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All we can ask as free software advocates is that software and hardware vendors establish and act upon plans to become more friendly to the free software community by opening specification and interfaces. In this respect, Sun is surpassing our expectations by also steadily moving to free software licensing for their own software products. They have not finished carrying out their plans, and I believe that this is part of the "duplicity" that Theo aptly notes.

What we see today is a large software vendor in the middle of a transition period that has already had a positive impact on the status of free software in the IT industry. Not all of their specifications are open yet, and therefore it is still hard to support and enhance their products with free software. Intel isn't completely open either, but the free software community has been much more accepting of their analogous free software stump speeches.

I think that Linus' "cynical" email was a mistake. It forced Schwartz to smooth things over without having anything to announce publicly. The challenge of rallying the troops as a leader of a free software project is that your enemies and "uneasy partners" can read the mailing list. For Linus to assert in the same email that license compatibility with OpenSolaris is mutually beneficial while also questioning Sun's intentions regarding ZFS was a step forward and then a step back.

If the intention was to goad Sun into making a statement about their plans for ZFS, then it failed. All we got was a vague assertion that they would like ZFS to run on Linux without any explanation as to how they would make this possible. Obviously Sun has nothing to say about ZFS that we don't already know. In the process, Linus has shown that his instinct is to respond to progress with cynicism.

Both Linus and Schwartz are technologists that have risen to prominence and share the burden of having far too many people analyzing their public comments. In this respect, Linus could learn a thing or two from Schwartz. When your counterpart announces progress, praise it as such. If he fails to capitalize on an opportunity to make progress, express regret. If he says nothing at all and you express distrust or discontent, expect him to try to take the matter offline.

As silly as it sounds, the dinner invite makes sense. Schwartz can't have Linus publicly badmouthing Sun's progress toward openness, and Linus can't be so dismissive of Sun's efforts. Schwartz needs to tell Linus that they are both on the same page as far as embracing the practical advantages of free software--it's just that Linus had the advantage of starting from scratch, whereas Schwartz has to steer a ship.

I'm sure that Schwartz would appreciate a vote of confidence from Linus. But failing that, Linus should have just noted that license compatibility with OpenSolaris would be a good thing and left it at that. The rest of the the "cynical" email had nothing to do with the GPLv3 relicensing issue, and it simply should not have been said. I'm not sure that an apology is completely necessary, but I wouldn't take it off the table--the dinner table, that is.