That means SUN holds the re-use license not you when you contribute back. And they don't have to pay for a license. That was one of the big sticking points with developers. It also means Sun could move it to other (non-free) versions of Solaris and not owe you a cent. If you are OK with working for free for a big company that can well afford to pay you then go ahead. Or you may prefer the GPL model.
You aren't working for them. They are free to use your code. Anyone is free to use your code! You don't have to contribute anything back to them.
Let me quote from Sun:
"It allows you to contribute back or stand on the shoulders [of OpenSolaris] and create your own proprietary value on top of the OpenSolaris code base."
You don't have to contribute back!
The GPL doesn't require you give up any of your rights to the code when you contribute it. Of course the GPL doesn't mean you will get paid either but you can enforce your copyright if someone takes you code and sells it w/o your consent.
The GPL has problems with patents and IPR. Solaris is a vast project with a long history, which includes many patents. The alternative would have been for Sun to re-write a clean-room Solaris from scratch.
OSI and GPL are two competing Open Source licenses. I'm never heard of any others.
OSI is not a license. It is an organisation that approves licenses. There are many open sources licenses: GPL, MPL, CDDL.. etc.
Matter of fact, neutron star's gravitational force according to Thacker Nuclear Binding Theory of Gravity, once the nuclei are bound very tightly together, become very weak. So it wouldn't be 1.5 times of the Sun even though mass is about equal.
This theory is utter nonsense. If the gravity was weak, the nucleii would not be bound together!
Proof that this theory is nonsense is that very precise observations of the orbits of binary pulsars have confirmed Einstein's theory of gravity.
It's NOT really open source. "OpenSolaris" is NOT released under the GPL.
There seems to be this myth that 'Open Source' == 'GPL'. This is not true. GPL is one of many open source licenses. OpenSolaris IS really open source, as it is released under a license analysed and approved by the Open Source Initiative.
Basically if you change the code, you have to give it back to Sun who will then decide if it wants to release it to the public, and Sun retains all ownership of the code. That's what I recall, but there was a lot of talk about it on Groklaw a couple months ago.
I'm pretty sure you recall wrong!
Let me quote from the OpenSolaris license...
"...the Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license:
(a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Initial Developer, to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Software (or portions thereof), with or without Modifications, and/or as part of a Larger Work..."
It is a long license, but there is nothing (I can see) about having to contribute back to Sun, only that you must make your source code available those you distribute OpenSolaris to if you change or add to it.
Erm, the problem with gravstars is we know there is no 'quantum gravity' theory even slightly likely to appear in a reasonable amount of time.
That is like saying that electrons can't exist because we don't understand what they are! Just because we don't have a theory of quantum gravity does not mean that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects.
Or did you miss the recent discovery that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects? It was actually posted on here a few months ago.
I did. URL?
That's not to say we will never have a quantum gravity theory, but simple 'gravitons' seem unlikely. Gravity just does not work like the electronuclear forces.
This statement is directly contradicted by the most popular approaches to unification - loop quantum gravity and string theory. String theory states explicitly that there are simple gravitons and they do work like the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces - they are simply different string vibration modes.
And the information paradox has, as far I know, has been solved by Hawking's discovery that black holes can 'emit' energy.
That is not even published, and many are doubtful. Hawking has been wildly wrong many times before.
Now the question is not whether Mars can support life, it is whether or not Mars could have supported its abiogenesis and subsequent evolution.
The problem is that this is going to be very difficult to prove. There is almost certainly a considerable amount of ongoing interplanetary transfer of microbial life (at least spores). There is plenty of experimental evidence that bacteria could survive the processes involved in such transfer (asteroid/comet collisions with planets, capture of debris by other planets, then entry into atmosphere).
I suspect that if we find life elsewhere in the Solar System it is going to be DNA or RNA based, and either be Earth-like microbes or evolved from them.
especially the portion that said...." In practice, over the few seconds that a gamma ray burst occurs, it releases almost the same amount of energy as the entire Universe! "
Which is, of course, nonsense. It should say 'the same amount of energy as the visible Universe'. Big (very, very big) difference!
This is interesting because we don't really know much about gravity; e.g. if it is a wave or a constant.
