Sun Considers dual-sourcing Solaris Under GPL3

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."

Comments

Sharing with Linux?

[confusion]

I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?

Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/

Re:Sharing with Linux?

[nurhussein]

I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?

I suspect that's the reason for the sudden change of heart. They know Linux won't be able to get any Solaris tech due to Linux being stuck at GPL2, and get to score brownie points with GPL-lovers.

Re:Sharing with Linux?

[CastrTroy]

The thing is, you could still get a lot of interesting tech from the solaris OS without necessarily taking anything from the kernel. Remeber, that Linux is simply a kernel. It doesn't require that all software run on top of that kernel be run under the same license. If they simply release the Solaris kernel, it probably wouldn't have meant much to Linux, because Linux already has a pretty good kernel, and I'm pretty sure they'd be a little incompatible anyway. I think the main thing that will help is the applications that run on top of the kernel, that Sun may be releasing.

Re:Sharing with Linux?

[Julian Morrison]

This is actually what i posted about before. Any project that licenses GPL2 is going to feel an increasing pressure to go GPL3. Some of them will just be assimilated by the "...or any later version" suggested language. Some, like Linux, which are GPL2 only, will start to look like isolated islands of ancient code, shut out from all the modern goodies.

Re:Sharing with Linux?

[squiggleslash]

I'm having difficulty understanding your logic. Would you explain it to me?

The scenarios I'm reading into your comment are:

1. Torvalds decides he hates the GPL, revokes it and switches to closed source. In this instance, everyone uses the last GPL'd version and forks the operating system.

2. Someone sues Linus for copyright infringement. While the case is bogus, Torvalds settles out of court, agreeing to no longer distribute Linux. Everyone uses the last GPL'd version and forks the operating system.

3. Someone sneaks code into the operating system that they didn't own the copyright to in the first place, and sues Torvalds. This is exactly the same scenario as would happen anyway (eg if IBM lost its lawsuit to SCO.)

How would Torvalds be a single point of failure? The principle of forking the last known Free Software licensed version is well established in instances where the licencer has refused to release Free Software future versions, either deliberately (AmiTCP, Gosling EMACS, etc) or through circumstances beyond his or her control (AtheOS.)

The worst is it kind of works the other way. As it stands, Linus Torvalds would have more difficulty than most enforcing the copyrights on Linux, as he would have to prove he has standing to sue. This was the original reason why the FSF recommended people assign copyrights to the project maintainer - because if you own the copyrights, you don't have to cross that hurdle.

Re:Sharing with Linux?

[justins]

Hah. You've got to love an anti-Sun sentiment so strong that GPLing software suddenly becomes a bad thing.

Re:Floodgates are shut

[Tim C]

I imagine that by "Linux", the submittor means "GNU/Linux" rather than "the Linux kernel".

I know, I know - Linux is the kernel, yadda yadda. When anyone I speak to says "Linux", they mean the OS, not the kernel - just like when people talk about NT, they mean the OS, not the kernel.

Horses, Loaves and Shoes.

[twitter]

Who cares about Solaris?

Anyone doing any kind of scientific computing, which is a large portion of their customer base. They have been losing that customer base to Linux, which hurts their sales in more ways than one.

You might also care about Solaris if you want to use any of their excellent hardware. If they GPL'd Solaris, no only could you use it without practical and moral problems, you could also do a much better job of porting other free software.

GPL'd Solaris would be a great gift. Don't look it too hard in the mouth.

GPL Java, for crying out loud.

The magic of cross licensing may prevent that. If Sun GPL's Solaris, you can be sure they will do everything in their power to get a free Java out.

Take what it gives and make what it won't.

Re:WTF?!?

[CastrTroy]

But maybe we don't want the most open and least restrictive. Because if we did, we'd all be using BSD. Which is the least restrictive license I know of. I think what a lot of GPL users want is for their code to stay GPL, and for changes made to the code by others to be brought back upstream, so the whole community can take advantage of the changes. I think that's what GPL V3 is trying to accomplish.

Re:WTF?!?

[Billly Gates]

The reason Linus turned down GPLv3 is that it required giving the copyright and permission available from all contributors. Linus wants to keep it trademarked under his name and the task is impossible to track everyone down for approval with GPLv3.

Re:GNU

[Aqws]

It should now be: GNU = "GNU NUG UGN", where NUG stands for "NUG UGN GNU", and UGN stands for "UGN GNU NUG".

yeah, right

[penguin-collective]

Just like Sun was going to open source Java, and like Sun was going to make an ISO and ANSI Java standard.

Sun management is a bunch of liars. At this point, you can't believe anything they say until they do it.