[advocacy-discuss] "What is OpenSolaris" page

[Stephen Lau]

Rich Teer wrote:
> On Tue, 6 May 2008, Sean Sprague wrote:
>
>   
>> If you wish to make Solaris a better Solaris (which is a truly laudable 
>> goal), then persevere with opensolaris - I guess that there are still 
>> plans to allow some external opensolaris developers to be able to make 
>> direct putbacks into the codebase at some point in the future; and as 
>> such, you will be able to contribute directly to opensolaris, and 
>> ultimately through the relevant processes/procedures, into Solaris. 
>> Where/if/how this has any relevance to OpenSolaris, I do not know...
>>
>> Conversely everything could be completely up in the air with regards 
>> eventual external contributions to opensolaris/OpenSolaris/Solaris. This 
>> is for others to comment on.....
>>     
>
> ISTR vague references recently by Sun management that they're considering
> dual-licensing ZFS with the GPL.  As the copytight owner, that's their
> entitlement, though I think it is a really dumb idea (if the Linuxites
> want ZFS, let them change THEIR license). 
It's not clear to me that that's the best strategy.  For years, Solaris 
has had the mindset of "We're superior to Linux, let them wake up and 
come to us", and it's had its marketshare eroded away year after year 
after year.  While tactics and strategy have changed with the shift from 
an opensolaris.org project to the OpenSolaris/Indiana distro, one thing 
that hasn't changed is that the entire project has been about bringing 
the OpenSolaris technologies out and making it available to others.  
Whether that's via open sourcing code, creating a new distribution, or 
(re-)licensing.

While I'm opposed to dual-licensing (purely because of the risk of a 
licensed-induced fork), I look at it this way:
I don't care about whether the Linuxites want ZFS.  Do I want ZFS on 
Linux?  Sure I do.  More platform support means more support and 
strength and more eyes on the filesystem code. 
>  One assigns certain rights to
> Sun when one contributes code to OpenSolaris: I wonder if those rights
> include the ability to relicense said code?  There's no way I'd allow
> anything I contribute to be licensed under the GPL.  The CDDL is just
> fine, thank you very much
Yup - that's exactly what the contributor agreement is.  Sun can 
relicense said code.

cheers,
steve

-- 
stephen lau | stevel at opensolaris.org | www.whacked.net