Sun CTO: New License Protects Developer Rights
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Ziff Davis - Greg Papadopoulos says Sun's Common Development and Distribution License is "more liberal in its IP license than even the GPL, because it gives a clear patent license and doesn't demand the same viral propagation."
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Hewlett-Packard has launched the FOSSology Project, a tool for tracking and monitoring the use of free and open-source software within an IT environment.The project stems from governance work done in-house at HP, according to the Web site set up for the project.&quot;We needed a tool that would quickly and accurately describe how a given open-source project was licensed,&quot; a statement on the site reads. &quot;Rather than simply collecting a project&#39;s advertised license (as given at their website or in their documentation), this tool needed to analyze all of the source code for a given project and intelligently report all of the licenses being used based on the license declarations and tell-tale phrases that identify software licensing.&quot;FOSSology is available under the terms of the GPL (GNU General Public License) version 2 and currently has support on most GNU/Linux platforms, according to the site.It is not clear from the site how HP plans to make money through the initiative. A company spokeswoman declined comment and said Friday that more details will be announced next week.Companies like Black Duck Software are already in the FOSS-tracking business.HP&#39;s entry brought a warm welcome from Black Duck CEO Doug Levin. Levin may feel HP&#39;s involvement will help the market expand overall. &quot;We can now officially welcome HP to our market,&quot; Levin wrote on his blog . &quot;FOSSology is a nice tool for developers. It will result in software developers being better informed about their use of GPL. That makes it a very worthy tool.&quot;Right now, the FOSSology project has modules for license analysis, MIME type identification and for extracting metadata, according to the site.The site said the tool already generates detailed results: &quot;More than simply reporting, &#39;Package X uses license Y,&#39; the FOSSology tool attempts to analyze every file within the package to determine its license. The license report is thus an aggregate of all of the different licenses found to be in use by a package.&quot;FOSSology&#39;s analyses aren&#39;t foolproof, however, a statement on the site concedes: &quot;In general, the analysis results are very good guesses but should not be considered authoritative. (Or to say it simply: We&#39;re not lawyers. The code tries its best, but leave the legal decisions up to your own attorneys.)&quot;Over time, FOSSology is meant to be far more than an open-source license tracker, according to the site. Future capabilities could address bug fixes and patches, security alerts, and code reuse, as well as analysis of all types of software.The effort prompted praise on Friday from Michael Cote, an analyst with Redmonk. &quot;It&#39;s free and open source, which is nice,&quot; Cote said. &quot;So if the data is reliable and well-fed, it could be of help for people who don&#39;t want to work with Black Duck ... and others who have commercial ways to scan for open-source licenses.&quot;&quot;The interesting thing will be to see how open the resulting data is and how much reporting people do with it,&quot; he added. &quot;There&#39;s a sort of cloudy idea of how much open source is used in the enterprise, and having more accurate, free numbers would be great for the community, and more importantly, enterprises that want to get a feel for how widely used open source software is.&quot;The availability of free open-source usage data &quot;will help people make much better -- and affordable -- decisions about what open source to use and not use,&quot; Cote said.
