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Replies:
8
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Last Post:
Feb 5, 2007 9:10 AM
by: dclarke
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Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 4, 2007 4:16 PM
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[No Body]
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Posts:
1,218
From:
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 4, 2007 4:16 PM
in response to: Guest
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Bryan Cantrill wrote:
> It is our responsibility in
> the OpenSolaris community to not just reflect today's economics, but
> understand tomorrow's possibilities -- and to have a license that protects
> our community from the internecine feuds that have destroyed or hindered
> so many software efforts. And before anyone says it: this is _not_ about
> protecting Sun -- it is about protecting OpenSolaris. Indeed, the scenario
> under which the risk of a dual-license feud would be most grave would be
> the untimely demise of Sun Microsystems; it is exactly because we must
> protect our community against such a cataclysm that we must seriously
> consider the risks of dual-licensing.
Thanks for pointing out the risks so concisely, and a big +1.
--
Alan Burlison
--
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Posts:
372
From:
AR
Registered:
2/2/06
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 4, 2007 5:13 PM
in response to: Guest
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On 2/4/07, Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng dot sun dot com> wrote:
>
> > The Emancipation project finally does its last putback into
> > OpenSolaris/ON Build "x", replacing the last of the closed
> > binary code.
> >
> > Some enterprising team immediately forks and strips off the
> > CDDL license, making a pure GPLv3 version of OpenSolaris/ON.
> >
> > 2 weeks later, OpenSolaris/ON Build x+1 comes out
> > (or the Hg repository gate is updated or ...)
> > and the fork is a little bit out of date.
> >
> > ...repeat every 2 weeks...
> > and each time the fork gets more out of date.
> >
> > Unless everyone stopped contributing to the OpenSolaris project and
> > rehosted themselves over to the fork, the fork maintainers will be
> > forced to either ignore the OpenSolaris changes, or spend more and
> > more time resyncing their fork - neither of which is long-term
> > feasible. Sure, some would use this fork, and would be happy.
> > Good for them. Sure, this splits the community a bit, but not
> > fatally for OpenSolaris.
>
> Let me lay out a scenario that I just elucidated on Stephen O'Grady's
> blog (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/): let's say that several years down the
> track, a major competitor to Sun in the server space decides that, much to
> their regret, OpenSolaris is an option that they must not just provide, but
> also extend and develop. But the competitor doesn't want to outsource its
> OS development to Sun -- they just want to hijack OpenSolaris. A GPLv3
> dual-license allows for a devious plan: they could take the source, strip
> the CDDL, and announce that their "GPLv3-only" OpenSolaris was open to all
> comers. For good measure, they might find some of the major pain points for
> non-Sun contributors to OpenSolaris and rectify them -- by either hiring
> those contributors, or establishing great developer resources, or offering
> services based on their GPLv3-only variant. The optics are good (the
> competitor positions themselves as "liberating" OpenSolaris, perhaps even
> joyfully expressing as much in a 101 billboard or two), they get the
> technology, and they steal the momentum -- albeit at a terrible, terrible
> cost to the OpenSolaris community.
i still see no benefit in dual licensing but i'm trying to be unbiased here
isn't most of that already possible now? the only difference is that
the gplv3-only news would give them a little short lived publicity and
opensolaris would not be able to integrate their changes.
having a company that invests as much as sun does in solaris is what i
think is unlikely to happen, if they do, and they solve some serious
problems the opensolaris community has at that time, then what is the
problem? cant that happen even if we dont touch the license?. forking
is certainly possible, it has already happened, check netbsd-openbsd
and freebsd-dragonflybsd.
nacho
>
> And before you blow off the above as impossible: both the AT&T/Berkeley
> wars in the 1980s and the Linux/proprietary wars in the 1990s contain
> significant elements of the above scenario. It is our responsibility in
> the OpenSolaris community to not just reflect today's economics, but
> understand tomorrow's possibilities -- and to have a license that protects
> our community from the internecine feuds that have destroyed or hindered
> so many software efforts. And before anyone says it: this is _not_ about
> protecting Sun -- it is about protecting OpenSolaris. Indeed, the scenario
> under which the risk of a dual-license feud would be most grave would be
> the untimely demise of Sun Microsystems; it is exactly because we must
> protect our community against such a cataclysm that we must seriously
> consider the risks of dual-licensing.
>
> - Bryan
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc
> _______________________________________________
> opensolaris-discuss mailing list
> opensolaris-discuss at opensolaris dot org
>
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Joerg Schilling
Joerg.Schilling@foku...
