Joerg Schilling wrote:
From time to time I grab a diferent OS to install and try my hands at
it. This time was OpenSolaris. The thing is, at some point in the
install, OpenSolaris throws a license at my face that doesn't seem open
at all. I can run the software, but I can't redistribute, copy, etc. I
am no law expert, but that license doesn't seem really open or free.
You did confuse terms.....
I don't know what you did install (most likely Solaris 10 or
Solaris Express - the latter is the Solaris 11 betas)
You did not install OpenSolaris, you simply can't as you cannot install "Linux".
You did rather install a Solaris distribution. If it shows something
like:
#uname -a
SunOS opt 5.11 snv_xx i86pc i386 i86pc
then the Solaris distribution you did install was OpenSolaris _based_.
OpenSolaris is (in contrary to Linux) a complete OS like e.g. FreeBSD,
it is however not a distribution that may be installed. You need to add
a few things even to make a simple installable OS distribution.
Sun Solaris is free but not as free as "free beer" as you need to
pesonally aggree on the license (which is needed because Sun still needs
to pay for some of the added software). Sun still gives you more
"freedom" than e.g. Intel as Sun allows you to compile software you like
to sell using the Sun Studio Compiler, Intel does not ;-) The Sun Studio
compiler will be OpenSource in the near future, the Intel compiler most
likely not.
There are other OpenSolaris based distributions (e.g. SchilliX) that
add different code in order to make an installable distribution.
For this reason SchilliX is free software _and_ completely
freely redistributable.
Although you are not allowed to redistribute Sun Solaris, you still may
do anything you like with Sun Solaris, you may even use it for commercial
purposes.
As far as I could tell, at least grub and (a javified version of) gnome
are free, and OpenSolaris is using it.
OpenSolaris uses an enhanced version of grub (Linux boots from the Solaris
grub, but Solaris does not boot from the unmodified grub found on Linux
distriibutions).
OpenSolaris does not include gnome, Sun Solaris does. Sun is the
biggest contributor for the gnome project, do you see a problem?
are free, and OpenSolaris is using it. Maybe it uses other free
software. So, doesn't that license conflicts with the gpl?
The Debian distribution uses a lot of free software from Sun. In fact,
28% of the Debian distribution is from Sun (3x more than RedHat contributed
and 5x more than IBM contributed). Do you see a licence conflict in Debian?
Its not to flame Sun, I know the company has contributed a lot with the
community, and many folks respects them. Just trying to get things clearer.
If it helps, OpenSolaris is a really free project. Sun did follow my advise from
November 2004 and we now have a OpenSolaris constitution as well as a
OpenSolaris Government Board. OpenSolaris is not controlled by Sun but by the
OGB. This makes OpenSolaris easier to deal with than the Linux Kernel that
depends on a single person that controls what goes in and what not.
The CDDL (used by OpenSolaris) is a license that is accepted as doubtlessly
free by the OSS community.
Jörg
Jorg and others,
It does help very much, thanks. I checked and what I have here is Sun
Solaris, not OpenSolaris. So, my apologies to the project. I didn't see
there was a difference between Solaris released freely (with some
restrictions) by Sun and OpenSolaris. I thought they were the same thing.
That said, my doubt is about Sun or any other company (doesn't really
matter which one) releasing gpl'ed software with additional
restrictions. Isn't that the 'viral' aspect of the gpl? That you cannot
impose additional restrictions when redistributing the software?
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