Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Saturday 03 February 2007 05:24 am, Simon Phipps wrote: On Feb 3, 2007, at 07:49, Ben Rockwood wrote: This is neither the first nor the last time this discussion will occur and frankly I don't see it as productive. You would rather Sun had not asked? Honestly, yes, it wouldn't have been better had Sun not asked. We have seen this on the list before and it has played out pretty similar to the same scenario almost every time. -- Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 Engineering - IHV/OEM Group Advocate of Insourcing at Sun, hire people that care about our company! ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Glynn Foster wrote On 02/07/07 15:16,: Hey, Jim Grisanzio wrote: I think the lists on opensolaris.org (177 of them currently) represent pretty well the community in the U.S. That's where the vast majority of traffic and posts come from and it's not even close. However, there are many people outside the U.S. who are just now getting into OpenSolaris but who are not actively involved in this site and on these lists. The language and cultural barriers are pretty big, as I'm learning, and sadly many of the newcomers are somewhat put off by how aggressive some of our lists are. And I have to agree with them at this point. We'll not hear from many of these people for quite some time, so, for now, I think what we see here is representative of those who choose to speak. So this has been addressed in a number of other communities with somewhat mixed results. Ubuntu have their 'Code of Conduct' policy http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct and arguably it has worked really well, and created a broad and effective community (though that may well be a reflection of the distribution and its goals). We've recently adopted a similar approach in GNOME, after much heated discussion, but have yet to see any major significance of its introduction. Perhaps something to consider for OpenSolaris. Before we opened, we took a crack at this with the OpenSolaris Principles: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/ It's not a code of conduct, per say, but it attempts to outline what we wanted to stand for back on June 14, 2005. Keith drafted it, by the way, and I wish we'd follow it more. :) We, as a community, can certainly consider a more prominent articulation of these principles in a new and expanded document, I suppose, but that may be an issue for the OGB to consider at this point since governance is coming to fruition. I'm disappointed by some of the language used in the thread, but I also don't know how far is too far. The third bullet of the OpenSolaris Principles is most relevant here: *** We will be respectful and honest. Developers and users have the right to be treated with respect. We do not make ad hominem attacks, and we encourage constructive criticism. Our commitment to civil discourse allows new users and contributors with contrarian ideas an opportunity to be heard without intimidation. *** To me, this is /the/ issue in our discourse as a community. I'm happy we got many substantive issues out on the table that were articulated absolutely professionally (and those posts were obvious), but we also attacked far too many people -- and entire groups and communities, actually -- in the process (and those attacks were obvious as well). I'm perfectly willing to accept that the aggressive behavior comes from a minority of people, but unfortunately in many community-wide threads like this they can carry the day. I may be making more of this than is necessary. It's just my opinion. Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
If the discussion were about discarding the current license and adopting a different one, that'd be different. I don't see the same risk of long-term community damage from that, though there are almost certainly other issues. There's still a potential fork issue: the current code can continue to be made avaiable under the CDDL, including improvements made to it. You can't unlicense something once you've licensed it as OpenSource. You can only add licenses (as the copyright owner/rights holder) Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
I'd say OpenSolaris/Solaris success looks pretty much like this: http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/02/06/1448200.shtml Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
To me, this is /the/ issue in our discourse as a community. I'm happy we got many substantive issues out on the table that were articulated absolutely professionally (and those posts were obvious), but we also attacked far too many people -- and entire groups and communities, actually -- in the process (and those attacks were obvious as well). I'm perfectly willing to accept that the aggressive behavior comes from a minority of people, but unfortunately in many community-wide threads like this they can carry the day. I may be making more of this than is necessary. It's just my opinion I'm not sure I agree; I think overall the debate has been passionate; I would not call it aggressive. But that's perhaps because I've been dealing with online discussions for many years; missing inflexions makes it difficult to assess the precise force with which statements are made; I find that it's better to err on the I'm sure he meant f*in' b*r'd in an endearing way. Yep, this type of discussion does away with all the niceties of polite conversation; I much rather have that, though, than Blair saying Noone is contemplating on attack on Iran. We just call 'm as we see 'm. I think your PR bacjkround has made you used to slightly more polite discourse :-) That's why I think it's fine for the OGB/CAB not to interfere as if we're refereeing a boxing match. There's the occassional Troll, but they seem to be fairly harmless. Now, it must be said that I read some non-technical Dutch newsgroups; and the behaviour there is absolutely horrific; with ad-hominem being the norm, not the exception (of course, political and general science groups attract for more crackpots than other groups, but there's something particularly wrong with how this works in the nl. hierarchy) As a very opiniated person myself, I'm not looking toward leadership for providing the right opinion. I'm also a laissez-faire kinda guy (I'd prefer to describe my self as an anarcho-liberal as opposed to the libearls who are generally conservatives, the conservatives who are really right wing and the progressive who are generally reactionaries.) I think the CAB/OGB will make a fair assessment of where the community stands wrt GPLv3 and dual licensing, heaving heard the arguments on both sides. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
So.. you're saying we should completely give up on the desktop and attracting developers? The article you reference talks about a server focus. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd say OpenSolaris/Solaris success looks pretty much like this: http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/02/06/1448200.shtml Casper -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
RE: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Stephen Harpster wrote: There are a lot of GPL bigots out there. And you *want* to appeal to them? Seriously - why? Are these bigots running datacentres? Are they running startups that have a hope in hell of actually making money - as opposed to generating PR and then just chewing their VC funds? a dual-license would make it easier to have OpenSolaris use that larger body of work. How? The larger body of work won't be dual-licensed, and won't have the necessary extra clauses that would allow combination. And you can run GPL apps on a non-GPL OS anyway. Please, before we start getting to much in-love with the idea of community as an end in itself, can we discuss what - and who - Solaris is *for*. I'm personally tired of 'open source communities' telling me to help fix their OS. It happens with BSD as well as Linux, perhaps more so. And its not condusive to wanting to be an OS user and develop my own apps. Don't join them - please! Be the open source OS that has a clear (and clearly explained) focus on *users* - and if that means that the would-be community members who want to own it, and want to have the same-old 'fix it yourself' attitude, are effectively excluded, then that looks like a Very Good Thing to me. Please let's start with: who are the most important members of the community. Is it: a) free-as-in-freedom campaigners b) coders c) users I put it to you that to deliver to users needs strong leadership (NOT some kind of community democracy) and strongly empowered and directed resource application. This is much more important than whether or not amateurs get the hump over the controls in the process. To my mind, its extremely important that Sun maintain strong control, because Sun *is* experienced with servicing a user base - and I doubt I'm the only user that wants it to continue (and improve). James ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote On 02/08/07 00:24,: I think your PR bacjkround has made you used to slightly more polite discourse :-) Actually, my specialty in Sun PR before OpenSolaris was rapid response and competitive attack ... not very polite at all. :) Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote On 02/07/07 23:41,: I'd say OpenSolaris/Solaris success looks pretty much like this: http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/02/06/1448200.shtml Interesting thread. Seems we are slowly making progress. Bubbling up in other conversations is really an excellent sign. Thanks for that link. Alan B. mentioned it as well. Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: contribution too but with CDDL alone it is just not possible in foreseeable future. People afraid to contribute to CDDL projects for variety of reasons, look how cdrecord has been forked to be pure GPL project just because of that. http://lwn.net/Articles/198171/ And this just proof that we do not want to have the GPL. This proofs the point that a dual license GPL/CDDL OpenSolaris will lead to a GPL-only fork at the earliest opportunity. Had the Debian community cared, they would have dual licensed it. Thanks for proving the point that we must not dual license. On the contrary, if cdrtools were truly dual-licensed, it wouldn't have to have been forked. It's not, however, and that's not something Debian can fix The issue with cdrtools is a very specific one. cdrtools is not dual-licensed, but instead contains files distributed under 3 different licenses. Some people (Joerg, evidently Sun legal since Sun ships it) feel this mix is legal. Others (Debian, Red Hat's legal team, probably others but I've quit paying attention ;-) feel the mix is illegal and that therefore a fork from the last legally licensed version was legally necessary for them to be able to distribute it cdrtools just isn't the generic proof of CDDL-GPL conflict you and others portray it as. It's a very specific example of the confusion that arises when you mix different licenses on different files within the same project later, chris ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Stephen Harpster wrote: We can't ditch CDDL for all the reasons we put it there in the first place -- and we don't want to alienate the community we have. There are still folks who will want to embed OpenSolaris in appliances and create proprietary solutions. CDDL allows for that very nicely. GPL does not. You mean, the Brocade fibre switches running Linux in my data centers don't really exist? ;-) GPL doesn't mean you can't embed, any more than CDDL means you can later, chris ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Stephen Harpster wrote: We can't ditch CDDL for all the reasons we put it there in the first place -- and we don't want to alienate the community we have. There are still folks who will want to embed OpenSolaris in appliances and create proprietary solutions. CDDL allows for that very nicely. GPL does not. You mean, the Brocade fibre switches running Linux in my data centers don't really exist? ;-) GPL doesn't mean you can't embed, any more than CDDL means you can That's not what Stephen said; please re-read it. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Stephen Harpster wrote: An increase in developers developing applications for OpenSolaris and an increase in people using an OpenSolaris distribution. It's reaching out to an audience that has been ignoring OpenSolaris. Embracing more people, making more friends, gets more people talking about you, participating, and developing with you. Growing the population. I think the effect of increasing the number of kernel developers will be minimal. There aren't that many kernel developers in the world. Changing the download process for Solaris Express to something sane (no login requirement, ftp + http + torrent, right to redistribute, no splitting of dvds into fragments that have to be merged) would be far more effective if that's your goal later, chris ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Chris Ricker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: contribution too but with CDDL alone it is just not possible in foreseeable future. People afraid to contribute to CDDL projects for variety of reasons, look how cdrecord has been forked to be pure GPL project just because of that. http://lwn.net/Articles/198171/ And this just proof that we do not want to have the GPL. This proofs the point that a dual license GPL/CDDL OpenSolaris will lead to a GPL-only fork at the earliest opportunity. Had the Debian community cared, they would have dual licensed it. Thanks for proving the point that we must not dual license. On the contrary, if cdrtools were truly dual-licensed, it wouldn't have to have been forked. It's not, however, and that's not something Debian can fix This is complete nonsense! Debian claims that there is a liscense problem but Debian has been unable to describe this problem within the past 12 months although I asked them many times. Debian is unable to understand build systems and Debian is unwilling to cooperate. Debian spreads easy to expose FUD on cdrtools: - cdrtools is a colloection of cdrecord, readcd, cdda2wav, btcflash, rscsi, scgcheck, scgskeleton, mkisofs - cdrecord, readcd, btcflash, rscsi, scgcheck, scgskeleton are _fully_ CDDL - cdda2wav is CDDL + a LGPL library - mkisofs is GPL and links to libs under various licenses - The CDDL is accepted by Debian to be DFSG compatible If Debian _really_ had a license problem, then this license problem is definitely not effective for the project cdrecord but (if at all) for mkisofs. If Debian _really_ had a license problem, Debian would need to rip off mkisofs from the cdrtools source package and the remaining rest would be CDDL plus one LGPL library. Debian could set up a separate source package that only includes mkisofs and its needed libraries. Debian did _not_ do this, Debian instead did stick with a very old version of cdrtools that does not include DVD support and that is full of bugs in mkisofs. Debian did not do any real development on this old code but just made a lot of speudo changes to confuse and addd a lot of Linux only code to platform independent parts of the source. For this reason, it is obvious and proved that Debian does not have a license problem but only likes to cause a Debian initiated conflict that is a burden to the users. The issue with cdrtools is a very specific one. cdrtools is not dual-licensed, but instead contains files distributed under 3 different licenses. Some people (Joerg, evidently Sun legal since Sun ships it) feel this mix is legal. Others (Debian, Red Hat's legal team, probably others but I've quit paying attention ;-) feel the mix is illegal and that therefore a fork from the last legally licensed version was legally necessary for them to be able to distribute it Redhad did never contact me for this reason, so we may safely asume that Redhat does nto see a legal problem. cdrtools just isn't the generic proof of CDDL-GPL conflict you and others portray it as. It's a very specific example of the confusion that arises when you mix different licenses on different files within the same project It looks like you did not understand the problem at all, sorry. Cdrtools is a collection of projects (see above). Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Hey, Simon Phipps wrote: On Feb 3, 2007, at 14:46, Peter Tribble wrote: I'm fairly sure that a flamefest on a mailing list isn't the right way. Perhaps it's a necessary step, but I don't think it's conducive to substantive discussions. I would be pleased if it didn't happen like it has here. There are a few other lists I am on (notably at Apache) where controversy does not immediately lead to a flame-war (though no-one hold back from discussion). But I think it has to be expected, tolerated and perhaps welcomed as a sign of an open community. I'm hopeful the passion will soon get channelled to positive discussion (of both the pros and cons). In trying to summarize this damn thread for the weekly news, I've learned a few things - o People *really* need to learn how to structure their arguments in a concise and easily understood manner o When a point has been made, you don't necessarily keep having to make it every time you write o Getting into the habit of replying to every thread possible isn't helpful at all (but you know all of this, right?) I'm sure I'm missing a whole bunch of arguments in the thread, simply because of people's inability to express themselves better. Maybe Apache is better in this regard and have learned some lessons from past discussions. Glynn ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Hey, Jim Grisanzio wrote: I think the lists on opensolaris.org (177 of them currently) represent pretty well the community in the U.S. That's where the vast majority of traffic and posts come from and it's not even close. However, there are many people outside the U.S. who are just now getting into OpenSolaris but who are not actively involved in this site and on these lists. The language and cultural barriers are pretty big, as I'm learning, and sadly many of the newcomers are somewhat put off by how aggressive some of our lists are. And I have to agree with them at this point. We'll not hear from many of these people for quite some time, so, for now, I think what we see here is representative of those who choose to speak. So this has been addressed in a number of other communities with somewhat mixed results. Ubuntu have their 'Code of Conduct' policy http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct and arguably it has worked really well, and created a broad and effective community (though that may well be a reflection of the distribution and its goals). We've recently adopted a similar approach in GNOME, after much heated discussion, but have yet to see any major significance of its introduction. Perhaps something to consider for OpenSolaris. Glynn ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Alan Burlison writes: Simon Phipps wrote: As with any democratic process, we won't know the answer until the votes have been counted ;-) Totally agree. I'm glad I don't have to vote yet because I don't know which way I would vote. When this discussion started I was in the Don't know camp. However as it has progressed I've learned much more about dual licensing, assembly exceptions and so forth. I also know far more about what frustrates the OpenSolaris community when it comes to trying to contribute. As a result of this protracted discussion my vote would now be No. When then discussion started, I would have been in the yes camp. As a result of hearing about the forking issues and, much more significantly, discussing the community fracturing issues, I'm certain I'd be a no vote as well, at least for dual licensing. If the discussion were about discarding the current license and adopting a different one, that'd be different. I don't see the same risk of long-term community damage from that, though there are almost certainly other issues. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
James Carlson wrote: Alan Burlison writes: Simon Phipps wrote: As with any democratic process, we won't know the answer until the votes have been counted ;-) Totally agree. I'm glad I don't have to vote yet because I don't know which way I would vote. When this discussion started I was in the Don't know camp. However as it has progressed I've learned much more about dual licensing, assembly exceptions and so forth. I also know far more about what frustrates the OpenSolaris community when it comes to trying to contribute. As a result of this protracted discussion my vote would now be No. When then discussion started, I would have been in the yes camp. As a result of hearing about the forking issues and, much more significantly, discussing the community fracturing issues, I'm certain I'd be a no vote as well, at least for dual licensing. If the discussion were about discarding the current license and adopting a different one, that'd be different. I don't see the same risk of long-term community damage from that, though there are almost certainly other issues. I echo this opinion as well. Dual Licensing using two different opensource licenses seems to me to be fraught with confusion, complexity and forking issues. I have seen it's common use in cases where there is one commercial and one opensource license like Qt. But two opensource licenses seems to be counterproductive so I'd vote no. I think the debate and analysis can also consider the case of replacing the current CDDL with GPLv3+whatever exceptions. Whether this makes any sense at all, the issues/problems in doing so, any long term benefits etc. etc. Regards, Moinak. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Seeing as how CDDL has introduced a point of contention (rightly or wrongly), I haven't seen a strong argument for its continued existence, other than it is in keeping with Sun's historical tendency for NIH (yes, I expect some flamage for that). Apple was mentioned as a point for the CDDL, as they supposedly wouldn't have used dtrace or zfs otherwise. Well, Apple has tended to do whatever it takes to use the technology that's available, and that has included using GPL'd software. If they're telling you that they would forsake the advantages of dtrace and zfs if it's GPL'd, then they're lying. And if they think they can hope to duplicate either of those projects, then they're full of crap, because they have neither the engineering numbers or talent to do it. And finally, I'm not sure what you're expecting, but Apple has a terrible history of contributing anything to open source projects. So... why do you care about Apple? Aren't they changing their name to iPods'r'Us? Honestly, who gives a flying fig about Apple? (...as I type this from my Ubuntu-converted Macbook) I do. Apple has given us more and deeper technical feedback on the implementation of DTrace than anyone else. We're not looking for Apple to necessarily extend DTrace in completely novel ways, but having the code examined by a second group of eyes from a completely disjoint background has been very useful to us -- and in doing this, they have found some bugs that, even if minor, we missed ourselves. I also care about Apple because the presence of our technology on their platform greatly expands the community for that particular technology. Do I want DTrace on my phone? You bet -- and at the moment, Apple's looking like the most likely vector to get us there... - Bryan -- Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Simon Phipps wrote: 1. There are ~800 people registered on this list. There are ~15 people in these threads making most of the comments. I conclude that there are others to hear from. I do not conclude that your view is either representative or unrepresentative, just that it is your view. 2. As I asserted just a few minutes ago in a message you must have read because you replied to it, /I have not made up my mind/. Considering various views and facts is not the same as opposition. From your emails, I got the impression that you favoured dual-licensing. My apologies for misreading your comments. This discussion was about talking to the community, and I guess the problem is: how do you do that? This mailing list is probably the best thing that is available for such a conversation. As with all community mailing lists, the number of people subscribed to it is smaller than the number of users out there, and only a smaller subset of those people will speak out on any subject. And we don't really know how big the community is in the first place (number of opensolaris.org registered user ids is probably the closest thing we have). It could be that this mailing list is not an accurate representation of the community, but I think it's the best thing we've got for discussions like this. - Frank ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I cannot see this.Linux stays with GPLv2 and the main problem is not Linux but the fact that people working on Linux do not like to use sources from OpenSolaris. I see no reason why Linux could not take ZFS and use it directly inside Linux. GPLv2 and GPLv3 won't mix. As long as Linus insists on keeping the This is correct kernel with v2, ZFS won't migrate to Linux (because it has kernel components). Now if the Linux kernel moved to v3, that's a different story. (but one that won't happen for years). This is wrong as you do not mix ZFS and Linux when you port ZFS to Linux. It looks like you still make the mistake to believe the FSF GPL FAQ that is incorrectly based on the term linking. Now normally, linking gpl.c and harpster.c would force harpster.c to also be licensed as GPL. That's the viral nature of GPL everyone This is not true. The GPL does not use the term linking, so using linking in an explanation definitely does not help to understand what can be done and what cannot be done. I knew that using the work linking would bring this quagmire back. Sorry, folks. Well, this is the main problem when trying to discuss legal aspects of the GPL. 2) The GPL allows to use ZFS inside Linux. ZFS is a big work and the changes that are needed in order to run ZFS on Linux do not make ZFS a work derived from Linux. The few parts from the Linux code that will be needed for the port will be covered by the Wissenschaftliches Kleinzitat klause in the Copyright law. I don't believe that the majority of the legal community would agree with you. Or the Linux community for that matter. If what you said is true, then ZFS would already be in Linux. Depends on what you understand by the legal community. It you refer to the dilletantes (e.g. from Debian), you would probably find people who will not agree ;-) As long as the legal community does not prove their claims with text from the GPL, we may safely ignore them. There is a big difference between mixing code and accumulating projects. You may safely incorporate the needed small amount of code from Linux if you like to port ZFS to Linux, see: http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__24.html http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__51.html http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__57.html http://bundesrecht.juris.de/urhg/__63.html § 24 allows to incorporate other peoples code into an independent work. § 51 allows free publishing if the amount is in the extent that is needed by the special case (while there is still an independent work). § 57 allows free publishing in case that the matter is a negligible attachement § 63 requires to name the source ZFS is doubtlessly an independent work ZFS is not becoming a part of the work Linux from the port ZFS only needs a very small amount of code from Linux for the port and this amount of code is covered by § 24, § 51 and §57 As I am talking about a right that is independent of the permission from the author, a ZFS - Linux port is not afected by the GPL. As you see, Linux people could safely take ZFS and port it as long as they are redeeming the rules from the CDDL. A aimilar case is when you port a driver from Linux to Solaris (as long as you may prove that this driver has been created as independent work). You should be able to safely assume an independent work in case that the driver has been not been created by Linus Torvalds and integrated into Linux after it was mainly complete. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
James Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Adding a new license to the code allows them to ditch CDDL by choosing to adopt GPL alone. If it doesn't allow them to get rid of CDDL, and we're actually planning to stop people from doing that (via the lack of patent grants?), then it opens us up to accusations of a bait-and- switch. I don't see a winning course here. See my previous mail about the Urheberrecht. ... we do not need a dual licensed OpenSolaris. What we need is a clear statement from Sun that Sun does not see any problem if Linux people would e.g. take ZFS and port it to Linux. Let us wait and see that then happens. I am sure that just the way of doing FUD against OpenSolaris from some people would become different. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 07:49, Ben Rockwood wrote: This is neither the first nor the last time this discussion will occur and frankly I don't see it as productive. You would rather Sun had not asked? Has there previously been a conclusive discussion about GPLv3 (I am aware of the discussions about GPLv2). Do you have evidence that the 18,000 registered on OpenSolaris.org (or at least the Core Contributors) would reject the GPLv3 (or embrace it)? Do you have an alternative method to consult? Would you rather the decision was made secretly? Are governance discussions unproductive by definition because they are not about code?[1] I am concerned about the creation of a hostile environment here where people do not feel free to speak. Maybe folk just assumed that I am management at Sun and therefore pro-whatever-it-is-we-hate, but I certainly feel flamed for posing a neutral set of comments. I'm rather fearful of new community members showing up and trying to join in. I hear plenty of anger, plenty of fear, plenty of mistrust of Sun, from the few voices that have spoken up. I'd like to ask people to channel that into positive proposals, comments and suggestions. Having them based where possible on data would be good too. That applies to all parties. And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. What proposal would you make for getting people here to take their governance responsibilities seriously? It seems people are happy to hack, but when it comes to running the place (that governance, this GPLV3 decision) they would rather leave it to others. S. [1] These are not necessarily rhetorical ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 11:11, Frank Van Der Linden wrote: From your emails, I got the impression that you favoured dual- licensing. My apologies for misreading your comments. Thanks, appreciated. This discussion was about talking to the community, and I guess the problem is: how do you do that? This mailing list is probably the best thing that is available for such a conversation. As with all community mailing lists, the number of people subscribed to it is smaller than the number of users out there, and only a smaller subset of those people will speak out on any subject. And we don't really know how big the community is in the first place (number of opensolaris.org registered user ids is probably the closest thing we have). It could be that this mailing list is not an accurate representation of the community, but I think it's the best thing we've got for discussions like this. I agree with all this. As I indicated elsewhere, I think this is part of a big problem we have with governance. The CAB/OGB had ~ no support from the community as it devised the Charter and then the Constitution, and the tone of the discussion here has either been hostile or weary. This won't be the last time there's a need for community discussion (I expect the final decisions to then be made by the OGB) and assuming democracy is the right philosophy for OpenSolaris we're going to have to come up with a way to hold serious, positive-toned, inclusive discussions. Maybe what we need is a Core Contributors list? They, after all, are the ones who elect the OGB so have ultimate responsibility for the governance of the place. Perhaps such a list with strict rules about positive discussion would be the best place to explore explosive issues? S. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Simon Phipps [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Plenty of people have asked what a GPLv3 dual license would bring to the OpenSolaris project. It would bring a mix of positives and negatives, just as OpenSolaris now is a mix of positives and negatives. The challenge for us as a community is to hear and measure all the positives and negatives fairly and reach something approaching consensus. Perhaps via the new OGB when it gets elected (and how /is/ that voting software coming on?) I still do not see that possible benefits from dual licensing OpenSolaris would outweight the problems. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 13:41, Joerg Schilling wrote: I still do not see that possible benefits from dual licensing OpenSolaris would outweight the problems. You may well be right. I'm not convinced we've had the positive and inclusive discussion needed to reach a conclusion yet. S. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
