for me. I recently started showing OpenOffice to my AA and it occurred to me that (probably anyway) no one I know has ever heard of OpenOffice.
If Sun's return from OpenOffice is a)breaking MS's monopoly hold on office productivity software, and b)endearing Sun to the Open Source community, then a major goal for the OpenOffice team should be attracting more users.
Do you see Sun paying for airtime to boost the "nongeek" userbase of OpenOffice?
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Note to 'male geeks'. Girls are the same as boys, with different body parts. Grow up and try talking to some one day.
As the Open-Source person in a commercially successfull company, do you manage to actually have positive financial results or are you just working in order to advertise Sun's openness ?
How is your position perceived inside your company ?
Do you spend your time fight ing to get a budget ? Do your business plan includes the placement of Sun consultants in big companies ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Finally, FreeBSD will get a native Java for 4.5. This is a very positive outcome of Sun's!
-Dom
Do you see Solaris incorporating some of the package management features found in Linux systems?
Also, Unix vendors many times have very feature-incomplete versions of utilities compared to their respective GNU versions. For instance, GNU tar (while lacking some of the Solaris tar options) has many features that are extremely handy. Do you see Unix vendors in the future incorporating more free tools over the proprietary ones they have, and if so what do you think the time frame is? Do you think that Unix vendors that move towards GNU tools and make their installations more "Linux"-like will have an edge, or will moving to unfamiliar tools be a hindrance?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I'd like to know how SUN views efforts like Mono to create an open source .Net for anyone to use. Will this have an effect in SUN possibly changing its mind on making Java open source? (note that I did not ask whether SUN will make Java open source or when).
My concern is that Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) could one day undermine the efforts that have made the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) so popular.
Do you forsee Sun having their own OS in 10 years time or do you forsee Sun selling hardware with their own optimsed version of another OS? If Yes, are we likely to see such an evolution climbing up your chain from the small workstations up to the big iron OR will we see a new OS for all boxes at once? Will Sun ever make an offer like IBM's offer for AIX with Solaris i.e. "You can have anything you want from our OS"?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Sun seems to have a lot of credibility problems with the open source community. Moves like SCSL, Jini, and limited support for SparcLinux have all lead to a mixed view of Sun. In some ways, I think the reason for this is that Sun didn't drink the open source "Kool Aid".
So my questions are: do you encounter these credibility problems? Are they a problem for you? Are you (or Sun) doing anything to change these perceptions?
sigs are a waste of space
What are the major goals that you would like to achieve at Sun in the next 5 years?
A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results
So? If I search my name on Google (and it's not a common name) I get 3000+ results. Why doesn't
Guess these are the privileges of being a stupid rock star...
</joke>
My Stack Overflow user
about the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, and how she goes about trying to change that.
Geez Robin, you act like she's the only one, aren't most of us in that boat? I would guess that not all of us work with OSS-knowledgeable PHBs. They're learning slowly, but it takes time.
Do you see open source software at Sun generating any positive income (and in what fashion) or is it mostly about making Sun hardware a viable alternative to pc's with MS software (and linux to some degree)?
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
How would you characterize the work environment at Sun? Do you have any insider's advice for those of us caught up in the recent market downtown who are looking for new challenges at Sun?
Sure it may seem cheesy but whatever it takes...
Please read this document.
~~ What's stopping you?
Sun made an enourmous amount of noise about how it was Java was going to be an open standard. But after trying to prevert the standards process by becoming a "Publically Available Submitter", then withdrawing its application and attempting to get the ECMA to rubber stamp, then withdrawing from the ECMA as well, the simple fact is Java has lived up to none of its standardization promises. It claims a "covanent" with its users that means they all want Sun to milk them dry with licensing fees, but thats hard to beleive. Other standards like Ethernet seem to have done relatively well compatability wise, while using Java across multiple platforms is an exercise in frustration.
.NET are actually allowed to implement the spec freely. I for one am certainly hoping that the folks who play fairly in this space win out, and in that case Microsoft deserves the prize. Is it possible C# will be a standard everyone can use freely before Java becomes one?
At what point do users and developers need to pull the rug out from under vendors who consistently lie, such as Sun? What surprisies me here is that people seem to require no moral or ethical dimension to a company, despite the actual business harm dealing with such a company poses. There have been a number of other cases where soon-to-be open sourced software went closed source, so the danger in these situations is real.
Microsoft, after a long history of BS, actually seems to be doing the right thing with C# standards wise, and I suppose the proof will be in the pudding if go-mono.com and the GNU Portable
1. Open source software //Too drunk, implement later
2.
3. PROFIT!!!!!
Since there's not going to be x86 support for Solaris 9, is there any chance that maybe Solaris 9 could be eventually Open Sourced (to at least allow for the possibility of an x86 version), à la Quake II?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
In my company we have 2 MS Office Licenses (one 97 and one 2k) and the rest of us run StarOffice 5.2. It saves us some cash and spares us time in the evergoing "keep-your-licenses-at-handy-just-in-case-struggle ".
