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Sun has not decided weather to make Trusted Extensions open source or not, but that does not change weather the OS will GPL or not.

Edited 2006-12-12 01:07

I stand corrected.

Trusted Extensions *is* open source - as part of OpenSolaris. Trusted CDE is not but that is for the same reasons as the base CDE. There are even modifications to GNOME to have a multilevel desktop and modifications donated back to Xorg for multilevel Xserver.

Note that Solaris 10 is NOT an OpenSolaris distribution - it predates the opening of the OpenSolaris project. Trusted Extensions is also available in OpenSolaris.

For more info go here: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/security/projects/tx/

Making Solaris GPL wont happen overnight; I wouldn't surprised if they waited until Solaris 11. Look, Solaris has just been opened under CDDL, Sun and its partners would have to see what going GPL would do the code they want to keep secret. Have patience. java was GPL'ed, Solaris will be too.

I sincerely hope so. Solaris has some great technology in it that would be of benefit to the Open Source community. On the other hand, the Open Source community has a lot to offer Solaris in the form of utilities and polish (Solaris is pretty ugly by default).

I think the result of a merge of the technologies, utilities, and polish would result in an excellent OS.

What do you mean by 'ugly'? Aesthetics? CDE, which was the default desktop is pretty ugly, but with this release, Java Desktop System is the default, and JDS has a very nice look to it.

CDE is part of what I mean, but some of the standard userland tools Linux users take for granted are not on Solaris, not installed or set up by default, or Solaris versions don't work right.

Perhaps this is fixed it later versions. The last time I used Solaris was 8.

"Perhaps this is fixed it later versions. The last time I used Solaris was 8."

That explains alot....Solaris 8 came out in 2000 (last update in 2004 AFAIK). Solaris 10 is much improved over 8 IMO. You should give it a try. BTW, some of the usrland tools you're looking for will probably be found in /usr/sfw (at least on Solaris 10).

Thanks. If I ever have the opportunity to work on a Solaris box again, I look forward to giving 10 + a try (I never liked Solaris much on non-Sun hardware).

JDS looks like shit for beeing Gnome, thought I know some Sun users like the looks of it.

You obviously don't know what WallSt. represents. They rely A LOT on system security. It's a must for them. Just check the Wikipedia article on Wall Street IT Infastructure if you don't believe me.

Cheers

You obviously don't know what WallSt. represents. They rely A LOT on system security. It's a must for them. Just check the Wikipedia article on Wall Street IT Infastructure if you don't believe me.

Would you link this? Thanks.

Again, that means nothing. An OS can be the most secure OS out there, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to its liability as a normal OS, because normal OSs, such as the ones Sun is trying to tout Solaris 10 as, have to offer a lot more than just security. Ease of use is one, a stable package manager is another, a healthy third-party market, etc., etc.

I don't see Solaris 10 offering any of these. It may be secure, and it may impress Wall St., but that is not the end all be all of an OSs duty.

This is a server OS. You don't care if it has a healthy third-party market except in the few applications that you must use. Especially if it's mostly running in-house applications.

Logical domains are more than just U3. It also requires a new firmware revision and some additional management software. Neither of the last two are yet available.

maybe not! I know at least one user it would gain and one user that linux would lose. I think the best thing that would happen is there would finally be a (good) choice of free operating systems and of course competition is good. I think solaris may find itself as the center of attention if it was to be licensed under the GPL.

I wouldn't switch, but I would add it to my list of alternatives, hardware support permitting.

Hardware support has always been the reason I haven't done anything with Solaris. I've tried many times, but it is either my network card not supported or video card.

Not that it was totally Sun's fault, I was just too cheap to go out and find supported hardware, just to run Solaris. :-)

;-)

I don't know about your NIC, but the few I have on my motherboards have worked, as long as Xorg or the nvidia driver supports the gfx card it should work I suppose. So I think it was mostly a user error.

Exactly. Besides, opening the source doesn't always mean that this is the best option to expand and enhance an OS - most want it open just because they feel everything should be open.

Some things NEED to be left untouched. If we opened up the source code to everything on the face of this mudball, where would we put it? China only has so many compromised PC's to be turned into networked RAID storage volumes... =:(

Exactly. Besides, opening the source doesn't always mean that this is the best option to expand and enhance an OS - most want it open just because they feel everything should be open.

Some things NEED to be left untouched. If we opened up the source code to everything on the face of this mudball, where would we put it? China only has so many compromised PC's to be turned into networked RAID storage volumes...

First, solaris is already open source. Second, I do feel that everything should be free software (not just open) and I certainly think solaris could gain more "mindshare" from this which would benefit SUN as well as giving me a OS to use.

Edited 2006-12-12 06:32

the CDDL _is_ a free software license, even the fsf says so ("weak copyleft" project-wide, but "strong copyleft" per file. the latter is what the fsf ignores).
just because the GPL is incompatible doesn't make the CDDL non-free.

Some things NEED to be left untouched. If we opened up the source code to everything on the face of this mudball, where would we put it? China only has so many compromised PC's to be turned into networked RAID storage volumes... =:(

MS just recently gave china insight into the source code.

Except if sun chooses GPLv3.

Except if sun chooses GPLv3.

I don't see how that would affect matters substantially one way or the other, except with regards to drivers.

Please clarify.

