[ILUG] Good open source ammunition document.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Glynn Foster (Glynn.Foster at Sun.COM):

> I'm pretty sure that Sun is 100% committed to Linux - some of our
> customers have asked for it, and we'll continue to provide it. However,
> I would imagine we'll always be pushing Solaris for mission critical
> deployments. Solaris will be open sourced before the end of the year [1]

(I'm not trying to put you personally on the spot.  I'm very sympathetic
to people who post from company accounts, and then have to face
complaints from every net.random who ever disliked anything at all about
the company, and don't want to be one of the latter.)

It's not clear that Solaris will be open sourced.  It is extremely
likely that a _source-available_ variant will emerge, but recent signs
have been suggesting that the licence terms will be proprietary.  I
could be overinterpreting, and/or other forces may prevail prior to
release.  I hope so.  We shall see.  (I participate on OSI's
license-discuss mailing list, but am speaking for myself, alone.)

Currently, I'm expecting a source release under a new licence -- one that
is not OSD-compliant and never could be -- that requires third-party
derivative works to comply in some fashion with a compliance testing
suite for conformity to some specified standards.  If so, the right to
create derivative works would be so restricted that the release will 
absolutely not be open source.

> [1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eschrock?catname=Solaris for one
> source of Open Source Solaris blogs

Eric Schrock says, among other things:

> ...the GPL doesn't align with our corporate principles. We want to
> have ISVs embedding Solaris in their set-top box without worrying
> about how to dance around the GPL while keeping their IP private.

I am disappointed.  I would (perhaps naively) have expected that a
spokesman for Sun Microsystems on open source -- even an unofficial one,
plugging away as part of the company's blogging initiative -- would 
understand the concept of dual-licensing.

That is, licences attach to _instances_ of a codebase.  Nothing prevents
Sun from issuing all or part (e.g., kernel only) of Solaris under a
copyleft licence -- which prevents competitors from creating proprietary
forks -- while simultaneously issuing a separate instance under
proprietary licensing terms to ISVs who've paid a token fee for for the
right to embedd it in set-top boxes while keeping their own copyrighted 
code fragments and trade secrets ("IP" [sic]) private.

Second, Schrock goes on:

> Second, we've already stated that the license will be OSI compliant.

That may be, but Sun employees' discussions with OSI -- unless there
have been private ones that have been more impressive -- have (so far)
suggested otherwise.  But of course, those didn't necessarily speak the 
view of Sun as a company.

>  I can't take Linux code and drop it into FreeBSD

Actually, a fair number of pieced of Linux (some notable drivers) _are_ 
dropped into FreeBSD -- because they're kept dual-licensed for that very
reason.  Thus my earlier point.

By the way, technically the term "OSI compliant" doesn't mean anything.
A licence may be OSD-compliant.  If applied in an open-source manner, 
covered software may bear the OSI Certified certification mark.


Again, nothing in the above is intended to put you _personally_ on the
spot.  I apologise in advance for any impression of same.  It's an
unfortunate effect of Sun's current blogging blitz that numerous
side-discussions occur, somewhat distant from the commentator being
discussed.  (I generally decline to follow and post comments on people's
blogs directly.  I'd rather participate in more genuinely public forums
like this one.)

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick at linuxmafia.com     modern-American-English-usage-improvement association.