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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.
It's more open than AIX, that's for sure.
Game... blouses.
I think this has more to do with IBM feeling the heat over not doing *anything* to open-source AIX. Sure OpenSolaris isn't quite as open as some would like, but it's more than what IBM has done with AIX. C'mon IBM, open up AIX!
This is true. It is more open the AIX. IBM does not, however, claim that AIX is open. OpenSolaris is also more open than Windows, whatever software the NSA uses to crack codes, and a closed door, but of these things, only OpenSolaris claims to be open, and it is these claims Mr. Frye is addressing.
I don't know... IBM hasn't been out and about announcing how open-source AIX and OS/2 are (going to be) (any day now). The problem here is that Sun seems to want all the PR that a "leader of the FOSS community" deserves without actually dipping more than their big toe in the water.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
So this is just like OpenOffice.org then? I've read a lot of complains that OO.o is tightly controlled by Sun.
Sun should just do as AOL did and spin off their open source projects as a seperate company.
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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.
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There are a variety of very good Open Solaris distros now:
o nid=6E46815A1C5CC33AC6470A9439DABAA6#all/
Belenix: http://belenix.sarovar.org/belenix_download.html/
Polaris, Solaris for PowerPC: http://www.blastware.org/
Nexenta, the Solaris/Ubuntu mix: http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki/Nexenta_OS/
And of course you can go straight to the official Open Solaris Communities page here: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/communities/;jsessi
Fight IBM FUD with Open Solaris Fact.
I wasn't trying to defend Sun, I find their actions quite ugly too. I just think it isn't IBM's place to point their finger at others and whine about their competitors while their own offerings suck such as bad or even worse.
I can't imagine how many licenses, agreements, contracts, and who knows what else would prevent IBM from sharing AIX or OS/2 code. Besides, what does "if IBM really cared about openness" mean? Of course IBM cares about open source. For the love of Pete, they have a vice president in charge of linux and open source. More importantly, can you think of any company ANYWHERE, for-profit or not, that's done more than IBM has for open source? How much of the modern linux kernel was written entirely or with significant help from IBM?
If IBM really cared about openness, they should open source AIX or OS/2 and shut up about Solaris.
IBMs donated some AIX features to linux and MS has some say in what happens to OS/2.
While I warmly thank Sun for their massive donations to free software, I wish they'd just STFU until they actually Open Source something. Most of the criticism they get is for flip-flopping on open source.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
IBM is just full of it. If OpenSolaris were not for real do you think they would have gone to the trouble of changing their source code control system from the in-house Teamware stuff to Mercurial (see this ).
No, that is the kind of wrenching and disruptive change that you do if you're really serious about pulling in developers outside the corporate WAN. If it were a facade they could have built a more impressive facade much more quickly.
Progress is slow on OpenSolaris because unlike Linux in 1991, Solaris is already a mission-critical operating system in many enterprises, and because they are trying to pull in non-employee contributions whilst maintaining quality. This is actually difficult.
Disclaimer: I was on the invite-only OpenSolaris pilot program and got some free t-shirts (none of which fit).
As you said, consumers have been clammering for IBM to OSS OS/2. (Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock) We're still waiting.
What would be interesting to keep an eye on is if OpenAIX or OpenOS/2 show up anytime soon. If they do, it could be indicitive that this FUD is all part of IBM's plan to promote their own OSS projects. Another thing to consider if this happens, is if they would have been released without Sun taking action first?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I am an outside contributor to OpenSolaris. I have several projects which are currently in the process of getting integrated into Solaris.
It is true that the development model at Sun is a bit more "Cathedral" than "Bazaar", and there are still some technical and administrative challenges to solve (for example they haven't figured out how to get folks to directly commit to OpenSolaris yet -- you have to hand off code to folks at Sun who integrate your code and walk it thru the process.)
Development of Solaris has always been a tricky thing, and historically has had huge amounts of "process" to get changes. This is because there are numerous quality safeguards, and committees that have been involved. There are famous questions that every project integrating has historically had to answer: (is it i18n safe, what interfaces does it expose? does it conform to various standards already established? is it portable to both intel and sparc? etc. etc.)
Part of the review process also has to uphold things like Sun's binary compatibility guarantee. In any respects, the _quality_ of Sun's Solaris product is much higher, I think, than what you find in say Linux, where churn is a lot higher and quality and oversight controls a bit less.
Anyway, it is possible to contribute to OpenSolaris now, though its a bit of a rough road right now. But they are making it better, and I expect it will be a lot easier in the next year or so.
Sun.
I wasn't so much saying the IBM guy is wrong, than I'm saying he's the wrong person to be pointing it out.
