> The Emancipation project finally does its last putback into > OpenSolaris/ON Build "x", replacing the last of the closed > binary code. > > Some enterprising team immediately forks and strips off the > CDDL license, making a pure GPLv3 version of OpenSolaris/ON. > > 2 weeks later, OpenSolaris/ON Build x+1 comes out > (or the Hg repository gate is updated or ...) > and the fork is a little bit out of date. > > ...repeat every 2 weeks... > and each time the fork gets more out of date. > > Unless everyone stopped contributing to the OpenSolaris project and > rehosted themselves over to the fork, the fork maintainers will be > forced to either ignore the OpenSolaris changes, or spend more and > more time resyncing their fork - neither of which is long-term > feasible. Sure, some would use this fork, and would be happy. > Good for them. Sure, this splits the community a bit, but not > fatally for OpenSolaris.
Let me lay out a scenario that I just elucidated on Stephen O'Grady's blog (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/): let's say that several years down the track, a major competitor to Sun in the server space decides that, much to their regret, OpenSolaris is an option that they must not just provide, but also extend and develop. But the competitor doesn't want to outsource its OS development to Sun -- they just want to hijack OpenSolaris. A GPLv3 dual-license allows for a devious plan: they could take the source, strip the CDDL, and announce that their "GPLv3-only" OpenSolaris was open to all comers. For good measure, they might find some of the major pain points for non-Sun contributors to OpenSolaris and rectify them -- by either hiring those contributors, or establishing great developer resources, or offering services based on their GPLv3-only variant. The optics are good (the competitor positions themselves as "liberating" OpenSolaris, perhaps even joyfully expressing as much in a 101 billboard or two), they get the technology, and they steal the momentum -- albeit at a terrible, terrible cost to the OpenSolaris community. And before you blow off the above as impossible: both the AT&T/Berkeley wars in the 1980s and the Linux/proprietary wars in the 1990s contain significant elements of the above scenario. It is our responsibility in the OpenSolaris community to not just reflect today's economics, but understand tomorrow's possibilities -- and to have a license that protects our community from the internecine feuds that have destroyed or hindered so many software efforts. And before anyone says it: this is _not_ about protecting Sun -- it is about protecting OpenSolaris. Indeed, the scenario under which the risk of a dual-license feud would be most grave would be the untimely demise of Sun Microsystems; it is exactly because we must protect our community against such a cataclysm that we must seriously consider the risks of dual-licensing. - Bryan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
