Slashdot Mirror
Torvalds vs Schwartz GPL Wars
javipas writes "The controversial message published by Linus Torvalds (mirrored) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List was from the beginning to the end an open attack to Sun and its Open Source strategy. Linus criticized Sun's real position on GPL, and claimed that Linux could be dangerous to Sun. Upon his words, "they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing." Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way. Sun's CEO notes that "Companies compete, communities simply fracture", and tries to explain why using GPL licenses is taking so long."
There is nothing like media pitting two public figures against one another and, consequently, pitting supporters and detractors against each other, in order to generate some cheap polemic to exploit for some 15 minutes. Nothing to see here, move along.
So this could be a new historical Linus debate.
-- tinyhack.com
Mirror here http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0706 .1/1722.html
My blog
Apparently they don't feel like a /.-ing today. :-)
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
"I see your shwartz is as big as mine."
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Many moons ago, I was at Sun Opcom when they were trying to release Solaris 8 source to anyone who would sign a non-disclosure, and it was insanely hard to find the rightful owners and get permission to do so much as publish the code.
If my leaky memory is correct, a number of files had to be rewritten from scratch, just to be able to release them to an audince of friendly customers.
You can imagine how hard it is to hunt down and relicense everything as GPLv3, for either Linux or Solaris! Kudos to Scott and Jonathan for their perseverance.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I'll cook, you bring the wine.
most.. awkward.. date.. ever.
The LKML is mirrored into the newsgroups 'linux.kernel' and 'fa.linux.kernel', you can find the message on your friendly local newsserver as Message-ID: <8vgNb-60b-21@gated-at.bofh.it> and Message-ID: <fa.szmWhTWYPwzbOWaH9H0wdBZU76U@ifi.uio.no>, respectively.
7 f6f676dc00c0beg /9dae088569c12eb4
Or via Google Groups:
http://groups.google.com/group/linux.kernel/msg/8
http://groups.google.com/group/fa.linux.kernel/ms
Sun are the proverbial me-too, camp follower company.
They don't firmly commit to anything, but merely spend a certain amount of time chasing whichever particular ambulance they think is hot with their customer base at a given moment. When the wind changes, they go off in a different direction.
The controversial summary sent by "javipas" to Slashdot was from the beginning to the end an open attack on Linus Torvalds and his "real" opinion posted to a mailing list . . .
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
It's working together, not working against each other. The F/OSS community is HUGE, but wasting resources is always silly. As Schwartz put it: "Let's stop wasting time recreating wheels we both need to roll forward."
Very nice attitude.
"they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing" ...says Linus to the company which has put an entire operating system, compiler, debugger, library set, etc. into the open source (though admittedly not GPL-compatible) world.
Sheesh, when we criticize a company that has done more than 99% of software companies out there at contributing to OSS, it starts to look pretty bad...
Unfortunately, due to his position, his personal opinion counts for too much. He needs to be more careful posting incendiary comments like this, because the public at large interprets his comments as the position of the rest of the Linux (and dare I say, open source) community. It does not help that his comments are so obviously not well thought out. At least think it through before inserting your foot squarely in your mouth.
rms? Is that you?
My blog
May the Schwartz be with you.
People are perhaps reading to much into it. Linus advanced some scenarios, while at the same time giving his reasons. He was blunt, in his style, about some things but I don't see it as an all-out attack on Sun. Even more interesting is that he says that he could be wrong, and that he hope he is wrong, and that releasing Solaris under the GPLv3 would be a very good thing.
