Advanced

Sun's OpenSolaris Plans Start to Emerge

Posted by dave on · 4 comments
eWEEK Linux
Mail this story
Print this story

The company will launch an OpenSolaris site on Friday, but an open-source version of Sun's operating system is still a long way off.

Full Story

  Nav
» Read more about: Groups: Sun; Story Type: News Story

» Get new stories by e-mail: nightly or as they are published

« Return to the newswire homepage

  Related stories
» More like this

Comments (4)

Sun doesn't seem to get it. It really looks like they are convinced that the "Open Sourcing" of solaris will be the poison pill that kills Linux.

Maybe that they have a slight chance in succeeding to push GNU/Linux off it's revered place as main FOSS OS, but their model better be like OpenOffice.org. Solaris needs to be Free for their plan to succeed, but is Sun willing to relinquish control to this level? I think not.

Most probably it'll be a license that says, look, touch after permission and don't you ever dare forking it or add it to anything other than Solaris. It could help building a strong (but small) Solaris loyalist community, which might be just what Sun needs.

Can it impact our Flagship GNU/Linux OS? I doubt it. While some might stick to Solaris, because they know it and they like it, I don't see the whole FOSS community flocking in droves around Solaris. If it's Free enough we will welcome it to the fold, but it'll be another niche flavor of Open Source Unix.

To be successful in FOSS, you need more than code and an OSI/FSF approved license. You need trust, dependability and momentum. I haven't seen Sun being very busy building that lately...
Perhaps you should look at the discussion on yesterday's Linux Weekly News:

http://lwn.net/Articles/101411/

Some people has similar worries, e.g. "... worst-case scenario, ... will also "taint" any developer who looks at the Solaris code ..." That means if you can even be proved to have peeked at the code you are disallowed from making any contribution to a free OS.

Moreover, there are a listing of less drastic possibilities, but still not an overall gain to Free, Open Source Software. To balance this, until recently Sun has seemed quite benign regarding the Open Office Organization - and even there their words are soothing while the potential for harm by MS against OOo does not seem mitigated by those words.

1. Hatred of Red Hat (but LOVERS of Linux!).

2. Long term intimate relationship with SCO.

3. Friend of Microsoft.

And now... they can be your friend too!
Sun needs to sort it self out in a hurray.

They made a deal with the devil who will turn on them at the best chance.

They think Linux ==Red hat, so they will lose to Novell

They think Sparc Rulez. while Sparc is good, it will lose out to x86 and Power chip running at 4 times the speed.

Sun needs a target, MSFT is to big, Red Hat to Agile, IBM is to big, and Novell is gonna blind side them.

Post a comment

A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.

Your message:
|||||
10
Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help

Sign up and post (it is free)  or  Log in and post