Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 22nd Feb 2008 19:58 UTC, submitted by diegocg
Dissatisfaction has surfaced in the OpenSolaris community. The dispute centers around how derivatives can use the OpenSolaris name and branding. Sun says that permitting broad downstream use of the OpenSolaris name would risk diluting the Solaris trademark, and it has stated that a policy needs to be established on how the name can and cannot be used. A member of the governance board has resigned. This looks similar to what happened with the Mozilla trademark.
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Member since:2005-07-13
So why is it that community-developed software and open source have to go hand in hand? Just because they frequently do, and in certain cases it might be in a company's best interest to establish an ecosystem of 3rd-party developers around their software, Sun did spend hojillions of dollars developing the software, and then released the code so all could benefit.
So call it what it is: shared source. Sun releases source code and claims "open source" superiority, yet they require copyright assignment on contributions that reserve the right to change the license. They may still technically meet the definition of OSS, in that the code is released and it is forkable, but it's certainly not an embrace of OSS. They're patronizing the community at best.
Don't get me wrong, the community should still be grateful when a company like Sun releases that significant a volume of code to the community, but the community needs to realize it's up to them to do with it what they will. Sun isn't embracing two-way partnership in any sort of a joint-relationship sort of way. They're using OSS in much the same way Apple does.
Sun is entitled to do what they do, all the more power to them, and the community should be happy to have what they have. But Sun's OSS commitment is one-way, they're not looking for community collaboration, they're looking for community adoption.
Member since:2005-11-16
Member since:2005-11-18
So call it what it is: shared source. Sun releases source code and claims "open source" superiority, yet they require copyright assignment on contributions that reserve the right to change the license. They may still technically meet the definition of OSS, in that the code is released and it is forkable, but it's certainly not an embrace of OSS. They're patronizing the community at best.
I fully disagree. Suppose that Sun would have licensed Java under the GPL + license exception and did not require copyright attribution. The community could have redistributed Java under the GPL, it would not be easy to change the license because the copyright is spread. The current situation is not different, the community can distribute it under the GPL, but can not change the license. So, for the free software community dual-licensing or no dual-licensing does not really matter.
But now they can also let customers pay who want some customized closed-source version of Java. And to be honest, you need some "bargain" like that. Be it Sun, ex-Trolltech, ex-MySQL, or ex-Sleepycat, it's hard to justify investing millions of dollars in a body of code, and putting the competition on exactly the same feet. It is not easy to make money through support only (especially for libraries like Qt or Berkeley DB). Or, for existing companies to switch fully to a service model.
So, dual-licensing deals seem fair to me, and fully in the spirit of free software: the community gets code as they would have without dual licensing. The company that contributes the code still has a tool to reasonably leverage profits.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
So why is it that community-developed software and open source have to go hand in hand? Just because they frequently do, and in certain cases it might be in a company's best interest to establish an ecosystem of 3rd-party developers around their software, Sun did spend hojillions of dollars developing the software, and then released the code so all could benefit. Sure it might not be exactly what you want, but if you have the resources, you could take the software in the direction you'd like. If you don't, I guess you can't expect something for nothing.