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Sun Considers dual-sourcing Solaris Under GPL3

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jan 30, 2006 08:48 AM
from the what-would-the-impact-be dept.
Sun Microsystems Operating Systems Software IT
foorilious writes "In his blog, Sun Microsystem's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz discusses the possibility of dual-licensing Solaris (and perhaps the rest of their software suite) under GPLv3, in addition to the CDDL, which is the OSI-approved license under which these products are already available, but generally considered to be incompatible with the GPL at some level. Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris (among other things), it's worth mentioning that Schwartz has speculated on exciting things in the past (such as porting Solaris to IBM's Power) that we subsequently never heard another thing about."
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  • Sharing with Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by confusion (14388) on Monday January 30 2006, @08:50AM (#14597770) Homepage
    I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?

    Jerry
    http://www.networkstrike.com/ [networkstrike.com]

    • Re:Sharing with Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nurhussein (864532) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:00AM (#14597832) Homepage
      I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?
      I suspect that's the reason for the sudden change of heart. They know Linux won't be able to get any Solaris tech due to Linux being stuck at GPL2, and get to score brownie points with GPL-lovers.
      • Hah. You've got to love an anti-Sun sentiment so strong that GPLing software suddenly becomes a bad thing.

            • Re:Sharing with Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by squiggleslash (241428) on Monday January 30 2006, @11:04AM (#14598818) Homepage Journal
              I'm having difficulty understanding your logic. Would you explain it to me?

              The scenarios I'm reading into your comment are:

              1. Torvalds decides he hates the GPL, revokes it and switches to closed source. In this instance, everyone uses the last GPL'd version and forks the operating system.

              2. Someone sues Linus for copyright infringement. While the case is bogus, Torvalds settles out of court, agreeing to no longer distribute Linux. Everyone uses the last GPL'd version and forks the operating system.

              3. Someone sneaks code into the operating system that they didn't own the copyright to in the first place, and sues Torvalds. This is exactly the same scenario as would happen anyway (eg if IBM lost its lawsuit to SCO.)

              How would Torvalds be a single point of failure? The principle of forking the last known Free Software licensed version is well established in instances where the licencer has refused to release Free Software future versions, either deliberately (AmiTCP, Gosling EMACS, etc) or through circumstances beyond his or her control (AtheOS.)

              The worst is it kind of works the other way. As it stands, Linus Torvalds would have more difficulty than most enforcing the copyrights on Linux, as he would have to prove he has standing to sue. This was the original reason why the FSF recommended people assign copyrights to the project maintainer - because if you own the copyrights, you don't have to cross that hurdle.

    • Re:Sharing with Linux? (Score:4, Funny)

      by m50d (797211) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:12AM (#14597893) Homepage Journal
      He meant GNU/Linux, most of which will be automatically available under GPL3 once it is published.

    • Re:Sharing with Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy (595695) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:15AM (#14597910) Homepage
      The thing is, you could still get a lot of interesting tech from the solaris OS without necessarily taking anything from the kernel. Remeber, that Linux is simply a kernel. It doesn't require that all software run on top of that kernel be run under the same license. If they simply release the Solaris kernel, it probably wouldn't have meant much to Linux, because Linux already has a pretty good kernel, and I'm pretty sure they'd be a little incompatible anyway. I think the main thing that will help is the applications that run on top of the kernel, that Sun may be releasing.
    • I thought Linux wasn't going to go for GPL3, so how exactly would that sharing work?

      Probably as well or better than the kind of sharing that puts OpenSSH into every Linux distro.

      Imagine Debian on UltraSparc with a Solaris kernel.

      Imagine Sun Linux kernel modules. You don't really think a practical person like Torvalds would turn any of that down do you?

      User name, "confusion", is way too obvious. Try "silly" or "wrong" for greater stealth.

      • Imagine Debian on UltraSparc with a Solaris kernel.
        I thought Nexenta (Debian) GNU/Solaris [gnusolaris.org] already provided that... or are they doing Intel only?
        • There is no Debian project which uses the solaris kernel.(yet) There are a few third-party projects, but they are no more Debian than Ubuntu is. There is a large group within the Debian project which doesn't believe the opensolaris license to be free according to the Debian free software guidelines, unless this assessment is changed or solaris is relicensed it can never be a part of Debian.