We are pretty sure it is a wave because we have seen the effects of gravitational radiation (of waves) in double neutron star orbits. If gravity isn't waves, then general relativity is in trouble, which is unlikely.
Such alternatives would yield the same observations.
There are major problems with current black hole theory - for example, the information paradox, and the central singularity. I think it is pretty reasonable to state that current black hole theory is at the very least incomplete, if not actually wrong.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't dinosaurs extinct over a period of time, long enough to evolve and adapt to changing environment?
No. Many species of dinosaur became extinct of a period, but at a slow rate. The latest evidence is that the final extinction which wiped out the rest was very fast indeed.
And not only that, extinction in mass scale doesn't seem to "sanitize", but "life" seems to find its way out of harsh environment or adapt. Matter of fact, didn't theropod dinosaur survive? After all, what are all these birds doing on earth?
The exact relationship between birds and dinosaurs is controversial. What did seem to happen is that some extinction event (most likely an asteroid collision) wiped out most large species. Things that could burrow or hide from the heat survived, which would have included birds.
Before becoming a blackhole any star will explode explode due to fusion of heavy atoms, the heavier they are more energy they will release. like the heavy metals
This is false. Fusion of atoms only releases energy if the atoms are light. Above a certain nuclear size (greater than Iron) fusion takes energy.
"Sun's license"? Which one of the many purportedly "open source" licenses that Sun plays with would that be then? Let's assume it's the CDDL: well established... hardly. Yet another MPL variant that does nothing that half-dozen pre-existing licenses already do, and introduced especially to create Sun's own little walled garden of Solaris code. "Yet another" -- fucking too right.
CDDL does mean well established. It means reviewed, accepted and approved by the Open Source Initiative. Who's opinion about the validity of the license do I accept - theirs or yours? As you post anonymously, I can't tell who you are, so I prefer to accept theirs.
Anyone who thinks that Solaris code is a "walled garden" has no understanding of open source. Anyone who thinks that Solaris code is "little" has no understanding of operating systems!
And again, as a Sun zealot it's hardly surprising that you fail to understand what license proliferation means. If the best you can do is fall back on making an argument that is not being disputed "BSD allows forking" -- then it just shows what an intellectually bankrupt little advocate you really are.
I'm not that little:)
However, what I do understand is the term 'proliferation' - it means an increase. Releasing code under CDDL - an existing OSI approved license - is NOT proliferation.
I am not an advocate for Sun - I have had to deal with enough crap code and operating systems from them in the past! What I am an advocate for is realism and a sensible attitude. Ranting against Sun just because they haven't seen the 'true Linux religion' and released everything they have ever written under GPL is absurd, and shows a naive lack of understanding of the complex history of code and patents involved.
And (yet again...) if the BSD license allows forking - what IS the problem? As I said before - no one is forcing you to use any forked code.
It's just not going in, is it? YET-ANOTHER-OPEN-SOURCE-LICENSE... as if there aren't enough already -- and Sun is a prime offender in this regard.
What seems to be missing from your understanding is that it is not 'YET-ANOTHER-OPEN-SOURCE-LICENSE'. Sun's license is well established and approved by the Open Source Initiative. So much for 'yet another'!
Sun have been contributing open source for years.
Jeez. Sun zealots are even dumber than Apple crazies.
The dumb zealotry is when established (not 'yet another') official open source licences are actually disapproved of!
And again, if the BSD license allows this, who cares? You don't have to use the forked product if your zealotry prevents you.
What powers Google? A bunch of Linux boxes clustered together. Point proven.
This proves nothing. Google would work just fine on any equivalent system - a cluster of any Unix boxes would work just as well. There is nothing special about Open Source here.
Let's just keep it in perspective. Open Source is the big revolution, and what is working wonders in the technology world today - not Google.
Open source is, of course, important, but 'working wonders?' How much of the software shipped with most PCs is open source? Almost none. How many PC users use Google? Probably the vast majority. I think perspective is required!
Astounding -- three year increase in expectancy in eight calendar years. That certainly will put the bite on pension funds, both public and private. But the life insurance companies ought to do well.
While people may be living a bit longer than they used to, I'd argue that it's only because we're preventing people from dying prematurely, rather than actively extending life span in general.
