Sun Opens Up Enterprise Software

abscondment writes "Stating that "open source is the future" of the software industry, Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun will be opening its enterprise software in a manner similar to Solaris 10. Sun is opening up the Java Enterprise System, Sun N1 Management software, and Sun developer tools, etc. - practically everything except Java - hoping to lure more developers and chief executive officers worldwide to use and deploy its enterprise software."

Comments

so....

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean I can finally type "emerge sun-jdk" on my Gentoo box and have it download and install in one easy step, without having to go to their stupid site and click on some stupid EULA??

Free as in beer, or free as in "not being a goddamn pain in the ass"?

(didn't I just post this a couple days ago??)

Everything except Java?

[Glomek]

What is going on with Sun? Why do they keep opening up things all over the board but ignoring the one thing that they have received the most demand to open up?

Does that include Sun Clustering?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd sure like to try that out. Veritas is too expensive.

OK, so we'll open Java

[thepotoo]

Right now, Sun has control of internet apps/coding. ActiveX/Visual Basic can't really compete.

If Sun were to GPL Java, they've have every Tom, Dick and Harry making an "improved platform independant language." They lose the marketshare, and browsers/websites have to start supporting a million little random Java-like applets.

No, thank you. I want some software (security stuff) to stay closed-source forever. I would start to seriously dout the security of Java (right now I have complete faith in it's being 100% vulnerability free) if hackers were allowed to see everything about how it works.

I say: Smart Move Sun!

Re:OK, so we'll open Java

[happymedium]

But isn't one of the whole premises of open source that allowing everyone to look at the code is, in the long run, better than "security through obscurity?" This has always made sense to me. Also, wasn't that Nessus software everyone's been talking about open source until the current version? Besides, wouldn't Java developers have a strong incentive to keep compatibility with the installed base--let's not forget how massive that base is--even if Java did become open to change? Finally, if someone did fork Java and Java were under the GPL, all forks would be GPL also, so potential problems caused by this move would be minimal...

Re:OK, so we'll open Java

[shadowmatter]

Huh?

Really, Sun has nothing to hide for security reasons. Your JDK already comes with the source code for all the public libraries found in the standard JRE distribution -- see src.zip in your JDK folder. And Sun doesn't try to stop you from writing your own JDK and JRE -- it is all spelled out quite clearly here.

The only problem is that writing all this in a clean-room fashion takes a lot of time and effort. You have to write your own JDK or classfile generator (which isn't too hard -- Eclipse already includes its own, so you can make class and JAR files on a system with only a JRE), your own JRE (which is substantial if you want it to have the efficiency of Sun's -- see the escape analysis they're including in Mustang), and most laborious of all: you have to write all the standard libraries that come with the JRE. That's why we haven't heard much from Harmony in awhile, and the cleanroom version that IBM produces is a version or so behind.

Sun is giving everyone, including open-source, the blueprints to Java; it just isn't giving them the assembly line.

- shadowmatter

Shot at Red Hat?

[Gerdts]

Sun is offering for free (as in beer) the same things that those that are going to pay for support for get with their support contracts. Sure, the free things come without timely feature patches, etc., but the barrier to using Sun software is defintely lowered. For those looking for free (libre) software from Sun, you can mostly get it too. OpenSolaris is an amazing step given the encumberances and continued business model that they had to struggle with. My guess is that most of Sun's customers will continue to pay for support even though they "don't need to." These customers tend to be the ones that believe that a Fortune 500 systems company is better prepared to deal with OS or other software problems than the outsourced IT department of a company that's core business is not software development. Those that get lured in by free beer have the option of switching to full support without changing software bits (unless they went to the libre bits).

With Red Hat, you can get for free (as in beer and freedom) almost the same bits as paying customers get. However, if you decide midstream that you need to switch from a free customer to a paying customer, you also need to change the code that you are running. This switch can be very costly because it disrupts your business.

It seems to me that this is an effort to pressure Red Hat into giving away RHEL. By reducing Red Hat's paying user base, Sun could put them on the ropes a bit. Again, those that feel that they really need support will still pay Red Hat.

Until Red Hat starts giving RHEL away for free, those that are simply going after the lowest (legal) cost of acquisition along with great ISV support and low risk have a clear choice in going with Solaris. This has the potential to at least slow the uptake of RHEL.

Re:How much?

[adrianmonk]

Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun will be opening its enterprise software in a manner similar to Solaris 10.

So... not very much then.

Looks pretty open to me. I can browse the source online or I can go download it.

And it's all under a license which is quite similar to the Mozilla Public License.

If you think this is "not very" open, could you be more specific about why and how?

Re:Control of the integrated platform

[gral]

Microsoft opened the Language that is C#. Java is available open as well. People are just as free to create Open Source versions of Java as they are of C#.

They just cannot call it Java. Thus Kaffe, and gcj.

Mono is a .Net implementation, but it does not have .Net in the name itself.

The MS.Net platform is NOT open source. Java platform is more open source than MS.Net. You can download the source code for Java, and depending on what you want to do, have various options. Where is the source code for MS.Net platform?

