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Sun Opens OpenSolaris.Org
An anonymous reader writes "Sun has launched the first version of opensolaris.org, featuring a small initial drop of source code. The idea is to make a display of good faith to the Solaris community while the rest of the source code due diligence is completed. The source code for Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) is available for download under the terms of the newly OSI-approved CDDL license."
I just want the cool features of solaris (such as hot-swappable processors on a multi-processor system) to be ported to Linux. Honestly, bot OS can and should merge into one entity. less fork, more merge.
Basically, it's a way of debugging programs. A VERY cool way of debugging programs.
What a lot of Slashdotters might not realize is that Sun has spent literally millions of hours over the last couple of years "unencumbering" Solaris from patented code that was owned by other companies opposed to the open sourcing of their intellectual property. They did this for no reason other than to prove to the open source community that they are serious about open sourcing Solaris, and hopefully to sell some good Sun iron in the process.
It would be nice to see some Slashdotters give Sun their well deserved props for a change, instead of ripping on them.
"What? You gave us OpenOffice? That's not good enough..." I hoping this thread doesn't turn into another Sun bash fest because this time they deserve a little respect for giving away what I see as the crown jewels of their company.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
They should revive their "Open Windows" trademark to issue a open source operating system distro - be it Solaris or Linux. That would be a perfect revenge for Microsofts litigation against Lindows.
Otherwise it will enjoy a slow death. Obviously maturing and growth of Linux, scared the hell out of Schwartz and his cohorts. Now they are trying to appeal to the OS community to give their precious operating system, which they locked up under layers of safes many many years and expect them to stop or slow down working on linux and make their solaris better instead, which they will be more than happy to incorporate the development and charge the corporations an arm and a leg.
I am not sure about you but I am not buying this half-hearted OpenSolaris movement.
Come, come to my web little fly, said spider...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
It doesn't matter nearly as much if they invented them or not, but it sounds like they're making an IBM-style pledge to use their patents as a shield for the open source community rather than a sword against it.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
You've got no idea what you're talking about.
Maybe for you - the geek in his parent's basement and a nervous caffine twitch preventing from typing properly - things like a $10k price gap between sun hardware and tigerdirect hardware is an issue. But not for anyone that needs reliability and support.
Yes, things like cooperation are a part of why various open-source based companies are doing well. You know why else they're doing well? They've got sound support, sound development, and a good record to back up their word.
Oh, and the first two lines of your post make about as much sense as this string: asdlfkj23ksdlds.
Thank you for your coherrent discertation. The citizens of slashdot salute you.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
They can be enforced against GPL software including the Linux kernel.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There is a big world out there, and not one solution is always right for everything.
Outside of the knee-jerk reactions on /. , the whole world should not switch overnight to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP. Sometimes, other systems are the right answer, for many complex reasons.
I happen to have a particular fondness for Solaris, having been a fan of their hardware for the last 15 years. It's the Devil I know, and I'm comfortable dancing with him.
I think it's amusingly disingenuous of the slashdot Linux-script-kiddie mentality to ignore that for ten years, SunOS Ruled The Roost in open software, for many good reasons. It is not without its warts (Solaris 2.0 through 2.4 being oozing pustules of lossage), but for an entire generation of sysadmins, Sun was the one system you had to know ... You could add on some of the other big players like Digital, AIX and HP-UX, and maybe one or two of the smaller also-rans like the BSD 4.4 cousins or Linux, but the 800 lb. gorilla was Sun.
Finally: any monoculture is a bad thing, whether it is BSD 4.3 on VAXen, SunOS 5.9 on US-IV , or Linux on Wintel hardware -- and it behooves anyone who wants to be taken seriously to study the differences between systems rather than put all of their energy into denegrating that which isn't their pet.
I think that last part really sums up what I find disheartening with the slashdot collective consciousness. It's that the slashborg will put an infinite amount of energy into defending their point of view, without investing any into analyzing the competition. And, sadly, that more than anything is the sign of ignorant zealotry.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
I would agree that any monoculture is bad. The thing you and those who share your view are missing is that of all those in your list, linux is the only one which is NOT a monoculture.
Just because it's all labeled linux doesn't mean it's all the same. If there are two opposing camps who disagree on how a component is best designed BOTH will be written and available for compilation. There isn't one linux, there are hundreds of linuxes. It may have the same name, but the linux you run on a wristwatch is NOT the same linux you run on an IBM mainframe.
There's a fox in the barn.
I don't like this one bit. Why this emphasis on Netbeans, OpenThis, OpenThat if these programs run on any hardware? Hardware that is normally cheaper than Sun(although admitedly not as cool)?
If every Sun software became open then Sun, the hardware company, will go the way of VA-Linux.
