Solaris at Robert Pogson

I have not used Solaris, Sun’s UNIX species. There are rumours that Oracle will change the licensing of Solaris which SUN distributed as Free Software as OpenSolaris. Free Software licensing is not designed to allow the software to be put back in the bottle, but Oracle certainly can charge a fee for the licence, even under the GPL, if it wants. That is quite reasonable behaviour for a company that charges gazillions of dollars per CPU for the right to use a binary version of their database.

This will, however, cut out some enthusiasm in the FLOSS community to continue work on OpenSolaris. Perhaps a definite fork will result but the situation with drivers will be awkward. Manufacturers, for instance, do not want to make two drivers for two variants of Solaris. The prime motivation for SUN to open Solaris was to encourage software development on the platform ensuring more widespread adoption and quality. Oracle may well feel it can do just as well in-house. Time will tell. Perhaps Oracle will learn something or teach something in the process.

I could rush out to try OpenSolaris now, while it still lives, but I think GNU/Linux does what I need very well.

If Oracle is thinking about making a little money from Solaris, what must they imagine they can do with OpenOffice.org or MySQL? It’s all good, one way or another. Free Software is meant to be used.

Update:
Another article on this subject appeared on the same day that I wrote the above blog entry:

“Solaris Is Dead. Long Live Linux.”

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.