Between OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and their work with GNOME, Sun has made plenty of solid contributions to OSS. Now they're supposedly opening the source for Java, which is the one thing everyone's been screaming about for the past five years and -- IMHO -- the only thing that keeps Sun relevant anymore.
I don't give a rat's ass about Sun, but they seem to be trying. Some douche from IBM doesn't need to be getting in their face because their OS code isn't open enough when IBM won't put AIX or OS/2 out there at all.
And the comment about there only being room for one open source OS is total bullshit. I hope his opinion doesn't represent the majority of IBM's staff.
Game... blouses.
Components of OpenSolaris are also showing up in other operating systems: DTrace will be in the next release of Mac OS X and FreeBSD. Speaking personally as one of the DTrace engineers at Sun, it's been quite a pleasure working with both the Apple and FreeBSD kernel engineers -- pretty decent community for a "facade".
It beats the hell out of OpenAIX. On acount of being somewhat more... existant.
But IBM never claimed to opensource their OS's.. so i don't see what their 'offence' is, sun however does tout the 'we are all about open source' horn, but in practise is not so much
;-)
Also IBM isn't such an offender, they've contributed a lot to the kernel, apache, and many many many oss projects; Which is something i personally value a lot more then opensourcing OS/2 forinstance
It's at least as Open as OpenVMS!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
This statement does not jive with your previous statement. Either Sun releases Free, OSS software (in which case they have a right to be heralded) or they don't (in which case they should STFU). Since I just rattled off three Sun OSS projects at the drop of a hat, I'm thinking that the former is the true case.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That doesn't really prove their commitment to open source in general beyond their commitment to making profit. Which is not a bad thing.
Yes, quite a few. Red Hat, SuSE, Novell, and even Sun, to name just a few.
How does IBM's contributing to the Linux kernel compare to Sun open sourcing an entire OS?
> "Sun holds it all behind the firewall."
Trans.: "I know a techie word and I'm going to use it."
Ade_
/
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
OS/2 will never be open sourced. AFAIK, Microsoft holds copyrights to some of that code.
But, maybe not in the way you mean.
Sun's own tools have driven more people to install GNU software on a Solaris machine than any other thing has caused people to migrate to Open Source.
Back in the day, a Sun which didn't have GNU tools was not very useful.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So bugger off *BSD. Very open-minded of him
Most likely, AIX may also have some code in it that prevents them from open-sourcing it due to licensing.
Keep in mind they're already in enough legal battles over intellectual property licensing. While SCO's claims regarding IBM and Linux may be trollish, the impression I get is that SCO WOULD actually have significant legitimate claims against an "open source" AIX.
The end result is that rather than opensourcing AIX (which would be a rather pointless endeavor as the impression I get is that IBM is "sunsetting" it in favor of Linux), IBM is simply taking all of the Good Parts from AIX which they can and merging them into Linux.
Remember, open-sourcing a product isn't always a simple matter of taking a snapshot of your source tree, making it public, and adding a new license. Frequently, a company may not own all the code in a program and can't open source it without ripping out some of their code and either spending time replacing/rewriting it or releasing what is essentially open-source crippleware. In a situation where there is no even remotely competitive open-source alternative (see Quake and Mozilla), it makes sense to release crippleware and let the community fill in the holes over time, as even if it takes the community years (Mozilla/Firefox) to fix the holes, it still puts them way ahead. In the case of AIX, there would be utterly no point whatsoever in releasing it if IBM were required by licensing agreements to remove critical parts. Unlike Mozilla, with AIX there's a healthy and robust open-source competitor which would be dominant in developer and user mindshare even if it were open-sourced in complete form.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I don't see openAIX floating around.
;)
Sure they've ported some of the technologies and added the opensource toolbox to AIX (imagine an RPM that can be installed on AIX and interfaces with the existing AIX package system).
Why is there no JFS2 for Linux? Why can't I mount a JFS2 filesystem on the SAN on my Linux machine? Why has the AIX lvm not been ported to Linux or why has IBM not contributed to the Linux LVM2 the ability to import AIX volume groups along with the requiste filesystem support on Linux? Why the hell don't I have lsdev, lscfg, lsattr for Linux? That alone would save me alot of effort.
Look the ODM is not the greatest thing since sliced bread but AIX has other good ideas that IBM should contribute instead of bitching about OpenSolaris. Shit they just want to sell more pSeries boxes anyway
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I suggest looking through the Linux kernel change histories sometime. There are a _lot_ of IBM email addresses in there.
And not just there. Have a look at most Apache projects too, for that matter.
There's a reason why SCO went after IBM. Well, ok, a second reason, beside the obvious "because SCO is on a pump and dump scheme." Like most lies, SCO's "IBM took our IP they had used in AIX and put it into making Linux enterprise-ready" is based on a small grain of truth, although in this case one irrelevant to the lawsuit. The truth is that IBM did donate that much code to Linux, and some which, indeed, is a part of why Linux is enterprise-ready OS instead of an academic toy. At any rate, a lot of that is either AIX code or it uses techniques developped for AIX.
