[...] > and yes .. I'm frustrated that a whack of Linux > community people never > showed up. IBM people are not here. That the mail > lists are full of > Sun.COM email addresses and people internal with > internal agenda's etc etc. > A lot of things just seem behind closed doors still.
Don't forget the Tadpole guy that _is_ here; I think I saw someone from Fujitsu, too. There are some (if not a lot) of people who've worked with and contributed to Linux here. And do you have access to the registration information, such that you _know_ there's nobody from IBM here? What about Apple porting DTrace (and according to some rumors, working on zfs) to MacOS X? What about the zfs to FreeBSD port? What about various drivers whose starting points have come from one or more of the *BSDs? What about increasing amount of external open source software available for Solaris, both via Sun and via your efforts? What about the two AT&T ksh guys participating in the ksh93 integration project? What about the deal with Intel? Having said that, I do agree with some things you've said. Sun's marketing department needs a major overhaul; anyone that thinks that changing the name of products every couple of years or other such shell games (which although not marketing's fault, dual-licensing also is _unless_ clear benefits can be identified) is worse than useless, insofar as renaming for anything less than a total rewrite simply distracts and confuses, and done repeatedly, wastes credibility. As to whether there _would_be_ clear benefits to dual-licensing, I think that needs (a) wait to see exactly what GPLv3 would look like, (b) identify what those benefits might be and how they might work (keeping in mind that _just_ seeking acceptance is a defensive position at best) and how likely they are to work, (c) take into account any downside of a dual-license arrangement, and (d) reach out to not only the OpenSolaris community, but also the Linux and FSF folks (between which there may be a split between GPLv2 _only_ or GPLv2 _or_later_), the *BSD folks, Apple, Tadpole, Fujitsu, IBM, NCR (if they're still doing anything with Solaris), Dell (if they give a darn), and anyone else that has an interest that might be mutually beneficial, to get some idea what their reactions to a dual-license arrangement might be. Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, and look at other cases of dual-licensing and to see what benefits vs problems they've encountered (and don't forget perl as a possibly successful counter-example to claims that other dual-license arrangements have had their problems). All of that, and probably more, is needed to get a big enough picture to decide realistically what the benefits might be. Now just perhaps, that's been happening; and maybe the talk and hype has been in part to get more people thinking about it. So maybe when GPLv3 is finalized, there will be enough information to talk about this intelligently. Until then, while plenty of points can be raised, I don't think there's much use in staking out strong pro or con positions. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