I agree. My disagreement was with the poster who implied that average lifespan was only increasing because of improvements in child mortality.
Say that the average lifespan of a human body under optimum conditions is 90 years (a figure I just made up, bear with me).
A good estimate. Many biologists put it at about 85.
But no amount of non-smoking and eating well is going to get you to live to 150. That would require fundamental breakthroughs in medicine and, as such, is entirely unconnected with historical life expectancy figures.
Again, I agree. However, I think it is hard to predict how much we will discover in the next few decades. We are alreadly close to stem cell transplants to deal with Parkinsons, Alzheimers and diabetes. There could be revolutions in medicine beyond anything we can now imagine.
Compared to someone starting to draw Social Security in 1940, today's retiree at age 65 has an expected "years to live" that's only about six years longer, not 15.
This may be true on average in the USA, but it directly contradicts a recent study in the UK which says that the average 65-year old male can now expect to live into his 80's.
According to this study, by 2075, by far the largest single component of the federal budget will be interest on the debt.
I don't think anyone who tries to predict anything so many decades ahead can be taken seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
That means SUN holds the re-use license not you when you contribute back. And they don't have to pay for a license. That was one of the big sticking points with developers. It also means Sun could move it to other (non-free) versions of Solaris and not owe you a cent. If you are OK with working for free for a big company that can well afford to pay you then go ahead. Or you may prefer the GPL model.
You aren't working for them. They are free to use your code. Anyone is free to use your code! You don't have to contribute anything back to them.
Let me quote from Sun:
"It allows you to contribute back or stand on the shoulders [of OpenSolaris] and create your own proprietary value on top of the OpenSolaris code base."
You don't have to contribute back!
The GPL doesn't require you give up any of your rights to the code when you contribute it. Of course the GPL doesn't mean you will get paid either but you can enforce your copyright if someone takes you code and sells it w/o your consent.
The GPL has problems with patents and IPR. Solaris is a vast project with a long history, which includes many patents. The alternative would have been for Sun to re-write a clean-room Solaris from scratch.
OSI and GPL are two competing Open Source licenses. I'm never heard of any others.
OSI is not a license. It is an organisation that approves licenses. There are many open sources licenses: GPL, MPL, CDDL.. etc.
Matter of fact, neutron star's gravitational force according to Thacker Nuclear Binding Theory of Gravity, once the nuclei are bound very tightly together, become very weak. So it wouldn't be 1.5 times of the Sun even though mass is about equal.
This theory is utter nonsense. If the gravity was weak, the nucleii would not be bound together!
Proof that this theory is nonsense is that very precise observations of the orbits of binary pulsars have confirmed Einstein's theory of gravity.
It's NOT really open source. "OpenSolaris" is NOT released under the GPL.
There seems to be this myth that 'Open Source' == 'GPL'. This is not true. GPL is one of many open source licenses. OpenSolaris IS really open source, as it is released under a license analysed and approved by the Open Source Initiative.
Basically if you change the code, you have to give it back to Sun who will then decide if it wants to release it to the public, and Sun retains all ownership of the code. That's what I recall, but there was a lot of talk about it on Groklaw a couple months ago.
I'm pretty sure you recall wrong!
Let me quote from the OpenSolaris license...
"...the Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license:
(a) under intellectual property rights (other than patent or trademark) Licensable by Initial Developer, to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute the Original Software (or portions thereof), with or without Modifications, and/or as part of a Larger Work..."
It is a long license, but there is nothing (I can see) about having to contribute back to Sun, only that you must make your source code available those you distribute OpenSolaris to if you change or add to it.
Now maybe if Sun allowed me to "tweak" things a bit I'd test it out and see if it was worth the switch.
Er... isn't that what the new open source version is for?
Erm, the problem with gravstars is we know there is no 'quantum gravity' theory even slightly likely to appear in a reasonable amount of time.
That is like saying that electrons can't exist because we don't understand what they are! Just because we don't have a theory of quantum gravity does not mean that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects.
Or did you miss the recent discovery that gravity does not exhibit quantum effects? It was actually posted on here a few months ago.
I did. URL?