Now that SUN moved away from the "let's teake over the desktop" strategy used in 5.2 I think that the suite will become even more attractive.
Cudos to SUN from me and my pals for keeping StarOffice alive. We NEED alternatives. No matter if the are free or not.
Cheers..
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Obviously Sun will only pursue an Open Source strategy if they are convinced that they can achieve higher revenue growth than with the existing strategy.
As I see it, Sun sells hardware/software solutions. In most cases it is your software that makes your hardware so valuable. If you give away the software and make it freely available to competitors then your margins will inevitably shrink as you lose competitive advantage.
How will Sun maintain its margins and how will an Open Source strategy lead it to higher revenue growth?
How do you feel Open Source software is in Sun's commercial interests, and is this basis on which you have to justify Sun's involvement in it to others within Sun?
As we heard today, Microsoft rigged a ZDNet poll to make .Net look more popular than Java. What do you think of this as a tactic, and why aren't Sun keeping up with industry practices? :-)
Most /.ers work with a number of Unix distros.(Solaris being one of them) I like many others would like to see Sun embrace the Open Source movement more fully. As customers/admins what can we do to help you push Sun more in this direction? Can you give us some practical ways to help you? (i.e. email decisionmaker@sun.com and kindly request more involvement from Sun)
I feel personaly more confortable when "vocal" open source advocates or "divas" have a well established history of contributing outstanding code to the community. It's only fit that Stallman who wrote most of the emacs code or Linus who wrote (well you know) are allowed to the media headlines. I personnaly don't know what Mrs. Cooper achievements have been before being named an "Open source diva", so I'd like to know more about that. In other words, what makes Mrs. Cooper special beyond being one of the few person believing in Open Source at Sun Inc. ? This might be enough to warrant attention for some, but not for me...
Tell me substantively what difference it makes if Java is open sourced or not. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but I haven't heard much in the way of substantial arguments aside from the unquestioned slashdot dogma.
Java is free, and there is a community process for making changes. Is there anyone out there who isn't using Java based on its closed source?? Be truthful here folks, and by the way your argument is shot down automatically if you also employ another closed platform such as AIX or Oracle.
Why did you accept the job opportunity at Sun? Is it in your career plan to work for an evil company?
For all those who are dying to see what
she looks like....
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
While most discussion revolves around software companies moving to open source, how do you think other large companies such as the international investment firm I work for be convinced to switch to open source? I guess this is a question more of your customers. I want my company to move to GNU/Linux and open source, but being on the Microsoft train for so long they are afraid to even look at other options. How will Sun get their customers to embrace open source? (And any suggestions on how I can convince my company to switch would be much appreciated!)
Developers: We can use your help.
My question is, if Sun opensources their OS, do you think many companys will not use it since they are afraid open source is a security problem?
What I mean is, the people that make decisions at large corps think of *nix's in Open source as a hackers play ground, leading to security problems.
I feel open source is a good way to improve code, but that is my opinion.
CS majors, we are the geeks that run it all. Without us things die.
Working as an opensource advocate within a primarily closed-source company, has your career trajectory been affected by your continuing advocacy of the open-source movement? For example, have there been career moves that you were unable to make because higher-ups were concerned about placing someone with your views in a position to make relevant decisions? In that vein, do you have any advice for the rest of us suits who wish to advocate open-source tactfully, without giving the impression that our primary goal in life is to give away the company's assets?
The people over at JBoss are very high on their software (rightfully so in my opinion) and have proclaimed that their J2EE application server will be the death of WebSphere, JRun, iPlanet, etc. Presumably the big draw to JBoss is not only that it works but also that its free and open source. Is Sun planning on open-sourcing iPlanet or making it free to compete with JBoss?
If you use Sun's JDK (I use 1.3.1_02 on Windows--yes Windows), you have the option to download the source code for the runtime libraries. There is a file called src.jar. In it, you will find the .java source for all of the classes that come with the JRE.
You will also find java.c, java.h, java_md.c, java_md.h. Now, I'm no C/Windows programmer, but after reading those files, they appear to be skeletons for what you would need to build your own VM launcher. So, if you were distributing a Java application to customers who use Windows, you could code your own VM launcher so that your customers could launch their applications by clicking an icon on their desktop without opening a Run box or CMD Prompt and typing 'java ClassName'.
I guess I just don't see the value in looking at the source code for the VM. As I said, I'm not a C programmer (but I know and have programmed it before) so looking at platform specific code to me is worthless.
Further, the specifications are available for the Java Languge and the virtual machine. If you are so inclined, you should roll your own.
GOBACK.
