Many open source developers remain sceptical of Sun because their memories of the company focus on Sun's interactions with the community in 2001/2002, which Sun's chief open source officer Simon Phipps concedes was a period where Sun "screwed up".
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Speaking in a recent interview with Builder AU, Phipps explained the situation in which Sun finds itself.
"Open source developers have been much more sceptical of Sun, a lot of open source developers don't remember the fact that Sun was pretty much the first open source start-up in 1982.
"All they can remember is what happened in 2001/2002 when, to be quite frank with you, we screwed up. We alienated a large group of open source developers by the attitudes we had of the community back then," said Phipps.
In order to remedy the alienation, Phipps said Sun is "leading by changing behaviour rather than by just saying good words".
Most of Sun's software portfolio has shown the company's commitment to open source and begun to heal the rift, says Phipps.
"We've open sourced Java [...] and people see that and they say 'wow, you've GPLed Java, you must be serious!'
"That has meant that a lot of open source developers have been willing to take a second look at Sun and give us credit for open sourcing Solaris, Java, the application server Glassfish, NetBeans and the rest of the portfolio," he added.
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DannyB - 25/06/08
I was a proponent of OpenOffice.org. I wasn't skeptical of Sun because their interaction with the community in 2001/2002. I was skeptical of Sun because of their interaction with SCO in 2003.
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cankles - 25/06/08
Simon looks a bit like Obi-Wan Kenobi in these videos.
Use the source, Luke. Use the source....
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C3PIO - 25/06/08
"...These are not the software licenses you are looking for..."
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I Like Vista - 26/06/08
So what exactly is the benefit here? They put it out, and what do they get back in? A few random coders that do not understand the big picture? A bunch of angry folks demanding this and that all day long?
Anyone that has delt with the OSS community knows what a pain it is and just how little you get back for what you put in/offer.
Large projects outside of a corporate structure do not work. Period. Open source / gpl is where they al go to die.
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dm1po - 26/06/08
direct link
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Vista_nonsense - 26/06/08
In response to "I Like Vista" comment. => Utter nonsense.
If Open Source (under GPL) is where they go to die, then explain why Linux is being used everywhere and actively being maintained 24/7 by a world wide collaboration of coders? (This isn't done by a few random coders, but also by paid employees of IBM, Intel, etc, etc. Check the code contributions yourself to confirm). This is a VERY large project outside of corporation hierarchy...And it works.
Its the 21st Century. We're moving from the Iron Age to the Information Age. The closed model of the iron age is becoming obsolete. Instead of ruling over someone, why not offer something so that you can collaborate in order for all to benefit?
Sun MicroSystems (and companies like them), see great potential in opening up something....Wider adoption, lower cost, innovation and flexibility.
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Anonymous Coward - 26/06/08
What makes anyone think Sun now "gets" Open Source - the two
key things about it are "Open" and "Source" - lets take Source: making decisions that are in the best interest not of yourself: but the project and it's source code: does Sun do that: no, it treats
OpenSource as a marketing veneer. Consequently, others are not welcome to join it's projects except on contorted terms. Secondly "Open" - eg. take "Open"Office - the rapacious Sun ownership requirements, and total Sun strangulation of the project are an un-addressed blot on the landscape. Kohei's Solver is still not integrated. Worse - in this case Sun does not have the courage to state it's intentions publicly but deceitfully hides behind spin and jargon: 'community guidelines' when the community simply doesn't exist. Sun has a -huge- amount to truly learn about Open-Source - though Simon is clearly a smiling, bearded, winsome marketing guy.
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George Posten - 27/06/08
Sun, I applaud you! Keep it up.
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Sum Yung Gai - 28/06/08
I'm still sceptical about Sun for the following reasons:
1.) funding SCO in 2003,
2.) using that CDDL for "Open"Solaris instead of Linux-compatible GPL,
3.) their repeated and prolonged attacks from 2001-2004 against Red Hat,
4.) cozying up to Microsoft several times (most recent in 2004),
5.) dropping out of both the US and European antitrust suits against Microsoft, and
6.) their repeated attempts in recent years to act like the above "just didn't happen."
