Sun Microsystems is the latest company to become a patron of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF's corporate patron program allows companies to provide financial sponsorship for the FSF in return for free license consulting services. High-profile FSF patron affiliates include prominent technology companies like Google, Nokia, IBM, Cisco, and Intel. FSF involvement represents Sun's latest attempt to take a more active role in the open-source software community.
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Member since:2005-07-08
Very well said. In addition to this and my argument below (Congrats to Sun for missing the point), it's worth clarifying that the GPLv3 is almost completely ineffective when combined with the CDDL. The latter is nearly always more permissive than the GPLv3, so the more restrictive parts of it can be legally side-stepped on the grounds that the CDDL grants a license to do what the GPLv3 prohibits. Essentially:
CDDL + GPLv3 == CDDL + under-informed fanboys
Member since:2005-07-07
Very well said. In addition to this and my argument below (Congrats to Sun for missing the point), it's worth clarifying that the GPLv3 is almost completely ineffective when combined with the CDDL. The latter is nearly always more permissive than the GPLv3, so the more restrictive parts of it can be legally side-stepped on the grounds that the CDDL grants a license to do what the GPLv3 prohibits. Essentially:
CDDL + GPLv3 == CDDL + under-informed fanboys
Dual licensing isn't a combination of licensing. It is the process of distributing something under two different licenses. If you only want to abide by the GPL you are free to. SUN will not accept the changes into their tree but they don't have to. It no longer belongs to Sun. It belongs to everyone.
Member since:2005-07-07
How is linux less enticing for free software distributors? And more to the point, who among the free software distributions, or even the freedom-or-nothing side of the community, are actually committing code to the kernel?
That's besides the point. If there is a wholesale switch to GPLv3 then most likely Debian would switch to the Solaris kernel as they are closely tied with Free Software, which in turn could impact distributions based on Debian, of which there are many including the popular Ubuntu. Gentoo could also switch easily or at least provide the Solaris kernel as the default eventually, as they are already attempting to support multiple kernels.
Are IBM and HP going to switch to supporting openSolaris with code contributions? Is Red Hat going to drop the linux kernel for openSolaris?
It's a definite possibility. You don't understand that if Solaris goes GPLv3 it no longer belongs to SUN except in name only. It is then Free Software. It doesn't matter where it came from.
And considering the dual-licensing, will the free software community be contributing to the openSolaris kernel knowing that their contributions must be dual-licensed under CDDL/GPL, along with copyright assignment, in order to be accepted?
This is not the problem you make it out to be. We don't have to let Sun keep it if we don't want to. We can fork it and call it something else. Once it is GPLv3 no one can stop that from happening.
Or will the free software community, which makes up but a portion of the OSS community, manage to sustain a fork of openSolaris that's pure GPL, breaking away from the advantage of upstream support from Sun? Is that an incentive for Sun to adopt the GPL? So that the free software community can immediately strip it of CDDL licenses and prevent any community contributions back to Sun? Or from the community, will the Debian maintainers, who are having a hard enough time getting linux releases out the door, adopt a forked openSolaris kernel? Will the FSF be able to manage a forked openSolaris kernel as a GNU project?
The FSF doesn't have to maintain a fork. Someone else can, and it wouldn't be difficult considering the fact that they can fold all official Solaris kernel changes into their own kernel if they so wish. It would be rather trivial in fact because you have all the power of the official Solaris kernel release PLUS any additions that you want to include.
I'm certainly not saying Sun's adoption of GPL v3 is a bad thing, but I am having a hard time envisioning why this is such a monumental win for the free software community when the fact of the matter is it will remain dual-licensed with Sun reserving the right to close future versions?
Once GPL always GPL. It's completely out of Sun's control after that, just like Linus and Linux. If Sun is a good shepard of Solaris then it will stay "Solaris". If they are a bad shepard then it will be "Phoebus" or something else.
linux is still the free software community's most viable kernel
This is true...at the moment. All I am saying that if Solaris goes GPLv3 and so does everyone else, this may change.
