Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sun Joins the Free Software Foundation

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the putting-themselves-out-there dept.

RLiegh writes "Ars Technica reports that Sun has joined the FSF Corporate Patron program. The article explains that the FSF corporate program allows companies to provide financial assistance to the FSF in return for license consulting services. The article goes on to observe that this move is doubtlessly motivated by Sun's interest in GPL3's direction. Now that Sun has opened up Java and become an FSF corporate sponsor...could the move to dual license OpenSolaris under the GPL3 be far behind?"

5 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. What this means by pooh666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is Linux has a new and very adept competitor. Solaris has some GNU pains, but they won't last long, and underneath the hood is some amazing work.. It is just just ZFS, and DTRACE either, just take a look at the main page for ifconfig on Solaris vs other systems. There is a lot of depth to Solaris that will start coming out, esp on SMP systems, but on any system really.. The great thing is, Linux will have Solaris to learn from now..

    1. Re:What this means by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "The great thing is, Linux will have Solaris to learn from now.."

      Nope. Solaris is going GPLv3, so can't be dragged back to GPLv2, which is where Linux is expected to stay for now.

    2. Re:What this means by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ok, I can see why someone might of thought this is flamebait. Here's some proof.

      http://docs-pdf.sun.com/817-0574/817-0574.pdf

      Then, check this patch out:

      http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetke y=urn:cds:docid:1-21-118833-36-1

      Then, check out which problems this patch solves, but obsoletes older patches that didn't solve the problem all the way. Next, check out which problems this patch fixes for other patches applied. Finally, check out which problems this patch causes (Note 74) !!!!!

      Now tell me you'd rather use this shitfest then something like debian or RH.

    3. Re:What this means by aeoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think this is indeed amazing. It blows my mind that perhaps Linux will stop being "it" for many people for whom it currently "is it" or "that's where it's at". To think that Solaris, from the point of view of software freedom, not only overcome FreeBSD, but also even Linux, it's pretty mind blowing to me.

      What's next? Windows Vista GPL'ed? I doubt anyone cares about any technical achievements in Vista's kernel, but on a social plane, such an event would be very interesting.

    4. Re:What this means by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Linux and solaris should be friends, the enemy here are non-GPL operative systems.

      Oh, so BSD is an enemy, because it doesn't kowtow to Richard Stallman?

      You zealots make me purge.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."