    • Re:Sharing with Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Julian Morrison (5575) on Monday January 30 2006, @10:00AM (#14598281)
      This is actually what i posted about before. Any project that licenses GPL2 is going to feel an increasing pressure to go GPL3. Some of them will just be assimilated by the "...or any later version" suggested language. Some, like Linux, which are GPL2 only, will start to look like isolated islands of ancient code, shut out from all the modern goodies.
    • The Linux kernel probably won't ever be GPL3, because the license it uses doesn't contain the forward-compatibility clause that the FSF's software does; however, all the GNU utilities (including, I believe, GCC) will be GPL3 and/or GPL2, because they have the forward-looking clause.

      So really what it would allow a person to do, is produce a GNU/Solaris as opposed to GNU/Linux -- an OS that would have the Solaris kernel, wrapped in the GNU utilities, without the Linux kernel. I'm not sure if anyone would really want that, because I'm not sure that it would be compatibile with either existing Solaris or existing Linux software without rewriting, and it generally seems to be a solution looking for a problem (not unlike GNU/Hurd).

  • Floodgates are shut (Score:5, Informative)

    by brunes69 (86786) <slashdot.keirstead@org> on Monday January 30 2006, @08:54AM (#14597793) Homepage

    Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris

    Linus already said that Linux is not now, and will not in the near future, be released under GPLv3. And since GPLv3 is not reverse compatible with GPLv2 (it has more restrictions), this won't happen.

    • I imagine that by "Linux", the submittor means "GNU/Linux" rather than "the Linux kernel".

      I know, I know - Linux is the kernel, yadda yadda. When anyone I speak to says "Linux", they mean the OS, not the kernel - just like when people talk about NT, they mean the OS, not the kernel.
      • "When he talks about sharing with Linux, he means developers, not code." Developers, developers, developers -> means applications, applications, applications. Mindshare matters, and Sun is desperate to get in the flow on a winning side. I suspect this is merely a test: running the flag up to see if people salute or blow raspberries. Does anyone know the numbers? How many developers does Sun have? How many volunteered after they formed their closed "open community"? How does this compare with the n

  • Patents in GPL3 (Score:5, Informative)

    by SWroclawski (95770) <serge@wr[ ]awski.org ['ocl' in gap]> on Monday January 30 2006, @08:59AM (#14597823) Homepage
    One of the least discussed but largest changes in GPL3 is the explicit mention of patents and how patents (if found to be violated) would effect the work as a whole. This is similar to the IBM Public License and is one of those things that I'd imagine would give a corporate lawyer warm fuzzies. Sun and others may find this change so compelling that they'd be willing to give more attention to the GPL3 than the GPL2, which strengthens it further (since these companies want the flow of information to go both).

  • a race to hypocrisy (Score:5, Funny)

    by geoffspear (692508) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:01AM (#14597837) Homepage
    Which will happen first:

    - Linux zealots abandon their "everything about Solaris sucks and I'll never use it" dogma, or
    - Mac zealots abandon their "Intel processors suck and I'll never use one" dogma?

    The Mac people are taking an early lead, but anything can happen.

  • Speculation with Schwartz (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Monday January 30 2006, @09:12AM (#14597894)
    ...it's worth mentioning that Schwartz has speculated on exciting things in the past (such as porting Solaris to IBM's Power) that we subsequently never heard another thing about.

    You can find out if you just use the Schwartz - trust your feelings, let go.
  • I read in a few /. posts that Solaris is likely the best 64bit OS available. On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.

    How much of a cachet does Solaris have and how will Sun attempt to capitalize on any cachet Solaris does have, especially on dual cores? Is going Open Source with GPL v3 an attempt to move into Linux territory and sell services while trying to maintain sales of their hi

    • You'll certainly love the speed of Solaris 10, with perhaps, only one exception for now. UFS filesystems don't [generally] perform as well as some other more recent filesystems supported by Linux, though you can be certain that will change when ZFS is considered production quality. ZFS is now available in OpenSolaris and [I believe] the latest Solaris Express builds. The "FireEngine" network stack on Solaris 10 is without a doubt the fastest I've ever seen. 64-bit multiprocessing is hands-down better on

    • On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.

      As far as I can tell, the "Slowaris" nickname came from having slow SPARC hardware back in the day, and having a crappy X server. The cool thing is that Solaris is using the Xorg X server for almost all hardware now. They've got an official Nvidia driver now and things are fairly snappy.

