> The GPL has traditionally been a good licence for corporations
> wanting to open source their stuff AND still retain copyright on the source.
I beg to differ. It might be a good choice if you're not planning on selling and/or maintaining the product any more. But that's not the case here. Sun probably wants something like Darwin/OS X.
> This pretty much forms a Solaris camp in the OSS world with
> source that can not enter any other open source software at all.
Let's say for a moment that this turns out to be true, that the source can't "go" anywhere (and it might very well be); So? What did you expect? This is still Sun's baby, and they might not want the good parts copied and pasted into Linux, or any other OS, without getting anything in return.
> How many open source programmers will program under Suns
> licence and howmany will stick to th GPL and or other well
> understood (BSD etc.) licences remains to be seen.
Two things. First, "well understood" is why I told the guy to go read some licenses in the first place. It looked like he had only glanced at the GPL, but had heard it was the holy grail of open source and went with the flow. Second, take a look at OSI's license list. It's getting pretty long now, and do you know what? There are projects out there using those licenses, even if they are not "well understood" by your definition.
What's more is that this isn't the first license to be incompatible with the GPL, if it indeed is. And in fact, being incompatible with the GPL seldom creates any major disturbance or outcry, with a few notable exceptions.
I know there are people who have been advocating for Solaris' return to the x86 platform and blaming Sun for pulling the support in the first place. Now, if they really want to, they can bring it back themselves. Isn't that alone good enough reason to simply keep an open mind about this and let people do their hacking under whatever licence their conscience permits?
To add some context to my remarks, it was a Slashdot thread not unlike this one that made me go and actually read some licenses about five years ago. I was running Linux at the time, and might have resembled our Anonymous Coward here a bit, albeit a little more level headed (at least I hope so). In so doing, I found that the only license at the time that I, personally, felt was really, truly free was the BSD license. Hence, for the past five years this household has been running FreeBSD as its free OS of choice.
Some of the arguments seen here also resembles those used when OpenMotif arrived. Some people just couldn't leave it be, complaining about a strange license and how it was too late for Motif anyhow. I feel, as I did then, that those people fail to see the significance of open sourcing traditional bastions of proprietary software, as I consider both Motif and Solaris to be. Whether the license is perfect or not ("perfect" meaning "to your personal liking" it seems), these are all steps in the right direction.
Oh great... I bet you're one those who created like ten of SourceForge projects that never got of the ground and stuck a GPL license on them because it was the only one you had heard about.
Go and read some of them.
Besides, why should Sun, or anyone else, care if an Anonymous Coward want to listen to them or not?
I used to do my hobby projects on FreeBSD, but would earn a living developing applications for Windows. In the past year, I've been fortunate enough to have a job developing on- and for OS X.
The difference for me is the availability of development tools, libraries and utilities, on nearly all other platforms, except Windows. On most other platforms I've touched in the last decade, they either come with the OS or are easy to install.
The approach to development, the tools, the environments, the APIs, are also worlds apart, at least mentally. I don't mean to badmouth the Win32 API, it's just that I personally feel like I entered the great wide open when I'm back on a Unix box.
Unfortunately, there aren't much work (as in with a paycheck) to be had outside of Windows. I therefore fear I will be forced back once my current contract expires. A grim outlook indeed.
As a side note, the security aspects also keeps me away, but as long as the Windows machine is protected by a firewall (and a virus scanner, and a, and a, and a...) I could learn to live with it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's about all there is to say about it.
> The GPL has traditionally been a good licence for corporations
> wanting to open source their stuff AND still retain copyright on the source.
I beg to differ. It might be a good choice if you're not planning on selling and/or maintaining the product any more. But that's not the case here. Sun probably wants something like Darwin/OS X.
> This pretty much forms a Solaris camp in the OSS world with
> source that can not enter any other open source software at all.
Let's say for a moment that this turns out to be true, that the source can't "go" anywhere (and it might very well be); So? What did you expect? This is still Sun's baby, and they might not want the good parts copied and pasted into Linux, or any other OS, without getting anything in return.
> How many open source programmers will program under Suns
> licence and howmany will stick to th GPL and or other well
> understood (BSD etc.) licences remains to be seen.
Two things. First, "well understood" is why I told the guy to go read some licenses in the first place. It looked like he had only glanced at the GPL, but had heard it was the holy grail of open source and went with the flow. Second, take a look at OSI's license list. It's getting pretty long now, and do you know what? There are projects out there using those licenses, even if they are not "well understood" by your definition.
What's more is that this isn't the first license to be incompatible with the GPL, if it indeed is. And in fact, being incompatible with the GPL seldom creates any major disturbance or outcry, with a few notable exceptions.
I know there are people who have been advocating for Solaris' return to the x86 platform and blaming Sun for pulling the support in the first place. Now, if they really want to, they can bring it back themselves. Isn't that alone good enough reason to simply keep an open mind about this and let people do their hacking under whatever licence their conscience permits?
To add some context to my remarks, it was a Slashdot thread not unlike this one that made me go and actually read some licenses about five years ago. I was running Linux at the time, and might have resembled our Anonymous Coward here a bit, albeit a little more level headed (at least I hope so). In so doing, I found that the only license at the time that I, personally, felt was really, truly free was the BSD license. Hence, for the past five years this household has been running FreeBSD as its free OS of choice.
Some of the arguments seen here also resembles those used when OpenMotif arrived. Some people just couldn't leave it be, complaining about a strange license and how it was too late for Motif anyhow. I feel, as I did then, that those people fail to see the significance of open sourcing traditional bastions of proprietary software, as I consider both Motif and Solaris to be. Whether the license is perfect or not ("perfect" meaning "to your personal liking" it seems), these are all steps in the right direction.
Oh great... I bet you're one those who created like ten of SourceForge projects that never got of the ground and stuck a GPL license on them because it was the only one you had heard about. Go and read some of them.
Besides, why should Sun, or anyone else, care if an Anonymous Coward want to listen to them or not?
I used to do my hobby projects on FreeBSD, but would earn a living developing applications for Windows. In the past year, I've been fortunate enough to have a job developing on- and for OS X.
The difference for me is the availability of development tools, libraries and utilities, on nearly all other platforms, except Windows. On most other platforms I've touched in the last decade, they either come with the OS or are easy to install.
The approach to development, the tools, the environments, the APIs, are also worlds apart, at least mentally. I don't mean to badmouth the Win32 API, it's just that I personally feel like I entered the great wide open when I'm back on a Unix box.
Unfortunately, there aren't much work (as in with a paycheck) to be had outside of Windows. I therefore fear I will be forced back once my current contract expires. A grim outlook indeed.
As a side note, the security aspects also keeps me away, but as long as the Windows machine is protected by a firewall (and a virus scanner, and a, and a, and a...) I could learn to live with it.