--- Ben Rockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. And why is that? Think about it... The governance people are not giving direction. They want to be leadership, they should be here. Or maybe the people here should be leadership... Or even maybe the people here are the leadership... Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.christophermahan.com/ TV dinner still cooling? Check out Tonight's Picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On 2/3/07, Simon Phipps [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. What proposal would you make for getting people here to take their governance responsibilities seriously? It seems people are happy to hack, but when it comes to running the place (that governance, this GPLV3 decision) they would rather leave it to others. I'm fairly sure that a flamefest on a mailing list isn't the right way. Perhaps it's a necessary step, but I don't think it's conducive to substantive discussions. I'm not bothered about any rhetoric or hostility, I just don't have the time or energy at the moment to jump in. Just the volume discourages the silent majority. For what it's worth, I do take issues of governance seriously, and have a number of areas of coding where I want to get stuck in, and have a life to lead, and lots of other things. Let me turn this around - what can *I* do to make sure that I'm taking my governance responsibilities seriously? -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 14:46, Peter Tribble wrote: On 2/3/07, Simon Phipps [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. What proposal would you make for getting people here to take their governance responsibilities seriously? It seems people are happy to hack, but when it comes to running the place (that governance, this GPLV3 decision) they would rather leave it to others. I'm fairly sure that a flamefest on a mailing list isn't the right way. Perhaps it's a necessary step, but I don't think it's conducive to substantive discussions. I would be pleased if it didn't happen like it has here. There are a few other lists I am on (notably at Apache) where controversy does not immediately lead to a flame-war (though no-one hold back from discussion). But I think it has to be expected, tolerated and perhaps welcomed as a sign of an open community. I'm hopeful the passion will soon get channelled to positive discussion (of both the pros and cons). I'm not bothered about any rhetoric or hostility, I just don't have the time or energy at the moment to jump in. Just the volume discourages the silent majority. Totally agree, it took serious effort to come to the point where I felt I could participate, and I am hardly silent majority :-) For what it's worth, I do take issues of governance seriously, and have a number of areas of coding where I want to get stuck in, and have a life to lead, and lots of other things. This is a key difficulty. Almost all people are here for the code, not for the governance. But when any community grows beyond the size of a circle of friends, there's a responsibility for governance. Let me turn this around - what can *I* do to make sure that I'm taking my governance responsibilities seriously? Well, in your case I'm pretty sure you do :-) I think that as our governance matures we'll need to encourage those on the Core Contributors list to carry this burden actively. Not 100% clear to me how that will happen yet, maybe (as I suggested elsewhere) through a list for that purpose. S. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
This is a key difficulty. Almost all people are here for the code, not for the governance. But when any community grows beyond the size of a circle of friends, there's a responsibility for governance. Right; so I don't think the non-involvement in governance is anything to go by; those who can do, those who can't govern (paraphrased) Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 15:52, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a key difficulty. Almost all people are here for the code, not for the governance. But when any community grows beyond the size of a circle of friends, there's a responsibility for governance. Right; so I don't think the non-involvement in governance is anything to go by; those who can do, those who can't govern (paraphrased) I disagree. By choosing to be part of a self-governing open source community, participation in governance becomes a given. A community this size working on a code-base this size and wanting to use a democratic process doesn't get the option to ignore non-code issues. And rule-by-the-loudest-voice is not democracy (even if it pretends to be in certain countries). So once again I come back to the question; what practical approach do we collectively propose instead? The Constitution does not cover this yet. S. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Frank Van Der Linden wrote: Simon Phipps wrote: 1. There are ~800 people registered on this list. There are ~15 people in these threads making most of the comments. I conclude that there are others to hear from. I do not conclude that your view is either representative or unrepresentative, just that it is your view. 2. As I asserted just a few minutes ago in a message you must have read because you replied to it, /I have not made up my mind/. Considering various views and facts is not the same as opposition. From your emails, I got the impression that you favoured dual-licensing. My apologies for misreading your comments. This discussion was about talking to the community, and I guess the problem is: how do you do that? This mailing list is probably the best thing that is available for such a conversation. As with all community mailing lists, the number of people subscribed to it is smaller than the number of users out there, and only a smaller subset of those people will speak out on any subject. And we don't really know how big the community is in the first place (number of opensolaris.org registered user ids is probably the closest thing we have). As of right now, we have 21,281 registrations on the site and another 4,000 or so who are subscribed to various lists but /not/ also registered to the site. So, about 25k unique emails are registered. I have no idea how many unique addresses are subscribed to all lists at this point, though. It could be that this mailing list is not an accurate representation of the community, but I think it's the best thing we've got for discussions like this. I think the lists on opensolaris.org (177 of them currently) represent pretty well the community in the U.S. That's where the vast majority of traffic and posts come from and it's not even close. However, there are many people outside the U.S. who are just now getting into OpenSolaris but who are not actively involved in this site and on these lists. The language and cultural barriers are pretty big, as I'm learning, and sadly many of the newcomers are somewhat put off by how aggressive some of our lists are. And I have to agree with them at this point. We'll not hear from many of these people for quite some time, so, for now, I think what we see here is representative of those who choose to speak. Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 3, 2007, at 15:52, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a key difficulty. Almost all people are here for the code, not for the governance. But when any community grows beyond the size of a circle of friends, there's a responsibility for governance. Right; so I don't think the non-involvement in governance is anything to go by; those who can do, those who can't govern (paraphrased) I disagree. By choosing to be part of a self-governing open source community, participation in governance becomes a given. A community this size working on a code-base this size and wanting to use a democratic process doesn't get the option to ignore non-code issues. And rule-by-the-loudest-voice is not democracy (even if it pretends to be in certain countries). So once again I come back to the question; what practical approach do we collectively propose instead? The Constitution does not cover this yet. Part of the governing has to do with how code is contributed and how the values of the community are maintained; coders are interested in that. But I can imagine that many people aren't really interested in the nuts and bolts of the constitution until such point that it hurts them. Programmers just want to be left alone and work; they care about governance when it interferes; not before. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Christopher Mahan wrote: --- Stephen Harpster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Complexity *is* the issue. With 15 million lines of very complex code, I would argue it would take a long time for the non-Sun kernel developers to outnumber the Sun kernel developers. Actually, given the total number of kernel developers in the world, I'd wager it will never happen. I don't know how else to explain this. So either I'm not understanding your point or you're not understanding mine. You mean to say that only people from Sun are now able to comprehend and modify the complexity that is Solaris? I suggest that maybe Solaris really need some fresh blood to entangle the mess of complexity. Besides, if it's really that complex that IBM, MSFT, APPLE, GOOG, and RH people can't figure it out, what do you have to fear from the basement long-haired hippies? Hmmm? I think that is what Steve is saying. There is nothing to fear. Forking won't happen. So what is your point? Do you really think any of these companies is going to drop their OS efforts and work full bore on OpenSolaris? Not likely. And if even one of them does, OpenSolaris grows, which is all off our goals, I hope. Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.christophermahan.com/ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/ ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Sat, Feb 03, 2007 at 01:21:30AM +, Simon Phipps wrote: It seems to me (as others have said) they they will gain far more from Solaris going GPLv3 than we will, so it's hardly surprising they are in favour, and by-and-large we aren't. While that's true of the ~15 people who have piped up, there are a substantial number of people we've not heard from yet. So I'd suggest it's too early to come to that conclusion. I'm sure I'm not alone in substantially agreeing with Alan Burlison et al, but not speaking up since I have nothing much to add to what they're saying. regards, john (speaking for myself) ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Christopher Mahan wrote: --- Ben Rockwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. And why is that? Think about it... The governance people are not giving direction. They want to be leadership, they should be here. Or maybe the people here should be leadership... Or even maybe the people here are the leadership... I think most of the OGB members have chimed in on this conversation. In general, governance has not been a strong community-wide conversation, but I have a feeling that will change. :) Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a key difficulty. Almost all people are here for the code, not for the governance. But when any community grows beyond the size of a circle of friends, there's a responsibility for governance. Right; so I don't think the non-involvement in governance is anything to go by; those who can do, those who can't govern (paraphrased) Not sure I agree with that quote since it doesn't leave much room for me. :) And I can think of many people who are quietly doing good work that doesn't involve coding or governance or so-called leadership in any way but who still desire to be part of an open community. Jim ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
James Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: don't want anything that is in Solaris. A number of core Linux developers have said we can't use ZFS because of the way its implemented. Even more Linux developers have decided that they are doing a This is true. The problem is that Linux does not use the VFS interface internally, but as Linux did implement NFS it should not be impossible. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On 2/3/07, Joerg Schilling [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: James Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: don't want anything that is in Solaris. A number of core Linux developers have said we can't use ZFS because of the way its implemented. Even more Linux developers have decided that they are doing a This is true. The problem is that Linux does not use the VFS interface internally, but as Linux did implement NFS it should not be impossible. but you are not implying we should bend over and kiss their rearends and beg them to use our stuff when they obviously don't want too? James Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
James Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: don't want anything that is in Solaris. A number of core Linux developers have said we can't use ZFS because of the way its implemented. Even more Linux developers have decided that they are doing a This is true. The problem is that Linux does not use the VFS interface internally, but as Linux did implement NFS it should not be impossible. but you are not implying we should bend over and kiss their rearends and beg them to use our stuff when they obviously don't want too? I believe that we should make clear that nobody from Sun likes to prevent Linux to take ZFS or Dtrace and that there is no license that prevents this from hapening. Then we could lean back and see what's going to happen. The signal is the same as (or even better than) dual licensing with GPLv3 abd it does not have the pitfall of dual licensing. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Simon Phipps wrote: On Feb 3, 2007, at 07:49, Ben Rockwood wrote: This is neither the first nor the last time this discussion will occur and frankly I don't see it as productive. You would rather Sun had not asked? Has there previously been a conclusive discussion about GPLv3 (I am aware of the discussions about GPLv2). Do you have evidence that the 18,000 registered on OpenSolaris.org (or at least the Core Contributors) would reject the GPLv3 (or embrace it)? Do you have an alternative method to consult? Would you rather the decision was made secretly? Are governance discussions unproductive by definition because they are not about code?[1] I was not passing judgement on those who've participated in this discussion, simply answered the Why there 800 people on this list and only 15 posting question from my perspective. Others may agree, others might not. As for whether or not governance discussions are productive or not... they are so long as they lead to completion of governance. Once governance is complete and a new OGB is in place we begin work on things that are more interesting, namely refining and honing the development processes. That work can't be completed until the framework of the project is hardened. And may I point out, that while ~15 people are making most of the comments on this thread, less than that are involved in governance. What proposal would you make for getting people here to take their governance responsibilities seriously? It seems people are happy to hack, but when it comes to running the place (that governance, this GPLV3 decision) they would rather leave it to others. Whether or not people care about governance is a personal opinion, people may feel as they wish. I think more people would care if they understood the purpose and direction of the project and how governance fits into that. This goes back to the old discussions on whether the OGB has enforcable power or not, whether or not Sun Executives can over-ride the OGB or not, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've not yet seen anyone approach the OGB for an opinion on these GPLv3 issues. That says something to me. Many of these fears of which you speak are, I think, out of a sense that no one is running the show... and that means that Sun Microsystems Inc (the faceless entity) is in control, not the OGB or engineers or people with faces regardless of who they work for. I personally don't worry so much because I happen to know who makes the decisions. I know that its real people, not some faceless entity. I'm sure lots of people don't have that luxury and are concerned. Just a possibility. benr. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Feb 4, 2007, at 01:29, Ben Rockwood wrote: As for whether or not governance discussions are productive or not... they are so long as they lead to completion of governance. Once governance is complete and a new OGB is in place we begin work on things that are more interesting, namely refining and honing the development processes. That work can't be completed until the framework of the project is hardened. Note that by governance in this case I mean the question of use of the GPLv3. Apologies if that was unclear. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've not yet seen anyone approach the OGB for an opinion on these GPLv3 issues. That says something to me. Actually the OGB has had discussions on the topic which did not lead to minuted conclusions, and received an e-mail from Jonathan Schwartz apologising for his off-the-cuff question to Rich Green at JavaOne and assuring the OGB that he would not take a decision without consultation. Many of these fears of which you speak are, I think, out of a sense that no one is running the show... and that means that Sun Microsystems Inc (the faceless entity) is in control, not the OGB or engineers or people with faces regardless of who they work for. We are in an interim period when the outgoing OGB feels it has been given a remit only to run the ratification/election votes - that's an unfortunate moment for the matter to arise. But even so, I doubt we would even begin to consider making a decision about the dual- licensing recommendation to make to the copyright holder without having the discussion that's now taking place. So while I agree with you, I'm not sure anything would have been different in, say, March. S. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Alan Burlison wrote: [snip Alan's excellent posting] +1 from me. 1 from me (we can do shifts, right?) Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Alan Burlison wrote: OpenSolaris is already perfectly usable by a community 10x or 100x as large as the one we have today. I really *don't* think the license is the main impediment we face, I think all the other issues that have been raised around ease of participation are *far* more important. Just adding another I agree wholeheartedly. - Frank ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
John Plocher wrote: o As good as the Java community was, releasing Java under the GPL made it better. Under the SCSL, the vibe in the FOSS community was Sun just doesn't get it. With GPL, the feedback changed to Finally, they get it. True, but you can't compare that situation to the current OpenSolaris situation.. The SCSL wasn't even an actual open source license. - Frank ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Ok, so we throw a bunch of packages on OpenSolaris.org and say they're a part of OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris is not a usable and complete system as it is today, and even if you claim that we have all of these packages available, they're not usable in any way without a lot of work and configuration. It's not *meant* to be a usable system. It's not even meant to be a *system*. It's a loosely tight set of open source projects which can be used to be rolled into an OpenSolaris based distribution. You don't install OpenSolaris; you'd install Solaris, Schillix, Nexenta, etc... Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
John Mark Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The fact that Eben Moglen has said that there's no meat to the GPL and CDDL incompatibilities, at least where Nexenta is concerned, should eventually clear out all of that riffraff, anyway. In the end, I have my preferences and you of yours, and I don't think there is an absolute wrong or right in that discussion. You don't need Eben Moglen for this... The GPL is unambigiuos in this area: the GPL only forbids merging GPL with non-GPL code if the non-GPL code becomes a derived work from the GPL code by this merge. The problem was only the some people from Debian do not read the GPL carefully enough and try to enforce things that are not required by the GPL. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. That's an interesting collection of assertions, but I'm not sure they are entirely correct. It really depends on what you mean by combine with Solaris. We already have a significant amount of GPLv2 code shipped with Solaris, so Solaris not being GPL obviously isn't an impediment. Any existing candidate projects will be GPLv2, so as I understand it they won't be able to combine with a GPLv3 Solaris unless they switch to GPLv3 first, and we won't know the level of uptake of GPLv3 until it's been in existence for some time. Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. What is to stop someone producing an OpenSolaris distribution where the only significant difference is that they've ripped out the CDDL? That would seem to be fairly easy to do, and I don't think it would be a good thing if it happened. An assembly exception is sort of a way to neuter a license. Suppose I have two files, gpl.c and harpster.c. gpl.c is dual licensed under CDDL and GPLv3. harpster.c is licensed under the Harpster license, a proprietary license that solves world hunger. ;-) Now normally, linking gpl.c and harpster.c would force harpster.c to also be licensed as GPL. That's the viral nature of GPL everyone talks about. If I wrote gpl.c, I can place upon it an assembly exception that says, when you link gpl.c with a Harpster licensed file, don't force the Harpster licensed file to be GPL. Because I wrote and own the original gpl.c, I can modify the terms of the license to be more restrictive. (Or less restrictive depending upon your point of view.) If we neuter the GPLv3 license with an assembly exception we'll immediately be accused of playing marketing games with licensing, which will defeat the entire purpose of the exercise. In fact it will make things *considerably* worse, not just in terms of the negative PR hit we'll take, but also in terms of the unnecessary complexity and confusion we will have saddled ourselves with. There is a direct analogue we can look at - MySQL is dual-licensed under both GPLv2 and a Commercial license. It's a cause of great confusion to anyone trying to use MySQL, and I don't see hordes of people switching from Postgres (BSD license) to MySQL as a result of MySQL being dual-licensed, in fact I suspect the flow is the other way - anyone who want's an open source database will pick Postgres, not MySQL as MySQL is only pseudo-open at best. For GPL purists the only acceptable license is pure GPL. A dual-license, especially one that contains a crippled GPLv3 is more likely to drive them away than it is to attract them. By sticking to pure CDDL we can make a reasoned defence of what I consider to be a very good license. I strongly suspect bolting GPLv3 on the side will only make things worse, not better. We can't ditch CDDL for all the reasons we put it there in the first place -- and we don't want to alienate the community we have. There are still folks who will want to embed OpenSolaris in appliances and create proprietary solutions. CDDL allows for that very nicely. GPL does not. If you force the GPLv3 issue against the wishes of the community you are going to alienate many of them anyway. If in 12-24 months time a significant proportion of the open source world has switched to GPLv3, then that would be a good time to consider a switch for Solaris. The upsides of switching Solaris to GPLv3 at this point in time are massively outweighed by the downsides. For now I think we should leave the OpenSolaris licensing alone. -- Alan Burlison -- ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Alan DuBoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 01 February 2007 09:55 am, Joerg Schilling wrote: As long as I am the only person who informs people about the fact that Debian is no longer kosher, people will mobb me. If other people understand the problem and inform others, it would be harder for Debian to attack me and also OpenSolaris (note that that Debian tells people that the problem is that I am supporting OpenSolaris...). I would rather we take the high road, don't tell people that they are no longer kosher, and work with them so they feel content that CDDL is. The problem is that these people do not talk with us anymore. As I mentioned before, the real problem is not the license but the unwillingness of these people to cooperate in a fruitful way. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
John Plocher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What if OpenSolaris under GPLv3 was usable by a community 10x or 100x as large as the one we have today? What if every Linux distro included the core OpenSolaris technologies? What if the FSF endorsed OpenSolaris :-) I am still waiting to see a proof for such a claim. If you believe that you know about a scenario where dual licensing would help, feel free to explain it. My impression is that the fact that the OpenSolaris community is smaller than the Linux community is not related to the license but related to prejudicess from people. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Assertion without proof. Who would this bring to our community? There are some indication that it would scare off others too. And, perhaps, can we in fairness in this discussion say that we're using GPLv3 with the assembly exception; that makes GPLv3 much more like the CDDL; and I'm sure that the community isn't stupid. If they like that property of the GPL, then they won't stand for the exception. Code under GPLv2 cannot be brought in; code under GPLv3 cannot be brought in. The only thing that can happen is that code under the GPLv3 w/ assembly exception can be taken to a GPLv3 environment (without exceptions) and such changes can subsequently not be taken back and help improve OpenSolaris. How does this benefit OpenSolaris? Similarly, if they *dislike* the CDDL so much, they won't contribute under the CDDL and so their contributions will be useless for the whole of OpenSolaris. Regardless of whether this license brings in more people or scares people away, the best thing to grow the community is focusing on the tasks at hand: - get the consitution ratified - get the OGB elected - get the mechanisms up and running so the barrier to commit is lowered. Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. That doesn't mean that the risk does not exist; and the fork may take different forms: forks of parts of the source code. There's no need to fork all of the source code for OpenSolaris to be hurt. An assembly exception is sort of a way to neuter a license. Suppose I have two files, gpl.c and harpster.c. gpl.c is dual licensed under CDDL and GPLv3. harpster.c is licensed under the Harpster license, a proprietary license that solves world hunger. ;-) Now normally, linking gpl.c and harpster.c would force harpster.c to also be licensed as GPL. That's the viral nature of GPL everyone talks about. If I wrote gpl.c, I can place upon it an assembly exception that says, when you link gpl.c with a Harpster licensed file, don't force the Harpster licensed file to be GPL. Because I wrote and own the original gpl.c, I can modify the terms of the license to be more restrictive. (Or less restrictive depending upon your point of view.) So Sun is not really proposing to use the GPL, Sun is just pretending? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. I cannot see this.Linux stays with GPLv2 and the main problem is not Linux but the fact that people working on Linux do not like to use sources from OpenSolaris. I see no reason why Linux could not take ZFS and use it directly inside Linux. An assembly exception is sort of a way to neuter a license. Suppose I have two files, gpl.c and harpster.c. gpl.c is dual licensed under CDDL and GPLv3. harpster.c is licensed under the Harpster license, a proprietary license that solves world hunger. ;-) Now normally, linking gpl.c and harpster.c would force harpster.c to also be licensed as GPL. That's the viral nature of GPL everyone This is not true. The GPL does not use the term linking, so using linking in an explanation definitely does not help to understand what can be done and what cannot be done. 1) The GPL allows to use GPLd drivers inside Solaris. Using a driver inside a OS kernel does not create a new derived work. The GPLd driver is merely used, but as long as the driver is not required to use the OS, it cannot be part of the work OpenSolaris kernel. If the driver is shipped in binary form together with the the binary of the Solaris kernel (inside one single binary), then GPL §3 requires the publisher to publish all sourcecode that is needed to compile and link that binary. If the driver is published as a separete binray, then this is no problem as the FSF did admit that the GPL is conforming to the OSI OSS rules and in special follows OSI §9. 2) The GPL allows to use ZFS inside Linux. ZFS is a big work and the changes that are needed in order to run ZFS on Linux do not make ZFS a work derived from Linux. The few parts from the Linux code that will be needed for the port will be covered by the Wissenschaftliches Kleinzitat klause in the Copyright law. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Assertion without proof. Who would this bring to our community? There are some indication that it would scare off others too. If Sun did dual license OpenSolaris wihout a proof that this would really give us some benefits, I would call this Vorrauseilenden Gehorsam (anticipatory obedience). The history proves that this usually don't helps the person doing it but the only person who did request it and ther eis usuallo absolutely no need for it. Code under GPLv2 cannot be brought in; code under GPLv3 cannot be brought in. The only thing that can happen is that code under the GPLv3 w/ assembly exception can be taken to a GPLv3 environment (without exceptions) and such changes can subsequently not be taken back and help improve OpenSolaris. How does this benefit OpenSolaris? Code under GPLv2 cannot be brought in in the general case where someone likes to e.g. use parts of a GPLd driver and put them into a CDDLd driver as this would create a derived work. There are many areas where GPLv2 code and CDDL code may be used together already. If there really was a potential benefit, then we did see e.g. ZFS inside Linux (because this is already allowed by GPLv2 and CDDL) but we would not see real mergers. In such a case, it may be usefull to discuss working on the license but it seems that the reason is rather political and a license change would not buy us anything. Jörg -- EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED](uni) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: Stack against that the issues we will have to endure if we dual license - the potential for one license to be ripped off and the source forked *incompatibly* (the incompatibility is the important bit), the inability to move bug fixes between versions, the confusion that dual-licensing will bring (just what *is* an assembly exception anyway?). Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. You can't say that. Somebody could do it just because. An assembly exception is sort of a way to neuter a license. Suppose I have two files, gpl.c and harpster.c. gpl.c is dual licensed under CDDL and GPLv3. harpster.c is licensed under the Harpster license, a proprietary license that solves world hunger. ;-) Dual licensing is complex and just makes things more complex than they already are. It is the worst possible outcome. To gain a good stable and willing developer community that wants to commit to the opensolaris.org code bases (rather than develop on it) we need a simple easy to understand licensing model. Dual (or worse Triple licensing) is too complex for the majority of developers to understand. We can't ditch CDDL for all the reasons we put it there in the first place -- and we don't want to alienate the community we have. There are and doing dual license with something else may well do that - is that a risk you personally would be willing to take ? still folks who will want to embed OpenSolaris in appliances and create proprietary solutions. CDDL allows for that very nicely. GPL does not. and of those nice interesting things that help do the appliance stuff only get released under GPLv3 and not CDDL it doesn't help them. As you said CDDL allows for a mixing of proprietary and open source in the way that the GPL does not. This was one of the main reasons the CDDL was created the way it was. It is also one of the things that many of us point out as being good about the OpenSolaris community, we have a license that allows that mixing at a file level. -- Darren J Moffat ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Alan DuBoff wrote: The average user just wanted to download a distribution, install it, and use it. They come to OpenSolaris thinking it's a distribution, since this is how Sun has marketed it, that they have open sourced Solaris. People associate Solaris with Xorg, gasp GNOME, and other pieces such as CUPS, sfw, companion cd, etc... Bullshit is a good description of what the user is left with at the end of the day, if they do install OpenSolaris as we know it today. Most sensible folks install Solaris Express and lay OpenSolaris over the top, so they don't have to figure out how to get the Xorg package you tossed over the firewall to work. If they want a distro, they install Solaris Express, Nexenta, Belenix or Schillix, and they have OpenSolaris. There is no such thing as lay OpenSolaris over the top. If they want to work with the code or try even newer bits, they download the sources for the parts they're interested in and build, or the binaries for those parts like ON JDS that make pre-built binaries available - but if they don't do any of these they're still running the same code we make available via OpenSolaris. If we did as you seem to be trying to suggest and took all the code we've released, built packaged it, put a installer on it, why then we'd end up with something almost exactly like Solaris Express, so we don't waste our time duplicating that effort and just tell people who want a binary distro to use Solaris Express. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Alan DuBoff wrote: That's not the point Stephen, the point is that today Xorg is not a part of the sources that I'm calling OpenSolaris, where AlanC is considering everything to be on the OpenSolaris site to be what OpenSolaris is. So you want all consolidations merged into one mega source tarball, that's 10 times the size of the current ON sources, takes days to build even on the fastest machines, and has an incredibly complex build procedure since each consolidation source is so different? I think that would just drive people crazy and lead to calls to split it into sensible sized chunks that developers can work with - one for ON, one for X, one for GNOME, and so on. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Because some large projects have already pledged to use it. Samba comes to mind.. Ian Collins wrote: How do we know when GPLv3 hasn't been finalised? I'd be interested in knowing which big projects these are. It might just be my perspective, but I couldn't care less about the license, it isn't the reason why I haven't been able to contribute more. I'd even go so far as to speculate that I'm not in a minority. Ian -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
OpenSolaris is just source. You're confusing a distribution with OpenSolaris. kernel.org is not a Linux distribution. You don't download it and use it. You download it, get some other pieces, put it all together, and you have a distribution. And if you don't want to go to that much work, you get a pre-built distribution from someplace else (Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, ) Same thing here, where the pre-built distributions are SXCE, Nexenta, Belenix, SchilliX, MarTux, etc. Since you need source from several places to build a usable distribution, yes, it's a bit of work. But people are working on solving that problem as well. You seem to want everything needed to build a distribution in one spot. By design, we *don't* want that, since it would mean duplicating a lot of open source communities out there (X.org, GNOME, ). Alan DuBoff wrote: That's not the point Stephen, the point is that today Xorg is not a part of the sources that I'm calling OpenSolaris, where AlanC is considering everything to be on the OpenSolaris site to be what OpenSolaris is. This is all fine and dandy, but this doesn't help folks download, install, and use OpenSolaris. We don't have a distribution yet, however, the way Sun markets it to the press and community, it's the open source version of Solaris. The packaging tools are on OpenSolaris also, but I don't think they're a part of ON, so the package tools are not in the sources. Most people that want to run OpenSolaris need to install Solaris Express first. This is a distribution that includes Xorg, GNOME, CUPS, et al. How come I don't see Sun market OpenSolaris as including Xorg? -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Won't it only open us up to projects that use GPLv3 with the same assembly exception? Pure GPLv3 projects will be able to take our code, but we won't be able to use theirs unless they relicense with the exception. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Won't it only open us up to projects that use GPLv3 with the same assembly exception? Pure GPLv3 projects will be able to take our code, but we won't be able to use theirs unless they relicense with the exception. Quite. And I think that sidestepping the exception is wrong. To use my playground analogy: The OS Kid: Can I play with you? Other Kids: We won't play with you, you're not GPL The OS Kid, relicenses under the GPL with exception: Hello, I'm relicensed, will you play with me now? Other Kids: That's not the proper GPL; give us your lunch money and get out of here. Unless GPLv3 is phrased such that the assembly exception is the norm, this won't buy is anything, PR wise. To claim that the GPL was instrumental in Sun getting it for Java is a fallacious argument; Java's previous license was not conductive to Open development Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ok, so we throw a bunch of packages on OpenSolaris.org and say they're a part of OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris is not a usable and complete system as it is today, and even if you claim that we have all of these packages available, they're not usable in any way without a lot of work and configuration. It's not *meant* to be a usable system. It's not even meant to be a *system*. It's a loosely tight set of open source projects which can be used to be rolled into an OpenSolaris based distribution. You don't install OpenSolaris; you'd install Solaris, Schillix, Nexenta, etc... Casper, Thanks for that tidbit. Would you mind exploring that a bit further? I'm now very confused... OpenSolaris is not a Kernel, not a distro, but something in between? Explain please... And if you can, make comparisons to well-known products... Thanks Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.christophermahan.com/ Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
Christopher Mahan writes: You don't install OpenSolaris; you'd install Solaris, Schillix, Nexenta, etc... Casper, Thanks for that tidbit. Would you mind exploring that a bit further? I'm now very confused... OpenSolaris is not a Kernel, not a distro, but something in between? Explain please... And if you can, make comparisons to well-known products... It's been discussed here many times before. It's a source repository, akin to kernel.org for Linux. You don't execute source. The distributors take the source, compile it, package it, and put it into neat DVD images for installing on a system. That's what Sun's Solaris, SchilliX, Nexenta, BeleniX, MarTUX, and the others are. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
--- James Carlson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christopher Mahan writes: You don't install OpenSolaris; you'd install Solaris, Schillix, Nexenta, etc... Casper, Thanks for that tidbit. Would you mind exploring that a bit further? I'm now very confused... OpenSolaris is not a Kernel, not a distro, but something in between? Explain please... And if you can, make comparisons to well-known products... It's been discussed here many times before. It's a source repository, akin to kernel.org for Linux. You don't execute source. The distributors take the source, compile it, package it, and put it into neat DVD images for installing on a system. That's what Sun's Solaris, SchilliX, Nexenta, BeleniX, MarTUX, and the others are. But you do build it to make sure it's working right? Where are those builds? Thanks. Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.christophermahan.com/ We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love (and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. As well as the example Jim says, the other likely more scenario is: * Someone takes a small-but-interesting part of OpenSolaris such as ZFS (rather than the whole thing), and ports this to run on Linux. * This gets released as GPLv3 only, and is hosted somewhere else. Not because of an intentional fork, but because the code needed to be changed and the contributors don't want to submit a bunch of ARC reviews for permission to add #ifdef LINUX all over the ZFS code, OpenSolaris does not want to take Linux-only changes, or other completely valid reasons. [1] * A bunch of new and interesting features get added, but are GPLv3-only. Again, not necessarily because of any intent to be anti-CDDL, but just because the project is forked. * OpenSolaris proper can't then use the enhancements due to the license. Granted the GPL v2/v3 conflict may make this more difficult for the Linux kernel proper. But maybe not impossible. Hugh. [1] For example, I don't think there's any existing #ifdef APPLE in the Dtrace code. Which means a fork already happened. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Alan Burlison wrote: That's an interesting collection of assertions, but I'm not sure they are entirely correct. It really depends on what you mean by combine with Solaris. We already have a significant amount of GPLv2 code shipped with Solaris, so Solaris not being GPL obviously isn't an impediment. For userland, correct. For the kernel, nope. Any existing candidate projects will be GPLv2, so as I understand it they won't be able to combine with a GPLv3 Solaris unless they switch to GPLv3 first, and we won't know the level of uptake of GPLv3 until it's been in existence for some time. True, unless they say GPLv2 or greater... And don't forget that most of the GNU code is copyrighted by the FSF. What you think of us the Linux userland will instantly switch to GPLv3 the day the GPLv3 license is final. Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. What is to stop someone producing an OpenSolaris distribution where the only significant difference is that they've ripped out the CDDL? That would seem to be fairly easy to do, and I don't think it would be a good thing if it happened. Nothing. Anyone can produce a distribution. In fact, I encourage that. But what I think you really meant is, what happens if someone creates their own source repository that contains all of the OpenSolaris source but only with the GPL license? Again, nothing prevents someone from doing that, but how would they maintain it? Most of the people that really know OpenSolaris work at Sun and will continue to work on opensolaris.org. It's not practical to have a source fork. If we neuter the GPLv3 license with an assembly exception we'll immediately be accused of playing marketing games with licensing, which will defeat the entire purpose of the exercise. In fact it will make things *considerably* worse, not just in terms of the negative PR hit we'll take, but also in terms of the unnecessary complexity and confusion we will have saddled ourselves with. There is a direct analogue we can look at - MySQL is dual-licensed under both GPLv2 and a Commercial license. It's a cause of great confusion to anyone trying to use MySQL, and I don't see hordes of people switching from Postgres (BSD license) to MySQL as a result of MySQL being dual-licensed, in fact I suspect the flow is the other way - anyone who want's an open source database will pick Postgres, not MySQL as MySQL is only pseudo-open at best. For GPL purists the only acceptable license is pure GPL. A dual-license, especially one that contains a crippled GPLv3 is more likely to drive them away than it is to attract them. By sticking to pure CDDL we can make a reasoned defence of what I consider to be a very good license. I strongly suspect bolting GPLv3 on the side will only make things worse, not better. I agree that if dual licensing were to happen, explaining how the license works is the biggest hurdle. Creative Commons did an excellent job of explaining their license to average folk. We could learn from them. We can't ditch CDDL for all the reasons we put it there in the first place -- and we don't want to alienate the community we have. There are still folks who will want to embed OpenSolaris in appliances and create proprietary solutions. CDDL allows for that very nicely. GPL does not. If you force the GPLv3 issue against the wishes of the community you are going to alienate many of them anyway. I agree, which is why I'm not going to and why we're having this discussion in the open right now. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?]
