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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."
I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/
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.
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).
http://www.blastware.org/
- Linux zealots abandon their "everything about Solaris sucks and I'll never use it" dogma, or
- Mac zealots abandon their "Intel processors suck and I'll never use one" dogma?
The Mac people are taking an early lead, but anything can happen.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
...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.
You can find out if you just use the Schwartz - trust your feelings, let go.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If Linux dont want do comply with openness there is always s.b. who will. This error from Linus is maybe the chance solaris needs to grab the initiative and mindshare of programmers.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you want "GPL Java", why not help out with GNU Classpath. Progress has been nothing short of spectacular in recent months, and more volunteers are always welcome.
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
GNU = GNU is Now Unix
http://saveie6.com/
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.
http://saveie6.com/
Well, Solaris is infinitely more valuable, for starters. "GPL Java" is a hot-button issue with people for some reason, but at the end of the day, it's just a programming language. Versus, you know, an entire modern Unix operating system.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
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
The Linux kernel probably won't ever be GPL3, because the license it uses doesn't contain the forward-compatibility clause that the FSF's software does; however, all the GNU utilities (including, I believe, GCC) will be GPL3 and/or GPL2, because they have the forward-looking clause.
So really what it would allow a person to do, is produce a GNU/Solaris as opposed to GNU/Linux -- an OS that would have the Solaris kernel, wrapped in the GNU utilities, without the Linux kernel. I'm not sure if anyone would really want that, because I'm not sure that it would be compatibile with either existing Solaris or existing Linux software without rewriting, and it generally seems to be a solution looking for a problem (not unlike GNU/Hurd).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
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
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.
Solaris hasn't been slow relative to Linux since Solaris 10 came out and before that Solaris outperformed Linux for most SMP workloads but lost out on single CPU systems.
One of the design goals for Solaris 10 was for it to be not more than 5% slower than Linux for a range of single processor workloads where typically in the past Linux had been faster (on the same hardware). To that end Sun developed a benchmark called LibMicro which modeled the workloads which Solaris underperformed at and gave this to the Solaris 10 kernel developers as a way of measuring how far they were from their goal.
Most of the benchmarks that have been published show that they have done a pretty good job with Solaris delivering very similar performance to Linux on the same hardware for single CPU workloads and generally outperfoming Linux on SMP workloads.
There are some areas where Solaris anhilates Linux, give Solaris 10 a TCP heavy workload and it will easily outperform Linux. This may also no apply to UDP as well.
To give you an example of how close Solaris is to Linux on single CPU tests the SPECjbb results for a AMD based x2100 are 15434 for SLES 9 64bit and 16070 for Solaris 10 64bit
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
I have to admit Sun seems to have some positive swing lately. They're selling some hardware again. Their open source policy finally seems to be bringing in new customers, after years of shooting themselves in the foot with weird licenses, inconsistent marketing and plain corporate stupidity affecting all their business units.
Their strategy of the past years has been very ineffective. Java has become a multi billion industry, Sun has invested hugely in it but they have failed to cash in on it directly (I suspect they barely break even). Also it hasn't driven hardware sales that much. Their main competitor on the other hand seems to have a very succesful Java strategy. IBM is leading the way in application servers, IDEs (eclipse, rational rose) and middleware with basically the whole industry eating out of their hand, including most JCP specifications committees. On top of that they also sell the hardware & support to go with the software. IBM loves Java!
Then the whole x86 solaris thing has come a long way too (from 'hey it's free now but we support it for a fee', 'oh wait we don't do that anymore' to 'oh well lets open source the whole thing and forget about it' to finally 'hey x86 solaris is really important to us'). I mean, what do they want?
Sparc sales have been a disaster for the past years with people basically favoring IBM power and x86 with linux. They may be laughing at intel for itanium but they have one thing in common with intel: x86 is driving sales for both of them. Sun has a few next generation architectures on the shelves which no doubt they are going to try to sell. These chips had better be way better than the competition (and their mediocre current offerings) or otherwise whatever spin they put on it won't work. Personally I'm not convinced yet. Their two operating systems (solaris/linux) & two architectures (x86/sparc4 aka niagra) policy is going to continue to confuse people. Sun seems to think the combinations can coexist without affecting each others marketshare. I don't. Confused customers will look to IBM and others.
To me Sun still is a company in trouble. Maybe a few of their business units are recovering (finally) but that still leaves large parts of the company not performing very well.
Jilles