Jim Thompson wrote:
The CDDL is yet another reason why the OSI (started by Perens,
Raymond and others to "re-brand" Free Software) was a really bad (and
dangerous) idea.
I complained to Larry Rosen (who approved CDDL as an OSI-compliant
license) and others about this back at TPOSSCON.
I'm concerned about "Free as in speech". Its not clear that the CDDL
permits software Freedom.
Jim
Aloha all, Larry is a good friend of mine. His treatise "Open Source
Licensing" was about the only time he was able to make some money from
his long-time involvement in the so-called free software movement.
Personally, I happen to like CDDL "a lot". (I do have freedom to
express my opinion, don't I?) As I mentioned previously, file-for-file,
CDDL is no different from GPL, except that CDDL allows proprietary code
to be included in the same software package. Most of those proprietary
codes are expected to be device drivers. The decision to use the CDDL
licensing scheme also allows SUN to greatly expedite the debut of
OpenSolaris before they are able to completely replace the third party
codes--if ever--which they have no right to open.
Anyway, we all know that Solaris on x86 was substantially less than
desired, but Solaris 10 is a totally different story. For use as a
corporate desktop, JDS/Solaris on Athlon64 is indeed more polished and
smoother than anything I have seen (especially the myriad of Linux
desktops). You should experience it yourself. Don't believe anything I
said.
Another potential advantage of working with OpenSolaris is that you
"may" get a chance to communicate directly with the kernel developers.
One of the SUN engineers I happened to talk to told me that she is 100%
involved with two babies: one of her own and the other the part of
kernel she is working on. SUN allows her to work at home, OTOH, the
open-source nature of Solaris allows her to talk to the world at large.
I am interested in organizing an OpenSolaris workgroup. If anyone is
interested, please send me a line (LUAU at hawaiilinux dot us). I will
to be out of town, but will contact you once I get back & can collect a
reasonable number of interested souls (very unlikely, I am afraid).
Mahalo, Wayne
