While Sun Microsystems is open to licensing Solaris under Version 3.0 of the GNU General Public License, it will not reconsider its decision not to license the operating system under GPL 2.0, the current version of the license. Sun created the CDDL for Solaris after rejecting GPL 2.0 as too restrictive for its purposes. Sun will not consider licensing Solaris under the current GPL for the same reasons it gave when it created the CDDL, which is based in large part on the MPL (Mozilla Public License), Tom Goguen, Sun’s vice president of software marketing, told eWEEK in an interview.
Well thats a big duh! why would SUN want to abnormally advance the progress of Linux with integration of Solaris code?
Well thats a big duh! why would SUN want to abnormally advance the progress of Linux with integration of Solaris code?
Wouldn’t it be that Sun is not interested in putting their code out under a license which doesn’t deal with patents? That was one of the deciding factors to go for an MPL derivative and not GPL V2.
Since the GPL V3 draft does have a patent retalliation clause, is more open to other non-GPL licenses, has cleaned up on the readability and seems to be on the right track, it might be that Sun sees the benefit of broader availability of their code and cross-polination with other GPL V3 projects, which will pop-up after the release of V3. (GPL V2 or, at your option, any later version was genious).
Anyways, this is not about Linux. Linux right now is a kernel with pretty nice hardware support for GNU desktop machines, but as I’ve come to realize that I’m quite fond of GNU, but don’t really care what kernel GNU uses, Linux as a kernel isn’t that important. A new steward with a proven solution to power GNU is fine by me.
It is not only fine by me but looking forward to it actually…
gplv3 for me! Would love to see alan cox manage to get linux to v3 but if not it is nice to know we have a alternative!
The current official GNU kernel is Linux, since HURD is not done, won’t be done for a while and according to some won’t ever be done. Linux won’t update to GPL3, Solaris probably will. Makes me think we might have a new official GNU kernel before 2007.
Debian GNU/Solaris
Debian GNU/Solaris
Sounds nice, isn’t that what NexentaOS is supposed to be?
Or did you meant an oficial GNU/OpenSolaris
Yes I meant an official GNU/Solaris but NexentaOS looks nice enough that probably wont happen. Anyway the main point was too see if Solaris will become the Official GNU kernel before years end.
Edited 2006-01-31 21:30
Wikipedia says “As of 2005, Hurd is in slow development, and is now the official kernel of the GNU system.” But I don’t think “official” matters anyway. None of the popular distributions have any plans of switching to the SunOS kernel.
Yes, official maters little, but I would like to know where the person that added that to wikipedia got it from. To be honest I’m not sure if GNU has a policy on what the official GNU system kernel is and what not. I’ve read RMS extend official GNU kernel to HURD and take it back 4 month later because he found out about the L4 port.
The GPL 3 draft seems to be more open to allowing the mix bettwen gpl and non-gpl free software licenses(I would assume those within the Free software licences in http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#GPLIncompatibleLic… ).
edit: Of course, the DRM issue could be a show stoper.
Edited 2006-01-31 21:00
sun wants to ‘open source’ solaris for the marketing points it would gain, but not so that the technology could be used to make linux better.
almost as bad as microsoft ‘open sourcing’ windows for a fee+nda to try to get around the EU ruling.
sun’s licensing is Orwellian – all code is open, but some is more open than others 😉
I have said it before and, no doubt, I will have to
say it again. It wasn’t possible to use the GPLv2 license
and have a distribution of opensolaris. There are kernel
modules which Sun does not have the rights to release the
code for. In fact, the source tree is now split into
/usr/src and usr/closed
Isnt there bigger issues regarding the code sharing, like the fact they are two completely different systems that would make it difficult to do.
The BSDs share code but even that isnt easy because of the forked codebases have evolved. In this case there isnt even a commonality between the two.