SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems gave developers a gift at the CommunityOne developer conference on Monday--a packaged version of OpenSolaris with a new logo. Now, Sun is hoping developers will return the favor by creating applications to run on the open-source version of its Solaris operating system and thus drive more demand for its servers and software.
The move is the latest in Sun's effort in the better part of a decade to regain relevance in a post-dot-com bust world by transforming into an open source player. Borrowing a trick from Microsoft and its own early successes with Java, Sun has learned that fostering a vibrant developer community, means more apps for your platform, and that theoretically translates into more hardware sales and service contracts, even if the software is free.
During the keynote at CommunityOne, Ian Murdock, who heads up Sun's operating system platform strategy, summed it up: "Sun's goal is to get the technology into as many developer hands as possible. He added, "When you need help scaling ...that's when we make our money."
Sun generally doesn't explicitly target Linux as OpenSolaris' competitive target, but in practice, it's the chief alternative, and the company hired Linux entrepreneur Murdock to spearhead its OpenSolaris effort, called Project Indiana. With OpenSolaris, Sun hopes to reproduce the success Linux had sneaking into corporate usage through developers' free downloads.
Already Intel is on board. David Stewart, an engineering manager at Intel, said his company is working with OpenSolaris on projects involving the Xeon chip, wireless, creating server functionality on a laptop, and power optimization.
AMD announced Monday it's working with Sun to make sure OpenSolaris, as well as Sun's xVM variant of the Xen virtualization software, can take advantage of features in its processors.
Over the past few years, Sun has opened up its operating system and Java Web development software, as well as begun to embrace other technologies like Java Script, PHP, Linux, and Perl. And with its CommunityOne conference, Sun is reaching out to the developer community like never before.
The conference opened with remarks from Murdock, a brief appearance by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, and a panel of open-source experts from Sun and elsewhere discussing the notion of community. Asked what role corporations should play in open-source projects, panel members said paying developers to work on open-source software benefits the larger community, but companies should tread carefully.
"Software projects fail when the company name becomes associated with the project and not the software behind it," said Jeremy Allison, who who leads SAMBA file-server software work at Google. He also complained about companies that "try and capture a project or start a project and never release it."
Meanwhile, Marten Mickos, senior vice president of Sun's database group and former chief executive of MySQL, assured the crowd that MySQL will remain open source indefinitely, despite speculation to the contrary.
But now that developers finally have a full-featured open-source operating system package to play with, will they move away from Linux, which is independent and more mature and established?
"That's the $64 billion question," said Jonathan Eunice, founder and principal IT advisor at Illuminata.
"Sun doesn't need it to be thought of as a commercial success. The trick is is it large enough to be economically interesting and viable and...self-propagating," he said. "Sun has a pretty good shot at it."
(CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.)
Ted T'so writes an excellent analysis of Sun Microsystems' attempts to build a community around its Open Solaris project. In so doing, he ends up uncovering a much larger issue: The difficulty of getting community development around projects that are hosted and serve corporations.
But first, the critique:
...(I)f you run into a Sun salescritter or a Sun CEO claiming that OpenSolaris is just like Linux, it's not. Fundamentally, Open Solaris has been released under a Open Source license, but it is not an Open Source development community. Maybe it will be someday, as some Sun executives have claimed, but it's definitely not a priority by Sun; if it was, it would have been done before now. And why not? After all, they are getting all of the marketing benefit of claiming that Solaris is "just like Linux", without having to deal with any of the messy costs of working with an outside community.
Probably fair, but let's assume that Sun really, really, really wants to have outside developers contribute to Open Solaris? What's keeping that back (other than apparently poor developer tools, which he describes). As he writes in response to Brian Akers' distinction between "sponsored" (corporate) and non-sponsored communities:
... Read more
In the latest word in a peculiarly public interchange, Linux leader Linus Torvalds appears inclined to take up Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz on his offer for dinner.
Last weekend, Torvalds expressed some "cynical" thoughts about Sun's intentions regarding its open-source Solaris operating system, which in turn led Schwartz to invite Torvalds to dinner to demonstrate Sun's intention of being a team player in the open-source realm, not a parasite.
In an interview Wednesday, Torvalds indicated he was interested in the dinner date, even given the condition Schwartz attached.
"I'm a fervent (believer and founding member) of the Free Food Foundation, and while Sun as usual has a few gotchas ('bring wine') in their licensing, it does sound like a good offer," he said.
But Sun has some work to do establishing its bona fides in Torvalds' eyes. In particular, he was clearly unhappy with how long it took Sun to make Java into an open-source project. The server and software company moved through multiple licensing regimes before finally releasing the core Java code under the General Public License (GPL), the same license that governs the Linux kernel.
"Quite frankly, if it wasn't for Java, I'd probably not be nearly as cynical," Torvalds said. "I've absolutely detested the Java licensing situation from the get-go, and a short time of being mostly open-sourced just hasn't yet had time to flush away all the bad taste of years of just stupid license shenanigans."
But Schwartz has had luck wining and dining potential adversaries in the past. As soon as Schwartz took over as CEO in 2006, his first call was to Intel CEO Paul Otellini. At that point, Sun sold x86 servers solely with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processors. But the two met over dinner and wine.
"It was a bottle of Barolo at Delfina," Schwartz said earlier, referring to the San Francisco restaurant. Now, just over a year later, Sun now sells Intel-based x86 servers.
Days after Linus Torvalds discussed the possibilities of Linux and Solaris joining forces as open-source projects, Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz has invited the Linux leader to dinner to allay his suspicions about Sun's motives.
"We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities," Schwartz wrote on his blog Wednesday. "We have no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense. And to prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner. I'll cook, you bring the wine."
Linux is governed by version 2 of the General Public License (GPL), which Torvalds considers superior so far to the GPL 3 that the Free Software Foundation is due to deliver in final form by the end of the month. Sun's OpenSolaris software--the open-source components of Solaris--is so far governed only by the Community Development and Distribution License, but Schwartz believes sees GPL 3 could let Sun "converge on a uniform license" for its open-source projects.
"We love where the FSF's GPL 3 is headed. For a variety of mechanical reasons, GPL 2 is harder for us with OpenSolaris--but not impossible, or even out of the question," Schwartz said.
That perspective shows some convergence with Torvalds' view, who said on a mailing list posting, "I don't think the GPL 3 is as good a license as (GPL) 2, but on the other hand, I'm pragmatic, and if we can avoid having two kernels with two different licenses and the friction that causes, I at least see the reason for GPL 3."
Torvalds expressed interest in one Solaris technology in particular, ZFS (the Zettabyte File System), which governs how data is stored on hard drives, with built-in features to span multiple drives and ensure data integrity. But in what he described as his "cynical" prediction, Torvalds forecast Sun would find a way to keep ZFS out of Linux.
Schwartz took pains to deny that possibility, saying Sun is "interested in seeing ZFS everywhere, including Linux, with full patent indemnity."
And more broadly, he said, "We should put the swords down--you're not the enemy for us, we're not the enemy for you."
Linux can benefit from ZFS and other Solaris software such as DTrace dynamic probe or Crossbow network virtualization, and Solaris could benefit from Linux driver software that gives it broader hardware support.
"It's not predation, it's prudence," Schwartz said. "Let's stop wasting time re-creating wheels we both need to roll forward."
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