On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 11:15:59PM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote: > <quote who="Scott Howard"> > > > It's kinda like Linux, only suits choose it first, and it's proprietary. It > > In what way is Solaris proprietary? > > There aren't any free software licenses on this page: > http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/licensing.html
You must have missed the bit on tha page which says "Free Solaris[sm] Binary License Program" > Realistically, Sun would have a very difficult time freeing the Solaris > source due to the amount of non-Sun code therein (not to mention the > business end of the proposition). Ohh.. you want the _source_? No problems, but you'll need a different URL http://www.sun.com/solaris/source/ will point you in the right direction. Sure, Solaris isn't "Open Source" based on most of the weird and wonderful definitions of that term that people come up with, but last I looked not being Open Source did not imply something was proprietary. Solaris is not proprietary by any definition I'm aware of. It follows all relevant RFC's (and whats more, I believe Sun have been involved in the writing of more RFC's than any other single company), has open, published interfaces to most everything, and has published (if a little outdated) source code available. > > Sun will _not_ be replacing CDE with Gnone anytime soon, and most likely > > not ever. They _will_ be including Gnone in addition to CDE in one of the > > Solaris 9 maintenance updates > > CDE didn't 'replace' OpenWindows, although it did become the default. The > same will go for GNOME (should it be released in a timely fashion). Well given that my Solaris 9 box has CDE and no openwindows, I'd say that CDE did replace openwindows. CDE is a different matter. Solaris is SVR4 complaint, and CDE is a part of that compliance. The only way Sun will drop CDE is either if they also drop SVR4 (very unlikely), or if SVR4 drops CDE (slightly less likely, but still very unlikely). Note that I haven't said at any point that Solaris is better than Linux, or that Linux is better than Solaris. As at today both OSes have their place - although this may obviously change in the future. If you want to run a machine with 20 processes, Solaris is your OS. If you want to run a small cheap file/web/proxy server, then Linux is the way to go. If you want something between these two, then the solution will vary... Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go back to running rc5-64 on my 20x 750Mhz US3 processor Solaris box (25.6 million keys/sec day before yesterday...) Scott -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