If you read the RTFA, even there they spell it out repeatedly: "It prefers Linux and its own proprietary version of Unix, called AIX." ("It" being IBM.) Or even better: "IBM helped put Linux on the map, funding programmers to improve the operating system and offering early pledges of support that indicated it was safe for customers to use. The company has more than 600 programmers at its Linux Technology Center, but it's actively involved in many open-source projects besides Linux."
So basically IBM _does_ put a lot of money and work into a F/OSS OS. It's not AIX, but in hindsight, a lot of us actually prefer it that way. The great Unix fragmentation happened precisely because everyone wanted to make their own flavour deliberately incompatible to everyone else's, trying to lock their customers in. And that's how Unix lost back then, and why nowadays we have Windows instead on most computers. Does anyone (other than MS) want _that_ to repeat verbatim again? Not me, anyway. So thank goodness that IBM contributes to Linux this time, instead of trying to divide-and-conquer the F/OSS OS market with an OpenAIX.
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.
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.
So excuse me if I find it outright funny to see someone claim that IBM isn't doing anything there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...I like some of the things IBM is doing now, but never forget they are a very, very big company whose agenda always directed at making money for their shareholders. They have a business motive behind everything they do.
IBM is a big champion of Linux now, but it wasn't all that long ago that they were issuing stern warnings to those who foresake the safety of proprietary software about the dangers of getting "locked into open source."
IBM would probably happily lock people into Linux... whatever, exactly, that would mean... if they can figure out how to do it and can see an advantage to IBM in doing it.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You do realise that IBM are in court right now, for the heinous crime of taking large gobs of its own AIX code and putting it in Linux, aren't you?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Apparently you've never priced Sun and IBM hardware. Sun's bottom end x86 server is $745, or $945 for a dual core Opteron. They're lowest end SPARC is $3145. IBM's bottom end x86 server is $1129. They're lowest end p-series is $2995 for a PPC970, for an actual POWER5 system it's $3399 and then you have to license the software on top of that.
Claiming that Sun is selling overpriced hardware just indicates that you really aren't in touch with the market.
So, out of curiousity, what exactly is "open source" in your world?
You can take Solaris get the complete source. Make whatever changes you want, build your own distro and release it. Sun could decide it was all a complete screwup and shutdown opensolaris tomorrow and you'd still be able to continue to develop and release your derivative code. Sounds like open source to me.
Contrast this to Linux. You can contribute patcehs to Linus. You can discuss it on IRC. You can subscribe to email lists. You can take the source and build your own. And Linus undeniably has private discussions with developers whom he has established working relationships with about the development of Linus' kernel. Additionally you cannot directly check your code into the mainline Linux kernel. Sounds about the same as the OpenSolaris development process to me.
So this rant of one IBM executive is completely baseless and probably intended to promote IBM at Sun's expense.
Agreed - and of course it's intended to promote IBM at Sun's expense.
Isn't it crazy that IBM, who's contributions to F/OSS (whilst large & also warmly thanked for) are dwarfed by Sun's contributions are able to get away with this?
The reason I suspect is Sun's flip-floppiness & skittishness when it comes to F/OSS - they contribute much, but also help spread a litlle anti-F/OSS FUD, etc. IBM's stance hasn't changed for what? eight years now.
CDDL is part of that problem I think - as the article notes, linus had 10 times as many people contributing to linux in his first year than Sun - with all their resources - had contributing to opensolaris in its first year.... A pity.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I don't think that the GP ever claimed that all of Sun's hardware was overpriced, or for that matter that IBM's hardware wasn't equally overpriced. Frankly I think they're both damned expensive, although I think as you scale into the high end, that it becomes very hard to compare one two the other.
At any rate, your price comparison doesn't really address the GP's point, namely that Sun is a hardware company, and IBM is a services and consulting company. Sun's products are always going to be, like Apple, designed around the concept of selling more hardware. IBM's hardware, on the other hand, is really an entre so that they can sell you a whole lot of maintainance/consulting/"transformation" services.
It's a question of business models, and which company really is more compatible with open source in general. I think they both could be, but IBM is a bit closer to the model which seems to have worked for other OSS companies so far.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Certainly calling Sun names for being closed while they are making serious noise about opening Java seems ill timed from a tact perspective. However, NFS was never usefully open sourced. It was a well-specified protocol that was reimplemented by everyone. The historical Sun was generally not a creator of open code, but did believe in open interfaces as a tactical market weapon.
They may be changing their stripes, but the deliberate GPL incompatibility of the CDDL makes me wary. I'll believe it when I see it.
-josh