OrangeCrate’s Chuck Talk talks to Russ Castronovo, in charge of Global Communications for Sun Microsystems about a lot of Sun-Linux issues.
An Open Dialogue with Russ Castronovo, Sun Microsystems
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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GPL… sigh.. this article is biased. big time. The guy thinks sun GPL’ing all of sun’s software is a good thing. Red Hat thinks otherwise privately… their main applications are NOT under the GPL and their linux system cannot be distributed without the brand and copyrights stripped. Sun is doing a good job in holding their tounge. I think that sun is doing the right job in keeping quiet and just playing the cards… I also didn’t know OpenOffice was “GPL” i thought it was like “LGPL” or something.
on the interview site it has open source advertisements.. and it seems they suppot the GPL and mentioned nothing about all the hundreds of other Open source licenses.
ohwell.
“We use the GPL license for OpenOffice.org, but there are a number of factors to consider that often mean another license needs to be used.”
I don’t know about a bias, but I agree that this quote is confusing. Isn’t OpenOffice under some special Sun Open Source license, like the SPL or something?
The real problem with the article is that the guy didn’t say anything particularly meaningful or insightful.
Its alittle of both….
http://www.openoffice.org/license.html
The platform must be GPL’ed, but any product line that is a vendor product, must use an alternative copyright license.
Especially since Sun is the only hardware vendor providing CPU’s who are not affiliated with the MS Palladium DRM thingie. Both AMD and Intel will loose it that day and we’ll have to use Sparcs and so forth. I’m happy to see that no matter what everyone yells about Sun this Sun that, they’re the only player playing FAIR!!!
I’m gonna go all Sparc and skip out on the DRM rights that you LinuxIntel people will be stuck with same goes for LinuxAMD people..
You’ve a very valid point there. DRM is a sour joke purpotrated by greedy entertainment industries need to stop being the cutout middle man leaching off creative peoples efforts. Intel should also be very ashamed for trying this again as they already know how bitterly the CPU serial number Id went down with their consumer base ans to an extent so does AMD as it coupled with a recruitment of ex Digital Alpha CPU engineers allowed them to get a foothold.
If Palladium/Trusted Computing (NOT)/what ever else conveluted title they try to bring it out under gets introduced, then it will require a massive campaign on our part to inform the average IT consumer of their fair usage rights and steer them to hardware and software that will enable those rights. Woe be any corporate that tries to stand in our way……
Sun is not very far away from taking Linux by storm and leading the way with their product line, while at the same time, helping the platform to stay open. So far Sun is looking stable and it is delivering a Linux desktop to the enterprise. The only thing that matters to me is that the platform stay open, while the product line become competitive and remain closed.
What non-free “main applications” are you talking about? Red Hat does distribute some non-free third party software such as Flash, Java and Real Player, but their own software if free software.
As for “stripping copyrights”, i assume you mean trademarks. Any way, that’s what trademark laws are like — you have to defend your trademarks if you want to keep them, so not allowing others to use their trademarks isn’t just reasonable, it’s required by law (if they want to keep their trademarks valid).
Read the article carefully and you will see the subliminal message: SUN needs help.
I read it but I can’t find it. What do you mean?
The SUN guy don’t really say anything more than that he can’t say anything. Hmm..could be that they don’t have anything to say….
their main applications are NOT under the GPL and their linux system cannot be distributed without the brand and copyrights stripped.
Which Redhat apps aren’t GPL’d? Their whole package management structure certainly is, which is why it’s in Fedora and Mandrake. You are right though that you can’t distribute Redhat without stripping the brand – GPL applies to copyright, but trademark is still in play.
“Especially since Sun is the only hardware vendor providing CPU’s who are not affiliated with the MS Palladium DRM thingie.”
Isn’t this also the case with the PPC processors made by IBM and Motorola, thus Sun is not the only hardware vendor providing CPU’s who are not affiliated with the Palladium thingie?
It looks to me like there is something of a power struggle going on within Sun between the old-skool proprietory unix/big servers/sparc camp that belives Sun can claw its way out of trouble by doing what its always done but better, faster, cheaper. On the other side is the new-skool camp that want to use linux/x-64/open source to reposition the company into an open source with added value company in a similar fashion to Apple with OSX, IBM and SGI except in a Sun style.
Its the only way to explain the on again off again affair Sun is having with linux, one side says one thing, the other side contradicts it. It might also explain the coments about GPLing Solaris as an attempt to find common ground between the two sides.
yes, lets open source all of sun’s products and start “Sunsoftware.org” or something. I’m sure the millions of companies that would take their products and offer them cheaper and such..w ell you would be able to get all of it for free..
horrible business decision if they GPL anything that makes them money. Look, Apple didn’t GPL darwin. They Apple licensed it.