Codes are open /. AC does reopen
An opcode seer
A code reopens
A creed so open
As code opener
A score opened
Redo open case
CEO dares open
Ease porn code?
or for
--
(if you're still looking for the point, it was back there, in the post. </sig>)
Why Sun should adopt Open Source? Or adopt Free Software? When their major competitors, like MS, Compaq are not? Should Sun go to a business plan IBM style? Selling consulting and not products?
------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
There's an interesting article at Javalobby (http://www3.usermagnet.com/nl/jlnews_20011210.htm l), admittedly from a Java pro's perspective, that talks about what .NET's submission to the ECMA really means. Here's a quote:
.Net you can expect to be using it only on Windows for a long time to come.***
:^) I'm intrigued by the idea of a GNU CLR or CLI or whatever it is now, but if it's going to be successful it'll have to progress quite a bit faster than GCJ (http://gcc.gnu.org/java/), as an example, before it's useful.
***This ECMA effort may be primarily symbolic, however, since only a player with enormous resources and funding could possibly implement the standard. If you use
Don't know if Mr. Ross is right, but I assume he's more connected than I am.
With respect to your comment:
>Other standards like Ethernet seem to have done
>relatively well compatability wise, while using
>Java across multiple platforms is an exercise in
>frustration.
Tried porting any C other than straight ANSI? Believe me, though toasters running weather modeling might be "goofy", Java makes some real headway into writing once and running anywhere. Limewire.com and Netbeans.org come to mind as pretty good xplat software that wouldn't be on our OS of choice without Java.
Yes, I realize Netbeans wouldn't be anywhere without Java since it's a Java IDE, but you get the point. I've seen a lot higher percentage (for x software packages, y had a Mac version) of software come to Mac Classic (which didn't have UNIX underneath) from Java than from C codebases.
I'm not against you being right about C#, and hope it does an even better job of making weather predicting toasters, but I'm not optimistic.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Star Division.
You can get away with a netra or blade 100 if all you need is a cheap terminal. But it doesn't really compete with a PC in terms of power even in the same price range. If you're doing almost anything serious you need at least a blade 1000 and those start at $9000. Well, the absolute minimum config is only $7000 but it's entirely unusable in that state.
If you put danese cooper in quotes, you get a more realisitic number of hits. This is basic stuff, kids. Why not write d a n e s e c o o p e r and include every document on Earth with those letters?
(Score -1, obnoxious)
Although hardware, by definition, can't be "open source (code)". But how does/can any of Sun's hardware business meld with the open source concept?
I am an OpenSource and FreeSoftware advocate, so please spare me the usual advocate diatribe. I would like to know why it is you support and push OpenSource software in your company. Sun, is by definition, one of the companies that OpenSource and especially the FreeSoftware Foundation is trying to topple. Why would you, or Sun wish to adopt an opposing strategy which has, unfortunatly, failed(for the most part). I realize that there are projects which have been extremely sucessful(Apache comes to mind) but so far, most other OSS projects have gone down in flames or sit in obscurity(Linux, *BSD). How do you think you can make it work, and how can it benifit the public as a whole?
Sorry, so my question would be, "Do you see C# becoming a more successful practical standard cross-platform (let's say that means Windows, Mac OS X, Linux x86, FreeBSD, and Solaris) than Java in the next 5 to 10 years?"
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Companies where their core business model is to sell support for Open Source software seem to be dropping like flies. While it is clear that Open Source can be a good way to support another business model (such as Open Sourcing software for hardware that you are selling), do you agree that selling or supporting Open Source software, as a business model in itself, has been a failure?
what a looker
or maybe not...
Well I don't care, just gimme karma.
I've been following Microsoft's .NET strategy for quite some time and have been quite interested in the Passport vs Liberty Alliance scenario.
Firstly, what exactly is happening with Liberty Alliance at the moment? I got the impression that the iniative was started as a marketing oppositing against Passport as there doesn't appear to be any visibility of the implementation on the web site.
Secondly, there is also an open source source initially from .GNU for this central authentication service. Essentially both Liberty Alliance and .GNU are trying to provide an opposition framework to Passport - and yet the nature of the concept and the existance of the two projects seem to be self depricating. If everyone and their dog develop a centralised authentication service that spans services across networks - people would probably use Passport purely because of its market share.
Would it not be a good idea to somehow merge the work done to offer a unified opposition to Passport?
How can we get you to speak at our LUG?
Will the netbeans IDE ever start in under 70 seconds on my machine?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Will Sun ever port this office suite to Mac OS X since OpenOffice isn't making any progress?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Free software can beat down this door by price tagging itself at a price equivalent to the commerical software, but only charging nominal fees in reality.