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Identity and access managed Sun Microsystems has become the latest infrastructure provider to express its love for smaller software partners in the form of an acquisition.â¦
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Sun announced Tuesday that it is buying Innotek, maker of VirtualBox, virtualization software that may have more value for software developers than datacenter administrators.Steve Wilson, vice president of&#160;Sun&#39;s nascent xVM virtualization line, called the purchase a &quot;huge deal&quot; for xVM and &quot;even Sun as a whole,&quot; on his official blog Tuesday. Terms of the deal to buy the German company, expected to close in Sun&#39;s fiscal third quarter, were not disclosed.&quot;VirtualBox is software designed to allow users to run multiple operating systems on top of whatever OS they currently have installed,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Whether you choose Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris as your default desktop of choice, VirtualBox will ride on top of it and allow you to &#39;host&#39; any arbitrary collection of operating system instances. Software developers everywhere are starting to discover this way of operating, and these desktop virtualization solutions are quickly becoming part of the common developer toolkit.&quot;&quot;While there are other applications that provide this capability, VirtualBox is free, open source, and supports a wide range of operating systems,&quot; Wilson added. The software has been downloaded more than 4 million times since it was released roughly one year ago, according to Sun.VirtualBox may sound similar to Sun&#39;s own xVM Server, but the two products are targeted at different markets, Wilson said. xVM Server, announced in November, is a hypervisor that installs on top of the hardware. &quot;It&#39;s a purpose-built software appliance with functionality to enable server consolidation and dynamic IT. ... This is datacenter grade virtualization,&quot; he said.In comparison, VirtualBox is &quot;a software developer&#39;s dream,&quot; he said. &quot;You can easily set up multiple virtual machines to develop and test your multitier or cross platform applications -- all on a single box. ... Where xVM Server is competitive with something like VMware ESX Server, VirtualBox is more like VMware Workstation/Fusion or Parallels Desktop.&quot;The product will continue to be free, and for strategic reasons, according to Wilson. &quot;The developers that build applications have a huge amount of influence on how they&#39;re deployed. We believe that developers using VirtualBox can help guide their friends in the data center towards xVM Server as the preferred deployment engine,&quot; he said.Sun may also look to align VirtualBox with its other developer-oriented assets, such as NetBeans and Glassfish, he said.&quot;Having a virtual lab story -- assuming it works and developers and QA like it -- is good for a developer-friendly company like Sun,&quot; said Michael Cot&#233;, an analyst with Redmonk. &quot;But I&#39;m not familiar with VirtualBox, so I don&#39;t know if it in particular is good or bad.&quot;Programmers who aren&#39;t using virtualization now ought to start, Cot&#233; said. &quot;You&#39;d have to be one of those self-flagellation types to not want virtual labs in your developer tool-chains,&quot; he said. &quot;Maintaining a bunch of physical machines is tedious. If I&#39;m a developer and I have to write software that runs on four different platforms, spread out over however many different versions of Windows, Linux distros, OS X, et cetera, all of those machines add up. And then creating &#39;fresh installs&#39; of them for testing gets worse.&quot;
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Sun Microsystems sta in effetti lavorando a un nuovo modello di licensing per Solaris, denominato Common Development and Distribution License (Cddl), e ne ha presentato le specifiche alla Open Source Initiative.
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With Sun Microsystems set to detail its plans for Solaris 10 on Monday, Sun President and COO Jonathan Schwartz spoke with Computerworld about what the company has up its open-source sleeve.
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More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.A number of corporations are moving into the free software arena, and this has resulted in legions of programmers, paid by companies, moving into free software communities, Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems said Friday at FOSS.IN, a conference on free and open-source software in Bangalore, India.This development has thrown up questions about how open-source developers on corporate payrolls can protect their freedom and rights from the demands of their employers, and resist corporate influences that may run counter to the free software community&#39;s interests.At the conference, an employee of an Indian government lab complained that his employment rules require him to turn in to the company any software developed by him, including what is done outside office hours.In this context, Danese Cooper, a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), who also advises Intel on its open source strategy, dedicated an entire session Friday at the FOSS.IN conference to outlining strategies employees can use to protect their autonomy from the &quot;corporate elephant&quot; that is both powerful and resistant to change.Historically, companies claimed rights to any software code written by their employees, but there are some changes, for example in California where employee agreements now allow the employee to retain the right to his work outside office hours, according to Cooper.&quot;Corporations are profit-driven, and are required to do well for their shareholders,&quot; Cooper said. To make profits, companies are going to shift their strategies quarterly, and employees may often find that projects they work on are cancelled, she said.