Sun needs to come totally clean. It hasn't. *That* is why many developers are still sceptical. Even Linus is still wary of the company.
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Phobos - 29/06/08
@Sam Yung Gai
Linus is wary of everything besides himself and his ego.
1.) they did pay SCO money... but Sun did need those x86 they licensed from SCO at the time... and besides, without this deal, they could not have done the open sourcing solaris deal they did at a later time
2.) the GPL is the one that is not compatible with the CDDL... and a lot of many other open source licenses. Why doesn't people bother Linus to change Linux code to GPLv3 and solve many problems that exist while using the GPLv2 instead?... (Linus has stated that if Sun released OpenSolaris as GPLv3, he would do the same with Linux to get ZFS, DTrace and loot everything else he wants)
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Ubuntu Warrior - 01/07/08
The open source community is in serious need of corporate backing and hopefully Sun can step up and fill those shoes. On the other hand it has a lot of work to do to convince the community that its intentions are honourable and for the advancement of the cause and not to make a buck. Yes, the two are not mutually exclusive but we need more profit-focused corporates to lean a bit more in the direction of open source and software freedom.
"Linux takes wisdom, foresight and guts!" Mike Kovacevich
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Sum Yung Gai - 02/07/08
That's kinda the point, Phobos. Sun cut a deal with a devil (SCO) to "sorta" open source "OpenSolaris". Sun saw yet another possible way to attack Linux and, like Microsoft, funded SCO to do it.
Speaking of "open sourcing" OpenSolaris, Sun did it very specifically under a GPL-incompatible license. Danese Cooper made that very, very clear at DebConf 2006, and Simon Phipps, who was on the same stage with her, agreed, much to his and Sun's embarrassment. I have the video of them saying this.
And Linus has not stated that he *would* put Linux under GPLv3. He said that if he *somehow could* do it (which he can't), then he might think about it. But he also pointed out that it'd be essentially impossible to put Linux under GPLv3 at this point, due to the thousands of contributors that would have to sign off on that.
Now, care to address points 3, 4, 5, and 6?
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Phobos - 02/07/08
@Sum Yung Gai
"Speaking of "open sourcing" OpenSolaris, Sun did it very specifically under a GPL-incompatible license. Danese Cooper made that very, very clear at DebConf 2006, and Simon Phipps, who was on the same stage with her, agreed, much to his and Sun's embarrassment. I have the video of them saying this."
it's funny, but I thought Open Source was able to handle competition better... or is it that Linux can't compete with Solaris and all the linuxtards have to attack Sun for wanting to maintain a high coding standard in their products?
notice that ZFS and DTrace are incorporated in Mac OS X (proprietary OS).... they are also being (or already, I can't really tell at this moment) ported to FreeBSD (Open Source OS) and included in it's 8th version... meaning that the only one that really has issues with CDDL is Linux... and even after that, there have been talks between Jeff Bonwick (ZFS' creator) and Linus Torvalds... what they talked about is still speculation, but everything points towards a GPL'd ZFS in the near future...
"And Linus has not stated that he *would* put Linux under GPLv3. He said that if he *somehow could* do it (which he can't), then he might think about it. But he also pointed out that it'd be essentially impossible to put Linux under GPLv3 at this point, due to the thousands of contributors that would have to sign off on that."
surely, you don't really believe that would be a problem for him... contributors agreements are a non-issue
"Now, care to address points 3, 4, 5, and 6?"
Sure.
"3.) their repeated and prolonged attacks from 2001-2004 against Red Hat"
Red Hat is a competing company for Sun... there's ALWAYS tension between competing companies.... Sun and Red Hat have also worked together at various points, some of the latest including work on OpenJDK and virtualization agreements...