Edited 2006-12-12 14:55

Well you can't mix GPLv2 and GPLv3 code, so if sun chooses to licence Opensolaris under the GPLv3 only, linux wouldn't benefit from it.
Plus they can convince linux driver devs to (re)release their code using the GPLv2 or later, which would enable them to use it on opensolaris.

Actually it might be interesting to see what features might move to the Linux kernel from OpenSolaris if the latter was GPL'd, since a lot of Linux users' 'problem' with *BSD seems to be the fact that so much is being ported to this family of OSs and not 'invented' for use with it as these people seem to claim being the reality on Linux' behalf...

I'd like to see these people's reactions to ZFS, Zones, DTrace etc. being ported to Linux.... Will they moan about it being Sun code ported to the OS or will they cheer out loud for what it brings that is currently available for Linux?

Yes it is available for all hardware platforms that the Solaris 10 11/06 release runs on. We generally don't use the x86_64 terminology but instead say AMD64 or just generically x86.

Hmm Last time I checked it was called x64

I prefer the x86-64 designation myself, but Sun does use the "x64" moniker in its marketing materials and press releases.

And we all know that the measure of an OS is total number of packages available, with no focus on how many of those packages actually work and do something useful

5500? Ubuntu has 20000+

You can't just compare those absolute numbers. Ubuntu and Debian split up a lot of software in multiple packages. E.g. most libraries are split up in normal and -dev packages, and sometimes there are also -doc packages. pkgsrc seldomly splits up software in different packages.

Besides that pkgsrc supports far more platforms and operating systems (e.g. Net/Free/OpenBSD, GNU/Linux, Solaris, Interix, Darwin, IRIX, AIX, and DragonFly). Even if it has a smaller number of packages, it is nice to have one package system across so many platforms.

Yeah just to bad not all packages from pkgsrc EXIST for Solaris, and most/many are probably very outdated, there are no kde port and so on. Also to bad Sun can't just get an official package manager and servers which everyone could use instead of Blastwave, Sunfreeware and pkgsrc where the first one doesn't have (atleast had) the source code available for all the packages in some easy to use way, the second one isn't easy to use and the later one lacks packages which the other two has.

Over all it's way to few packages, to little people involved, a crappy experience to use, outdated versions and just pure shit.

This, the not working ekiga, no recent KDE port and the fact that the UI just feels slow when my system uses the HDD a little and that Sun Audio sucks and no applications are built with OSS support is major show stoppers for me. To bad since much of the OS seems and is awesome, good for servers but make a very crappy desktop.

5500? Ubuntu has 20000+

You stand for quantity not quality?

can You deploy ubuntu package system on Solaris to be fully functional?

BSD License? The chances of Solaris being released under the BSD license are zero.

Except of course for the bits of Solaris that already are under the BSD license ;-)

A package system isn't entirely neccessary in an enterprise environment, but if your plan is to use this in a desktop environment, http://www.blastwave.org/ is a pretty nice package system for those open source applications.

Linux already supports snapshotting at the LVM layer

No, it's not so powerful as ZFS, but you can do it.

Ok LVM snapshotting has nothing to do with this

I should have used some clearer term but I have no idea what would it be.

Here's an other Linux user who would switch to Solaris if ZFS install/boot were finally complete. I guess that's another 6 months of wait then...

Though Linux might still integrate some snapshotting FS in that time.

Why is that? ZFS is pretty slick, granted, but not necessary for a small root partition. You can use fssnap to make UFS snapshots anyways (although only one snap per fs at a time).

http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1824/sam0201j/0201j.htm

thanks for that link !

You're assumption that the reason OpenSolaris wasn't licensed under the GPL is incorrect. It had more to do with timing and it had nothinbg to do with trying to prevent things from being ported. For more details, see this response from Simon Phipps

http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messageID=55008#55008

Sun do not own all of the code that is in Solaris, after all parts of codebase is up to 30years old. The CDDL is a decent effort at an openlicense if you ask me. And it is a perfect fit for current situation of Solaris codebase. As it a per-file license thus allowing CDDL licensed files to be mixed with files under propietry licenses in the finished product (Solaris). Something that GPL wouldn't allow. As all new code going into Solaris appears to be CDDL given time it would be possible to see a dual license approach, but tbh why are people so obsessed that there be a GPL version? It's only a license people not a religion.

Uhm, isn't it GPL which is the restrictive license?

They are a company. They do things to benefit themselves. If it benefits others in the process, wonderful - but that is not the primary intent of a company. They exist to make their stakeholders happy.

I don't think they can "hurry" GPLization anymore than they already are, it's a huge undertaking. Just be happy they are doing it, at all. Most companies wouldn't.

i wish they'd hurry up and gpl solaris so that all foss can benefit

Why does it have to be gpl specifically for foss to benefit?

I think what he means is that it would benefit Linux. Actually, making it GPL would cause problems for a lot of other open source software. GPL code can't be directly ported to BSD licensed code. I like the idea of dtrace and ZFS in FreeBSD, so I'm really in no hurry to see Solaris switch to the GPL license.

But linux is the only Foss alternativ there is.. did'nt know you that? Or atleast thats what it seems like when ever some company or the like talks about moving a way from windows they just have to move to linux.

Another thing is why even bother to change the licens to gpl when gpl v3 is said to be compatible with the cddl. So it will all be ported or copied to linux anyways.