&quot;Companies tend to like to think of their employees as interchangeable plug-ins, that can be renewed in different jobs,&quot; according to Cooper who added that this perception is slowly shifting as companies find that they are losing their employees.Companies also tend to want to manage open source projects, rather than facilitate them, to serve their business objectives, Cooper said. They demand, for example, that their staff work on open-source projects that are of interest to the company. Companies have created a pattern of working that lets them predict how much it is going to cost to do, and when it is going to get done, and though they have to change, it is taking them time to do it, she added.It is a lot harder to make money from offering support on open source software than from licensing software, according to Cooper. That is the reason employees should watch out for companies that have only halfheartedly embraced open source, she said. &quot;You see that specially in companies that throw code over the wall without any resource tree,&quot; she added.&quot;The open-source brand has become so powerful that people are trying to wear the brand, without wearing the behavior that goes with it,&quot; Phipps said.Employees are also likely to get caught up in ownership fights on contributions, on whether the contribution should be recognized on behalf of the employee, or the company. Even when employee contributions are recognized, it may be a figurehead rather than all the contributors that are recognized, Cooper said.The best path ahead for open source developers is to get more assertive when identifying the companies they would like to work with, and in negotiating agreements with companies that protect their rights.Employees should assert, for example, the right to blog and continue to participate in the projects they have been involved with, because these activities give them visibility beyond the company they work with, and also helps them if there is a dispute with an employer, Cooper said. &quot;Having a well-read blog is the best defense you can have against any problems you may encounter,&quot; she added.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz showed up Thursday evening at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference and declared he would not answer questions about the GNU general public license version 3, but he did disclose his lifelong fantasy concerning open source licensing. The GPLv3, which is expected to be released at noon on Friday, has been the focus of a public exchange between Schwartz and Linux creator Linus Torvalds over the future of open source licensing and the relationship between OpenSolaris and Linux. Schwartz, who briefly stopped to talk to reporters, said he wants licensing to be kept simple. "I want to get to uniform licenses for everything we do," Schwartz said. "So if you look at Sun you say 'Oh, I know you. I get you.'" Schwartz did not say which license he was considering. Sun has developed its own open source license, Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). Then he added, "One of my great fantasies in life is that the number of people with opinions on open source licenses will come roughly into balance with the number of people who have read them." "Go read the Mozilla license," he said. "It is very difficult for an international company to use it because it is for the [United States] only. What do I tell people in China? Sorry, if you have a gripe you need to come back to Santa Clara," he said with a laugh. Schwartz then took the stage and joked with the audience, thanking them for Sun's fourth-quarter revenue. He then talked about helping customers to condense their infrastructure by consolidating workloads, to run virtualized infrastructure at scale, and to develop compelling services. He singled out identity as one of those services. He then laid out Sun's position on open source software and licensing. "The core value of Sun comes down to a basic set of things," he said. "Everything we build will be built in the open source community, it will be built with a community of partners around us and, with all deference to my friends from the Linux world, under a coherent license that we can draft, ideally in concert with Linus, so we end up with a common platform and a common opportunity." "We're every way thinking to combine the communities because we think that gives us the critical mass to go after the big opportunities in the marketplace." Shortly afterward Schwartz welcomed questions from the crowd, but added "just not about GPLv3, please." Earlier this month, Torvalds used the Linux Kernel Mailing List to slam Sun in responding to a post about Sun and open source licensing: "You are making the fundamental mistake of thinking that Sun is in this to actually further some open source agenda." He then launched into a "cynical prediction" slamming Sun's licensing interests around the OpenSolaris kernel and GPLv3, and predicting Sun would use licensing to protect patents on its ZFS file system rather than make it freely and widely available to the open source community. The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2, and kernel developers have said there is little chance the Linux community would move to the new GPLv3 because it is not significantly better than GPLv2 and could take six months or more to convert all the components of the kernel. "A GPLv3-only release [of the OpenSolaris kernel] would actually let [Sun] look good, and still keep Linux from taking their interesting parts, and would allow them to take at least parts of Linux without giving anything back (ahh, the joys of license fragmentation)," Torvalds wrote. A day later, Schwartz responded on his blog in a friendly tone disputing Torvalds contention the Linux hurts Sun and saying Linux was not the enemy. Schwartz, writing on his blog, addresses Torvalds personally: "We want to work together, we want to join hands and communities -- 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. A mashup in the truest sense." Like the licensing, there also was no word Thursday night about dinner.
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Britain's National Health Service bought 5,000 licenses for Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java Desktop System as an alternative to Windows, in a move that could open the door for greater use of the open-source software by the health agency.
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Open-source advocates and industry watchers saw benefits to Sun's acquisition of MySQL that could mean greater use of open-source software in enterprise IT and more financial security to MySQL.
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A Sun Microsystems engineer chartered with directing the engineering effort to open source Solaris has published a new software license that could be used for the open-source release of Sun's Unix operating system. Though Sun is vague on details about the license, called the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), it is incompatible with Linux's software license.