Again, not to take away from Sun, but let's wait and see how things shake out before speculating on the future of free software. v3 is not even out yet, and will take some time before it's impact can realistically be judged.
Hmm. I'm not judging GPLv3. I'm merely speculating about the effect of a possible scenario, one that includes both the wholesale switch to GPLv3 and relicensing Solaris under the GPLv3.
Member since:2006-01-12
>>That's besides the point. If there is a wholesale switch to GPLv3 then most likely Debian would switch to the Solaris kernel as they are closely tied with Free Software, which in turn could impact distributions based on Debian, of which there are many including the popular Ubuntu. Gentoo could also switch easily or at least provide the Solaris kernel as the default eventually, as they are already attempting to support multiple kernels.<<
Your argument is based on the flawed assumption that Opensolaris will be dual licensed under the GPLv3. From everything i've seen from Opensolaris community there is alot of opposition to any such dual licensing. One of the main reasons been the fear of GPL only forks.
>>It's a definite possibility. You don't understand that if Solaris goes GPLv3 it no longer belongs to SUN except in name only. It is then Free Software. It doesn't matter where it came from.
...snip....
Once GPL always GPL. It's completely out of Sun's control after that, just like Linus and Linux. If Sun is a good shepard of Solaris then it will stay "Solaris". If they are a bad shepard then it will be "Phoebus" or something else.
<<
You logic is flawed, the main difference between Linux and Solaris in this regard is Sun owns the copyright on all the code they've released as "OpenSolaris" as result they can do whatever they want license wise with it. They could cease dual licensing it for example. In which case any GPL only fork would need a dev team to maintain, given the FSF progress with HURD I don't see this been a huge success do you?
The point been that after such a "fork" everything new and interesting going into Solaris would not be available to your theoretical GPLv3 fork.
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:
2005-07-13
If there is a wholesale switch to GPLv3 the Linux kernel will be left out in the cold while the Solaris kernel will look a lot more enticing to Free Software distributors.
How is linux less enticing for free software distributors? And more to the point, who among the free software distributions, or even the freedom-or-nothing side of the community, are actually committing code to the kernel?
Are IBM and HP going to switch to supporting openSolaris with code contributions? Is Red Hat going to drop the linux kernel for openSolaris?
And considering the dual-licensing, will the free software community be contributing to the openSolaris kernel knowing that their contributions must be dual-licensed under CDDL/GPL, along with copyright assignment, in order to be accepted?
Or will the free software community, which makes up but a portion of the OSS community, manage to sustain a fork of openSolaris that's pure GPL, breaking away from the advantage of upstream support from Sun? Is that an incentive for Sun to adopt the GPL? So that the free software community can immediately strip it of CDDL licenses and prevent any community contributions back to Sun? Or from the community, will the Debian maintainers, who are having a hard enough time getting linux releases out the door, adopt a forked openSolaris kernel? Will the FSF be able to manage a forked openSolaris kernel as a GNU project?
I'm certainly not saying Sun's adoption of GPL v3 is a bad thing, but I am having a hard time envisioning why this is such a monumental win for the free software community when the fact of the matter is it will remain dual-licensed with Sun reserving the right to close future versions? Everybody keeps saying "Woo hoo! GPL!" without explaining what the really means in the overall scheme of things. If free software supporters are going to be comfortable contributing to a dual licensed CDDL/GPL project, what was the opposition to CDDL in the first place? Seems to me that openSolaris is fairly viable right now with CDDL licensing, and it's starting to build up a community of it's own, so I'm not sure where the change is going to come into play. There's a lot of sound and fury here, without much clarity, and I suspect that's sort of the intent from a corporate marketing point of view.
Empty arguments about Tivoisation aside (and I say empty because the people arguing against Tivoisation weren't actually producing the code that was Tivoized), linux is still the free software community's most viable kernel. Don't underestimate the advantage of it's de-centralized ownership. Heck, even the Hurd kernel will take a step back with v3 since they won't be able to relicense the linux driver code they have incorporated over time.
Again, not to take away from Sun, but let's wait and see how things shake out before speculating on the future of free software. v3 is not even out yet, and will take some time before it's impact can realistically be judged.