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OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

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Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#41

Post by mprovost »

nailer wrote: post #22
barrkel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Nexenta, which uses the Solaris kernel, but with a Debian server-style userland, as a NAS. If ZFS were on Linux, I too would switch to it. Straight Solaris is like travelling back in time in comparison to the usual GNU userland, and while it's got nicely integrated ideas - like the services, logging and monitoring, etc., - the cost of being in a less mainstream branch is reasonably high. At least with Nexenta,…

Wait a year or two - RHEL 6 has btrfs (copy on write with btrees) in tech preview now.

btrfs is also an Oracle project.

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#42

Post by spudlyo »

kls wrote: post #33
ax0n wrote: post #11

I've been following this for a while. OpenSolaris, VirtualBox and MySQL are all things I was worried about surviving in the wake of Oracle's takeover. I use all three quite a bit.

I don't think you have anything to worry about virtualbox, virtualization and cloud computing are now instrumental to growth. Oracle did not have a comprehensive strategy. With VirtualBox it gives them a jump start on building a roadmap to one. The other two, yeah they are in trouble. I was worried about Netbeans and Glassfish before the acquisition because it is the most rapid way to develop in Java and the best sol…

I don't think MySQL is in trouble. The MySQL community is strong, and innovation from the likes of Google, Percona, Facebook, and others has been just as important as of late than anything that Sun/Oracle/Innobase has done. There are plenty of ways that MySQL can succeed even if Oracle were to completely abandon it.

I don't worry about MySQL at all.

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#43

Post by illumin8 »

melling wrote: post #19

(Open)Solaris died a few years ago. It has got some great features like Zones and ZFS, and it's still very stable. However, they lost the hearts and minds of almost everyone. I used OpenSolaris for a few months as my desktop. They don't have the package support of Linux, or the large community. Gotta remember to get GNU Make before Sun's Make in PATH, Gnu sed before Sun's, or was the other way around, Perl CPAN modul…

I went to an OpenSolaris users group last year. They were talking about new network features like being able to assign sub-interfaces to different zones. Stuff that VMware ESX had available for years. I was thoroughly unimpressed. The concept of Zones or FreeBSD jails has some appealing aspects; not needing to load multiple kernels in memory, for example, but by this time, Hypervisors such as VMware that deduplicate memory blocks pretty much negate any advantage Zones/Jails once had.

ZFS definitely has some potential though. I hope it will be released under a more liberal license that will allow a direct Linux kernel module as opposed to fuse support.

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#44

Post by patrickgzill »

ratcliffco wrote: post #28
melling wrote: post #19

(Open)Solaris died a few years ago. It has got some great features like Zones and ZFS, and it's still very stable. However, they lost the hearts and minds of almost everyone. I used OpenSolaris for a few months as my desktop. They don't have the package support of Linux, or the large community. Gotta remember to get GNU Make before Sun's Make in PATH, Gnu sed before Sun's, or was the other way around, Perl CPAN modul…

But why now? There must have been a good reason for Sun to continue developing their own UNIX variant. I can understand the value-add coming from ZFS, but why having to maintain your own kernel? They could have built their own Linux/BSD distribution with ZFS and any other Sun-branded additions. I guess my question is not "why now" but rather "why not 5 years ago". I don't really know much about Solaris, just trying t…

Even now, Solaris has a far superior VM subsystem and is better performing with multi-thread operations (IMHO).

However my company is going to move away from Solaris to Linux because Oracle is simply not trustworthy (I won't say "IMHO" because it is pretty much a fact).

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#45

Post by zts »

rbanffy wrote: post #39
bensummers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it would have to be a different name. However, if there were a sufficient community around it, this would not be a problem. But because it's so driven by Sun, and they never really managed to build an active community, there is no one who would naturally start using the forked OS.

The community around it is not sufficient. The license prevents borrowing code from Linux. It can, however, borrow BSD code. But not even that would be enough to keep it alive and evolving.

I'm sure I'll get knocked for this (again), but if you want to pick nits, it's the GPL that prevents the commingling, not the CDDL.

Why not just say that the licenses are incompatible?

