Slashdot Mirror
Sun Spokesman Says "We Screwed Up On Open Source"
An anonymous reader sends along a video from Builder AU, in which Sun's chief open source officer Simon Phipps describes 2001-2002 as 'a period where Sun 'screwed up' in their dealings with the open source community. Phipps says that Sun is trying to remedy the situation with the open sourcing of Java, Solaris, and the rest of Sun's software."
Oh, I'd say 2008 is shaping up quite nicely to be one of the worst years in their history. The huge revenue miss in Q3, combined with the total lack of organic revenue growth, the continued exodus of top execs, and the pending layoff of up to 3000 employees doesn't exactly bode well for the future of Sun.
Ponytail-guy and his pals have basically given away the crown jewels and have not been able to "monetize" any sort of decent return for their efforts. The company can't sell servers, gives away software, and keeps purging the budget of the services and marketing teams that are the only pathway left for revenue growth. Geniuses.
I love Sun, I love their software, and they even have some really impressive hardware, but the management team there is absolutely clueless about how or where to take the company. The bets they made on open source and other areas are clearly not paying off. The stock is as low as it has ever been over the past 8 years and is showing no signs of life.
It is utterly depressing to see such a great company go down like this.
you might be asking the wrong company there - as far as i recall, the main jython developer also wrote ironpython, and now works for microsoft who seem to not really take python seriously as its a bit of a bolt-on hack and not nicely integrated into visual studio like c++ etc; they're not exactly the kings of opensource either....
plus, even though the jython library version is out-of-date, it still makes c-python look like a snail - and i never thought i'd say that java is faster than c!
hopefully python3000 will bring us speed if not compatibility.
#include <sig.h>
IcedTea is based on OpenJDK, released by Sun.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
I think anyone who has attempted to legally link proprietary drivers, video codecs with the Linux kernel would understand some of GPL's limitations. The fact that GPL can take from so many licenses (without necessarily exporting) doesn't automagically make it the best license.
CDDL is based on MPL which has an explicit patent protection clause (bring a patent suit against another CDDL licensee and you lose all CDDL rights)
The fact that (besides Java), Sun hasn't released much GPL code should not cause us to ignore significant contributions by Sun to the opensource community. According to a E.U. study on The economic impacts of free and opensource software, Sun contributed 312 million Euro's worth of FOSS which amounts to over 51000 person months. This was 44% of all corporate contributions to FOSS. The next highest contributor was IBM with 13% then Red Hat with 8%. The rest SuSE, Netscape, AT&T... don't even add up to Sun's contribution. And this study came out before Java was GPL'd.
They open sourced their compiler, virtual machine and most of their libraries before IcedTea was started according to wikipedia. And how would you say they can be coerced? It's not like their entire revenue is based off open-source, so I don't see any distinct advantage open-sourcing would give Sun
ZFS is Open Source and has been since November 2005.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
http://en.opensuse.org/Novell_Supported_Projects for a list
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not really sure what you mean here. I was rather surprised when I decided to do some Solaris development that the primary focus has moved from Solaris/SPARC to Solaris/x86. Half the cool stuff in OpenSolaris is designed around the x86 platform.
Similarly, the primary focus of the Java codebase is the x86 platform first, remaining platforms later.
Sun is also a massive seller of AMD64 and Intel Xeon based servers and workstations. Amazingly, Sun's prices have even come out of the stratosphere and are extremely competitive with other manufacturers like Dell.
Sun is even working to virtualize these "commodity platforms" with their surprisingly good OpenxVM project. I actually passed on a free copy of Parallels because Sun's VirtualBox was working so well for me.
I know Sun has the stigma of selling only overpriced iron, but the truth is that they're fairly well in tune with their customers and are working hard to provide them with the products and services they need. Along the way, the Open Source community is benefiting greatly.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
No, here is why GPL was not chosen:
The other reason for the creation of the CDDL has to do with software patents:
The reasons that the GPL is incompatible with the CDDL are very complicated and nuanced but in large part have to do with the patent clauses. It is clear why a company such as Sun needs such clauses. So if it were not for the stupidity of the existence of software patents a CDDL-like license could have been created that would have been compatible with the GPL minus some other niggles. Because of the existence of software patents and the need for such clauses the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL. It is too bad about the GPL being so restrictive about adding clauses that protect the copyright holders.
Really the spirit should have been that if CDDL source is used in another project that this project needs to be open, but then all sorts of real world complications get in the way. That is basically the spirit of the GPL as well. Sun was against anything BSD-like where another company could take their source and create a closed source product.
I thought that Sun paid a lot of money for StarOffice, and then Sun open sourced it.
Isn't this right?