      One nice thing about Solaris is that successive versions of

    • Re:Will Sun Shine? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AKAImBatman (238306) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (namtabmiaka)> on Monday January 30 2006, @10:10AM (#14598357) Homepage Journal
      I read in a few /. posts that Solaris is likely the best 64bit OS available. On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.

      You have to be careful here. Solaris used to be called Slowaris when run on Intel machines, because it was designed for much more powerful hardware. A lot of features that are hardware supported on a SPARC machine had to be reimplemented in software on Intel machines.

      Another common vector for the "Slowaris" comments is the early days of the Sun framebuffers. Sun was one of the first vendors to do away with text mode all together, and emulate it entirely in software. The upshot is that Solaris SPARC machines have the best looking, smooth font, conole you will ever see. The downside is that the 100 MHz beasties that started this practice had a bit of trouble keeping up with the needs of the console rendering.

      Neither of these issues has been significant for a very long time. I haven't heard anyone call the OS "Slowaris" in almost a decade. The complaint I hear today is that Solaris is unwieldy and not at all designed with user-friendly setup. Sun keeps trying to fix this with new, prettier installers. I don't think they have a clue though, because the first thing I have to do every time I install the OS is go into the config files and setup the DNS server and default gateway. You'd think it would kill them to ask this info during an install. :-/
  • If Linux dont want do comply with openness there is always s.b. who will. This error from Linus is maybe the chance solaris needs to grab the initiative and mindshare of programmers.
    • If Linux dont want do comply with openness

      What the f*ck? GPLv2 was way more open that GPLv3 is looking to be (check it out for yourself: heres a draft analysis [newsforge.com]). Note the restrictions on (a) DRM (b) patent retaliation. While you may like what GPLv3 has to say about those things you do have to agree these are restrictions that DO NOT EXIST in GPLv2. Therefore, GPLv2 is more open and less restrictive.

      • Re:WTF?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CastrTroy (595695) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:38AM (#14598106) Homepage
        But maybe we don't want the most open and least restrictive. Because if we did, we'd all be using BSD. Which is the least restrictive license I know of. I think what a lot of GPL users want is for their code to stay GPL, and for changes made to the code by others to be brought back upstream, so the whole community can take advantage of the changes. I think that's what GPL V3 is trying to accomplish.
        • The reason Linus turned down GPLv3 is that it required giving the copyright and permission available from all contributors. Linus wants to keep it trademarked under his name and the task is impossible to track everyone down for approval with GPLv3.

  • Would be a nice move. Impressive indeed. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Qbertino (265505) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:25AM (#14597992)
    Please note people: This is a company. That means they make money. And they do it in the classic sense which means this type of company usually gets the creeps when hearing stuff like "go FOSS" or "rely on FOSS". CEOs freak out regularly when these terms come up.

    If SUN plans an OSS strategy they are certainly NOT going to GPL their powerhorse Java. Solaris is nearly just as impressive from a technical standpoint. It's probably that Solaris doesn't have the numbers attached to it SUN would like to see. So they probably guess it could prove itself as OSS, since Linux is winning in the custom Unix market at all fronts.

    If x86 Solaris would go GPL that would be really cool. I'd actually give it a try.
    • "If SUN plans an OSS strategy they are certainly NOT going to GPL their powerhorse Java. Solaris is nearly just as impressive from a technical standpoint. It's probably that Solaris doesn't have the numbers attached to it SUN would like to see."

      Solaris is a platform. Java is supposed to be multi-platform. I fail to see how GPL Java would work well.

      Imagine GPL Java under committeee control. Then one day, not to far distant, some member decides to fork the GPL Java because he/she has some other idea.

  • GPLv3 doesn't actually exist yet... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by _xeno_ (155264) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:30AM (#14598041) Homepage Journal

    The GPLv3 is still in draft form. It doesn't actually exist yet. The version on the FSF webpage could be better classified as a "beta" release (I think that's what Stallman considers it).

    It's a little early to be saying "I'm going to be using the GPLv3!" Yes, they're working on it, but it's not actually out yet. The optimistic "release" date is November of this year, with the expected release date being early 2007... It's just not ready yet!

    However, thinking about the current draft and any problems you have with it is encouraged. They want comments still, there's still time to help change the final draft. Saying "I'm going to use the GPLv3!" is still premature. Wait until it's actually finished, then decide.

