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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."
Probably as well or better than the kind of sharing that puts OpenSSH into every Linux distro.
Imagine Debian on UltraSparc with a Solaris kernel.
Imagine Sun Linux kernel modules. You don't really think a practical person like Torvalds would turn any of that down do you?
User name, "confusion", is way too obvious. Try "silly" or "wrong" for greater stealth.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Please note people: This is a company. That means they make money. And they do it in the classic sense which means this type of company usually gets the creeps when hearing stuff like "go FOSS" or "rely on FOSS". CEOs freak out regularly when these terms come up.
If SUN plans an OSS strategy they are certainly NOT going to GPL their powerhorse Java. Solaris is nearly just as impressive from a technical standpoint. It's probably that Solaris doesn't have the numbers attached to it SUN would like to see. So they probably guess it could prove itself as OSS, since Linux is winning in the custom Unix market at all fronts.
If x86 Solaris would go GPL that would be really cool. I'd actually give it a try.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The GPLv3 is still in draft form. It doesn't actually exist yet. The version on the FSF webpage could be better classified as a "beta" release (I think that's what Stallman considers it).
It's a little early to be saying "I'm going to be using the GPLv3!" Yes, they're working on it, but it's not actually out yet. The optimistic "release" date is November of this year, with the expected release date being early 2007... It's just not ready yet!
However, thinking about the current draft and any problems you have with it is encouraged. They want comments still, there's still time to help change the final draft. Saying "I'm going to use the GPLv3!" is still premature. Wait until it's actually finished, then decide.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I read in a few /. posts that Solaris is likely the best 64bit OS available. On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.
:-/
You have to be careful here. Solaris used to be called Slowaris when run on Intel machines, because it was designed for much more powerful hardware. A lot of features that are hardware supported on a SPARC machine had to be reimplemented in software on Intel machines.
Another common vector for the "Slowaris" comments is the early days of the Sun framebuffers. Sun was one of the first vendors to do away with text mode all together, and emulate it entirely in software. The upshot is that Solaris SPARC machines have the best looking, smooth font, conole you will ever see. The downside is that the 100 MHz beasties that started this practice had a bit of trouble keeping up with the needs of the console rendering.
Neither of these issues has been significant for a very long time. I haven't heard anyone call the OS "Slowaris" in almost a decade. The complaint I hear today is that Solaris is unwieldy and not at all designed with user-friendly setup. Sun keeps trying to fix this with new, prettier installers. I don't think they have a clue though, because the first thing I have to do every time I install the OS is go into the config files and setup the DNS server and default gateway. You'd think it would kill them to ask this info during an install.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Whenever people say this, I pick up my five test java applications. Three are programs I like and use, the other two are picked more-or-less randomly from freshmeat.
None of them work under such stacks. Not one.
Would you care to reveal what they are? It's quite difficult to track down a bug when you have to start by reading someone's mind.
I'm also an astrophysicist, in the UK. I've never heard of anyone using macs for serious computing work, for the same reason people don't use much solaris any more - a generic linux box is faster and cheaper. But many people use Mac laptops, because they're unix (i.e. can talk to your linux desktop) and they "just work" without the messing about required to get stuff like wifi and power management working on a linux laptop.
As far as I can tell the only important GPLed Unix-compatible operating system is Linux. It'd be good to have some redundancy there.
People forget that what you describe is a completely solvable problem without Sun's cooperation.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
The interesting things in Solaris are kernel-related (DTrace, zones and ZFS), I believe.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
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.
I work in the science number crunching field as well, and yes, this is the case. Suns have come down in price, but generic x86 and other commodity processors running linux has been superior in terms of cost and portability. As far as performance goes, the most Sun can do now is to sell Opterons with Linux. Kinda reminds you of a generic white box vendor, now doesn't it? Especially when you consider that the first round of Opterons were rebranded, and not Sun engineered.
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.
This is true too. OS X on a Mac has become _the_ UNIX workstation of the 00's. Linux was the workstation in the mid to late 90s, and Sun in the 80s and up to mid 90s. Although Apple is working on this, they have not yet too much made a dent into the number crunching world. Yes, I know about the Virginia Tech cluster, but AFAIK, that was a marketing stunt. They installed at a rush $5mil worth of desktop boxes around November 2003, then ripped them out, then reinstalled with Xserve boxes, and announced it was ready for work in January of 2005. I guess I could send an email to the head of the system and ask if its being used or not, but I have a feeling it is very underutilized. Being that they only have 2.7TB of storage for 2200 processors, I would bet my hunch is right.
I'm losing more and more interest in Linux because of it's lack of enterprise features. Hell, a month and a bit ago, I could have been sound asleep in bed if I'd been using Solaris, instead of up at some ridiculous time of the morning:
d _solaris_instead_of_linux-2005-12-14
http://www.penguinpowered.org/wayne/blog/if_i_use