You are living in the time near the end of the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

Does OpenSolaris fit your "Future" needs better than existing traditional products?

05 Feb 05 Monty Dickerson

Patent grants: I've read what Sun PR, Richard Stallman ?, Bruce Perens ?, and others have written about the alleged "patent grant" Sun made to the CDDL OpenSolaris (not the free or opensource) software community, and it seems clear that Sun is opening Solaris in order to lure users and developers into their corner, while reserving the right to sue the guts out of anyone who violates their patents on a GNU project not related to (or competing with) OpenSolaris.

Copyright Licensing: The CDDL ? was created for OpenSolaris; no existing software was licensed under the CDDL. It does not allow dual licensing like the MPL ?, and is incompatible with the GPL ? so source code is and must ever remain separate/isolated. No synergy, no reuse.

Initial Assessment: Relative to Closed Solaris, I believe that CDDL'ed OpenSolaris is a good thing. I do not receive it as a contribution to the F/OSS community, because it is not that. It does allow Sun customers to bugfix (and customize) as they desire. Of course its status is (as of today) vaporware ?. It appears that Sun has learned from their experience with StarOffice ?/OpenOffice.org and Closed Solaris is the StarOffice while OpenSolaris is in the role of OpenOffice.org, but subtract GPL licensing and add software patent litigation threats.

IF Solaris is/was a good then, then it is better now. But open? in letter, certainly, but in spirit, no. Does Solaris deserve to be mentioned alongside FreeBSD or Linux? No. It still belongs with the likes of HP/UX, AIX, and `Tru64. Is it useful? Sure, there are some requirements for which it (Solaris 10, not OpenSolaris) is well suited; it has a niche market.