Alan Hargreaves' Weblog

Solaris Express 02.05 (snv_07) available on February 28

This is the new development version (beyond Solaris 10), based upon the Nevada source tree.

You will note that uname -r will return 5.10.1, so if you have programs that compare against this output you may need to make the aware of this micro release. There is at least one script that I know of for which there is a pending bug that is affected like this. I'll post some more on how to deal with that particular script once I see what we are going to say about it in the release notes.

New Features

• Support for iCSSI Devices
• Fibre Channel HBA Port Utility (32-bit x86 only)
• Metaslot in the Cryptographic Framework
• IKE Enhancements
• X.Org Release 6.8.2
• Chelsio 10G Ethernet Driver (chxge)

Technorati Tag: Solaris

Posted at 01:10PM Feb 24, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Solaris Express  |  Comments[10]

Sun Responds to Red Hat on ZDnet

And of course after writing something on the Red Hat Article (previous blog entry, links are there); I notice that Sun has responded formally to it.

James Eagleton, does a much better job of taking the claims apart than I did :).

Technorati tag: OpenSolaris

Posted at 07:21PM Feb 17, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[1]

Red Hat vs Sun

There was an article on zdnet Australia this morning about the Red Hat Network "supporting" Solaris in order to transition customers from Solaris to Linux, along with some comments about Sun's support of Open Source. I'll touch on a few other comments from various sources through out this as well.

To the article.

The Red Hat 'Network' systems management tool is to gain the ability to manage software distribution and configuration for Solaris, with Red Hat claiming the features are the "the final nail in the coffin" for Sun's operating system. However the software could be four months away from release.

First off, I think it's wonderful that Red Hat will be "doing" Solaris. I look forward to hearing more details on how they will be doing this support. I'm not quite sure about the final nail in the coffin though. There are already many management tools that folk use for maintaining Solaris. One of the comments on osnews made some observations after attending a seminar at which this was discussed.

The first problem we (the group of admins I work with) was the starting price of $13,000 for the Management Server software. [...] During the discussion about the Management Server I kept saying "it's a poor man's Tivoli" and for the capabilities it has, can be easily duplicated with other F/OSS tools that even if you paid for them, would cost less than $13,000. The first thing that comes to mind in monitoring is Nagios.

I personally feel that some people at RedHat need to put the crack pipe down and listen to Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX admins. If RedHat is trying to convert existing networks to use their products, they not only have to win over management, they have to win over the administrators too. In that regard RedHat has some serious work to do, because I am not convinced their products are superior, especially above 8 CPU's. And the solution to every computing problem is not a cluster.

I hope Red Hat is listening to their customers.

Back to the article

Speaking with ZDNet Australia yesterday morning, Red Hat general manager for Australia and New Zealand Gus Robertson made it clear that the new features of Red Hat Network were aimed squarely at putting Sun Microsystems out of business. He said: "We have been talking about the demise of Unix for some time and had our sights set firmly on Solaris". "The majority of the business that we've been getting has been Unix to Linux migrations. With respect to migrations with time frames in the medium to long term, as opposed to the short term, our customers have been asking constantly if we could incorporate Solaris into the Red Hat Network".

Wonderful, they are listening. Please note, this is two companies competing pure and simple. I certainly hope that Red Hat will not be subject to the same vitriol that we are when we make comments that are simply competing. I do find it disappointing that while we have consistantly said that we are competing with Red Hat (not that we want to "put [Red Hat] out of business), that Gus would make such a comment about wantng to put us out of business. Although, I think it will take a little more than this. Folks it's competition, don't take it so personally.

The RHN features were released simultaneously with version 4 of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux (RHEL) solution, which Robertson said was "banging the final nail in the coffin for Solaris". RHEL v4 is based upon version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, and includes support for the National Security Agency's (NSA) Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) software. The distribution will also support version 2.8 of the popular Gnome desktop software.

That's great that you're getting the certification. I think it will be some time, however, before anything "bang[s] the final nail in the coffin for Solaris". There are too many things that Solaris does better than it's competition. That being said, I should also state, that I do not believe that that is strictly one way. There are certainly areas in which Linux out-does Solaris.

Paul Gampe, Red Hat's director of engineering for Asia-Pacific, who also spoke with ZDNet Australia , said that the inclusion of SELinux would bring security features to the distribution that traditionally would have been priced out of the market "for the average data centre operator". According to the web site of the NSA, the software "enforces mandatory access control policies that confine user programs and system servers to the minimum amount of privilege they require to do their jobs".

