Eric Boutilier

Systems Administrator, OpenSolaris Engineering

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Dual licensing -- GPLv3 and CDDL -- of OpenSolaris

Wednesday Feb 07, 2007

Having been on vacation and away from the internet last week, I desperately needed a hyper-distilled way to grok the pros/cons of the dual-licensing debate. I found exactly that by reading the comments section on sogrady's blog entry. Which means I now think the debate boils down to just this:

a. How big would the community gain be...

vs.

b. How likely and damaging would a license-based fork be...

Regarding b, I think it is very likely and extremely severe.

Regarding a, I think the potential for community gain is a big fat red herring. Why? Despite widespread noise to the contrary, the vast majority (i.e. >95%) of Linux and *BSD professionals and other users are simply too practical to be license zealots. (The problem is their numbers are hard to measure because they don't blog, slashdot, etc. about their non-zealotry. Why should they?)

In other words, almost all computer professionals and students, except a tiny loud minority, are not anti-CDDL. So I think community gain would be much smaller than Stephen O'Grady thinks it would be.

[7] Comments

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Posted at 12:33PM Feb 07, 2007 by Eric Boutilier in OpenSolaris
Tags: articles gpl opensolaris

Comments:

Isn't democracy grand? its not until it is really in your face detrimental hurting you or your immediate family that most people will stand up to be counted. fortunately this isnt a war situation.

Posted by MikeTLive on February 07, 2007 at 01:15 PM CST #

Mike --

Regarding standing up to be counted as a non license zealot:

The countless meetings and discussions I had with customers during my 3 years as a feet-on-the-street Sun sales engineer and 3 years in Solaris product marketing showed me that 99% of computer professionals are very similar to how I was during the 10 years before that -- a practical, UNIX/Perl-hacking IT professional whose priorities at work, home, or play left little room for being an activist in sys admin politics.

Posted by Eric Boutilier on February 07, 2007 at 01:35 PM CST #

First off, let me state that I want OpenSolaris to succeed. It's my favorite development platform, and I am a huge fan of Sun. That said... Where did you get this statistic that 95% of Linux and *BSD users are too practical to be license zealots? This number sounds made-up, and I am not even convinced that more than 50% of linux users aren't license zealots. Besides, you want the bloggers and the widespread noise on your side. You have to admit, the rise of Linux is at least in part responsible to the zealots that blog about it. The people that don't care about what type of license are still reading the hype generated by the zealots, and that has a LOT of influence, I'm sure.

Posted by stevej on February 07, 2007 at 01:57 PM CST #

stevej --

The reason I think the _vast_ majority of Linux and *BSD professionals are not license zealots is based on (as I just commented) my 6 years as a customer-facing Sun SE and product manager; and my experience as an IT professional (Sun specialist) myself at the Federal Reserve Board (3 years) and Motorola (8 years).

Posted by Eric Boutilier on February 07, 2007 at 02:11 PM CST #

stevej: "90% of statistics are made up." More seriously, if those users or developers are silent about their indifference towards license debates then how can you count them? (You can estimate their number, with a large degree of error, as there are also silent users/developers who do care about licenses.)

Posted by Nico on February 07, 2007 at 02:11 PM CST #

I'm no licensing zealot but I have been bitten by the incompatibility of CDDL and GPLv2. Being able to combine open source software from different projects is a practical issue and not just a matter of zealotry.

Posted by Luke on February 07, 2007 at 05:09 PM CST #

Why bother about licenses? The only thing of importance is price to the majority of users. And since Linux (GPL) is free, *BSD (BSD) is free and Solaris (CDDL) is free people will choose these operating systems. Solaris has grown due to the fact it has become free. Linux has gotten big because it is free and BSD (in my view is the best license) has it's own users but most important because it is free. When we need to talk license then why not license Solaris under BSD (the most practical license) and what is wrong with CDDL?