Those same corporate drones that like saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer' would absolutely love to be saying 'there's $600 of software on this computer, but I cut a deal to get it for $50.'
stipe42
www.pcwatch.com
.*?BSD and Linux does just about the same thing. AIX, IRIS, and Solaris also does just about the same thing, roughly. We have seem motions that companies release their software as open source instead, for example XFS. There has also been work done the other way around, where non open source companies use open source software.
What that in mind, what do you want Sun to do as far as software as a whole goes. Should they take all that is good with Solaris, open source it and try to unfied it as one OS that Sun will use, or will there only be certain pieces of software that will be open sourced?
To achieve what .NET can do with J2EE, one needs third party Web Services connectors such as Cape Connect to do this. Are SOAP, WSDL and UDDI going to be included in the J2EE specification at any point?
"A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results."
.sigs :-) )
Oh for god's sake, a google search for my name yields more than that at last count. And Usenet-wise there's about three times as many again. (Hey, people quote me in their
Me
Making money from Open Source is one often raised topic but not this time. Lets say that Open Source is a 'Good Thing (TM)'. While advocating it, you spend time and effort to convince customers and co-workers that the benefits are real. Well, that's nice. If you are right, they believe you, they follow your advice and they get the benefits. Very nice. But how do you make sure that some of those benefits will spill over to you? Or even to your company?
Is anyone working on a Mac OS X port of OpenOffice? Why did Sun drop OpenOffice for Mac OS X?
Since Sun doesn't want to spend money on Sol x86 anymore (which BTW, provides indirect revenue, but whatever), any chance it could be a project given the Open Source community?
How do you see Open Source? Is Open Source a fad or is it stable way of doing business? If it's a fad, what will it take to replace or overshadow Open Source?
If it is stable, will Open Source become the dominant way of doing business? If not, how will Open Source fit in with current ways of doing business in the software industry?
Do you find it as silly as I do to be called a "Diva" ?
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The JCP (Java Community Process) gets lots of critique from many in the open source community, since they claim it is basically run by Sun. It isn't open in the same way as ANSI, ISO or ECMA standardization. I would argue that it is open in other ways, where ANSI/ISO/ECMA are closed, or limited.
However, could you enumerate exactly in which ways Sun as a company is granted extra priviliges in the JCP, compared to other companies, and elaborate upon why these extra priviliges are there? Removing them could be a huge boost of the popularity of Java within the open source community.
Thanks!
Mats Henricson
You owe me a cup of coffee and a new keyboard, you bastard.
I was interested to know, the rational behind the recent losses on the open source front that were directly connected with Sun. That being that the Solaris code is no longer available, and there is no x86 support in Solaris 9?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
vauge@trollbot: cat troll_post
A large number of $fims have ceased to exist in the last while because they couldn't make money from $product.
In light of this do you believe that it is possible to make money from $product alone or does a company need a hardware arm like Sun?
Kewl post dude! Try:
firm = restaurant, law firm, consulting firm, doctor's office, courrier service or nasty nails.
product = food, legal advice, advice, health care, delivery service or toe funk cleaning.
Do you think we can make money off it, or do we need to sell some kind of hardware too?
pththth-th-th-fit!
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Scott Mc Nealy (your esteemed *cough*cough* CEO) once said : "You have no privacy. Get over it". I may have a couple of words wrong, but you get the drift.
Considering Sept. 11th aftermath, the new rules being put into place in the USA (some say they are privacy-invading) and the fact that a lot of Open Source software reject the position of Mr McNealy, what do you think will happen?
I think this question is especially relevant, since a lot of users are getting very wary of large companies (Redmondia comes to mind) tracking each and every gesture through the latest version of their software.
Many thanks in advance.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
What obsolete unix features are slated to perish
with future releases of solaris?
Stuff from the early 1970s may not be needed anymore.
What the the limitations that you have found with respect to Open Source software when you have been able to incorporate it in to your product portfolio? Where is it a success and where has it been a failure?
It's difficult for business people to understand that there is value in giving something away. What are the biggest obstacles you face in speaking to executives about the business value of open source, and how do you work through them to get buy-in? What are the objections, the communication barriers, the comprehension gaps, and how do you counter them? Can you explain to them the value in such a way that they can understand it from a "business value" perspective, or do you need to get them outside the typical "business value" framework to communicate with them?
-Thomas
It may be time to remind all the newcomers who
are not aware that the first true open source
operating system to be widely used was BSD. It
was also the basis for SunOS and it still lives
on in various forms at Sun. The true successor
to Unix(tm), BSD is available today in the widely
popular FreeBSD, now the basis for Mac OS X, the
most widely shipped form of Unix(tm) today,
outstripping all other *linux variants combined.
How do you convince a company that its not loosing assets on opening source?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://java.sun.com/features/2001/07/images/dcoope r.oscon.jpg
;)
May I please have a piece of that, ma'am?