That's not to say we will never have a quantum gravity theory, but simple 'gravitons' seem unlikely. Gravity just does not work like the electronuclear forces.
This statement is directly contradicted by the most popular approaches to unification - loop quantum gravity and string theory. String theory states explicitly that there are simple gravitons and they do work like the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces - they are simply different string vibration modes.
And the information paradox has, as far I know, has been solved by Hawking's discovery that black holes can 'emit' energy.
That is not even published, and many are doubtful. Hawking has been wildly wrong many times before.
Of course, that leads to thoughts of panspermia. What it abiogenesis never took place on Earth, but instead was colonized by extraplanetary spores?
Well exactly. There is even a reasonable chance that bacterial spores could survive interstellar space.
Excuse me. StarOffice is Sun's. OpenOffice is ours.
It it? How much code have you contributed to it?
It's pretty simple, bugs have a way of mutating in the damnest ways.
If a bug could have mutated to attack all life, it would have done so by now.
Now the question is not whether Mars can support life, it is whether or not Mars could have supported its abiogenesis and subsequent evolution.
The problem is that this is going to be very difficult to prove. There is almost certainly a considerable amount of ongoing interplanetary transfer of microbial life (at least spores). There is plenty of experimental evidence that bacteria could survive the processes involved in such transfer (asteroid/comet collisions with planets, capture of debris by other planets, then entry into atmosphere).
I suspect that if we find life elsewhere in the Solar System it is going to be DNA or RNA based, and either be Earth-like microbes or evolved from them.
especially the portion that said ...." In practice, over the few seconds that a gamma ray burst occurs, it releases almost the same amount of energy as the entire Universe! "
Which is, of course, nonsense. It should say 'the same amount of energy as the visible Universe'. Big (very, very big) difference!
This is interesting because we don't really know much about gravity; e.g. if it is a wave or a constant.
We are pretty sure it is a wave because we have seen the effects of gravitational radiation (of waves) in double neutron star orbits. If gravity isn't waves, then general relativity is in trouble, which is unlikely.
there are cases where the observations are such that no other solution per the proven theory seems plausible
r /gravastar.htm
There are alternatives, for example the gravastar:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/g/g
Such alternatives would yield the same observations.
There are major problems with current black hole theory - for example, the information paradox, and the central singularity. I think it is pretty reasonable to state that current black hole theory is at the very least incomplete, if not actually wrong.
Anyway, it is curious that no gamma-ray bursts occured in our galaxy (yet).
They may have, but not pointed in our direction.
It is supposed that such an even would generate enough gamma rays to wipe out the ozone layer, and cause life extinction on earth.
Wiping out the ozone layer would not cause extinction of life, after all, life survived for billions of years without such a layer.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't dinosaurs extinct over a period of time, long enough to evolve and adapt to changing environment?
No. Many species of dinosaur became extinct of a period, but at a slow rate. The latest evidence is that the final extinction which wiped out the rest was very fast indeed.
And not only that, extinction in mass scale doesn't seem to "sanitize", but "life" seems to find its way out of harsh environment or adapt. Matter of fact, didn't theropod dinosaur survive? After all, what are all these birds doing on earth?
The exact relationship between birds and dinosaurs is controversial. What did seem to happen is that some extinction event (most likely an asteroid collision) wiped out most large species. Things that could burrow or hide from the heat survived, which would have included birds.
Before becoming a blackhole any star will explode explode due to fusion of heavy atoms, the heavier they are more energy they will release. like the heavy metals
This is false. Fusion of atoms only releases energy if the atoms are light. Above a certain nuclear size (greater than Iron) fusion takes energy.
"Sun's license"? Which one of the many purportedly "open source" licenses that Sun plays with would that be then? Let's assume it's the CDDL: well established... hardly. Yet another MPL variant that does nothing that half-dozen pre-existing licenses already do, and introduced especially to create Sun's own little walled garden of Solaris code. "Yet another" -- fucking too right.
:)
CDDL does mean well established. It means reviewed, accepted and approved by the Open Source Initiative. Who's opinion about the validity of the license do I accept - theirs or yours? As you post anonymously, I can't tell who you are, so I prefer to accept theirs.