Also of note is Theo's de Raadt message in Sun's blog: "Jonathan, I wish the above was true. 15 years ago I was the biggest Sun fan. Today I speak as the project leader for another set of open source projects -- OpenBSD and OpenSSH. OpenSSH will be better known to your audience, as it is what they use daily to connect securely to and from their Solaris (or Linux) machines. OpenSSH killed telnet and rlogin, for those who still remember those mechanisms. We give our software completely freely to the world, without even the standard encumberances people see in the GPL or CDDL. Yet when we turn around and ask Sun to give us documentation for the chips on their machines -- chips Sun themselves designed, not via contractors -- Sun drags their feet. Recently we tried to reopen these 10-year-old repeated requests, and once again nothing positive happened. You may remember, because you and David Yen were in an email conversation with us. Lots of nice open words were exchanged, but no action. However, let me give an example of the duplicity of Sun. (I wish I could use a lighter word). Two operating systems run on Sun's latest PCI-e based (smallish) Ultrasparc-III machines, the v215/v245 -- Solaris and OpenBSD. The latter system runs on those machines because the code to support the non-processor chips on the board had to be written after painstaking reverse engineering, because Sun refuses to make available documentation for how these chips are programmed. Now we will readily admit that not every programmer in the world needs to know how to program these chips. But does every programmer in the world need to know how to program every little detail on Sun's processors, in system mode? Sun gets great press out of UltraSPARC being all "open", but what use is supervisor-mode documentation when the rest of the chips that the supervisor-mode code has to communicate with are entirely undocumented??? The press does not spot this problem, but Jonathan, you should clearly understand this is a fallacy. There are two operating systems which surprisingly do not run on the Sun v215/v245 -- Linux and OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris?? Yes -- Sun isn't even open enough to give the OpenSolaris community enough documentation to support their new machines. So I think that Linus is right, and Sun has a long road ahead."
I tend to listen to Theo's opinion carefully on this subjects. I'm an "FSF fanboy" to the bone, card carrying and all, which curiously is one of the reasons I tend to view Theo's opinion on this subjects with interest, more so than Linus. When it's not a GPL vs BSD thing (which is a fait-diver discussion in my sense of priorities) the fact remains that he seems to see the problems with licencing with a greater depth and in general is more "idealistic" than "pragmatic".
Frankly, I see very little difference here. Linus says, as he always does "Show me the code!". He draws a line in the sand with ZFS. Schwartz says "we will", but note, no promises about ZFS. The most remarkable thing is that Sun is currying favor with Linus.
Move on, nothing to see here. The dogs bark, the caravan passes.
That reminds me. It's been a long time since we've had a KDE vs Gnome flamefest.
Seems not only Linus is pissed of by Sun. The GNOME project as well:
7 /06/13/Indiana-patchesh tml
http://www.placenet.org/benoit/index.php/post/200
http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/project-indiana.
Why is Linux surprised that a commercial company might be holding back on open sourcing a large amount of its intellectual property? Thats what they make money out of. So maybe some people in Sun have been talking up open source wrt to Solaris to get some publicity , so what? This is what companies do to get their product noticed and theres nothing wrong with it (unless you're some publicly funded socialist who does little work but mouths off a lot about some neverland utopian ideal, but I'll leave Stallman for another post). Coporations are what make the western economy run , without them and they're "nasty" hunger for profit we'd all be a lot worse off including all the rabid open source fanboys. Theres nothing wrong with Open Source but lets not start thinking its the solution to any sort of problem , it isn't. The world would still turn without Linux or the FSF. Yeah , mod me down fanboys, see if I care.
Excuse me while I go selectively erase the mental image of Bill Gates in a French maid uniform from my memory with the time-tested method of blunt trauma to the head.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Competition is good.
- So they want to use Linux resources (_especially_ drivers), but they do
*not* want to give anything back (especially ZFS, which seems to be one
of their very very few bright spots).
- Ergo: they'll not be releasing ZFS and the other things that people are
drooling about in a way that lets Linux use them on an equal footing. I
can pretty much guarantee that. They don't like competition on that
level. They'd *much* rather take our drivers and _not_ give anythign
back, or give back the stuff that doesn't matter (like core Solaris:
who are you kidding - Linux code is _better_). Uh, if Sun GPL's the ZFS source code, isn't everyone on an equal footing? And if that turns out to be so, the entire thesis of Linus's missive is shot. At best, his post is nothing more than an opinionated prediction that "Sun is not going to play nice" because if Sun uses GPLv3 on ZFS, his kernel would have to move to GPLv3 to use it.