Tell me how in the world is giving away your software for free benificial to your company. Oh, yeah sell services to an email server. an open source company will pop up and offer the upgrades. really bad idea. they are trying to appease the people who want to get high end enterprise software all for free.. and that’s the world… they are using the GPL as a way to never close it ever.
Apple dosen’t like the GPL. IBM is liking it because they’ve always had an attitude of selling hardware-only.. even back in the 80s!!! they aren’t a software company and dont really care. SGI is trying to stay alive so they are using the ‘hot thing’… who says solaris won’t be the ‘hot thing’ and out do linux? oh yeah its GPL. Geeez biased biased biased
To all these people shouting “bias, bias!” does that matter when the argument has a point? Do you think that in dialog, the questioning side isn’t allowed to show their own opinion? Or do you think your opinions are unbiased? Opinions, unbiased… what’s your problem anyway?
“”Especially since Sun is the only hardware vendor providing CPU’s who are not affiliated with the MS Palladium DRM thingie.”
Isn’t this also the case with the PPC processors made by IBM and Motorola, thus Sun is not the only hardware vendor providing CPU’s who are not affiliated with the Palladium thingie?”
No, both IBM (Which isn’t that superhero som zeals wanna tell you they are) as well as Apple and Motorola support DRM. Sun is the only major player who does not.
Sun is the only one, like I said before, who believes in fair play
A lot of leaders agree — but Sun doesn’t. Why? Are they not afraid of Indian outsourcing?
Believe me, GPL or no GPL, companies are going to outsource to India or the Far East if they think they can save a few pennies. I find it funny that Microsoft, of all people, have perpetuated this one. It’s all going to end in tears of course, and if it really hits people are people going to do business with companies who outsource overseas? Probably not.
It only takes a handful of people moving their bank accounts to make that call-centre move look like a pretty bad idea.
What do you mean David. Please explain it in simple english. Who is going to cry and who is going to move bank accounts?
In Sweden we outsource everything,if we could move our mines we certainly would outsource them too. No big western company can claim that they got some kind of a national interest.
The reason why they ousource is to make connections with business on that side of the world. If they can only make international business dependant on computer technology.
The jobs are primarily service related, and cater to the vendors product line. Those jobs …. well I can’t say.
Who is going to cry and who is going to move bank accounts?
No, not immediately. However, if it ever became apparent that Western economies were being affected then a protectionist attitude would come into play in a huge way by ordinary people. Once it starts affecting you, it’s a whole different ball-game. After all, the Western companies outsourcing to the Far East are actually selling products and services to us here in the Western world. Assuming that you can somehow continue that and outsource jobs where wages are basically nothing is just not realistic. You also have to take into account that if Far Eastern economies do become fairly wealthy, then they will want a decent salary and a decent standard of living. Everything has a price eventually, and nothing is ever as cheap as you thought it was.
As many companies who have outsourced to the Far East have discovered, you have to have a reasonable presence and commitment in the countries where you are going to sell otherwise it does turn people off. Call-centres and the UK’s ludicrous Directory Enquiries service are an extremely good example.
I’ve just moved my account to a bank that has a commitment to my country, and my region. Why not? Because banks basically gamble your money, without you knowing, on the money markets (and make a great deal of money), changing your account can have pretty profound consequences.
No big western company can claim that they got some kind of a national interest.
Try telling that to the Americans.
The reason why they ousource is to make connections with business on that side of the world.
Mmm, no. It’s so they can save money on salaries and wages because they are able to pay people peanuts over there. It’s a very simple concept.
sun already outsources to india. i believe one of their founders was indian though… so is it really outsourcing if one of the founders was from india?
It’s fairly common these days. Whether you’re talking about Sun, IBM, or Oracle. They all outsource or move jobs to other countries. For example, Sun moved some of it’s enterprise server manufacturing to the UK, because of quality and cost issues. Sometimes it does make sense to do these things. American quality is not what it use to be, for example. On the flip side, there are jobs that are moved offshore for cost reasons alone. A good example is Oracle. In professional-service engagements, they usually will have an on-site team of a about a 6-12 ppl, and then have a team in India twice that size working on the same project remotely. While it saves Oracle a lot of money, it also makes it clear that there isn’t any employee loyalty out there anymore in the corporate world. It’s interesting, because some companies fought hard to keep jobs, like Sun, and in the end had to do lay-offs. All-in-All it’s a sad situation because it affects soo many ppl who had *stable* jobs, and now have to work harder for less with the realization that there is no loyalty. I love the *employment at will* clauses in contracts these days. It’s a way of saying.. “you’ll bend over for as long as we want you”.
The good thing about Sun is that it tries hard to prevent lay-offs and for the jobs that do go offshore, it’s usually because of manufacturing or because most of the programmers for a particular team are from that country. A good example, most of the X11 and Gnome programmers for Sun are in the UK:) And the head Sun Cluster ppl are in Hawaii:)