Sun COO Schwartz Promises Open Source Solaris 371
Alapan writes "According to C-Net Asia, Sun plans to make Solaris open source soon. While I hardly expect Sun to make it GPL compatible, I wonder how much restrictions Sun will place on distributing modified solaris systems. And will we some integration of Solaris' strong points into other open source OSes like Linux and BSD?" Update: 06/02 14:16 GMT by T : Correction: Schwartz is Sun's COO and President, but not CEO (as the headline originally had it).
Does this mean that . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Sun has gone mad (Score:3, Interesting)
maybe they'll do an X? (Score:1, Interesting)
Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Secondly, won't SCO have something to say about this? I would have thought there were some contracts to do with Unix that would prevent them open sourcing it. I know Sun "bought out" the rights, but surely that didn't include open sourcing the whole thing and destroying SCO's ability to licence Unix to other people?
Huge. (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris has probably the best security and stability out of any of the widely used *nix's. Not to mention the superior threading of the actual OS and its core.
However the article makes mention of using something similar to java's licensing, which is *NOT* open source in any way shape or form. This sounds like another wait-and-see thing from the leader of wait-and-see (although not leading in much else these days.)
Re:I could make a joke but i won't (or maybe i wil (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they have the experience and cred in the industry to do just that, unlike Red Hat who were (are) viewed as an upstart by many CTOs.
One thing holding back the adoption of Sun (and it was true in my office when we started looking to replace HP-9000 MPE based systems) is uncertainty as to the future of the OS. If we drop a boatload of cash into a bunch of Solaris boxes, and MSFT buys up and dissolves Sun tomorrow, then what?
Hell forget the hardware, what happens to our all our apps that we've tightly integrated into Solaris? Do we port all that stuff yet again to another unix?
With the source, that worry is gone. This is why Linux is succeeding, and because of Linux and the various free BSD's, folks who write checks are nervous about proprietary Unixes. Thing is, they want the support and expertise of a company like Sun, but they see the value in the openness of systems like Linux.
This is a very smart move on Sun's part, it'll push a lot of folks onto their side of the fence, and they should net a metric assload in support contracts and hardware sales.
seeing their other licence (Score:3, Interesting)
So don't hold your breath.
Riiiight (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you suppose the odds of that are?
Re:Probably not GPL... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does this mean that . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
I do know that Eric Raymond went to speak to Sun UK a couple of months ago and it was strongly rumoured that it was about open sourcing Java.
Stephen
Open source problematic when not Free (Score:3, Interesting)
Integration (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope not, as unpredictable and indecisive as Scott McNealy is, Darl McBride is relatively stable.
One week McNealy likes Linux, the next week he doesn't. That and the fact after years of slamming Microsoft (as much as they deserve it), and making himself appear like a raving lunatic to the detriment of other important business decisions, Sun and Microsoft kiss and make up, and everything is suppossed to be OK now.
Well, its not OK, this looks like another desperate move by a company seeking something, anything to gain mindshare and revenue. If solaris becomes free, and their hardware will be free [slashdot.org], how exactly is Sun supposed to make money again? And why should the open source community use source from Solaris from a company with such conflicting outlooks on open source and Linux?
Re:This would be welcome news (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the GNU tools are easier to use and have more features (and are free)
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Free as in Mozilla? (Score:2, Interesting)
This allowed the foundation to maintain centralised control of the project without forked copies damaging it. I think that will allow Sun to nicely control Solaris.
Take care.
K3n.
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:4, Interesting)
Be wary. (Score:5, Interesting)
1). Sun releases its code as a "open" with a non-GPL compatible license, possibly a license that states clearly that you cannot use the code in any other product.
2). OSS kernel contributor writes something similar to a Solaris feature into his patch, having read or not read the Solaris code, just because it "makes sense".
3). Sun pulls a SCO and starts suing everyone they can find for the misuse of its IP.
This move could very well poison the free kernel projects out there.
Re:Left hand, meet right hand (Score:4, Interesting)
To a $500/year/seat service contract would be my guess.
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:2, Interesting)
So all that crap is worthless from a corporate point of view. The niche players that are still in it are struggling against the tide. Competing with them would be stupid. The majority of casual users are moving towards the amazingly high quality free stuff and the specialists are being more than catered to by those comapnies that have not choice but to stay the course. Either way, it's not much opportunity for Sun.
Now, let's go back to your porn, games and P2P. Yeah, that is intriguing I suppose. But are the people in this market really ripe for a hefty subscription model after years in a frictionless economy of pure barter? And what is Sun going to do about copyright holders? This sounds rather iffy.
I think the only safe bet is Sun is fucked, everybody knows it. It died a few years bfore Bill Joy left. That's what he said anyway. Or something to that effect.
