In our SunLabs/CTO organizational All-Hands meeting this
morning I had the chance this morning to ask Rich Green
(Sun's EVP/Software) about what Sun has learned in the
last few years about licenses and open source, especially
with the recent GPL'ing of Java and this OpenSolaris thread.
His response was interesting, to say the least.

What follows is my (probably imperfect) take on his comments.

--------

o When Rich asked whether anyone thought that licensing
OpenSolaris under a version of the GPL would be a
bad thing, I was the only one in the room  of ~80 people
to raise my hand (if even only tentatively).  I'm not sure
if this says more about me or my co-workers :-)  I also
wouldn't read too much into his asking of the question.

o The open source licensing arena is not a worthwhile place
to try to innovate. It doesn't matter if your new license is
technically better, being different is almost always worse
than whatever benefits you sought to gain.  In particular,
being different means you automatically restrict the potential
audience for your code.

o One of the reasons Sun is open sourcing its software
portfolio is to get it used/reused by everyone (duh!).  As
people use it, however they use it, Sun benefits by the
association.  Sure, buying a $$million Black Box full of
Sun hardware because you really like Sun's Java Logo or
Solaris Express B56 would be one of the more valuable
associations :-), but there is also value in developers
using free downloads of Solaris Express, Schillix and
Nexenta.  And in MacOS users using DTrace.  And in Linux
distros using zfs.

o As a leader, it is not a bad thing when people follow.
In fact, it is really hard to be a leader with no followers.
As long as we continue innovating, making OpenSolaris the
best in the world, it is OK if Apple, RedHat and others
want to emulate and adapt the things we have done.  After
all, this sort of thing tends to validate and reinforce
OpenSolaris' leadership position.

o As good as the Java community was, releasing Java under
the GPL made it better.  Under the SCSL, the vibe in
the FOSS community was "Sun just doesn't get it".  With
GPL, the feedback changed to "Finally, they get it."

--------

What does this mean in the context of OpenSolaris and GPLv3?
For myself, I don't know yet.  Certainly there are potential
issues and pitfalls, but the "what ifs" make me pause:

What if OpenSolaris under GPLv3 was usable by a community
10x or 100x as large as the one we have today?  What if
every Linux distro included the core OpenSolaris technologies?
What if the FSF endorsed OpenSolaris :-)

To me, OpenSolaris is much more than a distro built from the
ON consolidation.  How much *more* it can be is really what we
are debating here.

Peace,
  -John

Background:  I've known Rich since he and I started at Sun
in '89 or so, and have worked with/for him in several positions.
He has, at various times, been in charge of Sun's compilers,
Project DOpE (Distributed Objects (pretty much) Everywhere),
Java, NetBeans, developer tools and Solaris. He is one of the
key executives driving Sun to Open Source its portfolio.  As
Executive VP/Software, he is the person who is directly
responsible for funding the majority of OpenSolaris developers.
Oh, and he is not currently in my management chain :-)


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