Again, well done Red Hat. I know that there are a lot of folks out there looking for this kind of thing.

In addition, Robertson said, Red Hat is locked into agreements with partners Intel, IBM and Oracle that would not leave the company at liberty to modify its rigid 12-18 month release cycle.

Welcome to the datacentre. This is the kind of thing that we have to work with too.

Gampe also took the opportunity to weigh in on the Java Desktop System (JDS), Sun's own desktop system which somewhat competes with Red Hat's product line. Gamte said the name JDS was a misnomer, as the system was "a straight Gnome desktop with a couple of Java apps that don't follow the look and feel ? basically just marketing".

Yup, it's marketing. The idea is that the platform is provided as an enabler of Java Technology. It does that quite well. It should be also noted that JDS is a desktop, not an Operating System. JDS is available on Linux (on x86) and Solaris (on SPARC, x86 and x64). Two companies competing. Nothing to see here.

The topic led into the general issue of Sun's recent moves to release more of its software to the Open Source community. In January the company released its DTrace software, a key component of Solaris 10 which allows network and system performance to be fine-tuned in real-time. The company also released information to the effect that it intends to show its good faith to the community by open sourcing the bulk of Solaris 10 under its Community Development and Distribution Licence (CDDL), which is understood to be directly based on the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL).

Gus apparantly doesn't understand why we chose to release the code to Dtrace in the fashion that we did. Let me attempt to explain.

There were many naysayers out theer saying that even if we did release the OS code under an OSI compliant license, that there would be no way we would release the new stuff (Dtrace, Zones, ZFS, ...). Guess what. To prove this statement wrong, we released the source to Dtrace while we continue on our due diligence of ensuring that everything else that gets released is kosher.

We gave a committment to release Open Solaris under an OSI compliant license. We stand by that commitment. There are comparisons between the CDDL and the MPL available at www.sun.com/cddl, including discusion on why we selected it and why we made the changes that we did. Also worth noting is that OSI accepted it as OSI compliant.

Robertson did not seem to be impressed with the practicality of Sun's demonstration of good faith, saying: "Red Hat's policy is to be an open source provider of technology. Our competitors are providing a hybrid of open source and proprietary software ? that's not the model we're going after". He went on to say: "We've had a very clear focus on Open Source technology and have been doing it for over ten years, now other organisations are seeing that this is successful and have started to copy what we're doing. But this is not something that you can start doing overnight".

We're obviously focussing on different markets. I do take a little exception to the implication that Red Hat has been doing open source for far longer than Sun and that we are the newcomer. This is either a straight out lie or, he is misinformed. Guy, go and have a look at sunsource.net. We've been doing open source a lot longer than you folks have existed. I agree it's not something that can be done overnight. It's something that we've actually been working on for some time. Something else to consider is that Red Hat is a Competitor to Sun. Do you really expect them to be impressed with anything that we do?

Gampe was more clear about what exactly his organisation felt about the issue, saying: "The open source train has left the station and Sun has been left behind".

Again, more marketing and competing. Time will tell.

We see a demand for what we are doing with Open Solaris and we see areas that it can be profitable for both us and those participating in the community. That's good enough for us.

We've committed to a buildable Open Solaris in Calendar Q2 this year. As a participant in the pilot, I'd say things look pretty much on track. We have already had a few pilot members blogging about getting their builds of the code working.

I feel the need to also make another comment on the CDDL. Sun lodged this license in such a way that it is available for anyone who wants to use it. We attempt to at least acknowledge that petents exist and do something about it. Ignoring the patent issue is not going to protect you from it. Code licensed with CDDL goes some way to providing a little in the way of protection. Simon Phipps has written a lot more on this subject on his blog and a bit more here as well.

There is some discussion at the moment on slashdot about certain folks from OSDL at Linux World commenting about there being too many OSI licenses. Maybe the CDDL can help here here. One comment from Sam Greenblatt bears noting and comment.

Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"

I must say that I find that comment extremely narrow minded and I would have expected better from him.

Folks, this is the real world. While GPL is appropriate for many things, it is not the answer to everything. Of course, Sam would be totally impartial in making this comment, wouldn't he. There couldn't possibly be a vested interest could there?

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Posted at 05:19PM Feb 17, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[2]

Laid down a new brew yesterday

I'm trying something different with this one.

After reading Greg Lehay's brewing pages (and some of the wonderful mixing of Unix and Brewing that he is playing with), I decided to try some of his ideas.