Why is Sun draggin it's feet on this issue, and where do you stand?
Although any potential date of Java going open source can't be commented on at the moment, is there any likelihood that there will be a link between it going open source and being resubmitted to ECMA?
(It seems to me that the only reason C# is really going before ECMA is to rub Sun's nose in the fact that Java has been pulled from ECMA a couple of times before now.)
Jon
Is Sun moving toward licensing fewer tools for development or other employees and using more that are OS. Examples?
An open-source Solaris kernel would be able to integrate the recently-released IBM-JFS and SGI-XFS filesystems (which both seem better than ufs), along with many device drivers from Linux (with some required rewrites, of course).
Sun has come 90% of the way towards really riding the Open-Source wave. 100% would not necessarily require completely opening Solaris.
An open-source Solaris kernel on Itanium would also really screw up your competetors hopes of selling proprietary UNIX on that platform, as well...
The drawback would be that we might be able to see some sensitive information on e1[05]k partitioning and hot-swap features.
Do the Sun decision-makers see it differently?
While many of Sun's efforts seem laudable from traditional 'open source' perspectives, there are some curious relapses (i.e., Java as an open standard.) Does Sun see open source as something to be encouraged for its own sake, or is it seen more as a weapon to use against the competition (specifically, Microsoft)? Personally, I worry about the future of projects such as Star Office: given that Microsoft's lead in office software is so huge, it seems to me that alternatives to MS Office will have a long road in front of them before appreciable progress (market share) is seen. Does Sun's committment to open source and Star Office extend to perhaps a decade of underdog competition?
Thank you.
Rocketboy
Sheesh!
:)
Granted, I think I get second-guessed too much for my liking. But, I've never seen problems w/promotions and the such as long as you do a good job.
However, I personally am interested to just see what her experiences have been in the field. How is she treated by most men, has she ever had her opinion ignored, etc.
Christina
It's obvious. Why, it's oral sex, silly! Now get on your knees and take my source in your open mouth baby! Whoops, here comes another promotion!
I found the original topic a 'little' sexist, but actually just more stereotypical of how a lot of men sound...
:/
But, the term you used comes out MUCH worse than what he wrote. It's not a term I like to here
Has interaction with the open source community contributed to any changes in Sun's internal development practices and/or toolset and/or do you see this happening in the future? I'm speculating that perhaps the toolset being developed at Tigris may be funded indirectly by Sun via CollabNet with an eye towards internal use in addition to use in Sun's collaboration with the community on projects like OpenOffice, Netbeans, and JXTA.
Have you read the Hacker Ethic, if so do you agree with the concepts of open source there exposed?
After scanning all of the comments about this article, I've found that most of the controversial/antagonistic comments are about java versus Open Source.
How do you deal with these type of questions when you are speaking internally?
Are you an "Open Source is the One True Way [TM]" kind of person, or are you an "Open Source Can Help Us Crush Our Competitors As Long As We Don't Give Up The Good Stuff [Java]" kind of person?
I realize that this question is kind of trollish, but I'd really like to know where you personally divide "Open Source" and "Good for Sun".
Everytime one of my colleagues or I gets a new Sun box, we have to spend an inordinate amount of time making the thing half-useful. Sun should embrace GNU tools, and get rid of archaic junk tools like 'find' and 'tar', pre-install gcc, and have a decent choice of shells.
In short, make it as useful as a linux box!
Right now, it is not competitive. I avoid them unless totally necessary due to this, and the usual economic disadvantage.
Thank you, Steven Christensen, for
http://www.sunfreeware.com (which appears to have some Sun support, finally)
Why was this modded a troll? Just because you disagree politically with the issue doesn't make it unreasonable to ask.
A little less knee jerk, immature reactions are what is called for here.
Peace, or Not?
Way back in the 1990's, Sun bought Lighthouse Design. Lighthouse published a suite of top notch productivity apps (spreadsheets, presentation, diagramming) and other good stuff for NextStep and OpenStep -- the predecessors of Mac OS X.
After these apps were end-of-lifed, an effort was made to tidy up their source code and release them as some flavor of open source. For reasons that have never been clear to me, the release did not happen.
Can you shed light on this? Or perhaps give someone or something a nudge and get the balling rolling again?
Ray Ryan
Former UI Lead of Lighthouse Design
The Sun Cobalt (ie Cobalt Networks) products use Linux and are based largely on open source software. Are there plans to open source any of the Sun Cobalt-developed software that ships on these products?
...but is there a picture of this woman on the net?
I find that women with the ability and inclination to be involved in software, development and open source are inherently very sexy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Is it that sun "doesn't get open source", or does sun get open source, but still see value in other models as well?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Aren't Diva's supposed to be hot?
second society
Sun spent money and effort to buy OpenOffice and put resources to improve and develop it. From the impression that we get as outsider, Sun seems to want OO to compete with MS Office.