"4.) cozying up to Microsoft several times (most recent in 2004)
5.) dropping out of both the US and European antitrust suits against Microsoft"
same as before, Microsoft is everyone's biggest partner.... yes, you can try to compete with Microsoft (Sun offers OpenSolaris, Java, Star/OpenOffice, MySQL, xVM/Virtualbox... competing with Microsoft's Windows Server, .NET, MS Office, MSSQL Server, Hyper-V/Virtual PC... note that all of Sun's products are open source too... and all of them are used in GNU/Linux too... particularly, by Sun's competitors Red Hat and Novell), but alienating Microsoft and their users, means to alienate the vast majority of your potential clients
"6.) their repeated attempts in recent years to act like the above "just didn't happen.""
so, what do you want them to do?... un-pay SCO?... drop any talks with Microsoft?... they have admitted they did wrong, they are showing a change of heart, what else do they have to do?
they have been trying to forget their old ways and adopt open source... are you willing to let them try or are you going to keep bringing up the old thorns?... what other company the size of Sun has adopted open source?... do you see IBM's AIX as open source?... how about HP's HP-UX?... yes, IBM sells Linux... when it's good for their business... otherwise, they don't... IBM could have supported OpenOffice.org... but instead, they decided to make a closed source version based on all source code...IBM still sell their AIX as part of their core offerings for critical systems... AIX is fully proprietary... OpenSolaris with all it's technical advances is open source... who do you support?
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Phobos - 02/07/08
Just adding to my previous post:
-Aside from Bonwick's chat with Linus, ZFS is being ported to FUSE FS
-There is a recect port of DTrace to Linux (ftp://crisp.dynalias.com/pub/release/website/dtrace/ )... it still has a long road ahead, but it's much better than waiting and expecting for SystemTap to do the same as DTrace..
-DTrace has been ported to FreeBSD 8 and backported to FreeBSD 6 and 7 ( http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/dtrace-discuss/2008-June/006268.html )... accompanied with much deserved thanks to Sun for releasing DTrace as Open Source
-ZFS port to FreeBSD is ongoing because it had to be restarted at one point
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Sum Yung Gai - 03/07/08
Well, while you momentarily devolved into name calling, which is inappropriate, you at least did respond, which is more than I expected (and I do appreciate it).
"it's funny, but I thought Open Source was able to handle competition better... or is it that Linux can't compete with Solaris and all the linuxtards have to attack Sun for wanting to maintain a high coding standard in their products?"
"Linuxtards", eh? I didn't know you were going to devolve to name calling. It means you must not have much of a case. Keep it civil.
While high coding standard is certainly important (Linux dev team's is exceedingly high, for example), the issue at hand is a licensing issue, not a coding standard issue. CDDL was chosen *specifically* to be GPL-incompatible, long after Linux had already become a runaway success. Just Google for the video about DebConf 2006, watch it (especially starting from the 26th minute), and you'll see what I mean.
"surely, you don't really believe that would be a problem for him... contributors agreements are a non-issue"
Umm...surely you're aware of something called "copyright law" which makes it a definite issue. It is illegal to violate someone's copyright. Period.
'"3.) their repeated and prolonged attacks from 2001-2004 against Red Hat"'
"Red Hat is a competing company for Sun... there's ALWAYS tension between competing companies.... Sun and Red Hat have also worked together at various points, some of the latest including work on OpenJDK and virtualization agreements..."
What you've said here is certainly correct. What you're leaving out is the set of blatant lies that Sun spewed about RH, especially the bit about RHEL being proprietary. That's just plain wrong, as the existence of CentOS proves.
'"4.) cozying up to Microsoft several times (most recent in 2004)
5.) dropping out of both the US and European antitrust suits against Microsoft"'
"same as before, Microsoft is everyone's biggest partner.... yes, you can try to compete with Microsoft (Sun offers OpenSolaris, Java, Star/OpenOffice, MySQL, xVM/Virtualbox... competing with Microsoft's Windows Server, .NET, MS Office, MSSQL Server, Hyper-V/Virtual PC... note that all of Sun's products are open source too... and all of them are used in GNU/Linux too... particularly, by Sun's competitors Red Hat and Novell), but alienating Microsoft and their users, means to alienate the vast majority of your potential clients"
You addressed point 4 somewhat (but not totally) accurately. I'll point out that Sun didn't "provide" MySQL. Sun just recently bought MySQL AB which was phenomenally successful for years before then. Not all of Sun's products are open-source, either (e. g. StarOffice), and certainly not all of them (e. g. Solaris itself) are used in GNU/Linux. But several products, like OpenOffice.org (incredibly important product), Java (finally truly Freed as of this week!), and several protocols such as NFS, are indeed used in GNU/Linux and the BSD's. So I'll give you this one, because I think we basically agree that Sun is a big FOSS contributor and has been for some time.
