"Don't expect to see key features of OpenSolaris showing up in the Linux kernel," said a top Linux maintainer. At his LinuxWorld opening keynote, Andrew Morton made it very clear that the appointment of former OSDL CTO and Debian co-founder Ian Murdock to Sun's OS platforms organization will not translate into a merging between the open source version of Solaris Unix with Linux. He didn't mince words. "It's a great shame that OpenSolaris still exists. They should have killed it," said Morton, addressing one attendee's question about the possibility of Solaris' most notable features being integrated into the kernel. "It's a disappointment and a mistake by Sun." Morton said none of those features - Zones, ZFS, DTrace - will end up in the Linux kernel because Sun refuses to adopt the GPL.
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Member since:2007-08-04
you cannot say that only the GPL community has issue with the CDDL!
No, I'm saying that while Linux has the GPL-or-nothing attitude, there is always the possibility that companies in the future might release non-GPL kernel features. Today, Linux users have missed out on DTrace and ZFS for 2 years and counting; what future features will they also miss out on?
Plus, it's most likely that even if the Linux kernel had used a different license X which happened to be compatible with CDDL as it exist now (they would have needed a cristall ball to guess), Sun would have used another license again incompatible with X.
Really? I find that somewhat suprising, having worked at Sun now for several months I've only heard positive discussions about encouraging DTrace to appear on Linux, not plans to stop that from happening.
But then, maybe you know more about Sun's politics than I do, and maybe you work at Sun too. Who are you "renox"? What is your real name and identity please?
So is-it really surprising that OpenSolaris, DTrace, ZFS are using GPL-incompatible license?
Oh, are you saying that Sun is delibrately trying to prevent these technologies from appearing in Linux? Quoting Sun's CEO:
"And for the record... as Adam states so eloquently, we're thrilled to see ports of DTrace running everywhere. ZFS and DTrace's availability beyond OpenSolaris/Solaris, on Apple's Mac OS (and BSD) prove the point - joining communities is a good thing."
Member since:2005-07-06
So is-it really surprising that OpenSolaris, DTrace, ZFS are using GPL-incompatible license?
No, it isn't. But it also has nothing to do with this "we want to screw the GPL users" mentality you seem to be implying. The simple fact is, the GPL wasn't suitable for what Sun needed to do, and probably would've delayed the whole thing by years if they'd been insistent on using it.
Member since:
2005-07-06
>the GPL-or-die mentality has already cost Linux users 2 years without DTrace and ZFS,
Do you know that there is a debate in FreeBSD to see if they can use DTrace headers or not? And that they chose to not integrate it into FreeBSDv7 for this reason? The 'legal' debate is not settled, maybe this will turn out to be a mistake, I don't know, but you cannot say that only the GPL community has issue with the CDDL!
Plus, it's most likely that even if the Linux kernel had used a different license X which happened to be compatible with CDDL as it exist now (they would have needed a cristall ball to guess), Sun would have used another license again incompatible with X.
Remember while Sun released a lot of open-source software:
-they opensourced OpenOffice to hurt Microsoft, not just out of 'good will'
-they opensourced Java only when there was an opensource reimplementation of Java which was becoming on the verge of being a real threat to their implementation.
So is-it really surprising that OpenSolaris, DTrace, ZFS are using GPL-incompatible license?
If SystemTap becomes one day as useful as DTrace is, it's quite possible that Sun will dual license DTrace, until them I don't expect them to do so..