On Jun 14, 2005, at 6:56 PM, Hawaii Linux Institute wrote:
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.
I've spoken to Larry a couple times. (It would be going way to far
to call him a friend.) IMO, he did more harm than good by assisting
OSI in their quest to re-brand Free Software
and "make it safe for the business community"? Doing so was never
a primary concern of the LInux community. Linus certainly doesn't care.
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.
Yes, you have complete freedom to express your opinion. The CDDL
looks like it took a lot of work, and Sun "went as far as they could"
while still preserving the rights of proprietary software
companies. As for the "only difference" being proprietary code
(allowed by the CDDL), perhaps true, but thats a HUGE difference.
Its like stating that the only difference between humans and fish are
a few chromosomes. True, but a bit of a composition fallacy if you
ask me.
But "Open Solaris" is not Free Software. The difference can be
quite important.
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.
I have a desktop, it runs OS X. I have several more linux and
FreeBSD computers as well. All of these (including the released
parts of OS X) are much more Free than Open Solaris.
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.
At the risk of coming off conceited and arrogant, I don't need "a
chance" to speak with Sun's engineers. I once was one, and in
addition to a lot of navel-gazing and muttering to myself, I still
maintain several relationships with people who were at Sun "back in
the day" (1988 - 1992, IIRC.) Prior to leaving Sun I worked directly
for Bill Joy. After leaving Sun I ported SunOS 4.1.3 (Solaris 1.1)
and various releases of Solaris 2 (SunOS 5.x) to Tadpole's
hardware. The rest of Tadpole's engineering team was located in
England, btw.
One of the machines that Scott picked up last Friday was a Netra
T1. One of the last projects I did before I moved to the islands
was radically improve the "tulip" driver for the on-board Ethernets
**under Linux** for a big Sun Consulting customer.
Many developers I know (open source or not) work at home. Doing so
is one of the classic "hacker responses" to cube farms and other
environments where it is impossible to not be interrupted.
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
Heck, lets drop it on a PeeCee and show it at one of the up-coming
"tech events". Maybe benchmark it against Linux. I don't see any
reason to separate this from HOSEF. HOSEF's mission is Open Source
Education, not Free Software advocacy.
jim