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Microsoft&#39;s settlement with Sun Microsystems includes a provision explicitly preserving Microsoft&#39;s right to sue licensees of a free alternative to its dominant Microsoft Office software.
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The Apache Harmony project, serving as an Apache-branded open-source version of Java, is moving forward, but a disagreement remains with Sun over compliance testing.Predating Sun's November 2006 open-sourcing of Java, Harmony was begun in May 2005 and presents an open-source implementation of Java Platform, Standard Edition (SE) 5.0. While the subsequent Sun effort might at first glance seem to have rendered Apache's project obsolete, an Apache official sees room for more than just Sun's open-source Java."There are multiple implementations of Java and there happens to be two implementations in open source," said Geir Magnusson, a founder of the Harmony project at the Apache Software Foundation and a member of the Harmony project management committee, on Wednesday.The Apache Harmony project group announced Wednesday the availability of Harmony 5.0 Milestone 4, another step in delivering a fully compliant implementation of the Java SE 5 specification. Magnusson did not have a date for when Apache plans to release the final product. Harmony is meant for running Java programs and includes the Java Virtual Machine, a Java development kit, and class libraries.Milestone 4 features enhancements and optimizations, including full 64-bit support and JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler optimizations. The compiler takes Java byte code and turns it into native instances for the CPU, improving performance.Also added were functionality and coverage enhancements through class libraries as well as improved virtual machine threading. "What the threading does is it allows multiple code paths to execute at the same time," Magnusson said. This provides more efficient handing of Java code, he added.Apache remains in disagreement with Sun, however, over terms for a TCK (Test Compatibility Kit) to verify that Harmony is compatible with the Java specification."The license Sun is offering to Apache for the TCK, the test kit for the Java specification, prevents Apache from distributing our independent implementation under the Apache license," Magnusson said. According to Apache's interpretation of the Sun license agreement, restrictions are placed on downstream users pertaining to fields of use. Users could not implement the Java variant beyond a plain desktop system, said Magnusson.For example, using Java in a kiosk, which is a plain PC in a box, would be out of compliance, he said.Limiting Apache's distribution of its own software is unacceptable, said Magnusson. "We're stuck between a rock and a hard place," Magnusson said."Obviously, we'd like the TCK," Magnusson said.Because of this ongoing dispute, Apache lately has been voting against any JSR (Java Specification Request) that has Sun as being the specification lead. JSRs serve to amend the Java specification as part of the official JCP (Java Community Process). Sun, Apache believes, is out of compliance with the JCP because the company does not provide TCK licenses that do not inhibit how an implementation can be distributed, said Magnusson.In response, a Sun representative said Wednesday that Apache is free to use any of three options for determining Java compatibility, including a scholarship program free of charge to non-profit organizations like Apache. The representative also referred to an August blog entry from Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, which addressed the issue. Green cited Sun's choice of the GNU General Public License version 2 as root of the problem."We knew when we chose the GPL and the free software model for Java technology that we couldn't satisfy everyone's desires. This is the case for the Apache Harmony Project at the Apache Software Foundation," Green said."Sun has offered Apache Harmony a license to use the JCK (Java Compatibility Kit) and the Java Compatible logo at no charge once their implementation passes the tests, and we're even offering free support to help Apache run the JCK. But because the Apache code is not governed by the GPL and does not require code-sharing by any entity using or modifying Harmony, the terms of this license are the same terms under which Sun licenses the JCK to commercial entities that build their own independent implementations of the Java SE platform," Green said."As was made clear in their open letter to Sun, [Apache] is not satisfied with these terms," Green said."Unlike the GPL, the Apache open source license does not require innovation to remain in the open. Java technology governed by the Apache license could be altered by any organization -- commercial or non-profit -- and rendered both incompatible and inaccessible to the community. The trust and value of "Write Once Run Anywhere" could not be upheld," said Green.
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Bites into identity management In July 2005, news emerged of Sun Microsystems' first foray into open source identity management with the Open Web Single Sign-On (OpenSSO) project.â¦
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Ziff Davis - Sun's plans to offer Solaris code to the open-source community leaves some analysts scratching their heads.
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Sun is reaching out to Linux, and specially Linus Torvalds, in an effort to explain its motives in placing Solaris under GPLv3, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Wednesday.
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After being blasted by security researchers, Sun is changing the way it patches Java.