But you do build it to make sure it's working right? Where are those builds? Solaris Express Community Edition is a collection of builds. There may be some other bits (I think OS-Net binaries are available) Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Assertion without proof. Likewise your argument as well, but actual data is nearly impossible to obtain until after the fact, so let's continue with our current working theory. Who would this bring to our community? The entire GNU community for one. There are some indication that it would scare off others too. True. And, perhaps, can we in fairness in this discussion say that we're using GPLv3 with the assembly exception; that makes GPLv3 much more like the CDDL; and I'm sure that the community isn't stupid. If they like that property of the GPL, then they won't stand for the exception. Code under GPLv2 cannot be brought in; code under GPLv3 cannot be brought in. The only thing that can happen is that code under the GPLv3 w/ assembly exception can be taken to a GPLv3 environment (without exceptions) and such changes can subsequently not be taken back and help improve OpenSolaris. How does this benefit OpenSolaris? We already bring in GPLv2 code. So we must therefore limit this discussion to the kernel where I expect contributions to remain relatively low away. Similarly, if they *dislike* the CDDL so much, they won't contribute under the CDDL and so their contributions will be useless for the whole of OpenSolaris. Regardless of whether this license brings in more people or scares people away, the best thing to grow the community is focusing on the tasks at hand: - get the consitution ratified - get the OGB elected - get the mechanisms up and running so the barrier to commit is lowered. Yes! So what's holding you up? ;-) Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. That doesn't mean that the risk does not exist; and the fork may take different forms: forks of parts of the source code. There's no need to fork all of the source code for OpenSolaris to be hurt. Welcome to the world of open development. People will take our code. That's good. In fact, it's happening already. Apple's XCode (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/xcode.html) is a kick-ass front-end for their version of DTrace. I don't see them contributing that back to OpenSolaris. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Assertion without proof. Likewise your argument as well, but actual data is nearly impossible to obtain until after the fact, so let's continue with our current working theory. Your working theory. Not our working theory. My working theory is alienating 30% of the current community; little or no influx of new people. Who would this bring to our community? The entire GNU community for one. Sorry, which community is that? There is no such thing. Do you mean the FSF? We already bring in GPLv2 code. So we must therefore limit this discussion to the kernel where I expect contributions to remain relatively low away. No; we need to limit it to much of the core OS: the kernel *and* libraries. Yes! So what's holding you up? ;-) So, what' sthe rush about the license change? Do you want to be on stage when Richard Stallman announces GPLv3? Welcome to the world of open development. People will take our code. That's good. In fact, it's happening already. Apple's XCode (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/xcode.html) is a kick-ass front-end for their version of DTrace. I don't see them contributing that back to OpenSolaris. No, that's just fine; but they can already do that. But they can't publish the results without also allowing us to take the modification back; any dual license situation allows for just that. It adds needless complexity and needless risk of irreversible forking. And for what, a few minutes of PR? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: That's an interesting collection of assertions, but I'm not sure they are entirely correct. It really depends on what you mean by combine with Solaris. We already have a significant amount of GPLv2 code shipped with Solaris, so Solaris not being GPL obviously isn't an impediment. For userland, correct. For the kernel, nope. As you said yourself in a later post, Linux is staying GPLv2, so I don't understand which kernel we would be able to include code from if we switched to GPLv3, but perhaps I'm missing something... And don't forget that most of the GNU code is copyrighted by the FSF. What you think of us the Linux userland will instantly switch to GPLv3 the day the GPLv3 license is final. But we can (and do) already use the GNU userland code under GPLv2, and when it switches to GPLv3 we'll be able to carry on doing so. What does switching Solaris to GPLv3 gain us in this scenario? -- Alan Burlison -- ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
For the kernel, true. For userland, no. Don't forget that we're already taking in GPLv2. Alan Coopersmith wrote: Stephen Harpster wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Won't it only open us up to projects that use GPLv3 with the same assembly exception? Pure GPLv3 projects will be able to take our code, but we won't be able to use theirs unless they relicense with the exception. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
But we're already doing that, so dual-licensing won't open us up any more than we already are, so where's the benefit? Stephen Harpster wrote: For the kernel, true. For userland, no. Don't forget that we're already taking in GPLv2. Alan Coopersmith wrote: Stephen Harpster wrote: The big bonus is that GPLv3 will open us up to a whole new audience. Linux aside, there are plenty of other big projects that will combine with OpenSolaris more easily if we're dual licensed. To be successful, you want to reach out to as many communities as possible. The more friends the better. GPLv3 will give us that. Won't it only open us up to projects that use GPLv3 with the same assembly exception? Pure GPLv3 projects will be able to take our code, but we won't be able to use theirs unless they relicense with the exception. -- -Alan Coopersmith- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering February 2007 Selection: LSARC Chair of the Month Club ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Who maintains the code on that CVS server? If there's a bug in virtual memory, who fixes it? The experts are here in Sun, and they will continue to work on opensolaris.org. OpenSolaris is too large and complex for even a small set of people to maintain an entire separate fork. OK, they could pull bug fixes from opensolaris.org, but what happens to them once one of their changes doesn't work with our changes? That's the biggest danger of a fork. You're constantly playing catch-up. If someone wants to do that, they can do that now. Knock yourself out. James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: Stack against that the issues we will have to endure if we dual license - the potential for one license to be ripped off and the source forked *incompatibly* (the incompatibility is the important bit), the inability to move bug fixes between versions, the confusion that dual-licensing will bring (just what *is* an assembly exception anyway?). Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. I can. If the source becomes available under GPL, then an obvious fix to the community's well-justified[1] frustration with our lack of openness, speed, and flexibility in bug tracking, development, and integration becomes possible. All that someone has to do is set up a CVS server with Bugzilla somewhere on the 'net, allow a simple registration process, and prohibit the use of anything but GPL. Heck, putting it on sourceforge or the like would probably do the trick. This then becomes a _rival_ project to Open Solaris. They can take new bits from opensolaris.org if they want, or they can just not care to do so. They instead build an open community. The result is a fracture over control issues that are akin to those afflicting Zebra versus Quagga and some other open source projects. If I had to place money on one of those horses to win, it almost certainly wouldn't be the one saddled with a complex multi-license scheme, fragmentary bug tracking, and developmental problems. I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie before. [1] Yes, I know we've made great progress. That's not the point. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: and of those nice interesting things that help do the appliance stuff only get released under GPLv3 and not CDDL it doesn't help them. Which is why contributions back into OpenSolaris (the kernel anyway), will need to be dual-licensed. No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like reallyopensolaris.org hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. Those who are willing to consent to dual-licensing today with the possibility of additional licenses to be named in the future might go to opensolaris.org. The rest would go to the other site, and use GPL alone. If the goal really is growing the community around opensolaris.org, I don't see how adding another layer of complexity will achieve that. If the goal is setting Solaris free such that Sun can't use it anymore, then I think adding another license is a solid move in that direction. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Hugh McIntyre wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: Very unlikely that a source fork will happen. Let's face it. Most of the people who know and understand all the intricacies of OpenSolaris source code work at Sun. Who's going to fork? How will they maintain that fork? Constantly chase opensolaris.org? And what happens if their new incompatible changes don't work with the changes they pull from opensolaris.org? It's not practical and I can't imagine it happening. As well as the example Jim says, the other likely more scenario is: * Someone takes a small-but-interesting part of OpenSolaris such as ZFS (rather than the whole thing), and ports this to run on Linux. * This gets released as GPLv3 only, and is hosted somewhere else. Not because of an intentional fork, but because the code needed to be changed and the contributors don't want to submit a bunch of ARC reviews for permission to add #ifdef LINUX all over the ZFS code, OpenSolaris does not want to take Linux-only changes, or other completely valid reasons. [1] * A bunch of new and interesting features get added, but are GPLv3-only. Again, not necessarily because of any intent to be anti-CDDL, but just because the project is forked. * OpenSolaris proper can't then use the enhancements due to the license. Next step, and one that is more likely: * Sun's ZFS team put in more interesting features. But these don't work with the features that went into the fork. Sorry! And since to-date, the majority of ZFS developers work at Sun, it's likely for the foreseeable future that the ZFS in opensolaris.org will stay ahead of the fork. Granted the GPL v2/v3 conflict may make this more difficult for the Linux kernel proper. But maybe not impossible. Hugh. [1] For example, I don't think there's any existing #ifdef APPLE in the Dtrace code. Which means a fork already happened. My same example as well. :-) -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: Who maintains the code on that CVS server? Same as any other open source project -- the community built around it does. Would you ask that question about any other open source project? If there's a bug in virtual memory, who fixes it? The experts are here in Sun, and they will continue to work on opensolaris.org. OpenSolaris is too large and complex for even a small set of people to maintain an entire separate fork. Assuming that _all_ of the smart, capable people are within sun.com seems like a substantial risk. Assuming that it _matters_ seems like a bigger one still. Particularly so when what we're actually talking about here is the viability of the community itself -- which is much larger than just the code. So, as a contributor, my choice is between Sun's community and dealing with the unfinished areas of the process but gaining possible future bug fixes, versus being able to commit directly, track bugs fully, and feel like I own parts of the system. The choice doesn't look so obviously in opensolaris.org's favor to me. OK, they could pull bug fixes from opensolaris.org, but what happens to them once one of their changes doesn't work with our changes? That's the biggest danger of a fork. You're constantly playing catch-up. If someone wants to do that, they can do that now. Knock yourself out. They can't do it and get out from under the requirements of the CDDL, particularly those that allow users to compile binaries and add proprietary files and ship the result under a difference license _without_ exposing source. Adding a new license to the code allows them to ditch CDDL by choosing to adopt GPL alone. If it doesn't allow them to get rid of CDDL, and we're actually planning to stop people from doing that (via the lack of patent grants?), then it opens us up to accusations of a bait-and- switch. I don't see a winning course here. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Who would this bring to our community? The entire GNU community for one. Sorry, which community is that? There is no such thing. Do you mean the FSF? Yes. We already bring in GPLv2 code. So we must therefore limit this discussion to the kernel where I expect contributions to remain relatively low away. No; we need to limit it to much of the core OS: the kernel *and* libraries. Well, some libraries, yes. Yes! So what's holding you up? ;-) So, what' sthe rush about the license change? Do you want to be on stage when Richard Stallman announces GPLv3? No, I meant what's holding up the OGB elections and constitution ratification? (I'm being cheeky here. :-)) Welcome to the world of open development. People will take our code. That's good. In fact, it's happening already. Apple's XCode (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/xcode.html) is a kick-ass front-end for their version of DTrace. I don't see them contributing that back to OpenSolaris. No, that's just fine; but they can already do that. But they can't publish the results without also allowing us to take the modification back; any dual license situation allows for just that. It adds needless complexity and needless risk of irreversible forking. I'm not following. They don't necessarily have to publish their changes. Remember that CDDL works on file boundaries. As long as their changes are in separate files, they can keep them proprietary. Dual licensing doesn't change this situation at all. That was my point. Your fear of a fork has already happened. Dual licensing won't make that better, but it won't make it worse either. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Alan Burlison wrote: Stephen Harpster wrote: That's an interesting collection of assertions, but I'm not sure they are entirely correct. It really depends on what you mean by combine with Solaris. We already have a significant amount of GPLv2 code shipped with Solaris, so Solaris not being GPL obviously isn't an impediment. For userland, correct. For the kernel, nope. As you said yourself in a later post, Linux is staying GPLv2, so I don't understand which kernel we would be able to include code from if we switched to GPLv3, but perhaps I'm missing something... We would get the entire GNU userland, for one. Samba, who says their going v3, will be easier to integrate as well. Kernel, not so much. And don't forget that most of the GNU code is copyrighted by the FSF. What you think of us the Linux userland will instantly switch to GPLv3 the day the GPLv3 license is final. But we can (and do) already use the GNU userland code under GPLv2, and when it switches to GPLv3 we'll be able to carry on doing so. What does switching Solaris to GPLv3 gain us in this scenario? Makes it easier. But the big boon would be in mindshare. I'm not convinced that a dual-license would dramatically increase the number of OpenSolaris developers (relative small number), but I believe it would increase the number of developers developing apps for OpenSolaris and increase the user base (those people using an OpenSolaris distro), which is a huge number. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: Ian Collins wrote: How do we know when GPLv3 hasn't been finalised? Because some large projects have already pledged to use it. Samba comes to mind.. But surely the license only becomes an issue for projects that would be integrated into Open Solaris code, rather than packages that we already bring in and bundle? I guess there are components of Samba that could be integrated to improve interoperation with windows, but are they worth the complexity of a dual license? Is there a 'hit list' of GPL code that could be integrated if their license permitted this? Ian ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: and of those nice interesting things that help do the appliance stuff only get released under GPLv3 and not CDDL it doesn't help them. Which is why contributions back into OpenSolaris (the kernel anyway), will need to be dual-licensed. No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like reallyopensolaris.org hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) openersolaris.org? :-P i suppose that runs into the 'solaris' trademark. openersolarisest.org -steve -- stephen lau // [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 650.786.0845 | http://whacked.net opensolaris // solaris kernel development ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like reallyopensolaris.org hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) Fine. openos.org is also available, and easier to type. Those who are willing to consent to dual-licensing today with the possibility of additional licenses to be named in the future might go to opensolaris.org. The rest would go to the other site, and use GPL alone. No they won't. Where will innovation occur? That's what people really care about. Who will work on reallyopensolaris.org and who will work on opensolaris.org? Most of the developers, for good or bad, are employed by Sun and will continue to develop on opensolaris.org. The rest of the world can pull from reallyopensolaris.org, but that code base will get old and crusty pretty fast. I think we're coming down the the crux of the matter here. I agree that if we think like customers and end users of Solaris then, yes, it's innovation and branding and patch delivery and support that matter. However, if we think like contributors to an open source project, what matters is the openness and speed of the process, the transparency of the licensing, the ability to contribute *directly* to the code, ownership of the results, and an equal footing for those involved. Assuming that growing the opensolaris.org community is the intended purpose, adding a new license to the mix does not in fact advance any of those issues. It makes a rival community that _does_ address those issues possible, while it actually adds complexity and risk to our existing community. That still seems like a net loss, as I'm rather convinced that the fork will in fact happen, whether we think it's feasible or not. (For what it's worth, and it may not be much, I believe the very same issues affected the Zebra/Quagga split. Integration into Zebra was considered by quite a few to be difficult, and the folks who started the project apparently felt they held the important cards. Now it seems that's not quite the case.) No matter how much I think of sun.com, and it's quite a bit, I'm not so willing to bet that the only smart, talented, capable people available are already here. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Isn't it more likely that folks would cherry-pick projects off of Open Solaris for forking/re-hosting? OpenZFS.org OpenDtrace.org ... -- mark James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like "reallyopensolaris.org" hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) Fine. "openos.org" is also available, and easier to type. Those who are willing to consent to dual-licensing today with the possibility of additional licenses to be named in the future might go to opensolaris.org. The rest would go to the other site, and use GPL alone. No they won't. Where will innovation occur? That's what people really care about. Who will work on reallyopensolaris.org and who will work on opensolaris.org? Most of the developers, for good or bad, are employed by Sun and will continue to develop on opensolaris.org. The rest of the world can pull from reallyopensolaris.org, but that code base will get old and crusty pretty fast. I think we're coming down the the crux of the matter here. I agree that if we think like customers and end users of Solaris then, yes, it's innovation and branding and patch delivery and support that matter. However, if we think like contributors to an open source project, what matters is the openness and speed of the process, the transparency of the licensing, the ability to contribute *directly* to the code, ownership of the results, and an equal footing for those involved. Assuming that growing the opensolaris.org community is the intended purpose, adding a new license to the mix does not in fact advance any of those issues. It makes a rival community that _does_ address those issues possible, while it actually adds complexity and risk to our existing community. That still seems like a net loss, as I'm rather convinced that the fork will in fact happen, whether we think it's feasible or not. (For what it's worth, and it may not be much, I believe the very same issues affected the Zebra/Quagga split. Integration into Zebra was considered by quite a few to be difficult, and the folks who started the project apparently felt they held the important cards. Now it seems that's not quite the case.) No matter how much I think of sun.com, and it's quite a bit, I'm not so willing to bet that the only smart, talented, capable people available are already here. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: and of those nice interesting things that help do the appliance stuff only get released under GPLv3 and not CDDL it doesn't help them. Which is why contributions back into OpenSolaris (the kernel anyway), will need to be dual-licensed. No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like reallyopensolaris.org hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) That's nothing but random (semi-humorous I guess) nitpicking, and you know it. So far, in this sub thread. You've somewhat implied that those of us not employed by you are unable to fix problems in the code (for reasons other than process), and matter less both in these decisions, and in general, and then have thrown in random things like the above. What *exactly* are you intending to gain from this argument other than the distrust of anybody both involved in this process and not directly subordinate to you? -- Rich ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
I did not mean to say that one group is smarter or more talented than the other. I'm simply saying that the majority of the opensolaris.org contributers work at Sun. If say, IBM, were to pony up contributers that out numbered Sun, I would be very happy indeed for it would mean that OpenSolaris was successful (and that we would have more than double the developers we have now). James Carlson wrote: No matter how much I think of sun.com, and it's quite a bit, I'm not so willing to bet that the only smart, talented, capable people available are already here. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Mark A. Carlson writes: body bgcolor=#ff text=#00 ttIsn't it more likely that folks would cherry-pick projects offbr of Open Solaris for forking/re-hosting?br br OpenZFS.orgbr OpenDtrace.orgbr Possibly, though they'd have to deal with the new and likely highly complex cross-consolidation dependencies they'd be introducing in the process. I agree that'd be more in line with the usual open source development model. As a low-risk path to creating a usable and coherent source base and community, I think taking the whole lot at once would be more practical. It looks like openon.org and openosnet.org are also available, if someone wants 'em. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
(For what it's worth, and it may not be much, I believe the very same issues affected the Zebra/Quagga split. Integration into Zebra was considered by quite a few to be difficult, and the folks who started the project apparently felt they held the important cards. Now it seems that's not quite the case.) XFree86 vs X.org? Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Yes, but the same argument holds. This can happen today. CDDL has file boundaries. You can create a fork of ZFS and innovate all you want. If your innovations remain in separate files, you don't have to publish them or contribute them back. Mark A. Carlson wrote: Isn't it more likely that folks would cherry-pick projects off of Open Solaris for forking/re-hosting? OpenZFS.org OpenDtrace.org ... -- mark James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: No, they won't. According to 'whois', it looks like reallyopensolaris.org hasn't been registered yet, and would be an excellent place to set up a rival community. OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) Fine. openos.org is also available, and easier to type. Those who are willing to consent to dual-licensing today with the possibility of additional licenses to be named in the future might go to opensolaris.org. The rest would go to the other site, and use GPL alone. No they won't. Where will innovation occur? That's what people really care about. Who will work on reallyopensolaris.org and who will work on opensolaris.org? Most of the developers, for good or bad, are employed by Sun and will continue to develop on opensolaris.org. The rest of the world can pull from reallyopensolaris.org, but that code base will get old and crusty pretty fast. I think we're coming down the the crux of the matter here. I agree that if we think like customers and end users of Solaris then, yes, it's innovation and branding and patch delivery and support that matter. However, if we think like contributors to an open source project, what matters is the openness and speed of the process, the transparency of the licensing, the ability to contribute *directly* to the code, ownership of the results, and an equal footing for those involved. Assuming that growing the opensolaris.org community is the intended purpose, adding a new license to the mix does not in fact advance any of those issues. It makes a rival community that _does_ address those issues possible, while it actually adds complexity and risk to our existing community. That still seems like a net loss, as I'm rather convinced that the fork will in fact happen, whether we think it's feasible or not. (For what it's worth, and it may not be much, I believe the very same issues affected the Zebra/Quagga split. Integration into Zebra was considered by quite a few to be difficult, and the folks who started the project apparently felt they held the important cards. Now it seems that's not quite the case.) No matter how much I think of sun.com, and it's quite a bit, I'm not so willing to bet that the only smart, talented, capable people available are already here. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Stephen Harpster wrote: Who maintains the code on that CVS server? If there's a bug in virtual memory, who fixes it? The experts are here in Sun, and they will continue to work on opensolaris.org. OpenSolaris is too large and That's a dangereous assertion. What it Jeff Bezos[1] decided to spend more than the (??) $480m he spent last year on software development and made some people at Sun an offer they could not refuse. Or decided to put half of his software development $s into creating a Ubuntu like OpenSolaris alternative. Then there is Google with enough budget to put 3,000 people to work on any project they wish to... Who was it that said (something like) no one company can have all the technical talent (on staff). complex for even a small set of people to maintain an entire separate fork. Simply not true and not borne out by history. Was'nt ZFS developed by a small team. Dtrace by 3 people. BSD, before it was open sourced was a 5 or 6 person (??) team. OK, they could pull bug fixes from opensolaris.org, but what happens to them once one of their changes doesn't work with our changes? That's the biggest danger of a fork. You're constantly playing catch-up. Not true. In a race you're either leading or following. It's only wishful thinking to suggest that Sun will always be the leader (altough I'd _like to_ think it would). If someone wants to do that, they can do that now. Knock yourself out. ... snip [1] there is some evidence to suggest that he is the ultimate geek who just likes to build software systems and rockets and anything else that strikes his fancy and does not seem compelled to justify his technobudget to anyone. Regards, Al Hopper Logical Approach Inc, Plano, TX. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice: 972.379.2133 Fax: 972.379.2134 Timezone: US CDT OpenSolaris.Org Community Advisory Board (CAB) Member - Apr 2005 OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Member - Feb 2006 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster wrote: Yes, but the same argument holds. This can happen today. CDDL has file boundaries. You can create a fork of ZFS and innovate all you want. If your innovations remain in separate files, you don't have to publish them or contribute them back. The entirety of this discussion has been you saying I don't think it will make anything worse, and people outlining reasons that it could. Other benefits that have been suggested have been largely shown to not actually change anything. I'll ask again (for the 3rd time). What is the benefit that you see coming out of this? Does this all come down to Sun getting good PR? Because a license change for that reason would be, is, and always will be, entirely inappropriate. -- Rich ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Sorry, which community is that? There is no such thing. Do you mean the FSF? Yes. I like to compare the FSF to the abolishionists and the suffragettes; the latter two are certainly irrelevant now but the FSF is not far behind. I'm not surprised that the FSF wants Sun's backing; but I don't think they bring to the party what you think they bring to the party. Casper ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Richard Lowe wrote: OpenSolaris is a Sun trademark, so don't count on it. ;-) That's nothing but random (semi-humorous I guess) nitpicking, and you know it. That's why I had a smiley face there. So far, in this sub thread. You've somewhat implied that those of us not employed by you are unable to fix problems in the code (for reasons other than process), and matter less both in these decisions, and in general, and then have thrown in random things like the above. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that simply the majority of contributers work for Sun. Period. If that changes, nobody will be happier than me. If you the community didn't matter, I would just change the license and be done with it. Instead, we're having this discussion because I believe that OpenSolaris is indeed open and that we as a community must reach consensus one way or another. What *exactly* are you intending to gain from this argument other than the distrust of anybody both involved in this process and not directly subordinate to you? I'm trying to determine if a dual-license is a good idea or not. For the record, some of the people that have so far spoken against a dual-license do indeed work for me. That's ok. This is a free and open discussion. I'm not trying to strong arm people, but I do want to address potential issues. Some very valid concerns have been raised, but there's also been a lot of panicking, sky is falling, side tracking off to unrelated issues, etc. I want to separate the valid concerns from the noise and see if the valid concerns can be addressed. If not, then you have valid reasons for not doing a dual-license. I don't see why open discussion would generate distrust. I would have thought the reverse. P.S. Nobody has yet asked me what my opinion is. For the record, I'm still on the fence. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: Yes, but the same argument holds. This can happen today. CDDL has file boundaries. You can create a fork of ZFS and innovate all you want. In what possible instance does someone innovate without changing the source? I think that misses the point. People who want to innovate want to be able to contribute *anywhere* without worrying about ownership. If your innovations remain in separate files, you don't have to publish them or contribute them back. The difference is that you're obliged to keep the original files under CDDL and obey the rules for CDDL. If those original files are published under GPL as well, you are no longer constrained in that way -- you can ignore CDDL. You're now free to create a non-CDDL fork. One in which there are source changes to the files we originally published, but that which *WE* cannot access. The changes are no longer under CDDL, and thus we can't adopt them. We can't bring those changes back into Open Solaris. That can't happen today, but it will tomorrow if the source is dual-licensed. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