Secifically, I'm using the yeast from a couple of bottles of Coopers Pale Ale (which is bottle conditioned), and instead of sugar I'm adding an extra can of the brew mix. In this case I'm trying a Tooheys Special Lager. I've also dropped in about 250g of Light Malt.

Just waiting for the temperature of the mix to get down to room temperature before adding the yeast. I'm looking forward to trying this one.

Posted at 05:12PM Feb 17, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Brewing  |  Comments[1]

The difference between blogging and directly answering Journalist Requests

I was recently contact by a journalist who wanted me to comment on an article that they were writing, specifically to comment upon something that a competitor had said about us. They stated that they had been passed my name as someone who might like to comment on what had been said.

I take no issue in the manner that the request was made, it was very polite and pleasant.

The problem is, that while I might like to comment on such things here in my blog, that is one thing. It is obvious here that I am speaking representing my own views and opinions.

If I even respond to such an email, then it can be perceived that I am making official comment on behlaf of Sun Microsystems. I cannot make such a response.

As such, let me offer my apologies to the journalist in question that I could not even respond with a "no thank you" by email. I hope you can understand why I didn't respond. I did however pass the request on to the folks who could, so I hope they got back to you.

Please folks, I have no issue with my blog being quoted (along with appropriate attribution), but I simply cannot respond to direct press enquiries. We have people whose job this is. Please contact them.

Posted at 05:03PM Feb 17, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in General  | 

Rave review of the V40Z at Linuxworld Magazine

I don't write a lot about hardware (don't even have a category for it), but I had to make not of a review of the V40Z at Linuxworld Magazine by Martin C. Brown

Basically he is very impressed with the machine, it's price point, performance, robustnes, ...

Thanks for the review Martin!

Posted at 03:47PM Feb 11, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in General  | 

Techworld.com article - Linux goes head to head with Sun

Manek Dubash of Techworld appears to be another looking to fan flames of the issues between the CDDL and the GPL in his article titled Linux goes head-to-head with Sun.

In one corner is the GPL, or General Purpose License (sic), a free licence. It allows you to use the software in pretty much any way you see fit. One key proviso though is that any code that becomes part of the distributed product must also be published under the GPL.

That second sentence is the sticking point for a lot of commercial developers.

I found it disappointing that Manek only went to the organisation that is least likely to say anything complimentary about the license. It should also be noted that it is a condition of teh GPL that makes for the incompatibility with CDDL (and actually quite a lot of OSI approved license).

Simon Phipps actually wrote a very good article on the difference between Copyright and Patents which discusses why we address intellectual property in his article titled The IP Elephant in the IT Kitchen.

Also, like many other reporters Manek has made the mistake of reporting that Sun and Open Solaris is in competition with Linux. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story huh?

Sun as a company is in competition with Red Hat as a company. You can't compete with a social movement. Indeed Sun sells a lot of linux as well as Solaris.

Open Solaris is not intended to steal developers away from Linux.

The community of Open Source developers is far larger than just the Linux Community. There are many folks who have a great interest in Open Solaris.

I've always been a fan of using the right tool (be that command, operating environment, real tools etc) for the job at hand. There are things that Solaris does very well and there are things Linux does very well. There is no one correct operating system for all environments.

Sometimes this means Solaris, sometimes it means Linux or one of the BSDs, sometimes it even means Windows.

I am hoping that by releaseing Open Solaris and having folks able to see how Sun has approached various Operating System problems that the general knowledge of such will be raised as such, computing as a whole moves forward.

Manek, is it too much to ask for a little balance in your reporting?

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Posted at 06:35PM Feb 10, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  | 

Using Open Solaris in Teaching Computer Science

One of the things that we've been thinking about with the release of Open Solaris is that we would like to see more use within Universities, both from a teaching and user standpoint; specifically within Computer Science.

Going back to V6 Unix, John Lions' book was all about how Unix did things and explaining the source. This kind of thing may be an interesting starting point.

I'd be very interested in hearing some comments on what folks think that we would need to do to encourage this kind of thing.

One of the things that I thought of would be to provide some focus on how we address various O/S type issues and challenges that were faced and had to be dealt with in the implementation (dtrace and the slab allocater spring to mind).

Maybe we could do more things like the Dtrace challenge that was run last year.

How do you think we should encourage folks to start playing with either Solaris or Open Solaris?