Waah.
BTW, having seen both Linux and Solaris source, I disagree with your "Linux code is _better_" opinion.
sage
This is just Linus speaking bluntly as always. In fact its comparatively mild compared to some of the things he says. He is never afraid to call a dirt extraction device a spade.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It remains to see who participates and the nature of the co-operation. Sun contributing Java, even for cynical reasons, says more about Open Source as an evolving business model than a fracturing community.
And so what if it fractures anyway, maybe that makes software evolve in a more "natural" way.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This is very interesting. I got some questions: 1. How can you say, that companies and communities do not compete? That is total Bullshit! Communities and Companies compete more then ever these days. The same as Bloggers compete with the old school media. There is a hell of a lot competition going on. Gnome and KDE are another wonderful example of how communities compete against each other. Ubuntu and Gentoo are another wonderful example! 2. The Old Software development and distribution models do not work anymore and Sun will find out, if they want or if they do not want. Sun needs to learn more - lots more - from the OpenSource development model if they want to prosper in the future. 3. As Linus puts it, merely trying to take away the best people from the Linux Kernel will not work. Sun needs to realize that they must organize them selfs more and more like the Kernel development model is organized. 4. OpenSource tactics can and will be implemented in the Future business world as well. 5. Linux is a 21st century role model.
rms? Is that you?
Even if RMS has an Slashdot account. I'm sure he doesn't recognize Slashdot as "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." anymore.
MOD UP GP.
First, this is not troll nor flamebait. From a psychological standpoint, if I analyze Linus' message, and I read between the lines, I see the following bottom line:
"OpenSolaris under GPL scares the shit out of me as an unmatched competitor."
For all of you who have not read the blog, I would suggest that you just skim down to the comments. There is one excellent comment by Theo from OpenBSD & OpenSSH where he is quite articulate about some of Sun's not-so-friendly experiences with Open Source projects.
To my mind, the relationship between Sun and Open Source has always been coloured by Sun's Big Thing: Java.
As a development platform, Java only had one new thing to offer. Perl, Python, PHP, C et al. are "write once, run anywhere" languages, as long as you publish the source. Sun's contribution is a language that supports "write once, run anywhere" without publishing the source.
In other words, Sun's most interesting contribution to the software industry is a powerful (if painful to use) tool for distributing proprietary closed source applications.
I keep wondering whether they just stumbled into this or whether it was a strategic move. In either case, it's hardly a testimonial to Sun's support of Open Source.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
They should apply statistical model for wars from previous story to figure out who has higher chance of winning.
Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way
:P
He sounds like any other corporate fag to me
"Companies compete and communities simply fracture"? What is that supposed to infer? There are a ton of competing open source projects. I think Mr.Schwartz does not understand the open source community very well.
--fatboy
Will this FOSSie civil war in any way effect our ability to get new and innovative text editors?
Because as any Lunix aficionado know, you can never, ever have enough text editors. We may not have an OS which can auto detect and auto configure new hardware, but when you have millions of different text editors to choose from, chasing Windows 95's tail lights seems like a pretty good place to be.
-William Brendel
So we have Schwartz, Linux and Theo on record. Now all I need for my collection is something from RMS, Bruce Perens, a couple of the FreeBSD Founders and NetBSD founders to REALLY get things going :)
"arr... that'll replace the whale in my nightmares!"
I really don't see what's so controversial about that message from Linus.
- Sun says it'll do A
- Linus says that based on Sun history he is sceptical that they will actually do A, and thinks that they say A but will do something like it, but not completely
- Then he says he thinks Sun should be commended for the things they did.
That's not a war. That is just an opinion that isn't even remotely controversial.
And then someone replies...
Let's stop wasting time recreating wheels we both need to roll forward."