However, another impression that we have is that Sun wants other companies to use it, but Sun does not. I met quite a few people from Sun, and they don't use OO at all. A few Sun developers have downloaded it and played with it, and went back to MS Office. Funny thing is, those Sun presenters make jokes about Microsoft during their presentation, but they are all using MS Office and MS Windows. For that, I think it's not even funny.
Is this OO initiative a political game only, or is Sun serious about pushing OO to the enterprise environment? What are the efforts inside Sun to push OO as the standard office tools? What office tools do you use? Same for Scott McNealy.
If Sun didn't rain all over the people trying to write software for their systems they wouldn't be in such trouble today. What do I mean? I have have to pay 1000+ dollars for Sun's compiler suite, which includes a bunch of garbage I certainly don't need, when all I want is /usr/ucb/cc.
Two hints to Sun's Open Source initiative:
1. Release the source when you say you are going to.
2. Stop ripping off the devlopers.
If you are an idiot:
Yes, gcc works on Solaris. But it certainly doesn't compile the most important code written for Solaris, i.e. Solaris itself.
Will Sun ever make a native compiler for Java which allows for binary executables?
The advantage of native compilation (as the GCJ folks already know) is a bit of improvement in performance, as well as a reduction in startup time amd memory usage because JVM/JIT compilation is not needed (though the runtime still is). Sun has already put a lot of optimization tricks into Hotspot, so putting all that into a native compiler shouldn't be too hard. Native compilation would probably be most beneficial for desktop apps using Swing.
Why was the Solaris source closed, and the x86 version taken off of Sun's free download section?
Whatever happened to the ANSI JAVA idea?
If open standar it, they will come...
Ever since Sun bought Cobalt, we've heard less and less about their product line.
Initially, it was assumed Sun would (try to) switch these server appliances to run Solaris, but with the recent announcement that Solaris was going to drop support for X86 boxes, this seems less likely.
So, what ARE Sun's plans for Cobalt? They can still serve the very large market for file/print/firewall appliances without harming Sun's big iron. And file/print servers without per-seat charges are just what it would take to blunt the Microsoft 'bottom-up' push into the server space. So why so little noise?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Two questions.
When will GNOME be available as the default desktop on Solaris? It didn't appear in the last Solaris 9 beta.
Also, the GPL licensing implications always intrigued me. Without getting too heavily into GPL issues, I was surprised that one could distribute GPL software as a default component in a proprietary system.
This item in the GNU FAQ appears to be particularly pertinent.
How have you dealt with this apparent contradiction?
1) Install Free Solaris on PC
2) wish for better hardware for same nice software
3) Go and buy a Sun
Or is there another marketing strategy that stands a chance of increasing Sun's share of the hardware market by more than 2% pa?
Yes I have got a Sun on my desk!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Not much of an Open Source question, but after the Solaris 9 x86 cancellation, I don't quite understand their need to forbid it's download...
It will be really useful for the Linux minded people to have an easy step-by-step guide on some usefull examples for GridEngine for Linux. Are you contemplating such a guide?
Being member of a JCP commitee almost always affords high financial investments/fees. Thus in reality there is usually no way to contribute for small companies or individuals. Is there any chance that the JCP model will change soon, e.g. to a true Open Source Community Process with much broader, independent developer involvement?
(Note that I am not asking whether Java will be Open Source, even if this would be the most interesting question)
good call.
The first Sun Workstation I used, a Sun 1, Serial number 184, had an OS very close to vanilla BSD and, in order to put an Ethernet card and a slip line on it (so it could be used as a router) we could modify the drivers and recompile the kernel.
So, Sun was an Open Source leader in the 1980's -- before the term was even coined.
Could you give us any insight as to why Sun decided to close its OS' source? And start charging extra money for its compilers? (Why, so SUN could have $$ to devote to developing NeWS?)
It seems to me that the reason SUN needs an "open source advocate" at all is their fall from grace 15 years ago. You had it right the first time.
seriously. I left a company a year and a half ago which was subsequently bought up by Sun. Why did I leave? The rather clueless attitudes about Open Source ("oh yeah, people send Linux money all the time") from people in said company as well as Sun.
She's gorgeous.
I do believe we have another Jew Hater, at last America is waking up.
Recently, Lutris announced that they were pulling their J2EE application server EAS from open source. Here is an excerpt from their statement:
..."
"Today we made a major change to the Enhydra.org site: we stopped the hosting of Enterprise Enhydra. While we regret this action, it is necessary in order to satisfy J2EE licensing restrictions. J2EE has not been released as Open Source. We attempted for more than a year to get an Open Source compatible license for J2EE but have not been successful in this regard.
My question is: Why is it so difficult to have this project be open source? Other application servers like JBoss are open source and seem to be within the license agreements, why is Lutris such a big deal?
