Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sun Considers dual-sourcing Solaris Under GPL3

Posted by Hemos on from the what-would-the-impact-be dept.

foorilious writes "In his blog, Sun Microsystem's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz discusses the possibility of dual-licensing Solaris (and perhaps the rest of their software suite) under GPLv3, in addition to the CDDL, which is the OSI-approved license under which these products are already available, but generally considered to be incompatible with the GPL at some level. Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris (among other things), it's worth mentioning that Schwartz has speculated on exciting things in the past (such as porting Solaris to IBM's Power) that we subsequently never heard another thing about."

3 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Floodgates are shut by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris

    Linus already said that Linux is not now, and will not in the near future, be released under GPLv3. And since GPLv3 is not reverse compatible with GPLv2 (it has more restrictions), this won't happen.

  2. Patents in GPL3 by SWroclawski · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the least discussed but largest changes in GPL3 is the explicit mention of patents and how patents (if found to be violated) would effect the work as a whole. This is similar to the IBM Public License and is one of those things that I'd imagine would give a corporate lawyer warm fuzzies. Sun and others may find this change so compelling that they'd be willing to give more attention to the GPL3 than the GPL2, which strengthens it further (since these companies want the flow of information to go both).

  3. Re:Horses, Loaves and Shoes. by Dr_LHA · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're out of date I'm afraid. Solaris already lost out to Linux in the scientific computing field a few years ago. In my field (Astrophysics) universities 5-10 years ago were 100% Solaris, with some Dec Alphas thrown in the mix. 5 years ago the exodus began to Linux machines when people realised they were faster than Solaris boxes, 1/5th of the price and could run all the same software.

    Fast forward to today linux is losing out to Macs in science, every conference I go to it seems that more and more people have Powerbooks (like > 50% of the audience), especially at NASA. My project just decided to move entirely over to Macs. Solaris isn't even in the mix anymore.