This is _classic_ corporate PHB psychological warfare that simultaneously discredits Linus in this case and elevates Sun's position. It's intent is to weaken the stronger party by getting them angry.
And, no, corporations can't "just get along" with individuals. Sun's job is to return a profit to its investors. They do that by crushing competitors when they aren't abandoning projects that didn't make enough money.
If Sun sticks with the GPL long enough, it is only a matter of time before Sun's interests in the GPL will diverge from the GPL's original intent.
Let me put it to you more simply: if the only thing that stands between Sun and profits was a GPL license, then wave the GPL goodbye.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
What you say is true but they do better on the Open Office front.
If they were really interested in seeing ZFS everywhere, why did they release it in a license incompatible with the GPL license?
the story is about Linus commenting/speculating about Sun's direction and intent. Part of that includes possibility of GPL3 for Solaris and how that GPL3 might better fit Sun's plant. why that pushed your you-can-choose-gpl-version hot button isn't at all apparent.
Yes, as long as you maintain your own fork of the relevant code. The existing GPLv2 code can be used and perpetuated under GPLv2 for as long as you wish. However, if someone else makes a change and re-releases under GPLv3, you can't use it in your fork.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
SPARC Performance horribly slow? Have you tried a modern SPARC processor? I'm talking say an UltraSparc T1 here, not an old US II or US III processor. Performance on web based applications with the T1 cpu blows the doors off of most Linux based OSes. oh and "Linux code _is better_" - I'm sorry. Today's Solaris 10 is more stable, more capable and more compatible than any Linux variant I've ever tried. Couple this with ZFS, Fire-engine, Containers/Zones and we've got an all in one solution to consolidation that runs circles around the Linux based varieties that we've tried. (TurboLinux, RedHat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Yoper, Stormix - and yes, I know some of these are no longer around). Please, please, make certain of the facts before making such patently false claims.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Dear Jonathan Schwartz,
You cannot to steal GPL source code from Linux's drivers to put it in your dual licensed OpenSolaris and Solaris!
You are sucking it for your own CDDL license in addition to second license GPL.
It's reasoned for the (non-from-Sun) opensource community that
current ( GPL or CDDL ) + adding GPL => GPL without CDDL ( because of virility of GPL ).
but the trap of Jonathan Schwartz is
current ( GPL or CDDL ) + adding GPL => GPL or CDDL
The CDDL license is using GPL source code that is not from CDDL!!!
Companies compete.
Communities EVOLVE.
My code, even if licensed under GPLv2, is still copyrighted by me. If they fork and change it, only the changes belong to them; Most of the code base still belongs to me. And unless I permit it, they're not allowed to arbitrarily switch the license. (Unless I was silly and included the "Or any later version" clause in the license declaration, which I've done in the past. But that's not a required component of GPLv2.)
Now, they can fork it and rewrite it from the ground up, removing all the lines I wrote. At that point, it's their code, they can do whatever they want with it. But for most projects, that's a lot of work.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Sun should not be hugging Solaris like it is some great asset. Maintaining an OS is expensive, and thankless as far as revenue is concerned.
It's too late for Solaris to attract an open source developer community by itself. What Sun must do now in order for Solaris not to slide into an untenable position of being too expensive to maintain, but not worth paying to get, is to merge it with the Linux family tree: Make the parts of Solaris, including ZFS, upstream projects of any distribution that wants them, and make Solaris itself a downstream distribution of, e.g., Debian or other distribution that is upstream of several popular Linux distributions.
Sun should be able to make revenue-neutral changes to support and maintenance contracts as open source Solaris becomes the current supported version. Counting conquests from other Linux distributions and other OSs, they should be able to grow revenues.
Sun has a market value one fifth of Apple's, about half the revenue, and twice the employees. Sun is still acting like they are a big swinging deal. They need to get over that and start acting like they need to catch up to an industry that has passed them by.
I wrote parts of this stuff
What is that supposed to infer
He implies. You infer.
There's two sides to every Schwartz. You must have gotten the DOWN side.