Have they given up and are now willing to die shooting (at Microsoft)? What is left in their magic hats now that Solaris is free?
Broken Hearts are for Assholes. - Frank Zappa
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Note also that IBM's grant came just in time to drown out news about 61 European Parliament members asking to restart the software patent debate there from zero. IBM is one of the main parties lobbying for European software patents. Their grant is part of a larger strategy to convince European legislators that Open Source and software patenting are compatible, that could indeed kill Open Source, because it would leave us vulnerable to many software patent lawsuits.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Ignoring for a moment the question of whether it's buggy, who gives a damn about Solaris 8? That was the 90s, man. OpenSolaris is based on Solaris 10, the release of which is imminent. It's a boatload of new technology plus two full releases' worth of bug fixes removed from Solaris 8. If you had a bad experience, we're sorry, but please don't continue feeding people misinformation based on a badly outdated release. Should I talk about my experience with Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux (based on kernel 0.99!) in 1993 and pretend my difficulties then are reasons to avoid Debian GNU/Linux 3.0?
Next, pedantry.
Yes, sed and awk have bugs filed against them. Probably everything except maybe /usr/bin/true does. Since you didn't say what kind of bugs, it's hard to assess the legitimacy of your complaint. If you'd care to elaborate, there's a chance your problem can be fixed. Otherwise everyone just assumes you're a crank.
Most of the "bugs" in Solaris userland that draw a lot of complaints from GNU users are not bugs at all but rather artifacts of painstaking maintenance of compatibility with long-extant standards. The GNU tools you're familiar with follow different (or their own) standards, because backwards-compatibility is not a GNU priority. It's a constraint imposed on Solaris development by our customers, who seem pleased with the results. You can in some cases make the GNU tools behave similarly if you wish. Solaris also has several different versions of these tools, each of which matches different incompatible standards. You might just be using the wrong one.
Finally, Linux doesn't have awk, sed, or tar. It's a kernel. I've assumed here that you mean the GNU tools, though of course each distro ships its own version and combination of specific tools, but it's certainly possible to build a system with a Linux kernel and non-GNU userland. In fact, soon it will be possible, at least in theory, to make a system with a Linux kernel and a mostly-Solaris userland, if you really want to.
Ok, on to your other concerns.
Most x86 hardware doesn't suffer from the transient error bug that the non-ECC cache of the ultrasparcII processor.
What does this have to do with Solaris? If you think x86 systems are more reliable, you can run Solaris on those instead.
Linux works on parking meters.
So does Windows CE. Should we all start using that? Standard Linux won't run on less than about 4MB of memory, even if you're talking about Linux 2.0. Newer means bigger. Solaris as shipped today by Sun also requires more resources than would normally be found in a small embedded system. It's a safe bet that, like Linux, the SunOS kernel could be reduced sufficiently for such an application. It's just software and work. The fact that a highly modified version of Linux can run a parking meter is a curiosity and a testament to the effort of the hackers who did it, not evidence of inherent software superiority.
Solaris doesn't work out of the box with an A1000.
I can only assume this is yet another reference to some past bad experience you've had. Since you're not telling us what it is, it's impossible (a) to know if it's still a problem, and (b) to fix it if so. Please, be specific if you want to complain. Hint: referencing bug IDs is a good idea.
Most quality nics work out of the box with linux.
Which nics would you like to use on Solaris? In the 10/100 space there's iprb (Intel), elxl (3Com 3c9xx), dnet (Tulip/21xx0), and about a half dozen others. In the Gb/10Gb space there's e1000g (Intel), bge (Broadcom), sk98sol (SysKonnect), and xge (S2IO). See the reference manual for drivers if you want to participate in an informed discussion. The examples I gave don't include the various vendor-supplied drivers or any of the Sun-specific d
You're mistaken, AC. OpenSolaris can co-opt BSD code, because the BSD license specifically allows anyone to use their code for any purpose -- simply put, the BSD license is compatible with any license, as long as credit is given. It's as free, in that respect, as you can get (without going public domain).
The BSDs, however, cannot use any of OpenSolaris' code, because you cannot relicense CDDL code as BSD (if you could, it would be trivial to put it into Linux -- after all, BSD licensed code may be added to the Linux kernel, and in fact has been on several occasions.)
The BSDs will benefit no more from OpenSolaris using their code than they do from NT using their code.
This is essentially how BSD works -- everyone benefits from BSD, but no one is required to give back. The BSD people don't see any issues with this, so more power to them.
Linux can't benefit from OpenSolaris either -- but because of the GPL, this means that OpenSolaris also can't benefit from Linux. So it's a symmetric relationship in that respect.