Anyone who thinks that Solaris code is a "walled garden" has no understanding of open source. Anyone who thinks that Solaris code is "little" has no understanding of operating systems!
And again, as a Sun zealot it's hardly surprising that you fail to understand what license proliferation means. If the best you can do is fall back on making an argument that is not being disputed "BSD allows forking" -- then it just shows what an intellectually bankrupt little advocate you really are.
I'm not that little
However, what I do understand is the term 'proliferation' - it means an increase. Releasing code under CDDL - an existing OSI approved license - is NOT proliferation.
I am not an advocate for Sun - I have had to deal with enough crap code and operating systems from them in the past! What I am an advocate for is realism and a sensible attitude. Ranting against Sun just because they haven't seen the 'true Linux religion' and released everything they have ever written under GPL is absurd, and shows a naive lack of understanding of the complex history of code and patents involved.
And (yet again...) if the BSD license allows forking - what IS the problem? As I said before - no one is forcing you to use any forked code.
It's just not going in, is it? YET-ANOTHER-OPEN-SOURCE-LICENSE... as if there aren't enough already -- and Sun is a prime offender in this regard.
What seems to be missing from your understanding is that it is not 'YET-ANOTHER-OPEN-SOURCE-LICENSE'. Sun's license is well established and approved by the Open Source Initiative. So much for 'yet another'!
Sun have been contributing open source for years.
Jeez. Sun zealots are even dumber than Apple crazies.
The dumb zealotry is when established (not 'yet another') official open source licences are actually disapproved of!
And again, if the BSD license allows this, who cares? You don't have to use the forked product if your zealotry prevents you.
No, dumbass. Read the fucking post:
release it under Yet-Another-Open-Source-License,
Exactly. That what the BSD license allows.... so what is wrong with doing it? I assume the rants are only because it is Sun...
No... the BSD license allows Sun to fork it, release it under Yet-Another-Open-Source-License, and then claim it as their own open source project.
So if someone else does this, it is an avantage of open source, but if Sun does this....
What powers Google? A bunch of Linux boxes clustered together. Point proven.
This proves nothing. Google would work just fine on any equivalent system - a cluster of any Unix boxes would work just as well. There is nothing special about Open Source here.
Let's just keep it in perspective. Open Source is the big revolution, and what is working wonders in the technology world today - not Google.
Open source is, of course, important, but 'working wonders?' How much of the software shipped with most PCs is open source? Almost none. How many PC users use Google? Probably the vast majority. I think perspective is required!
Astounding -- three year increase in expectancy in eight calendar years. That certainly will put the bite on pension funds, both public and private. But the life insurance companies ought to do well.
It is astounding, as it has happened so rapidly.
I would be surprised if the UK case was really that different -- can you provide a pointer to the study you mention?
Yes...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4296008.stm
"UK life expectancies have risen dramatically in the last eight years, with a 65-year-old man now living more than three years longer, a report says."
"BBC personal finance reporter Richard Scott said: "Living longer is one of the main reasons for the pensions crisis."
(Which backs up my point)
While people may be living a bit longer than they used to, I'd argue that it's only because we're preventing people from dying prematurely, rather than actively extending life span in general.
I agree. My disagreement was with the poster who implied that average lifespan was only increasing because of improvements in child mortality.
Say that the average lifespan of a human body under optimum conditions is 90 years (a figure I just made up, bear with me).
A good estimate. Many biologists put it at about 85.
But no amount of non-smoking and eating well is going to get you to live to 150. That would require fundamental breakthroughs in medicine and, as such, is entirely unconnected with historical life expectancy figures.
Again, I agree. However, I think it is hard to predict how much we will discover in the next few decades. We are alreadly close to stem cell transplants to deal with Parkinsons, Alzheimers and diabetes. There could be revolutions in medicine beyond anything we can now imagine.
Compared to someone starting to draw Social Security in 1940, today's retiree at age 65 has an expected "years to live" that's only about six years longer, not 15.
This may be true on average in the USA, but it directly contradicts a recent study in the UK which says that the average 65-year old male can now expect to live into his 80's.
According to this study, by 2075, by far the largest single component of the federal budget will be interest on the debt.
I don't think anyone who tries to predict anything so many decades ahead can be taken seriously.