I think the parent may have meant if changes are made to the original codebase then they can't be used in the differently licensed fork. The FSF directly owns copyright on glibc, gcc, and various other goodies which will make maintaining forks of all that problematical.
I don't care about Lunix anymore, their opportunity to win hearts and minds has long passed. They have been whining about Microsoft supposedly keeping them down for over a decade, despite the fact that they can't even do what Windows 95 could do back in the day.
Lunix is not, despite their propagandizing to the contrary, ready for the desktop... and probably never will be. And no matter how you slice it, they will always be at least a decade behind Microsoft.
So sadly, their vast and unprecedented variety of text editors is just not enough to get people to use their OS as anything but a tech toy. It's an ok choice for a server, and it's kind of neat for small devices, but as for the desktop... I'll go with an OS which is actually ready for prime time.
Just substitute "Bill Gates" for "Linus Torvalds", and a similar argument can be made for the opinions of ordinary computer users, who would favor Gates over some relative unknown. Moreover, you are buying into some kind of myth about Torvalds. In fact, he is well known for saying more than needs to be said, and often it is insulting, self-serving material (e.g., Bitkeeper mess; ugly insults against CVS and Subversion; regular, unprovoked insults against FSF, etc.).
My eyes, they burn!!
I understood that...my point was that they don't have the authority to put the fork under a different license, as they don't own the copyright to the entire code base.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Wrecked the curve? Are you on crack? The man would have failed, like Andy said. He has shown time and again that he fails to grasp some of the most basic and fundamental concepts of operating system design. Not only does he fail to understand, but he is so arrogant that he refuses to even try to learn, instead he just insists that his ignorance is really wisdom, and that anyone who is smarter than him is an academic blowhard who doesn't understand the real world (despite being proven wrong).
Linux being popular does not equate to Linus being good at computer science. Windows is even more popular, does that mean Bill Gates is better at OS design? Of course not, popularity has nothing to do with the quality of the OS. If you think Linus is smarter than you, then you either have poor self esteem, or a very misguided perception of Linus. He's just a mediocre programmer who lacks a strong understanding of computer science. Like Bill, he was just in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time.
> They don't firmly commit to anything, but merely spend a certain amount of time chasing whichever particular ambulance they think is hot with their customer base at a given moment. When the wind changes, they go off in a different direction.
Doesn't matter. Once it's GPL'd, it's Free (libre) and even if they were to go SCO on us, we'd still have a great benefit. I mean, if we want to snark, you could say things like "Linus is only pissed because he might have to GPLv3 Linux for ZFS & co." but that's pretty unfair.
The real benefit of licenses like the GPL is that they allow people to cooperate even though they don't get along. Yes, there may be forks, flamewars and such, but in the end, they end up sharing code whether they want to or not and whether they like each other or not.
And that, I think, is a good thing.
If Linus were to decide to go the GPL3 route, I don't see why the existing code can't be GPL2 and any new additions simply marked GPL3. This would effectively GPL3 the whole shooting match since anybody wanting GPL2 (i.e. Tivo) can't use any of the new releases, they have to go back to the GPL2-only codebase and roll their own updates/enhancements.
Anybody else read the headline in their feed reader and wonder why Randall was getting involved in GPL wars? :o)
Market value is based on stock price which based on perception. Most of the time the perception does not equal to the reality.
Because the kernel is marked GPL V2 only, meaning any code added to it must also be licensed under GPL V2 only. If it were marked "GPL V2 or later" there wouldn't be a problem. RMS did warn Linus over his choice of GPL V2 only, wayyy before there was a GPL V3.
My blog
Johnatan: I'll invite you for dinner.
Linus: What will be having.
