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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."
Thank you Sun for all the great products that you have open sourced. Unlike your competitors, you have outsourced your crown jewels.
> GPLing ZFS would go a long way with me!
Prepare to be surprised.
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I am still skeptical of Sun. They are coerced into behaving nicely by the huge open source community which is not that much interested in what they have to offer anymore and have a lot of influence in the market. And let's face it, they opened up Java after IcedTea is out for quite a while now.
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Sun has tens of thousands of employees, many exclusively engaged in software development. They've had many rounds of layoffs before and since 2001. They looked at Linux vendors such as Red Hat and saw they were much smaller. Have you ever had to meet a payroll? It's easy to sit back and say, this company should do this, should've done that, they should get a new business model.
The wrong decision can sink a company. Look at Sybase - they were one of the hottest RDBMS vendors in the late '80s. Then they ran into a cash shortfall and had to make a source code licensing deal with Microsoft. Now Microsoft has the majority of the SQL Server business that Sybase once had, even though Sybase still has joint ownership of the source code. Yes, there are plenty of nice people out there willing to roll up their sleeves and help, but there are also plenty of un-nice people who will take what you've got and use it to push you aside.
What's wrong with the GPL "taking" from other licenses? If you don't want your code taken and modified without being given the changes you should pick another license that doesn't allow that (I can name one that comes to mind). I don't see anyone bitching about modified BSD code in Windows or OSX, although I'm sure some changes were given back by Apple. This isn't really directed at you as much as it is to the driver developers who got their panties in a bunch a few months ago, so please don't think I'm taking one word you wrote out of context for the purpose of this rant.
Why does my post history abruptly stop? I want to laugh at the stupid things I posted as a kid.
Sun has, and has had, some great products in the past, and some of their hardware is still pretty excellent, but the problem with the company is that they still have a deep rooted protectionist attitude towards SPARC and Solaris. Why do you think it took so long to get Solaris on x86, why it took so long for Sun to accept that x86 servers was where the growth was, why most of Sun's customers still get Linux pre-installed on Sun's systems and why Sun paid a couple of billion for an excellent business opportunity in Cobalt, and then promptly destroyed it?
If they could make Solaris and SPARC stand out and pay off then fine, but they can't hence the half-hearted and pretty sad move to 'open source' Solaris just so all their consultants and execs can run around trying to tell us that it's 'just like Linux'. However, in the cold hard light of day, Linux ate Solaris's lunch, and SPARC just competes too closely with x86 based servers without the comparable performance. SPARC is so inferior to x86 in terms of raw performance it's so laughable. Solaris also suffers from the fact that Sun just don't have the resources to push development to where Linux and other operating systems are, and these days it is increasingly expensive to try and maintain an entire OS yourself.
In terms of open source, Sun's problem is that the vast majority of open source software is written for Linux and the BSDs first. No one thinks of Solaris as their first platform of consideration, and it's difficult to see why they should do so now. It's still like that now, and it was still like that a few years ago when a former employer scratched its head trying to work out why Zope and Python performance was so terrible on Solaris and an UltraSPARC. A Sun guy even recompiled Python in Forte. The bottom line answer we got from the Python devs was "We use open source systems, and possibly Windows, first and foremost on x86 systems, x86 and Linux performs better anyway, and while we'd like to help, we just don't care about your corner case problem on an OS and hardware we don't have access to and can't reproduce. Just use Linux and x86". That's not literal, but it's the general gist, and I couldn't say I blamed them.
The solution? They moved to a far cheaper x86 system with Linux, they had no installation problems with Python as it came within the package management system itself, things were far easier to manage, performance increased exponentially which pleased everyone and Python and Zope ran with no issues whatsoever. That still holds true today.
> Solaris, for example, is being positioned as an alternative to Linux: it's "pick us or pick Linux". From an open source point of view, it would be better if Sun picked a license that allowed the best parts of Solaris and Linux to be combined, and for end users to decide what those best parts are.
..... But it DOES have some cool technologies like Dtrace and ZFS. So what best SUN can do is to integrate these technologies with Linux and try to get maximum hardware sale and service contract on Linux platform. The problem with SUN has been that they are late in everything. They do things after much resistance. That is what has happened with Java and now going to happen with Solaris. I really wonder why its so hard for the SUN execs to understand such simple things.
