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Sun vs. OpenBSD?
An anonymous reader writes "CNet has an article up about OpenBSD trying to get documentation for Sun's UltraSparc-III processor. Basically Sun is giving them a bit of run around....There is some documentation available for the processor, but not enough to get things to boot."
much like this article from the other day.
man
No manual entry for
But Sun didn't put its open-source community liaison officer, Danese Cooper, in touch with de Raadt until after CNET News.com informed the company of his dissatisfaction. Cooper is "already well-known in the open-source software community," Sun representatives said. But the company acknowledged it needs to improve its work with open-source groups, saying the task would be addressed "within the next few weeks. Cooper has been responsive and is pressing the OpenBSD case within Sun, said de Raadt, but he's reserving judgment until he gets what he needs. "
It seems they are now working very actively to solve the problem.
I agree completely with Sun on this one. They have to make a buck, and when a free OS comes along wanting to utilize its systems and take away from its revenue. I work with Sparc 10 systems everyday, and I have come to love the Solaris system, it is pretty flawless and is specifically designed for the Ultra Sparc architecture. Plus, many people the utilize the Sparc Systems with Solaris use specifically written programs for the Solaris systems and are designed in house, this OpenBSD system could be hell on those programmers and Sys Admin.
But Sun don't many any money from Solaris, it's just the stuff you need to run your apps on Sun hardware. Sun are a hardware company first and foremost.
Secondly, Sun don't even own the UltraSPARC, certainly not in the same way that Intel own the Xeon - see the SPARC International web site. SPARC is about as close as you can get to an Open Source processor.
From reading the article, it seems that Sun simply didn't have anyone looking after the BSD community like they had looking after the Linux community, and when the matter was brought to their attention, they assigned someone to do the job.
Of course, anyone who pays $$$ for modern Sun kit is an idiot if they want to run anything other than Solaris on it, because Solaris, as well as being a solid and powerful Unix implementation in its own right, is designed from the ground up for SPARC hardware, it doesn't have to make any compromises for compatibility's sake. That's why NetBSD is generally slower than FreeBSD, it deliberately avoids anything too platform specific, and performance suffers as a result.
Over the last few weeks this argument has been raging. I've lost count of the number of IRC conversations I've had on ircnet #openbsd, and here's my take on the options presented to the OBSD developers.
1:If the OpenBSD crowd want the docs, sign the NDA. Linux developers did this. It's not that big a deal.
2: Look at the Linux source for hints. This surely isn't too difficult.
Why are Sun not willing to make the relevant docs fully-disclosed to anyone who wants them, sans NDA? In part, the answer is simple: The USIII / III* proc is still pretty new. Solaris doesn't yet fully implement all the chipset features, but will do in future releases. Is it a good idea for Sun to open the proc docs to any Tom, Dick or Harry, including other chip manufacturers, at this stage? Probably not.
There's been a lot of negative talk propagated by the OBSD community regarding this issue. Classic "blame the faceless multinational" diatribe that most of us grew out of in our teenage years.
Access to the information the OBSD developers have requested is a privilege, not a right. They want to build a kernel around the USIII, which is great, but the rules have been set by Sun, and are quite clear. Deal.
(Yes, I do work for Sun btw)
Super Awesome Broadband
Nice troll. From the SPARC International FAQ:
And
If Sun made it policy that it required an NDA to get Sparc 3 Theo would go away. That makes Sparc 3 a closed architecture.
:-) Sparc != UltraSPARC-III. SPARC is an open architecture. UltraSPARC-III is a proprietary, closed chip. What is difficult about that? TCP/IP is an open protocol, OpenBSD implements it in an open way, and MS does so in a closed way. One closed implementation of an IEEE spec does *not* make that spec closed and proprietary.
Aaaaargh! Stop it!
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.