Johnatan: Steam Clams! Open Source Steam Clams!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
... in response to Mr Schwartz. "Jonathan, I wish the above was true. 15 years ago I was the biggest Sun fan. Today I speak as the project leader for another set of open source projects -- OpenBSD and OpenSSH. OpenSSH will be better known to your audience, as it is what they use daily to connect securely to and from their Solaris (or Linux) machines. OpenSSH killed telnet and rlogin, for those who still remember those mechanisms. We give our software completely freely to the world, without even the standard encumberances people see in the GPL or CDDL. Yet when we turn around and ask Sun to give us documentation for the chips on their machines -- chips Sun themselves designed, not via contractors -- Sun drags their feet. Recently we tried to reopen these 10-year-old repeated requests, and once again nothing positive happened. You may remember, because you and David Yen were in an email conversation with us. Lots of nice open words were exchanged, but no action. However, let me give an example of the duplicity of Sun. (I wish I could use a lighter word). Two operating systems run on Sun's latest PCI-e based (smallish) Ultrasparc-III machines, the v215/v245 -- Solaris and OpenBSD. The latter system runs on those machines because the code to support the non-processor chips on the board had to be written after painstaking reverse engineering, because Sun refuses to make available documentation for how these chips are programmed. Now we will readily admit that not every programmer in the world needs to know how to program these chips. But does every programmer in the world need to know how to program every little detail on Sun's processors, in system mode? Sun gets great press out of UltraSPARC being all "open", but what use is supervisor-mode documentation when the rest of the chips that the supervisor-mode code has to communicate with are entirely undocumented??? The press does not spot this problem, but Jonathan, you should clearly understand this is a fallacy. There are two operating systems which surprisingly do not run on the Sun v215/v245 -- Linux and OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris?? Yes -- Sun isn't even open enough to give the OpenSolaris community enough documentation to support their new machines. So I think that Linus is right, and Sun has a long road ahead." Posted by Theo de Raadt on June 13, 2007 at 02:25 AM PDT #
Schwartz has a $2 billion dollar "no suing over patents" agreement with Microsoft.
Only some Linux vendors have similar agreements.
This is a good reason why "working together" isn't as easy as Schwartz makes it sound.
Even if the licenses are compatible, there's good reason the Linux community should be very careful with Sun code.
Though, Sun has a lot more "big things" than Apple does. And those things are expensive. If you max out an apple workstation you're still looking at under $20,000. Sun's bread and butter are these large scale installs with prices from hundreds of thousands to millions and not to mention support contracts. Now for Apple they have spawned the iPod generation with millions of listening to music via them and they have become the main source (aside from P2P) to fill those with music.
Sun has to have a large R&D budget for their hardware. Even the newest iPods aren't really all that hard to put together on paper... Storage, an ARM processor, a little ram for cache, a DSP and a sound chip. Connect to some buttons and an LCD. For their Computers, motherboard design is practically given away by Intel, that's in their best interest. If they can make sure that 5 to 10 of their chips are in each computer that rolls out the door, then they'll be glad to publish schematics to Dell, HP, Apple and others, so the only R&D costs really incurred by Apple are how to lay it out, how many of each port and which chip+processor+video chip to use.
He had sent patches for over a week of GNOME, which needed to be patched. That proved his idea.
What does he plan now? just an E-Mail? what about something creative like last time?
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
"Then Schwartz responded by.... saying lots of nice things."
Schwartz said more than just some nice things. He explained that moving an existing product to the GPL is more difficult than a product that you start and just put under the GPL to begin with. The existing products can have third party code that was licensed. These parties may not want their code put under the GPL.
I can see that you would want to know where every line of code came. This could take time. If you found third party code that was licensed, you have to either remove that code and rewrite it or get the third party to buy off on GPLing their code.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
This is fascinating. It seems to me through the number of references in Linus's post to ZFS that he (or at least members of the kernel team) are drooling over it. This is all actually working quite the way RMS intended. Linux may be a GPLv2 stronghold, but as soon as some piece of GPLv3 software comes along which is a *must have* i.e. ZFS, enough pressure will fall on the major copyright holders that they will consider going through the PITA of upgrading the kernel to GPLv3.
