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Sun COO Schwartz Promises Open Source Solaris

Posted by timothy on from the big-welcome-sign-but-which-license dept.

Alapan writes "According to C-Net Asia, Sun plans to make Solaris open source soon. While I hardly expect Sun to make it GPL compatible, I wonder how much restrictions Sun will place on distributing modified solaris systems. And will we some integration of Solaris' strong points into other open source OSes like Linux and BSD?" Update: 06/02 14:16 GMT by T : Correction: Schwartz is Sun's COO and President, but not CEO (as the headline originally had it).

5 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. comments to sun by millahtime · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wonder if sun will accept comments on their system from those who write linux and BSD?

    --
    Evolution or ID?
  2. Odd.. by jwthompson2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just yesterday we were talking about this...which just leaves me saying huh!? Unless they meant Shared-Source and not really OSI-Style open source...

    --
    Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
  3. INCORRECT TITLE by bstil · · Score: 5, Informative

    Jonathan Schwartz is Sun Microsystems' president and chief operating officer, not CEO as the title, "Sun CEO Schwartz Promises Open Source Solaris" suggests!

  4. Re:I would be wary of this news by TheLinuxWarrior · · Score: 4, Informative
    Sun isn't saying "Don't use Linux". In fact, if you want Linux, you can get it on Sun (X86) hardware.

    Sun is also producing turn key Linux cluster solutions for pharmaceutical companies. How does that say "don't use Linux"?

    I think you're getting the wrong message. The message is, we've always prided ourselves on our committment to open standards and open source, and that trend will continue with Solaris.

    I for one don't see anything bad coming from that.

  5. Re:This would be welcome news by Cajal · · Score: 4, Informative

    I suggest you check out Blastwave. They've created a Debian-esque wrapper around Sun's package format and have a network-aware installer. So, to install, say, PostgreSQL, you just do `sudo pkg-get install postgresql` and it will connect to a repository, fetch pgsql and its dependecies. You can also upgrade all of your Blastwave packages by doing a `sudo pkg-get upgrade'. It's pretty nice. They've got a decent amount of packages available.

    Sun has announced that GNOME will be their new default desktop. In fact, I believe they are porting Java Desktop (which is GNOME with a Sun theme) to Solaris.

    Regarding speed, have you checked out Solaris 10? It's a lot faster than 8 and 9. Sun is making the betas of 10 available for free - check out Solaris Express.

    Also, an Ultra 5 is hardly an ideal system to use. It's about 7 years old, and even then was extremely low-end. I used to use one as a Kerberos server. It worked fine as a lightweight server, but I'd never use it for interactive work. Linux is probably faster than Solaris on it, but Solaris is hardly optimized for that level of system.