With all due respect, I believe the complexity of OpenSolaris outweighs the complexity of Zebra, Quagga, XFree86, and X.org combined. And with that complexity you have the impracticality of maintaining it. With respect to cherry-picking individual projects to fork, see my previous posting. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (For what it's worth, and it may not be much, I believe the very same issues affected the Zebra/Quagga split. Integration into Zebra was considered by quite a few to be difficult, and the folks who started the project apparently felt they held the important cards. Now it seems that's not quite the case.) XFree86 vs X.org? Casper -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Al Hopper wrote: On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Stephen Harpster wrote: Who maintains the code on that CVS server? If there's a bug in virtual memory, who fixes it? The experts are here in Sun, and they will continue to work on opensolaris.org. OpenSolaris is too large and That's a dangereous assertion. What it Jeff Bezos[1] decided to spend more than the (??) $480m he spent last year on software development and made some people at Sun an offer they could not refuse. Or decided to put half of his software development $s into creating a Ubuntu like OpenSolaris alternative. Then there is Google with enough budget to put 3,000 people to work on any project they wish to... Who was it that said (something like) no one company can have all the technical talent (on staff). I would love it. It would mean that OpenSolaris is successful. And the publicity of Sun saying Amazon and Google have validated the superiority of OpenSolaris over Linux would be HUGE! Not true. In a race you're either leading or following. It's only wishful thinking to suggest that Sun will always be the leader (altough I'd _like to_ think it would). It's quite unlikely that any one company other than Sun will lead OpenSolaris. Even if they did, we have the above case and I'm still happy. More likely, there will evolve non-Sun leaders of individual projects. This is what we're actually *trying* to create, so I'm still happy. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Stephen Harpster writes: I did not mean to say that one group is smarter or more talented than the other. I'm simply saying that the majority of the opensolaris.org contributers work at Sun. If say, IBM, were to pony up contributers that out numbered Sun, I would be very happy indeed for it would mean that OpenSolaris was successful (and that we would have more than double the developers we have now). I'd like to know where the 420 for the IBM commitment comes from. ;-} Seriously, I think they'd have to be downright confused to contribute in a way that helps out Sun. I could have sworn that we were, at some point, in competition for similar markets. However, contributing bits that are GPL-only derivatives of our dual-licensed code would be a savvy move on their part. It'd provide them with an alternate Solaris-like environment to exploit, a fractured Solaris community, and additional anti-Sun FUD to employ. It's a big win. And, with our requirement that all contributions are dual-licensed by the author, we'd benefit naught. Stephen Harpster writes: With all due respect, I believe the complexity of OpenSolaris outweighs the complexity of Zebra, Quagga, XFree86, and X.org combined. And with that complexity you have the impracticality of maintaining it. Complexity is not and has never been the central issue. The central issue is building a community. Doing that involves providing certain components that we aren't actually in a position to supply today (namely: open repositories, bug tracking, and perhaps even discarding development process and/or lowering standards), but that someone else would be able to do in very short order. In other words, good enough is the enemy of the best. It's what's sustained and built many other groups for quite some time. This still turns back to the argument that Solaris is somehow above the heads of all possible open source contributors, and thus only the acolytes here can attend to its needs without having it fall to bits. With all due respect, that's bunkum. We do have a lot of smart folks, and obviously a formidable army of people working on Solaris, but in an open world we cannot (and will not) hold a monopoly on these skills forever. The history of those other forks has shown that, even if the original is seen as better in some respects, over the longer haul, that simply does not matter. That's what I meant by saying that I've seen this movie before. The hero dies in the end. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: I did not mean to say that one group is smarter or more talented than the other. I'm simply saying that the majority of the opensolaris.org contributers work at Sun. If say, IBM, were to pony up contributers that out numbered Sun, I would be very happy indeed for it would mean that OpenSolaris was successful (and that we would have more than double the developers we have now). I'd like to know where the 420 for the IBM commitment comes from. ;-} Seriously, I think they'd have to be downright confused to contribute in a way that helps out Sun. I could have sworn that we were, at some point, in competition for similar markets. However, contributing bits that are GPL-only derivatives of our dual-licensed code would be a savvy move on their part. It'd provide them with an alternate Solaris-like environment to exploit, a fractured Solaris community, and additional anti-Sun FUD to employ. It's a big win. Agreed. Or - the same point expressed differently - it would enable them to poison the OpenSolaris project, one file at a time. And, with our requirement that all contributions are dual-licensed by the author, we'd benefit naught. Stephen Harpster writes: With all due respect, I believe the complexity of OpenSolaris outweighs the complexity of Zebra, Quagga, XFree86, and X.org combined. And with that complexity you have the impracticality of maintaining it. Complexity is not and has never been the central issue. Agreed. Complexity does *not* provide any insulation or isolatin from competitive business forces. More below. The central issue is building a community. Doing that involves providing certain components that we aren't actually in a position to supply today (namely: open repositories, bug tracking, and perhaps Agreed. even discarding development process and/or lowering standards), but ^^ Agreed with common sense reservations. that someone else would be able to do in very short order. In other words, good enough is the enemy of the best. It's what's sustained and built many other groups for quite some time. Yes - we need to concentrate on being the best and improving the project. If you really want to be the leader - you've got to run like hell and you don't even have time to look over your shoulder. This debate is a prime example of time spent looking over your shoulder This still turns back to the argument that Solaris is somehow above the heads of all possible open source contributors, and thus only the acolytes here can attend to its needs without having it fall to bits. With all due respect, that's bunkum. We do have a lot of smart folks, and obviously a formidable army of people working on Solaris, but in an open world we cannot (and will not) hold a monopoly on these skills forever. Agreed. In almost every instance where intelligent people have made (business) decisions based on the mistaken concept that they have the best brains/talent in the industry - and were somehow isolated from technical competion because of the high calibre of their in-house talent - they have lost that bet. Examples abound: - Netscape did'nt feel like they needed open review of their cryptography algorithms or its implementation (the industry norm is to solicit open review of the algorithms and the underlying implementation) and were very embarassed when someone figured out that their source of random seed data was easily second guessed - allowing a successful brute force attack with modest hardware resources because the guessed source of random data greatly reduced the scope of the required brute force attack. - Intel vs. AMD where Intel figured that no-one could possibly reverse engineer the x86 architecture - including its *numereous* bugs. Most knowledgeable engineers would assert that Intel has *never* produced a bug-free chip (from the simple serial UART on forward). Since its an industry standard - cloners are forced to produce a bug-for-bug compatible implementation. Now *that* is difficult. - Intel vs. AMD where Intel figured that no-one could out-innovate its thousands of engineers - even after they acquired (by hook or by crook) most of the available industry talent. For example, the team that developed the Alpha processor.[0] - Microsoft where the XBox architecture was completely reverse engineered in short order. - Intel with the infameous Pentium Floating Point (FP) bug. Not only was the bug found, but someone figured out which FP algorithm(s) were implemented and the flaws in the actual implementation. - Numereous DVD/movie encryption algorithms. - the ill-fated wireless WPA and WPA2 encryption algorithms. - Cisco and the well published case of the kill the presenter of IOS security flaws/exploits. I could go on and on [0] Summary: you violated our patents - we can sue you into total
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
An increase in developers developing applications for OpenSolaris and an increase in people using an OpenSolaris distribution. It's reaching out to an audience that has been ignoring OpenSolaris. Embracing more people, making more friends, gets more people talking about you, participating, and developing with you. Growing the population. I think the effect of increasing the number of kernel developers will be minimal. There aren't that many kernel developers in the world. Richard Lowe wrote: Stephen Harpster wrote: Yes, but the same argument holds. This can happen today. CDDL has file boundaries. You can create a fork of ZFS and innovate all you want. If your innovations remain in separate files, you don't have to publish them or contribute them back. The entirety of this discussion has been you saying I don't think it will make anything worse, and people outlining reasons that it could. Other benefits that have been suggested have been largely shown to not actually change anything. I'll ask again (for the 3rd time). What is the benefit that you see coming out of this? Does this all come down to Sun getting good PR? Because a license change for that reason would be, is, and always will be, entirely inappropriate. -- Rich -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
You're correct. What *I'm* saying is that with OpenSolaris as whole, that is highly unlikely given my previous argument of complexity and maintainer knowledge and on a per-project basis, it has already happened as with DTrace and Xcode at Apple. James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: Yes, but the same argument holds. This can happen today. CDDL has file boundaries. You can create a fork of ZFS and innovate all you want. In what possible instance does someone innovate without changing the source? I think that misses the point. People who want to innovate want to be able to contribute *anywhere* without worrying about ownership. If your innovations remain in separate files, you don't have to publish them or contribute them back. The difference is that you're obliged to keep the original files under CDDL and obey the rules for CDDL. If those original files are published under GPL as well, you are no longer constrained in that way -- you can ignore CDDL. You're now free to create a non-CDDL fork. One in which there are source changes to the files we originally published, but that which *WE* cannot access. The changes are no longer under CDDL, and thus we can't adopt them. We can't bring those changes back into Open Solaris. That can't happen today, but it will tomorrow if the source is dual-licensed. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Hey, Stephen Harpster wrote: An increase in developers developing applications for OpenSolaris and an increase in people using an OpenSolaris distribution. It's reaching out to an audience that has been ignoring OpenSolaris. Embracing more people, making more friends, gets more people talking about you, participating, and developing with you. Growing the population. There's other ways to achieve this though - a simple license change may not necessarily be the best approach [1]. A very obvious example would be the permission to openly distribute Solaris Express through bit torrent, or work to reduce the bandwidth barrier by reducing the number of CDs required to get the basic functionality working. Glynn [1] And a few people have commented at FooCamp this weekend that they're are surprised we're looking at doing this - there's a lot of other open source projects that have higher volumes of contribution, yet are still relatively GPL incompatible. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
Complexity *is* the issue. With 15 million lines of very complex code, I would argue it would take a long time for the non-Sun kernel developers to outnumber the Sun kernel developers. Actually, given the total number of kernel developers in the world, I'd wager it will never happen. I don't know how else to explain this. So either I'm not understanding your point or you're not understanding mine. James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: With all due respect, I believe the complexity of OpenSolaris outweighs the complexity of Zebra, Quagga, XFree86, and X.org combined. And with that complexity you have the impracticality of maintaining it. Complexity is not and has never been the central issue. The central issue is building a community. Doing that involves providing certain components that we aren't actually in a position to supply today (namely: open repositories, bug tracking, and perhaps even discarding development process and/or lowering standards), but that someone else would be able to do in very short order. In other words, good enough is the enemy of the best. It's what's sustained and built many other groups for quite some time. This still turns back to the argument that Solaris is somehow above the heads of all possible open source contributors, and thus only the acolytes here can attend to its needs without having it fall to bits. With all due respect, that's bunkum. We do have a lot of smart folks, and obviously a formidable army of people working on Solaris, but in an open world we cannot (and will not) hold a monopoly on these skills forever. The history of those other forks has shown that, even if the original is seen as better in some respects, over the longer haul, that simply does not matter. That's what I meant by saying that I've seen this movie before. The hero dies in the end. -- Stephen Harpster Director, Open Source Software Sun Microsystems, Inc. ___ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you? (was Re: [Fwd: Re: [osol-discuss] GPLv3?])
OK, we're going in circles folks. I did not mean that Sun has technically superior engineers to every company out there. (Actually, I think we do, but that's not the point of this particular argument.) The point I'm trying to make is that Sun has *more* of them. It's quantity, not just quality that's the crux of the complexity argument. Go fork opensolaris.org now. Go ahead. CDDL will allow you to do that. Now try and maintain it. Fix bugs. Add features. Good luck. You can't, because no matter how many smart people you have, you don't have *enough* of them who know all the ins-and-outs of the OpenSolaris kernel well enough to maintain it. Although it's possible for you to build that team up over time, a) it will take a very long time; and b) there aren't enough kernel developers in the world, esp. those that know, or what to learn, the OpenSolaris kernel. And even if you satisfied a b, by the time your team has learned enough to maintain the kernel, the opensolaris.org kernel will have moved on to make what you've learn obsolete. It's possible, but improbable. Risk assessment and probabilities. Al Hopper wrote: On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, James Carlson wrote: Stephen Harpster writes: I did not mean to say that one group is smarter or more talented than the other. I'm simply saying that the majority of the opensolaris.org contributers work at Sun. If say, IBM, were to pony up contributers that out numbered Sun, I would be very happy indeed for it would mean that OpenSolaris was successful (and that we would have more than double the developers we have now). I'd like to know where the 420 for the IBM commitment comes from. ;-} Seriously, I think they'd have to be downright confused to contribute in a way that helps out Sun. I could have sworn that we were, at some point, in competition for similar markets. However, contributing bits that are GPL-only derivatives of our dual-licensed code would be a savvy move on their part. It'd provide them with an alternate Solaris-like environment to exploit, a fractured Solaris community, and additional anti-Sun FUD to employ. It's a big win. Agreed. Or - the same point expressed differently - it would enable them to poison the OpenSolaris project, one file at a time. And, with our requirement that all contributions are dual-licensed by the author, we'd benefit naught. Stephen Harpster writes: With all due respect, I believe the complexity of OpenSolaris outweighs the complexity of Zebra, Quagga, XFree86, and X.org combined. And with that complexity you have the impracticality of maintaining it. Complexity is not and has never been the central issue. Agreed. Complexity does *not* provide any insulation or isolatin from competitive business forces. More below. The central issue is building a community. Doing that involves providing certain components that we aren't actually in a position to supply today (namely: open repositories, bug tracking, and perhaps Agreed. even discarding development process and/or lowering standards), but ^^ Agreed with common sense reservations. that someone else would be able to do in very short order. In other words, good enough is the enemy of the best. It's what's sustained and built many other groups for quite some time. Yes - we need to concentrate on being the best and improving the project. If you really want to be the leader - you've got to run like hell and you don't even have time to look over your shoulder. This debate is a prime example of time spent looking over your shoulder This still turns back to the argument that Solaris is somehow above the heads of all possible open source contributors, and thus only the acolytes here can attend to its needs without having it fall to bits. With all due respect, that's bunkum. We do have a lot of smart folks, and obviously a formidable army of people working on Solaris, but in an open world we cannot (and will not) hold a monopoly on these skills forever. Agreed. In almost every instance where intelligent people have made (business) decisions based on the mistaken concept that they have the best brains/talent in the industry - and were somehow isolated from technical competion because of the high calibre of their in-house talent - they have lost that bet. Examples abound: - Netscape did'nt feel like they needed open review of their cryptography algorithms or its implementation (the industry norm is to solicit open review of the algorithms and the underlying implementation) and were very embarassed when someone figured out that their source of random seed data was easily second guessed - allowing a successful brute force attack with modest hardware resources because the guessed source of random data greatly reduced the scope of the required brute force attack. - Intel vs. AMD
