[advocacy-discuss] Is opensolaris 100% opensource?

[Shawn Walker]

2008/6/21 Angad Singh <angad at angadsingh.in>:
> I am posting this question here as I am a sun campus ambassador and this more or less falls into advocacy of opensolaris. I have had a recent encounter where I am having problems proving opensolaris is completely open source to a group of people.
>
> Here is the question I have been confronted with:
>
> "Is there any way that today I can get an OpenSolaris system installed,
> booted, running and doing common tasks (e.g. desktop, browsing, office,
> mail) without any proprietary binaries at all?  A simple yes or no will
> suffice.
>
> If the answer is yes, then yes, OpenSolaris is FOSS.
>
> If the answer is no, then I'm sorry, it's not FOSS (yet).  It may be
> getting there, but I personally wouldn't touch it with a barge pole."
>
> I have already explained in detail as to why and how it takes time to open up a software ecosystem like solaris and that it is 99% open.
>

The answer is currently no. Just like Java (until just recently!),
there is a small percentage of the code that is in binary form only
required to build something useable. The Emancipation CG is working
hard to replace these last few closed bits so that the system can be
completely self-hosting without any binaries.

The OpenSolaris code that has been released is FOSS.

It should be obvious that since other operating systems have
integrated technologies such as ZFS, DTrace, etc. that there is a lot
of valuable material in the code that has been released.

I would encourage anyone concerned about this issue to join the
Emancipation Community.

Cheers,
-- 
Shawn Walker