That may be the major reason for Linus's striking change of heart on GPLv3.
You have to wonder whether RMS talked to Sun at all about this. We do know that he has praised the company for the decision to GPL Java. If RMS wanted to strongarm Linux into a license change, what better way to do it than through ZFS?
Maybe because Linus did not wanted to go to any unspecified direction with the kernel's license, and be able to choose. That's even stronger at the light that he does not like parts of GPLv3. Or the other way around: Linus warned RMS that he wont have the kernel go automatically to whatever terms RMS might come up with. Makes sense to me.
some are 2 or later.
So your assertion of absolutes is incorrect.
N/T
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
I'd like to know what email he was reading
Why do I have visions of some 8 year old little manipulative prick running into the kitchen yelling "Mommy! Mommy! Guess that Jimmy just did!"
sun is the new caldera.
always looking for a caveat.
-
on a side note: if i buy something, anything,
should one be entitled to understand how "it"
works?
if it is readylably available, no one cares.
but still, if i buy, i own?
question: what do YOU buy, but don't own?
home: words...
Linus's analysis is spot on. And Schwartz just keeps bullshitting about "a variety of mechanical reasons": despite denying that Sun has been choosing nuisance licenses, the fact is that nothing is stopping Sun from releasing ZFS, dtrace, etc. under a Linux-compatible license tomorrow, even if there are weird issues surrounding the entirety of Solaris. The only reason not to release ZFS under GPLv2 is that Sun doesn't want those parts of Solaris in Linux.
I also agree with Linus that ZFS is pretty much the only part of Solaris that is at all interesting. And, frankly, the main reason I'd like to see ZFS released under GPLv2 is that then Linux users would have a choice. I predict that ZFS would be greated with the same yawn as JFS, XFS, Reiser4, etc., and that that would hopefully end the debate about ZFS's supposed superiority.
You are correct :)
Wonder why I got moderated as a troll?
--fatboy
Ok. You can mod this offtopic if you want, but how come servers just melt when a website is posted to Slashdot, but no one ever RTFA?
Johnny: How about you go over the SF bar there and get you a cup of shut up?
Is SUN still in business?
I feel real sorry for those Solaris kernel proggys
need a job guys?
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22java+is+the+new+ cobol%22 1350 hits
+ the+new+cobol%22 0 hits
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22visual+basic+is
FWIW I like Java but let's have a fair Googlefight.
Xenu loves you!
Dunno -- it might be a fatal flaw in the universe, so keep quiet. File it under "3) ???", before "4) Profit!"
will linux always be a monolithic kernel? as far as i understand, we already have pretty much faster computers for handling microkernels, so... will linux _always_ scale and be a monolithic kernel? or there will be some major changes in the structure of the design?
Coincidentally they have been more consistent since then and have started to make profits again. I doubt that is due to chance or incompetence.
Schwartz is clearly a friend not a foe, so you could put your baseless skepticism to rest about this one, go anc chek his blog, he has been singing to the same tune for quite a while.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just don't get some people here.
Sun, even during its darkest days, always has promoted (or at least paid lip service) to open standards, has released bunches of stuff to the development community (NFS and OpenOfice, to name only two), have truly innovated (Java, NFS, SPARC architecture) and in general have shouldered their way into their position of importance based on offering a good product, not based on threatening their costumers with patent violation bullshit, breaking the law, or strong arming unfairly their business partners.
Some people have this paranoid view of corporations out to screw anybody in order to make profits. This is clearly bullshit. Many people get along quite well with big corporations, and many corporations can and do make profits while maintaining and promoting and attitude of good ethical standards.
Say what you wish about Sun, or about Schwartz, I have mostly good things to say about both, during many years where other companies have really been out to screw their clients, users and partners Sun has behaved mostly impeccably, I have seen how they will fall over backwards to lend a hand when needed (and this in several countries, so clearly there is corporate culture that encourages this) which is certainly difficult in the business world but not utterly impossible as some derided minds would like us to believe.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Burn your bridges.