That's the simple truth, and that's not a slight on either of them.

The real problem here is that there doesn't appear to be an OpenSolaris development community outside of Sun^WOracle. It's much like Mozilla in its early days, though with an even smaller chance of success. Mozilla's competitive landscape was devoid of credible open-source alternatives - that's not the case for OpenSolaris.

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#46

Post by rbanffy »

zts wrote: post #45
rbanffy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community around it is not sufficient. The license prevents borrowing code from Linux. It can, however, borrow BSD code. But not even that would be enough to keep it alive and evolving.

I'm sure I'll get knocked for this (again), but if you want to pick nits, it's the GPL that prevents the commingling, not the CDDL. Why not just say that the licenses are incompatible? That's the simple truth, and that's not a slight on either of them. The real problem here is that there doesn't appear to be an OpenSolaris development community outside of Sun^WOracle. It's much like Mozilla in its early days, though…

Fair enough. Linux also can't borrow code from OpenSolaris. I would love to have ZFS on Linux.

Anyway, it was Sun who raised the possibility of licensing OpenSolaris under GPLv3 (that would still prevent Sun from borrowing lots of Linux code and Linux from borrowing any Sun code, but it would, at least, be a start) not the Linux folks who considered re-licensing Linux under a CDDL-friendly license, hence the "unidirectional" slant of my post.

As for the community and Sun^WOracle's contributions, Oracle has made it clear that they would follow an open-core model for the OS.

That's really sad, IMHO, but predictable. Ellison is nicer than Gates and way cooler, but it doesn't make him a particularly nice guy who wants to share.

BTW, I think the copyright fragmentation you see in Linux is one of its strengths. When you contribute a patch to OpenSolaris, do you retain its copyright or you transfer it to whoever controls OpenSolaris?

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#47

Post by zts »

rbanffy wrote: post #46
zts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I'll get knocked for this (again), but if you want to pick nits, it's the GPL that prevents the commingling, not the CDDL. Why not just say that the licenses are incompatible? That's the simple truth, and that's not a slight on either of them. The real problem here is that there doesn't appear to be an OpenSolaris development community outside of Sun^WOracle. It's much like Mozilla in its early days, though…

Fair enough. Linux also can't borrow code from OpenSolaris. I would love to have ZFS on Linux. Anyway, it was Sun who raised the possibility of licensing OpenSolaris under GPLv3 (that would still prevent Sun from borrowing lots of Linux code and Linux from borrowing any Sun code, but it would, at least, be a start) not the Linux folks who considered re-licensing Linux under a CDDL-friendly license, hence the "unidire…

That's fair - Sun at least had the option of relicensing (given that the required contributors to sign an IP agreement).

FWIW, it saddens me to watch Solaris stumbling towards its grave. Remaining available only on hardware sold by Oracle renders it worthless to me.

I can't make that shift now, which means that I need to build my own credible alternatives to using Solaris. And when I am in a position where I could afford Solaris on Oracle hardware, I won't be so inclined - because I'll have my homebrew alternatives, and a bitter taste in my mouth.

So it goes.

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#48

Post by rbanffy »

bitwize wrote: post #40

That's a threat?! Larry Ellison: "Uh, sure, we'll get right back to you on that." [Larry alt-tabs back to his word processor with a draft of his Solaris Developer Trial licensing plan: foree for 30 days followed by a $9000-per-seat licensing fee]

Larry may not be the nicest guy around, but he's no idiot. He just spent a ton of money on Sun and something like this would put that much more momentum behind commodities he cannot control (like Linux)

Re: OpenSolaris governing board threatens dissolution

#49

Post by adbge »

I installed FreeBSD a couple weeks back just so I could play around with ports and ZFS. Getting ZFS to work with the bootloader is kind of a pain (should be fixed in FreeBSD-9, I'm hoping) but otherwise I was blown away by just how intuitive ZFS is to use and how ridiculously powerful. ZFS was introduced in 2005(!) and I'm still amazed by how far ahead of the pack it is. It's really a damn shame that we can't get ZFS into the Linux kernel because of licensing.
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