    • It's a little early to be saying "I'm going to be using the GPLv3!"

      Is anyone actually saying that?

      • Read the blog post [sun.com]. The author specifically specifies the GPLv3, and not just "the GPL." The blog title is "Thinking About GPL3..." and he links to a copy of the GPLv3 draft. (Which actually says "THIS IS A DRAFT" right on it, don't know why he linked a copy [tbray.org] and not the GPLv3 site [fsf.org], but...)

        So, yes - he's talking about using the GPLv3 as opposed to the current GPL.

        Which is silly, because the GPLv3 is still in draft form. It's not released. Speculation about how to apply the GPLv3 would make sense, ta

    • As reluctant as Sun has been to test the GPL waters, I can't imagine them diving right in to the GPLv3 unknown. If anything, perhaps, they might:

      1. use the "version 2 or later clause" (unlikely), or
      2. use version 2, and go FSF-style and make contributors assign copyright on new code back to Sun - leaving them the option to migrate en masse at a later date once version 3 gets a bit more polish.

      I think those are the only remotely possible options at this point.


  • Schwartz also said the only relevant OSes left today are Linux, Windows and Solaris.

    Anyway, they had a PPC port of Solaris.... 10 years ago when they had Solaris 2.5.1. Why would they want to start it up again?
    • Opensolaris already has backported it to powerpc. Its almost finished. So why not?

      I think he wants solaris to be the alternative to linux. As a former FreeBSD user its nice to see a stable operating system that is also enterprise ready in terms of scalability and performance. I like unix more than linux and I want to try out OpenSolaris soon when I have time. The way sun wants to do this is increase the platforms and peripherals solaris can run on. Solaris10 is a big improvement on x86 over 9 in terms of ha

  • GNU (Score:4, Funny)

    by Billly Gates (198444) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:43AM (#14598153) Homepage Journal
    GNU = GNU is Now Unix

    • Re:GNU (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Aqws (932918)
      It should now be: GNU = "GNU NUG UGN", where NUG stands for "NUG UGN GNU", and UGN stands for "UGN GNU NUG".
  • 1 - Linux won't use Solaris code because there doesn't appear to be any intention of migrating to GPL3

    2 - Solaris can't use Linux code because Sun wants to keep their code under a second license (CDDL), which is at some level incompatible with the GPL (a.k.a incompatible with any imported Linux code)

    I applaud Sun's ideas, but I am looking forward to a Fully Open Source Java (granted, I do appreciate that alternatives from other vendors are available nevertheless).
  • Back in the Solaris 5 timeframe there was a PowerPC version available. The idea was that it was going to be available on the IBM/Apple/Motorolla 'Refrence Platform'. Solaris 2.5.1 came out and it was no longer available. This must have been around 1995-1996. Since they already have some base drivers available for PowerPC it should be pretty easy to reactivate that leg of the source tree, from what I know.

  • yeah, right (Score:3, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective (932038) on Monday January 30 2006, @12:16PM (#14599506)
    Just like Sun was going to open source Java, and like Sun was going to make an ISO and ANSI Java standard.

    Sun management is a bunch of liars. At this point, you can't believe anything they say until they do it.

  • I would move in a heartbeat (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Builder (103701) on Monday January 30 2006, @12:42PM (#14599720)
    I'm losing more and more interest in Linux because of it's lack of enterprise features. Hell, a month and a bit ago, I could have been sound asleep in bed if I'd been using Solaris, instead of up at some ridiculous time of the morning:

    http://www.penguinpowered.org/wayne/blog/if_i_used _solaris_instead_of_linux-2005-12-14 [penguinpowered.org]

  • I have to admit (Score:3)

    by jilles (20976) on Monday January 30 2006, @01:25PM (#14600054) Homepage
    I have to admit Sun seems to have some positive swing lately. They're selling some hardware again. Their open source policy finally seems to be bringing in new customers, after years of shooting themselves in the foot with weird licenses, inconsistent marketing and plain corporate stupidity affecting all their business units.

    Their strategy of the past years has been very ineffective. Java has become a multi billion industry, Sun has invested hugely in it but they have failed to cash in on it directly (I suspect they barely break even). Also it hasn't driven hardware sales that much. Their main competitor on the other hand seems to have a very succesful Java strategy. IBM is leading the way in application servers, IDEs (eclipse, rational rose) and middleware with basically the whole industry eating out of their hand, including most JCP specifications committees. On top of that they also sell the hardware & support to go with the software. IBM loves Java!