The problem here is what we've recently learned, thanks to the Novell/SCO trial's recent testimony, that Sun kept quiet with regard to a very important point. SCO effectively gave Sun carte-blance to open-source UNIX SVR4, which is why Sun could open-source so much of "OpenSolaris". Meanwhile, SCO was threating Linux users for the alleged use of that same UNIX SVR4 code. So, Sun *knew* that SCO's confidentiality clause about SVR4 was blown to bits...but didn't say a damned word. *That* is the kind of cozying up to Microsoft (through their proxy, SCO) that is reprehensible.
Point 5 is still outstanding, though. Sun basically got bought off big time to jump out of doing the right thing. They should've stayed in the suit and said, "hey, European Commission, we will not go to Canossa, we're with you, Microsoft must be reined in and we'll actively back that." Instead, they sold out, right along with Real and some others. The only ones who wouldn't sell out were the Samba team, who blasted Microsoft's little bubble in court (Andrew Tridgell, especially). But...no Sun.
'"6.) their repeated attempts in recent years to act like the above "just didn't happen."'
"so, what do you want them to do?... un-pay SCO?... drop any talks with Microsoft?... they have admitted they did wrong, they are showing a change of heart, what else do they have to do?"
Well, since you bring it up, they actually could help to "un-pay SCO" by supporting Novell more actively in the current Novell-SCO trial. That money that SCO got from Sun and Microsoft has been judged to belong to Novell, not SCO. Come on, Sun, where are you? Where's that amicus curiae filing when we need it?
But what I really hope Sun does, from Jonathan Schwartz down (not just Simon), is finally just acknowledge their past mistakes, openly and honestly. Just come clean, that's all, don't try to whitewash. The only thing that can come from Sun trying to hide those "old thorns" is pricking new skin.
Sun has made great contributions to Free Software. You and I both have mentioned several. But they act so schizophrenic about it sometimes, a whole lot of people who matter more than either of us aren't really sure which way Sun really wants to go! Just pick a direction and *be consistent* with it. That's what made MySQL, Red Hat, JBoss, and others the successes that they became.
And as for who I support...I support the FSF, the Linux dev team, the OpenBSD dev team, and others like them. And I thank Sun for their important contributions.
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Phobos - 04/07/08
""Linuxtards", eh? I didn't know you were going to devolve to name calling. It means you must not have much of a case. Keep it civil."
I'm sorry, but you're not the first person I have found under this same situation... when the points are brought to the table, everything ends up being that they hate Sun just because they won't eat Linux and wish to keep Solaris... Linux is not the answer to everything and everyone, like they believe, and this ends up being tiring to explain every time...
"While high coding standard is certainly important (Linux dev team's is exceedingly high, for example), the issue at hand is a licensing issue, not a coding standard issue."
I think we define "high" differently.
for me "high" is when something is designed, via proper engineering and only after the best design is complete, you develop it.
hack over hack and breaking API constantly is certainly no high coding standard.
"CDDL was chosen *specifically* to be GPL-incompatible, long after Linux had already become a runaway success."
"success" is also relative. GNU is a clear success, a paradigm shifter... Linux is a hack under it.
"Umm...surely you're aware of something called "copyright law" which makes it a definite issue. It is illegal to violate someone's copyright. Period."
I meant it was a non-issue because agreements are doable... not because he could break the authors copyrights.
"What you've said here is certainly correct. What you're leaving out is the set of blatant lies that Sun spewed about RH, especially the bit about RHEL being proprietary. That's just plain wrong, as the existence of CentOS proves."
CentOS is not RetHat. CentOS is based on RH Enterprise Linux source code, but it has nothing to do with RH the company.
CentOS was started in 2004, after your defined time set (2001-2004).