This call to isolationism is completely idiotic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am sure they are not as stupid as you claim them to be, but go on, convince us, show us where they have misappropriated the role of representatives of the FOSS community (heck, Stallman is the father of the GPL and Emacs, he has as much right to talk and represent people as Linus does).
If Linux is never 0wnd by the likes of MS and Novell it will be more thanks to the work of Stallman & Co in the legal arena than to the efforts of Linus and the Linux developers. Without the legal framework created by Stallman they would be completely toast by now (companies would have run away with the code and developers would have no incentive to contribute just for corps to make money without helping everybody else).
If Linus had gone along with BSD or closed source we wouldn't have the alternative we have today. The BSDs are all nice and what have you, but many developers and corporations sharing their work sure as hell want something in return, the GPL grants them exactly that.
Many people here seem to be scared of a person with solid principles, but in an era when not even politicians have a resemblance of them, to some it seems strange there are still people out there willing to be consistent even if they are not popular.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sun has been mostly a services company, even at times when they were writing they own tools for their hardware, they always sold you a packaged service with hardware, software and support. They did not care much about you installing Solaris in many machines, simply because they were no chasing licensing as their main source of revenue.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What in the name of the bunny stops you to make the source code of your Java classes GPLed?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Under such flawed premis gcc is also in the same boat, since you can distribute binaries without source code as well.
The Sun haters are really making up a storm in a very small tea cup.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So the conspiracy theory regarding that bit of your argument sound implausible frankly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So the BSDs out there are not direct competitors. Apple is been helped to become one.
Why don't you take the man to his word?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To leverage the development of all other people out there.
There is little point of keeping reinventing the wheel when there are concerted efforts from other people doing the same.
The Solaris internals are so different (and superior frankly) to Linux's that to state they are chasing Linux because they feel inferior is a bad joke.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That guy is talking about the desktop experience. This thread clearly is talking about the internals and overall performance. These 2 issues do not intercept very often, specially since the discussion we are having is centering clearly in machines firmly palced in a datacentre.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sun does not sell music and needs Engineers to innovate and technicians to fulfill their service obligations.
It is not Sun fault if pure IT companies are less valuable than media ones (which Apple has become), to compare 2 companies profiting in such disparate fields is completely pointless.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The more I read Linus's article the more out of touch it seems. Sun has donated more lines to of code to the OpenSource community than any other entity. If you add Sun's code donations to their insistence on standard interfaces, published specs and their willingness to share ideas when without exception the rest of the commercial SW industry thought the opposite and you come to the inevitable conclusion that Sun is probably the company most responsible for Linux being possible at all.
Linus goes on to make off the mark comments about SPARC, actually the T1 is a very interesting processor the T2 looks even more interesting, the current high end servers are quite competitive with Power and Itanium and Rock may well be a killer CPU. So much for SPARC's poor performance.
ZFS despite Linus's complaints is available for platforms other than Solaris, FreeBSD and OS-X for example as is dtrace. Despite Linus's comments about drivers the sad reality is that most Linux server administrators could survive without the plethora of device drivers available and would be quite happy with the ones available for OpenSolaris but they would kill for Dtrace, ZFS, SMF and a large raft of OpenSolaris features.
If Linus thinks that the single most important differentiator between Linux and Solaris is device drivers then god help Linux.
D-
The benefit of Java is that it is built around a large and consistent API. The actual language is irrelevant, it's what API's are available that count. If Perl, PHP, Python or any of the other languages had a solid and consistent cross platform API around them then the argument is valid. You can't have WORA otherwise.
Personally, I like Sun and have for a long time. I think that their hardware is getting pretty good, their service rocks and their company is tending toward doing good things. Here is the rub though, I don't think that the company as a whole is committed to supporting OSS and I think they would dearly love to claim to be. For now I still think of them as a decent hardware company but I'm not ready to jump on any software they have. ZFS? No, not for me yet, probably never. Its a performance thing.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.