    Then the whole x86 solaris thing has come a long way too (from 'hey it's free now but we support it for a fee', 'oh wait we don't do that anymore' to 'oh well lets open source the whole thing and forget about it' to finally 'hey x86 solaris is really important to us'). I mean, what do they want?

    Sparc sales have been a disaster for the past years with people basically favoring IBM power and x86 with linux. They may be laughing at intel for itanium but they have one thing in common with intel: x86 is driving sales for both of them. Sun has a few next generation architectures on the shelves which no doubt they are going to try to sell. These chips had better be way better than the competition (and their mediocre current offerings) or otherwise whatever spin they put on it won't work. Personally I'm not convinced yet. Their two operating systems (solaris/linux) & two architectures (x86/sparc4 aka niagra) policy is going to continue to confuse people. Sun seems to think the combinations can coexist without affecting each others marketshare. I don't. Confused customers will look to IBM and others.

    To me Sun still is a company in trouble. Maybe a few of their business units are recovering (finally) but that still leaves large parts of the company not performing very well.

    • Horses, Loaves and Shoes. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by twitter (104583) on Monday January 30 2006, @09:14AM (#14597907) Homepage Journal
      Who cares about Solaris?

      Anyone doing any kind of scientific computing, which is a large portion of their customer base. They have been losing that customer base to Linux, which hurts their sales in more ways than one.

      You might also care about Solaris if you want to use any of their excellent hardware. If they GPL'd Solaris, no only could you use it without practical and moral problems, you could also do a much better job of porting other free software.

      GPL'd Solaris would be a great gift. Don't look it too hard in the mouth.

      GPL Java, for crying out loud.

      The magic of cross licensing may prevent that. If Sun GPL's Solaris, you can be sure they will do everything in their power to get a free Java out.

      Take what it gives and make what it won't.

      • Re:Horses, Loaves and Shoes. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dr_LHA (30754) on Monday January 30 2006, @10:21AM (#14598448) Homepage
        You're out of date I'm afraid. Solaris already lost out to Linux in the scientific computing field a few years ago. In my field (Astrophysics) universities 5-10 years ago were 100% Solaris, with some Dec Alphas thrown in the mix. 5 years ago the exodus began to Linux machines when people realised they were faster than Solaris boxes, 1/5th of the price and could run all the same software.

        Fast forward to today linux is losing out to Macs in science, every conference I go to it seems that more and more people have Powerbooks (like > 50% of the audience), especially at NASA. My project just decided to move entirely over to Macs. Solaris isn't even in the mix anymore.
        • 5 years ago the exodus began to Linux machines when people realised they were faster than Solaris boxes, 1/5th of the price and could run all the same software.

          I work in the science number crunching field as well, and yes, this is the case. Suns have come down in price, but generic x86 and other commodity processors running linux has been superior in terms of cost and portability. As far as performance goes, the most Sun can do now is to sell Opterons with Linux. Kinda reminds you of a generic white box
          • I'm talking about in the USA, not in the UK. PPARC budgets for computing in the UK are low, so you have to go cheap. I know because I did my PhD in the UK, but I've worked in the USA for 8 years now in Astrophysics.

            However in the US, where Macs are cheaper than in the UK and computing budgets are more reasonable, Macs are starting to win out. I work on a NASA mission at a University and personally have a Dual G5 workstation. The Astronomy department here is moving to entirely Macs, and my project is too (cu
    • GPL Java, for crying out loud.

      If you want "GPL Java", why not help out with GNU Classpath [gnu.org]. Progress has been nothing short of spectacular in recent months, and more volunteers are always welcome.

    • Well, Solaris is infinitely more valuable, for starters. "GPL Java" is a hot-button issue with people for some reason, but at the end of the day, it's just a programming language. Versus, you know, an entire modern Unix operating system.
        • Yes, but we have working Unix-compatible operating systems,

          As far as I can tell the only important GPLed Unix-compatible operating system is Linux. It'd be good to have some redundancy there.

          most Java software however doesn't work on free Java implentations.

          People forget that what you describe is a completely solvable problem without Sun's cooperation.
    • So, you want to remove the last shred of hope that Java may make Sun some money one of these days? ;-)

      -jcr

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