Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Solaris community license
Author: Edd Dumbill Posted: 10/3/1999; 7:59:04 AM Topic: Today's scriptingNews Outline Msg #: 11712 (In response to 11703) Prev/Next: 11711 / 11713
There are two sides to this issue. I think what Sun's done is a great move, but I can see why the Open Source movement doesn't want it called "Open Source".I knew of a company heavily reliant on SunOS 4. There were several bugs and inefficencies in the OS that annoyed them and got in the way of what they needed to do. One way or another they got hold of the source for the SunOS 4 and were able to recompile and fix things for their business.
Now that's going to be available for all Solaris users, and I'm sure businesses running mission-critical or specialized software on Solaris are going to be thankful. You just can't wait for the latest patch in some situations, and having the source around can often explain things better than documentation when you come up against an odd bug.
What Sun have done is responded to a business threat posed by open source operating systems like Linux: for specialized applications having the source gives your business flexibility and lessens risk in using a particular OS.
It's not totally about marketing: there's real value in what Sun have done for the Solaris user-base. Keeping source closed isn't going to give them a competitive advantage, making it available will. The license simply protects Sun's business while giving their users the advantage of the source.
This is why Eric Raymond's comment about "free labor" doesn't make sense to me -- I don't believe that's what Sun intends. They just want to make Solaris seem a safer bet by giving businesses the ability to fix problems and add specialized functionality rather than having to wait.
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