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
Is your hair dyed or are you a natural redhead?
Exactly how free should software be?
Free as in available to everyone?
Free as in not having to pay?
Free to non-commercial users?
Free as in available for all to study, whether or not they must pay for use?
Free to use as examples for (competing?) software?
Or free as their designers should allow?
What I mean is, do you beleive that software should be open source so that everyone can benefit from it, so that you can let others help fix your code for you, so that everyone can benefit from your work without paying (i'd guess not), or is it some odd combination of these. What do you feel, personally, feel is the point/advantage of open source, and what, in turn, does sun fell is the point/advantage?
Java is the Virtual Machine. Without it, no Java
.class file is really a bytecode object... not a true native binary in the classic sense)
the binary output
Java is a LANGUAGE. You can compile it down to native code like GCJ or Jove can do, or you can bytecode compile it to a bytecode object like the Sun/IBM JDK for use with JVM-JIT compilers (what Sun calls a "binary output"
the primary intent of the platform
The primary intent of the "platform" was beating M$. Look at all the Java propaganda, what is the feature that always gets mentioned first? (particularly Sun) WORA! Java is not bytecode compiled and run on JVM's primarily for pure technical reasons... it's done so mainly because Sun wanted to come up with something to beatup M$ in the marketplace, and a development tool which produced extremely portable apps (not so centric to one OS) was supposedly that magic bullet. However, in order to achieve that agenda, native compilation couldn't be part of it because recompilation just doesn't fit the definition of WORA as Sun sees it. It would have to be bytecode compiled and that object run on whatever platform has a JVM. Instead of the menory and speed constraints of being bytecode-complied for WORA, Java has been relegated mostly for use on boxes with lots of ram and cpu... servers! Swing has failed on the desktop due to speed/memory issues and even IBM has decided to go with SWT which uses native widgets. Wake up! I like the Java LANGUAGE, but all I'm saying is let's look past this WORA/JVM stuff and see what happens with a Sun-backed native compiler... at least for Swing on the desktop.
Stop being so beholden to WOAR and having this bytecode object "binary" which can run on many platforms. Recompiling the src for different platforms is not that big of a deal and not too far from WORA.
Java is the Virtual Machine. Without it, no Java
.class file is really a bytecode object... not a true native binary in the classic sense)
the binary output
Java is a LANGUAGE. You can compile it down to native code like GCJ or Jove can do, or you can bytecode compile it to a bytecode object like the Sun/IBM JDK for use with JVM-JIT compilers (what Sun calls a "binary output"
the primary intent of the platform
The primary intent of the "platform" was beating M$. Look at all the Java propaganda, what is the feature that always gets mentioned first? (particularly Sun) WORA! Java is not bytecode compiled and run on JVM's primarily for pure technical reasons... it's done so mainly because Sun wanted to come up with something to beatup M$ in the marketplace, and a development tool which produced extremely portable apps (not so centric to one OS) was supposedly that magic bullet. However, in order to achieve that agenda, native compilation couldn't be part of it because recompilation just doesn't fit the definition of WORA as Sun sees it. It would have to be bytecode compiled and that object run on whatever platform has a JVM. Instead of the menory and speed constraints of being bytecode-complied for WORA, Java has been relegated mostly for use on boxes with lots of ram and cpu... servers! Swing has failed on the desktop due to speed/memory issues and even IBM has decided to go with SWT which uses native widgets. Wake up! I like the Java LANGUAGE, but all I'm saying is let's look past this WORA/JVM stuff and see what happens with a Sun-backed native compiler... at least for Swing on the desktop.
Stop being so beholden to WORA and having this bytecode object "binary" which can run on many platforms. Recompiling the src for different platforms is not that big of a deal and not too far from WORA.
Part of being open source is listening to the community. What efforts is Sun taking to listen to what we have to say ? Recent announcements like the discontinuing of Solaris x86 seem to show not only does Sun have no clue of what the Open Source community's wants and needs are, but that you people couldn't care less !
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
I used to work on the Solaris networking stack;
they build x86/Solaris from a 99% shared code base.
Could you talk about how Sun's various open source endeavors (OpenOffice, JXTA, etc.) fit into Sun's business model? I know that most of Sun's revenue is from hardware, but are there plans to generate more from software in the future, and from open source projects in particular? If so, how exactly does Sun intend to do that, and how will the business model reflect this in, say, 10 years?
I truly believe that if Sun had open-sourced a reference implementation of NeWS back in 1985 that right now it would be Scott McNealy on the government witness stand right now and everybody as SlashDot would call them $un. This is because Sun would be in control of the NeWS standard and could propose and release any enhancements to it before anybody else. They could also close-source it, or close-source the enhancements (like people worry about MSoft doing with .net), if they wanted. But to do any of this it had to be accepted, and it was not going to be accepted when it cost vast amounts of money and there was another thing (X) that, while obviousy 100 times crappier, was free (well $115 for a tape of the source code).