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 5, 2007 12:39 AM
in response to: nacho
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"Ignacio Marambio Catán" <darkjoker at gmail dot com> wrote:
> i still see no benefit in dual licensing but i'm trying to be unbiased here
> isn't most of that already possible now? the only difference is that
> the gplv3-only news would give them a little short lived publicity and
> opensolaris would not be able to integrate their changes.
What do you call "short lived"?
I expect that Debian will be able to fool people with their fork from cdrtools
for about 2 years. This is something that could painfully hurt OpenSolaris,
do you believe it makes sense to become vulnerable to this type of risk?
Jörg
--
EMail:joerg at schily dot isdn dot cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
schilling at fokus dot fraunhofer dot de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Posts:
315
From:
US
Registered:
4/27/05
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 4, 2007 6:12 PM
in response to: Guest
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On 2/4/07, Bryan Cantrill <bmc at eng dot sun dot com> wrote:
>
> Let me lay out a scenario that I just elucidated on Stephen O'Grady's
> blog (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/): let's say that several years down the
> track, a major competitor to Sun in the server space decides that, much to
> their regret, OpenSolaris is an option that they must not just provide, but
> also extend and develop. But the competitor doesn't want to outsource its
> OS development to Sun -- they just want to hijack OpenSolaris. A GPLv3
> dual-license allows for a devious plan: they could take the source, strip
> the CDDL, and announce that their "GPLv3-only" OpenSolaris was open to all
> comers.
This can be done right now, without any involvement with a GPL dual
license, solely under CDDL.
This hypothetical competitor can take the current OpenSolaris, under
CDDL, set up an open development environment somewhere, and purposely
and explicitly disallow anyone who is now, or has ever been associated
with, Sun Microsystems, from participating in this new venture, under
any circumstances.
This new venture can make API and ABI incompatible changes to existing
source, they can add new source (and features) based on these
incompatible changes, thereby making it, if not impossible,
impractical to even try to merge these changes back into OpenSolaris.
This newly added source might implement features which would be
desirable in OpenSolaris. However, because of the nefarious intent of
this hypothetical competitor, these features cannot be brought back
into OpenSolaris, because it would require ABI and API breakage.
At this point there are two incompatible versions of OpenSolaris,
which can never be reconciled.
This new "WeBrokeABIWithOpenSolarisSoNeenerNeenerNeener" operating
system might even become very successful, and might even "steal
momentum from OpenSolaris". And this was done exclusively under CDDL.
What does this have to do with the GPL ?
For the record: Yes, i am a card carrying member of the Free Software
Foundation.
--Stefan
--
Stefan Teleman
KDE e.V.
stefan dot teleman at gmail dot com
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Bryan Cantrill
bmc@eng.sun.com
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 4, 2007 10:06 PM
in response to: steleman
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> >Let me lay out a scenario that I just elucidated on Stephen O'Grady's
> >blog (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/): let's say that several years down the
> >track, a major competitor to Sun in the server space decides that, much to
> >their regret, OpenSolaris is an option that they must not just provide, but
> >also extend and develop. But the competitor doesn't want to outsource its
> >OS development to Sun -- they just want to hijack OpenSolaris. A GPLv3
> >dual-license allows for a devious plan: they could take the source, strip
> >the CDDL, and announce that their "GPLv3-only" OpenSolaris was open to all
> >comers.
>
> This can be done right now, without any involvement with a GPL dual
> license, solely under CDDL.
>
> This hypothetical competitor can take the current OpenSolaris, under
> CDDL, set up an open development environment somewhere, and purposely
> and explicitly disallow anyone who is now, or has ever been associated
> with, Sun Microsystems, from participating in this new venture, under
> any circumstances.
Perhaps, but the license is still the same -- a derivative of both could
still incorporate code from both.
> This new venture can make API and ABI incompatible changes to existing
> source, they can add new source (and features) based on these
> incompatible changes, thereby making it, if not impossible,
> impractical to even try to merge these changes back into OpenSolaris.
> This newly added source might implement features which would be
> desirable in OpenSolaris. However, because of the nefarious intent of
> this hypothetical competitor, these features cannot be brought back
> into OpenSolaris, because it would require ABI and API breakage.
And again, a derivative of both could still resolve the divergence.