RHEL is effectively sold as a binary, proprietary operating system... you just happen to be able to find the source codes too and compile them yourself (thus, CentOS)
sometimes lies are part of the business.... you can check Novell's documents comparing their SLES with Solaris and with much more than one lie in them.... why don't you attack Novell accordingly?
Microsoft lies too about RHEL... no news there...
yes, it is wrong... but that's the way old school companies worked... that's the 90's ideology, following Microsoft's example... Sun has changed in that area too... Sun embraces competing companies as their partners now... in example, I can list Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, HP, EMC, VMware, RedHat, Novell, Canonical, Oracle.... and so on
"You addressed point 4 somewhat (but not totally) accurately. I'll point out that Sun didn't "provide" MySQL. Sun just recently bought MySQL AB which was phenomenally successful for years before then."
you don't consider a $1 billion inversion to be relevant enough for an open source project?
I never stated that they invented MySQL, I said it's on their portfolio now... and it's part of their offerings.
"Not all of Sun's products are open-source, either (e. g. StarOffice)"
and not all of them need to be... even with that, they have shown that they want to open source everything they have
"and certainly not all of them (e. g. Solaris itself) are used in GNU/Linux."
I wanted to write that, but I forgot to... it should be obvious enough from a point of view... but thinking about it a little, remember that DTrace and ZFS are part of Solaris, so if the port of those pieces to GNU/linux succeed, Solaris would actually be used in GNU/Linux
"The problem here is what we've recently learned, thanks to the Novell/SCO trial's recent testimony, that Sun kept quiet with regard to a very important point. SCO effectively gave Sun carte-blance to open-source UNIX SVR4, which is why Sun could open-source so much of "OpenSolaris". Meanwhile, SCO was threating Linux users for the alleged use of that same UNIX SVR4 code. So, Sun *knew* that SCO's confidentiality clause about SVR4 was blown to bits...but didn't say a damned word. *That* is the kind of cozying up to Microsoft (through their proxy, SCO) that is reprehensible."
The case existed, the proof was out there... it was Novell's lawyers job to take that information and input it in the trial, not Sun's... they didn't participate in that trial, but did they really needed to?
correct me if I'm wrong, but the confidentiality bits weren't really blown away, Sun got a license to do so... but others didn't
"Point 5 is still outstanding, though. Sun basically got bought off big time to jump out of doing the right thing. They should've stayed in the suit and said, "hey, European Commission, we will not go to Canossa, we're with you, Microsoft must be reined in and we'll actively back that." Instead, they sold out, right along with Real and some others. The only ones who wouldn't sell out were the Samba team, who blasted Microsoft's little bubble in court (Andrew Tridgell, especially). But...no Sun."
Sun joined the EU case in 1998... Novell was at it since a couple of years earlier... without their support, today's result would hardly have been achieved
and... Sun is still part of the EU commission
"Well, since you bring it up, they actually could help to "un-pay SCO" by supporting Novell more actively in the current Novell-SCO trial. That money that SCO got from Sun and Microsoft has been judged to belong to Novell, not SCO. Come on, Sun, where are you? Where's that amicus curiae filing when we need it?"
don't you think it's a little ironic that just a little before that you said: "*That* is the kind of cozying up to Microsoft (through their proxy, SCO) that is reprehensible."... what about the Novell/Microsoft deals?... what about Novell's sellout to MS?... doesn't Novell looks like the new SCO now?... why would anyone support them?
"Sun has made great contributions to Free Software. You and I both have mentioned several. But they act so schizophrenic about it sometimes, a whole lot of people who matter more than either of us aren't really sure which way Sun really wants to go! Just pick a direction and *be consistent* with it. That's what made MySQL, Red Hat, JBoss, and others the successes that they became."
I feel their direction is pretty consistent... they have been very diligent in open sourcing everything they can... they have done good so far, but that is not something you can do in a couple of days... they point towards a service-delivering company, not a software-selling one... that model is long overdue...
but, as I said earlier, GNU/Linux is not the single solution to everything... not everyone must use GNU/Linux... and I can't wait for the day when people actually realize this...
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Daniel Gara - 05/07/08
At least he admitted it. What more can one ask for?
Daniel Gara
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