This is a very important point. Regardless of any so called technical merit Solaris kernel has over Linux, its NOT going to catch up with Linux in adoption or momentum. At least not anytime in the near future. I am telling this as I have managed to get Solaris(intel version) installed on a machine after about half a dozen failed attempts. Mostly due to hardware incompatibility. The tried hardwares include even the very common ones like DL-385. Just to manage it from my laptop(Kubuntu) I installed OpenSSH on the solaris box. It took almost 30 minutes to get it installed where as in linux it would take less than 30 sec. Solaris is no where near to Linux in hardware compatibility , ease of installation, availability of applications
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
[Java]'s a great learning language, like Turing was back in the 80's-90's or so, and it can be used to teach the basics of OOP and OOP compiler design.
Java is a useful language with a well-designed and extensive set of libraries that make it one of the best languages available for implementing most kinds of business applications.
What it isn't, in fact, is a good learning language.
How they EVER planned to make money off java, is beyond me, [well, maybe the embedded versions]. This should have been open-source from the start.
1. The original plan for Java was as a language for embedded systems. The other applications were added as an afterthought, effectively.
2. It's hard to see how they would have been better off had it been free software[1] from the beginning. The language was adopted at a phenomenal rate, has had a huge amount of community input and is now effectively one of the three most important languages for commercial programming today (along with C++ and C#).
Sun's lack of profit from Java stems primarily from the fact that they never developed the kind of leading support software for it that the development community required, leaving things like IDEs and application servers for others to successfully commercialise. If Sun had produced an IDE even a fraction as good as eclipse, or a server environment as robust as IBM WebLogic, they could have made a fortune from it. But they failed to achieve that.
[1]: I use the term to avoid confusion: Java has always been a "source code available" product, but simply did not have the redistributability of modified versions that we expect from free software. Many people understand "open source" to include the former.
I think that GPL-fanatics' attitude is all the time quite unwelcoming towards people outside the GPL realm. Does it make them feel good? I think not, but old habits die hard.
Because the GPL is manifestly less free than the CDDL and contributions licensed under the GPL could not be folded back into the CDDL version?
And don't try to say "well, they could stipulate that all submissions have to be dual-licensed"--you and I both know we'd see some stupid little gnuZFS the same day as ZFS was GPL'd, just to get around that.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Yeah, they screwed up big time. Groklaw has a nice article up on their involvement with SCO:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080625020853732
And they are still screwing up. Just have a look at the legal agreement you need to agree to when downloading even the *specification* from any of the Java Community Process groups where the project lead works for Sun. Evil and completely unacceptable terms for open-source developers...
And in those projects where they have released the source under a free license, they still keep an iron hand on the development process. So unless you work for sun, you need to beg to get your changes in (and sign all sorts of agreements). Closed bug-reporting systems. Version-control repositories that you need to apply to get read-only access to. Closed mailing lists. Design meetings held in person (Sun employees only of course).
This is a company that has a *long* way to go before they understand what Open Source is about.
Or, less charitably, this is a company that does indeed understand what open-source is about and is manipulating the system. Yes, once the source is released a fork is then possible, but for a large project inertia and an existing pool of developers all from one company make that something that takes real anger to do. So the changes Sun has made so far don't achieve a whole lot; they still completely control the direction their open-source projects take.
Real OSS companies are different; they contribute upstream, allow derivatives downstream, and are open in their process. A whole world of difference. See RedHat for a good example.
licensing it under the CDDL is like dangling a carrot out, but saying only one in ever ten people can have a bite.
Actually, it's like saying that only 9.5 out of every 10 people can have a bite... among all the OSes out there, I think only Linux has problems, and that's a tiny fraction of the desktop OSes out there.
E pluribus unum
Sure, Simon Phipps's quote makes a good headline, but between OpenOffice.org, Netbeans, Glassfish, slowly but surely Java, etc. I would personally give Sun a good grade.
Open Source can be good for business, huge, large, and small. A bit off topic, but: while I earn most of my living consulting on (unfortunately) closed source projects, I almost always try to initially talk my customers into at least considering Open Sourcing all or parts of development projects. I believe that software development should be done in the least expensive and highest quality way possible: better for almost everyone to drive down the cost of software development; I argue that the less expensive that useful projects are, then more projects get funded. Also, about an hour ago, I received a small grant from someone in Europe to convert one of my LGPL projects from Java to Pascal/Delphi :-)
Linus Torvalds always struck me as a pragmatist, and Linux kernel development is backed by a number of groups with a genuine commercial interest in improving Linux with the inclusion of good technologies like ZFS. In the light of these facts, I would be very surprised (not to mention disappointed) if a dual license prevented the inclusion of ZFS in Linux.
ZFS and Sun need Linux more than Linux needs ZFS or Sun.
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The fact that GPL needs to have everything that touches it be opened makes it very difficult to use it in proprietary environments. By using CDDL and allowing ZFS to be in freebsd, I could now use freebsd to create a proprietary network storage device using freebsd as the OS, zfs as the file system, and not have to release any source if I don't want to. That's pretty powerful.