We asked them to write a short document to explain us why we should do such a thing.
In this document they wrote the following statement: 'JAVA is now part of the open source domain but still controlled by SUN'
Given the fact that SCSL is still not open source approved and SUN retracted JAVA even from a standardization commission, can you comment on this statement (as head of the open source office and personal). What power do you have interally at SUN to react on such or similar things.
Staf Verhaegen
staf.verhaegen at imec.be
I remember the good old days when we got our first Sun workstation, running Berkeley Unix on a 68000, and it came with all kinds of free (as in beer) tools, including compilers (no license managers). They were a hardware company then, and they knew it. In my opinion, Sun went downhill when they started emulating DEC, with a proprietary OS (Solaris) and expensive license-managed compilers. Do you think that GNU/Linux on SPARC can perform well enough that Sun will mend its ways?
"the same"
Good one!
Try hitting the marketing dept now and then. You can see what real women look like.
This is typical of Ross. Not only does it not make sense (is there some limit at which we consider a system "tto big" to publish specs on?), but its patently false. The larger the system, the more necessary the spec is, not the other way around.
What do you think would be needed to qualify a product as of more danger to Sun's competitors' markets than Sun's own markets, which seems to be the main business reason that OpenOffice was selected for support and promotion by Sun?
How would Sun feel about, for example, a RAD tool which competed directly with VB+ASP but was not (or at least not primarily) aimed at Java?
How about a truly open Exchange+Outlook killer suite?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
NeWS was an advanced, Postscript-based network windowing system develped at Sun that was later dropped as a product in the late 1980s. NeWS contained advanced technologies that many people still praise today. Is there any possibility that Sun will release source code of NeWS under a free software/open source license? That should be a great contribution to the community.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
I understand that SUN did an incredible donation to the community by GPL'ing OpenOffice (the Free Software version of StarOffice). But, as it stands, OpenOffice still depends on GPC (General Polygon Clipping Library) which is not free for commercial use. This means that business use of OpenOffice, if deemed a commercial use, might need an authorization from Alna Murta (GPC's author) or else be illegal, which is more likely because most people don't even know about this issue. Are there any plans to deal with this last roadblock ?
Could you give me one reason to buy any of your company's products?
On the S/W side, Solaris sucks. One could easily get a superior OS on any platform Solaris runs on for less money.
On the H/W side, IBM beats you on the high end in price/performance & Intel beats you on the low end.
BTW, thanks. You guys have made me a ton of money when I shorted your stock. P/E is still at 170! Ca-ching!
So Danese has 1000+ hits on Google... my name has got 5000+ ? Does that make me more important?
I remember hearing you speak on the OSDN BRIE panel about finding GPL code in the proprietary applications of companies Sun has bought. Is this true?
Does Sun see itself as a Software company or Hardware company?
why was solaris for x86 pulled? beyond the obvious statements given to avert the true reason.
" ... an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, ... "
Given that Sun has contributed more lines of code to the open souce community than any other, and is sponsoring the OpenOffice and NetBeans projects, RobLimo's comment is both petty and ignorant.
Perhaps a little less editorializing and a few more facts would be useful.
It would make an excellent compromise between CDE and GNOME. XFce is fully GNOME compliant. It will work seemlessly with GNOME & GNOME apps while still giving users the look 'n' feel of CDE. And XFce has many features than GNOME (KDE, CDE, et. al.) do not have. In addition, the speed and resource usage are so much better than anything except striped down or bare bones WM/Environments like IceWM or twm. I think it would be worth taking a very hard look at.
For the record; I am not writing this to start a holy war on window managers or desktop environments. I would just like to get some feedback from vendors who currentlly use CDE as their primary environment whether they have looked at XFce or even know about it.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
My question would be the following:
Sun software packaging utility, pkgadd, is useful and well know, however, with the rise of Linux and the Red Hat RPM format, is Sun considering supporting Solaris RPM packages, perhaps by using OpenPKG.
This would be similar to how Sun has adopted ZIP compression on newer patches.
http://java.sun.com/features/2001/07/images/dcoope r.oscon.jpg
Of all of the conceepts originated or popularized by Sun Microsystems, I see OpenBoot as being the most in need of "coming out". It is a way for manufacturers of PCs to escape the Microsoft Tax. M$-Windows boots rely on the BIOS; with OpenBoot, the OEM license need not apply, easing the way for Solaris, *bsd, and Linux. Embedded systems developers would also benefit from a published, cross-platform boot/diagnostic package, which would, again, provide an alterative to Microsoft, in this case CE and Embedded XP. What are the chances of open sourcing Open Boot?