Massive security holes will be found (Score:5, Interesting)
Please don't flame me! I love Solaris!
BUT: I humbly predict that when Solaris is opened, people will pour through the code and find (a) many old security holes, unpatched, and (b) many new security holes, due to the number of eyes on the code.
This will probably result in:
- Frequent patching for a while;
- Frequent security alerts for a while;
- Many hacks into existing unpatched systems;
- Cross-polination of good (security and other) ideas from Solaris into xxxBSD and Linux;
- Gradual settling down of security problems to even lower numbers than before.
This is not a dire prediction - Solaris is already Pretty Damned Secure - and it'll be an unmitigated Good Thing once the initial flurry of patches come through. I'm just concerned for the interim timeframe when "Security Through Obscurity" goes away and hasn't yet been replaced by "Security Through Code Quality".--Kevin (at justanyone dooooooooootttt cooooommmmmmm).
no news... just redefining words (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:3, Interesting)
But somehow clueless PHBs just love discounts. If you told one "we'll give you this top-of-the-line mainframe for 1000 bucks", it wouldn't sound so cool as "it normally costs 10,000,000 dollars, but we'll give you a 50% discount, if you also license 100,000 worth of software for it. Oh, and we'll also give you this huge discount on premium support. Meaning that if you pay us ludicrious sums per month (whether you need support or not), when you do have a problem we'll at least try to fix it in two months or so." They end up paying a lot more, but still think they've made the deal of the century.
Basically I guess it boils down to: IBM is good at selling snake oil, Sun isn't. Or wasn't.
IBM is giving clueless managers an illusion of buying something safe (in more than one way: "noone ever got fired for buying IBM"), proven and well supported. They make it sound like you're getting into a nicely warm and cozy place. (Even if you're really getting into an iron maiden.)
Sun's McNealy used to just be frothing at the mouth along the lines of, "give us a ton of money so we can destroy Microsoft." Which wasn't even much of a business proposition. (I mean, ok, your "Hatfields vs McCoys" feud with Microsoft is funny and all, but what do _I_ get for my money?)
Who knows? Maybe the aggreement with Microsoft will do Sun a lot of good after all. Now maybe they can get back to some actual marketting of their products, instead of focusing on just "buy from us only because Microsoft is evil."
Will we one day have "Debian GNU/Solaris?" (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:1, Interesting)
logical? (Score:3, Interesting)
PHBs aren't clueless, they just want a boat (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes true. But it's worth mentioning that many PHBs (purchasers, CFOs, etc.) are fincancially rewarded based on the percentage or number of dollars "saved". Sure, it may not be the best technical (or financial) solution for their business, but if they are able to negotiate 30% savings on solution A versus 10% savings on solution B, they may get a much larger end-of-quarter bonus if they "save" the company the 30% by choosing option A.
You may want to chat with the folks (read: Board of Directors) who establish potentially counter-productive incentives like this.
YES! (Score:1, Interesting)
So they think Java is open source, and want to do the same fake-open-source to Solaris.
What's the problem? (Score:1, Interesting)
"I don't want another car mess, where there is a "Ford Solaris" and a "BMW Solaris, etc. I am happy with a single one.. maybe two... for driving and hauling."
We have standards for the things which need to be standardized (ELF, XML, TCP/IP), and we have freedom for everything else.
Microsoft can kiss the high end market good-bye. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the things that keeps Linux out of top-end shops are the reasons stated above. Sure, clustering is an alternative, but sometimes you *NEED* a big mainframe switching among thousands of processes. Linux has a difficult time of mega-multiprocessing now; but once the Solaris code is assimilated (or hijacked) it too will do one more thing Solaris is known for.
All of this just makes Linux better. Which just makes it tougher for Microsoft. Especially in the big-iron shops.
But the thing I wonder is-- is this what SUN wanted to gain from this?
Re:I would be wary of this news (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, IMO, Solaris is really only good on Sparc hardware. It just sucks on x86. The stability is not there and most software that is certified on Sparc/Solaris is not certified on x86/Solaris. Solaris's tool chain is also very, very old and crusty compared to Linux or FreeBSD. If I need some _really_ big iron, then Sparc/Solaris has always been a good choice, however for anything else, Linux/FreeBSD is just better (tm).
So basically this will be a free (as in beer) Solaris that really only runs well on expensive, proprietary hardware. So how is this any different from today? Solaris Sparc is free as in beer already. Will Sun allow a large community to contribute to Solaris? They don't with Java.
I personally think Sun should take all of their Solaris knowlege and put that into Linux. It would really lower their development costs since Sun would not have to hanlde the entire OS. They can just tweak Linux to make sure it runs great on their sparc hardware. With lower development costs, they could lower costs of their hardware and take back a good portion of the mid-range server market and even the low-end server market.