The problem comes when, under a dual-license, the fork becomes unresolvable
because the forks are licensed differently. Such a fork would force
each member of the OpenSolaris community to choose one or the other,
cleaving (and weakening) the community.
- Bryan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development. http://blogs.sun.com/bmc
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Posts:
1,218
From:
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 5, 2007 12:47 AM
in response to: Bryan Cantrill
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Bryan Cantrill wrote:
> And again, a derivative of both could still resolve the divergence.
> The problem comes when, under a dual-license, the fork becomes unresolvable
> because the forks are licensed differently. Such a fork would force
> each member of the OpenSolaris community to choose one or the other,
> cleaving (and weakening) the community.
This is the absolutely key point, IMHO. Here's my understanding of how
it works, please correct me if I'm wrong:
Under a single licence, the copyright holder can determine the
conditions governing any fork. Under the CDDL (and any other open
source licence I can think of) the forks may become incompatible from
the perspective of code, but they remain compatible in terms of licence,
and any suitably motivated person or group could resolve the code
divergence and merge the fork.
However in the dual-licence case, the copyright owner cedes some degree
of control of the licensing to others. Other people cannot add new
licences (only the copyright owner can do that), but they may remove a
license. Licence removal means that any code divergence between the two
halves of a fork is irreconcilable, as the licenses are incompatible.
I also believe that any GPL assembly clauses can be removed by others,
and that may have the same deleterious effect as removing a licence in
the dual-license case.
The problem with dual licensing isn't forking of the code, it's forking
of the license.
--
Alan Burlison
--
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Joerg Schilling
Joerg.Schilling@foku...
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to you?
Posted:
Feb 5, 2007 12:42 AM
in response to: steleman
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"Stefan Teleman" <stefan dot teleman at gmail dot com> wrote:
> This can be done right now, without any involvement with a GPL dual
> license, solely under CDDL.
>
> This hypothetical competitor can take the current OpenSolaris, under
> CDDL, set up an open development environment somewhere, and purposely
> and explicitly disallow anyone who is now, or has ever been associated
> with, Sun Microsystems, from participating in this new venture, under
> any circumstances.
>
> This new venture can make API and ABI incompatible changes to existing
> source, they can add new source (and features) based on these
This is most unlikely to happen as in this area people do not lose their
brain. If the same thing could be done with ideology in the background,
it will be sucessful. If there is more than one license, there is ideology.
Jörg
--
EMail:joerg at schily dot isdn dot cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
schilling at fokus dot fraunhofer dot de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
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Posts:
1,539
From:
Cobourg Ontario Canada
Registered:
4/27/05
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Re: Re: What does OpenSolaris Success look like to
you?
Posted:
Feb 5, 2007 9:10 AM
in response to: Guest
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>> Unless everyone stopped contributing to the OpenSolaris project and
>> rehosted themselves over to the fork, the fork maintainers will be
>> forced to either ignore the OpenSolaris changes, or spend more and
>> more time resyncing their fork - neither of which is long-term
>> feasible. Sure, some would use this fork, and would be happy.
>> Good for them. Sure, this splits the community a bit, but not
>> fatally for OpenSolaris.
>
> Let me lay out a scenario that I just elucidated on Stephen O'Grady's
> blog (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/): let's say that several years down the
> track, a major competitor to Sun in the server space decides that, much to
> their regret, OpenSolaris is an option that they must not just provide, but
> also extend and develop. But the competitor doesn't want to outsource its
> OS development to Sun -- they just want to hijack OpenSolaris.
< snip >
I follow this with a slightly more dramatic bit of prose at Stephen
O'Grady's blog also ( http://redmonk.com/sogrady/ ) :
Economics, commerce and greed will always destroy superior technology and
intelligence. To think that an economic shift could not destroy the
OpenSolaris community is childlike naiveté. Digital was swallowed whole by
Compaq. HP swallowed Compaq. The DEC Alpha was a vastly superior processor
at the time and it has been simply vanished from commercial existence. SGI
barely has a pulse anymore. The OS/2 operating system was superior to Window
3.1 and perhaps even Windows NT. Solaris is superior to Linux in many ways.
None of these fine technology examples will save OpenSolaris from an
economic shift. Certainly not when an open invitation to destruction is
stamped on every file.
This is the CDDL :
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing/opensolaris_license/
It is neither trivial nor without strength. It took work and thought
and careful consideration. The CDDL is our license and I see no fault
with it. If we as a *community* feel a need to revise it then we can
discuss those perceived needs.
Dennis Clarke
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