On 2/4/07, Bryan Cantrill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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 and the fork is a little bit out of date.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 and each time the fork gets more out of date.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.
i still see no benefit in dual licensing but i'm trying to be unbiased here
isn't most of that already possible now? the only difference is that
the gplv3-only news would give them a little short lived publicity and
opensolaris would not be able to integrate their changes.
having a company that invests as much as sun does in solaris is what i
think is unlikely to happen, if they do, and they solve some serious
problems the opensolaris community has at that time, then what is the
problem? cant that happen even if we dont touch the license?. forking
is certainly possible, it has already happened, check netbsd-openbsd
and freebsd-dragonflybsd.
nacho
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
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