IBM Derides OpenSolaris as Not-So-Open

MaverickFire writes "OpenSolaris isn't a true open-source project, but rather a "facade," because Sun Microsystems doesn't share control of it with outsiders, executives from rival IBM say. "Sun holds it all behind the firewall. The community sees nothing," Dan Frye, the IBM vice president who runs the company's Linux Technology Center, said. Sun could do "simple things" to build a real OpenSolaris community if it were serious about doing so, Frye said. "They would push their design discussions out into the forums, so people can see what's going on," he suggested." I talked to one of the OpenSolaris developers at the project's LWCE booth in the "dot-org ghetto," and though it wasn't in response to this article, he pointed out that OpenSolaris takes contributions from all comers, has active public mailing lists, open IRC channels, and several online communities, so Frye's description seems at least overblown.

Comments

IBM is wrong

[pinky0x51]

Whether IBM is right or not that OpenSolaris has a development community, OpenSolaris is true Free Software.
Free Software is not about a development method but about a way of licensing software. Free Software can build in a community process and in a in-house process as proprietary software can be developed in a community or in-house. It's not the development method which makes something Free Software it's the license.

Sad to see that even such a big company with such a big "linux-centre" like IBM doesn't really understand Free Software.

Re:You mean, as in, Linux?

[htd2]

Your posting gives the impression that IBM is a huge donator to OpenSource projects and Sun with the exception of OpenSolaris which you are unsure about isn't.

Let me soothe your concerns, in fact Sun without OpenSolaris dwarfs IBM in terms of OpenSource contributions, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions more code in RedHat was donated by Sun than any other commercial company IBM and RedHat included. This excludes Sun's donations such as OpenOffice and it also excludes a huge amount of IP donated by Sun in the form of properly documented standards Patents and interfaces that most of the other commercial donators to OpenSource had to be dragged kicking and screaming to.

Re:You mean, as in, Linux?

[gdamore]

But even OpenSolaris is a very new development. What I'm getting at is: IBM was putting its money where its mouth was, _long_ before Sun.

Ever hear of, oh, NFS. No? How about RPC? These Sun contributions to open source predate IBM's involvement with FOSS by a long time. Heck, they even predate the whole FOSS movement. Except for the University of California, Berkeley, I doubt any institution has ever given as much or as freely to open source as Sun has, as early as it did, or technologly that has done more to contribute to the developments that ultimately led to the Internet. And they have continued to support open source (and open standards) throughout their history.

Get your facts straight next time.

You also said:

I don't know exactly how "open" OpenSolaris is. Maybe it's really open, maybe it's one of Sun's usual smoke screens. No idea. I couldn't be bothered to care about it at that point.

Then WTF are you doing posting here? You obviously haven't looked into it. Yes, OpenSolaris is mostly OpenSource (there are a few closed bits, but they are not necessarily critical bits anyway). And guess what? Just because Sun has control of OpenSolaris, doesn't mean you can't download the whole source tree and fork it and start your own project. (Some folks have already done this, check out the PPC port of Solaris, or the port of Debian userland to the Solaris kernel, for example.) That is what Open Source means.

Somebody mod the parent down, please!