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"If IBM setup a website called OpenAIX and gave away a few thousand lines of code they would have done exactly what Sun has."
Oh come on. There is a HELL of a lot more than a few thousand lines there.
"There are a couple distributions of OpenSolaris, and they may be usable operating systems, but OpenSolaris(TM) is not. It is unusable sourcecode without a compiler, tools and preexisting operating system to build it on."
Remind me again when the definition of open source required that pre-compiled binaries be made available by the company releasing the source code?
oh... And please tell me when you figure out how to compile Linux in thin air... ie, build it without a compiler, tools, and pre-existing operating system to build it on.
Your argument is nothing more than a totally illogical strawman because you hate Sun.
Remind me again when the definition of open source required that pre-compiled binaries be made available by the company releasing the source code?
The definition of operating system would require binaries in one form or another that "operate".
OpenSolaris is not functional. It is millions or billions or trillions of lines of source code, just like Linux and BSD, yes. But its useless unless you like looking at algorithms.
Until they make an OpenSolaris Operating System why not just call it source code or package or something non-functional.
Linux is relatively easy to build. When was the last time you tried to build and install OpenSolaris? You begin to run into licensing problems for redistribution around Step #3 because the copyright for the build tools and libraries might prevent redistribution.
But I'm sure its as easy as Gentoo or FreeBSD, and with a company like Sun and a license like the CDDL behind it, we should expect it to replace Linux any day now.
In case someone hasn't pointed out ... Sun indeed made the compilers available for free. Arguably the best compiler, at least when it comes to SPARC. Besides, to bootstrap OpenSolaris you can use either one of the available OpenSolaris distribution, or the one from Sun itself.







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how many entire operating systems has IBM open sourced?
As many as Sun has..
If IBM setup a website called OpenAIX and gave away a few thousand lines of code they would have done exactly what Sun has.
There are a couple distributions of OpenSolaris, and they may be usable operating systems, but OpenSolaris(TM) is not. It is unusable sourcecode without a compiler, tools and preexisting operating system to build it on.