Sun already has most of the useful stuff in the upper part of the GNU/Linux stack because most of it is licensed under BSD/MPL/Apache... licenses which are all compatible with CDDL and run well on OpenSolaris (see openSolaris2008.05 and Nexenta for examples.)
The tiny part of "Linux" which can't be easily used on OpenSolaris, the real Linux almost no one thinks about when they're talking about RedHat, Novell... is Linus's kernel, the filesystem, drivers and a few other bits. What the #^~@% would Sun do with another kernel? The kernel in OpenSolaris has scalability, security and observability features that are only being dreamed about in Linus's kernel. But more importantly, the OpenSolaris kernel has stable APIs and ABIs so you won't have to rebuild and requalify all of your business logic the next time Linus adds a kernel module to support this week's latest X86 (&@?ware.
Speaking as a Sun employee: you're welcome.
But do remember that there's an element of self-interest in this open-sourcing strategy. It's all part of our fiendish plot to sell people hardware and services.
Take Solaris, for example. By opening it up, we do lose the income we would have had from selling it to people. But that's been dwindling anyway, as Solaris loses ground against Linux and Windows. By opening up the OS, we make it a better product through user contributions, and encourage its spread. More Solaris users means more people who will seriously consider out products and services.
Of course, even Linux and Windows people should be looking at us anyway, since we are now serious about products that run those OSs. (I work on documenting several of them.) But if you're already a Solaris user, then your options go beyond our x64 systems to the systems that are still the core of our business: the SPARC machines.
There are many reasons SPARC systems have been losing ground. But a big one is that they don't run "standard" operating systems. Promoting Solaris through open-sourcing (and through other means, such as supporting it on other vendor's hardware) drastically changes that particular equation.
Suck-ass for your customers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What Linux has that Sun needs is a thriving community.
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Milestones for Sun:
1) They stopped shipping a C compiler with the SunOS. Frustrated people gradually moved to GCC.
2) They moved from BSD to SYS-V. Hey, all the other kids are doing it.
3) Linus wrote his kernel while reading the SunOS kernel API.
4) They spent years championing everything but PCI.
5) They spent millions trying to make IDE and NIC chipsets that sucked. Ooh, remember the Ultra5, and HME?
6) The spent years playng a peekaboo game of "Look NFS is standard, except only we have a lock daemon".
7) They spent years giving Veritas and Oracle blowjobs. If Solaris was a car, it would come without wheels.
8) They spent years smoking mental crack, and planning to dominate the desktop by making Java the dominant paradigm. (It looks painful, being thoroughly outmaneuvered my Microsoft.)
9) Cache RAM NDA fiasco?
10) ZFS is so great, we're giving it away. Wow excellent plan. XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, yup we need one more FS.
11) During all this dick fumbling time, *IBM* has gradually turned AIX/RT into something that eats a portion of Sun's lunch.
How do you guys keep morale up over there? Do you console yourself by saying, "Hey, at least we're more relevant than Novell?" or "Hey, Solaris is in better shape than OS/2?" or "Hey, HP completely dumped PA-RISC, and now their an Intel Junkie. ROFL"
How can so many smart people make so many stupid decisions, and keep from running a company completely in the ground? Are they flying by throwing themselves at the ground and missing?
The UNIX market, and arguably all modern OS business, was Sun's to loose. At this point, throwing one more thing out of the gondola isn't going to help. If you opensource everything tomorrow, is anyone really interested in taking you back?
Quick buy some Sun memorabilia before they become the next Intergraph/SGI/Sequent.
First of all, the question is not why they didn't use the GPL, but why they didn't use one of the many GPL-compatible licenses.
Second, a license that prevented programs from running on GNU/Linux would (by definition) not be an Open Source license.
Third, I suspect the GPL is the Open Source license *most* court-tested.
Fourth, Linux's GPL license does not prevent any codec from running on it. It's the authors of the codecs and patent holders that do that.
And finally, the GPL hurts Linux's stability? Truly it is a powerful license, but I never imagined that it had such capabilities...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
In 2000-2001
1. They screwed up by announcing the end of line for Solaris on X86
2. They screwed up by refusing to offer X86 hardware.
3. They screwed up by not offering Linux on any of their hardware
4. They screwer up by not open sourcing Java, Solaris, and other goodies.
In the end, they are trying to correct all those errors, but I wonder whether doing that 7-8 years later means that they missed a golden opportunity to become a leader in the Linux and Unix software and hardware market (including on X86).