Yes it will stay open source. The CDDL is a very nice license, and doesn't allow easy 'take backs' either. The only approach Oracle would be able to take would be one of SCO-like claims about improperly released copyright material. That approach would not yield them any positives, and would invite scrutiny from regulatory bodies.
They could attempt to let it wither in favor of some flavor of Linux, or they could throw away a lot of things they don't understand in favor of some blend, or they could not screw up something that's working... So far, they're a bit vague about much besides laying off piles of people. They made some statements at the MySQL convention recently, but I'm not sure what they were, or what bearing they might have on Solaris. I do know that the Oracle rep was greeted with some degree of reservation on the part of the audience at the address. In order for them to succeed, they're both going to have to change. Otherwise there's going to be value lost. It's my expectation this will be the case given that the plan involves sacrificing workers to the jaws of markets of questionable intelligence. If they were either taking a one time charge, or setting a goal of meeting pre-merger revenue goals, I might have a bit more faith. So far though the announced plan has a lot of layoffs in it, at a high rate. When technology companies lay people off in droves, value gets lost. That's just how it works, it's nearly unpreventable. This is something I saw over and over in the dot com bust, and it's no less true today than it was then. So while Oracle might derive some short term approval by making the streets run red with the toil of Sun employees labors, their very next task ends up being a shell game of trying to hide the bodies of work left adrift by the layoffs. Thats not a situation that's well structured for the fiscal conservation of IP assets at all. Oracle has a tough road to pave ahead of itself, but I hope they can do well with it. A large portion of my career has been spent doing Solaris & Oracle and all the bells and whistles that go with it. So I have no desire to see either company fail. Oracle is going to have to remodel itself with some co-operation between it's technology assets that it previously would not have contemplated. This may prove a difficult transition if they want to both 'be Oracle' and 'be Sun'. They're going to have to really pile into open source in a serious way in a company that has not gone through the wrenching pain of doing what Sun has done. With the CDDL, I really believe Oracle has dealt itself a nice hand to work with, and it certainly leaves everyone who's ever sucked down a source tree free to do what they want with it, in a really unencumbered way. My hope is that a year from now I'll be as happy with the OS & Sun hardware technology offerings as I am today. It would be nice if there was some better integration of Oracle technology with Suns, but due to the cost modeling, that may continue to be less of a technical consideration than it once was. I also am far more interested in seeing Sun and Oracle application technology propagated to Linux, than I am seeing things Linux propagated to Solaris. I'll use IP over Fiber Channel (fcip) as an example. How long has Sun had this technology commonly available? How long has Linux had it? Who's would I rather trust? The answers to those quite valid questions are the types of issues which I formulate my preferences on. There are a lot of open possibilities, not all gloomy either. I hope they do well with this, but until they articulate their ideas more clearly, we're all going to be left wondering. Tim -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