So how is that Microsoft learning to live and let live? They are BOTH in the same pot for OPENNESS.

Re:How much?

[burnin1965]

The open solaris license looks like a nice open source license but there seem to be some conflicts when you go to download Solaris 10 binary CDs or the DVD and must agree to additional licensing terms such as:

5(b) You may make a single archival copy of Software, but otherwise may not copy, modify, or distribute Software. However if the Sun documentation accompanying Software lists specific portions of Software, such as header files, class libraries, reference source code, and/or redistributable files, that may be handled differently, you may do so only as provided in the Sun documentation.

I guess I have to actually download the disks to know for certain what I can or can't do as the information from their website seems contradictory.


5(d) Unless enforcement is prohibited by applicable law, you may not decompile, or reverse engineer Software.

Wow, thats not very open, and what is the point if the source is available?


5(f) You may not publish or provide the results of any benchmark or comparison tests run on Software to any third party without the prior written consent of Sun.

My, a bit touchy about how people may talk about us, are we?


5(g) Software is confidential and copyrighted.

Umm, yes it is copyrighted, but is it confidential if its open source?


5(h) Unless otherwise specified, if Software is delivered with embedded or bundled software that enables functionality of Software, you may not use such software on a stand-alone basis or use any portion of such software to interoperate with any program(s) other than Software.

So its all Solaris or none of our code at all. Whatever, too bad they don't see it both ways.


5(i) Software may contain programs that perform automated collection of system data and/or automated software updating services. System data collected through such programs may be used by Sun, its subcontractors, and its service delivery partners for the purpose of providing you with remote system services and/or improving Sun's software and systems.

Oh great, I have to accept spyware if I want to run Solaris?


6 Software may contain Java technology. You may not create additional classes to, or modifications of, the Java technology, except under compatibility requirements available under a separate agreement available at www.java.net.

Geez, kinda touchy about people touching their java as well. Very strange.

The license really isn't too bad, short and sweet, and at some point I may click on the accept check box and download Solaris 10 to check it out, but I still wonder how supportive Sun is of open source. Do they only support it if they have little choice and then only if you use it in a way that will not benefit anyone else?

Sun rising

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun is the most significant Unix company in existence, which no one who knows anything about the Unix market and it's history can deny. What true Unix company still exists and is as true to Unix more than Sun? None. IBM, HP, DEC, SCO, SGI, etc. all lost to Sun during the dot com years. HP has HPUX on life support, no new innovation and no will left to survive. IBM talks up Linux because AIX is breathing its last breath. The rest are not even worth mentioning because they are either completely dead or will be any minute. How did things get to this point? Because Unix and the hardware designed to run Unix has been Sun's primary focus for which it has continued to develop, improve and campaign for relentlessly.

I am perplexed by the number of people posting FUD about Sun on slashdot. Who by their comments, clearly know nothing of Sun's financial situation or products. Sun is not going away anytime soon, even if they didn't sell a single new support contract or single new hardware device ever again, they would continue to exist. But that's just it, Sun has not given up (unlike its rivals), it is raising the bar and delivering on commitments.

I am getting really excited about the latest moves by Sun. Afterall, I only got involved with Linux because I couldn't afford to run a Solaris box for personal use. Do you think Linus would have ever been inspired to start working on Linux if he was able to run Solaris for free and it ran on his PC? I think not. And yes, much has changed since 1991 and Linux has certainly grown up. But what many fail to see is that Solaris has not been standing still. The gap certainly started closing rapidly around 2003 with the release of the 2.6 kernel. However, with Solaris 10, Sun leaped even further ahead. And I'm not talking about speed, reliability and scalability improvements, which it certainly had much of. Solaris 10 has features like DTrace, predictive self-healing, containers/zones, ZFS and more. These are completely new technologies. And unlike Linux, Sun's code comes out solid from the day it is released. If you're a developer, I urge you to go look at the source code and compare it to the typical Open Source project's code. I think you will see that the difference is like comparing a donkey to stallion.

Hopefully these words are not interpreted as being anti-Linux. I have dedicated a huge portion of my life during the last decade to Linux, its development and support. I feel ashamed to be part of a community that sees anything different as the enemy or a threat. The Linux community should not feel threatened by Sun or anyone else for that matter. The commercial entities that feed off our community however (IBM, HP, Red Hat, Novell, etc.) should be afraid, very afraid...

Re:Sun rising

[amigascne]

I agree that Sun is the only truly relevant/credible Unix company left.

Also, I found that Nexenta GNU/OpenSolaris was an easy way to quickly get my hands on to a recent OpenSolaris build without too much commitment (LiveCD). I'd recommend it to anyone who is curious about OpenSolaris but unwilling or unable to install it on their machine. Once it is out of alpha, I will almost certainly replace my FreeBSD box with Nexenta.

http://www.nexenta.org/

Re:Sun getting desperate

[cold fjord]

Who are they following? When did HP open the source to HP/UX, True 64 (Digital) Unix, and Openview? Or did IBM open AIX, Tivoli,and the Rational tools?