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Posted at 06:52PM Feb 09, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[5]

The differences between Copyright and Patents

The thing that I am noticing most about those of us who are hammering us over "only releasing our patents to CDDL" is that there is major confusion between Patents and Copyrights.

I am not a lawyer, but I have dealt with the patent process (having one lodged with the patent office now for about two years - only one more to go before they decide whether or not to approve it).

Simon Phipps has done a much better job than I could have hoped to of discussing the differences and implications, but there are a few things that I will say.

One of the statements that really annoys me is when people say "don't look at the Sun code in Open Solaris or you might find yourself in a patent lawsuit".

What utter rubbish!

A patent covers an idea, a copyright covers an implementation. It is possible to infringe on a patent without seeing an implementation. In fact whether or not you have seen an implementation is completely irrelevant.

All that we have done with CDDL is to say that if an entity releases code that is the subject of a patent that that entity holds, then anyone working within the framework of the CDDL is granted patent protection under the terms of that license. Nothing else has changed with regard to other licenses. If another license should include patent protection terms such as what the CDDL does, then the same protections would apply with regard to the entity releasing code and developers.

Open Solaris is being released under an OSI approved license. One of the consequences of the terms of this license is that Sun (or anyone who contributes code under it) is required to provide patent protection for any patents that they may hold that may cover that code.

This is definitely an improvement on the status quo and I am left wondering how this is a bad thing.

The other thing that is certainly worth noting is Sun's history of aggressively prosocuting patent infringement. There isn't one!

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Posted at 07:05PM Feb 03, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[2]

Credibility in Journalism

Jim Grisanzio recently blogged comparing two articles at ZDnet. The articles in question were

• Sun gives way more than an inch, but open source advocates want the whole mile
• Memo to Sun: stop whining

I've just read both of these and I have serious concerns about one of them.

Let's have a look at the leading paragraphs of Dana's.

Today David Berlind has a great piece about Sun executives complaining that they "give and they give" but the open source community keeps demanding more.

What exactly does the open source community want, Sun asks.

David actually said no such thing. Let's have a look at the first couple of sentences of what he actually did say.

Somewhere within Sun, the executives are saying "Whattayagotta do to get some respect around here? We give and give and give and they still want more." The "they" of course is the open source community.

Nowhere in David's article did he quote anyone at Sun as making these statements. This is an opinion piece and the "quotes" are pure speculation.

I would have thought this blatantly obvious. I guess Dana didn't. Dana, in my eyes at least, you've not done your credibility a lot of good.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Update

I've also placed some comments in the talkback of Dana's article. It looks like I successfully logged a trackback, but ZDnet is yet to display it.

Posted at 03:32PM Feb 02, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[4]

Solaris 10 is out!

As Fintan points out,

Solaris 10 is out Yep, the moment you have all been waiting for, Solaris 10 is here, go download and enjoy.

I could not have put it better.

Technorati Tag: Solaris

Posted at 12:59PM Feb 01, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Solaris  |  Comments[1]

Sun: Patent use OK beyond Solaris project

There is a very interesting article at zdnet titled Sun: Patent use OK beyond Solaris project.

As many of you will already know there have been a number of concerns raised about exactly what the 1600 odd patents that are covered by the CDDL can be used for.

Most recently, Dan Ravicher wrote an open letter to Sun asking for important clarification.

Interestingly Richard Stallman wrote quite a restrained piece which appears to leave the door open for Sun to 'do the right thing'.

Now, on reading Steven Shankland's article (the one in this title), it appears that this might just be the case.

Now, before I go any further I have to say...

I am not privy to anything that Sun has not yet said on this issue, my comments are based purely on personal opinion and what Steven has quoted in this article.

Quoting from Steven's article

Sun itself has given mixed messages. Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said in November, "It is not our intent to say, 'Here is our intellectual property and we'll sue you.'" A company representative said Tuesday that Sun wouldn't sue Linux users for using the patents.

But Sun's published statement position is less generous. The company's press release said, "OpenSolaris developers and customers alike no longer need patent protection or indemnity from Sun and other participants in the OpenSolaris community for use of Solaris-based technologies under the CDDL and OpenSolaris community process."

That's a pretty straight forward statement from Jonathan.

I would also note that the statement made in the second paragraph does not exclude what was said in the first, merely points out that those people using Open Solaris are covered.

Now, earlier in the article we have some interesting quotes from Tom Goguen.

The server and software company clarified its position somewhat on Monday. "Clearly we have no intention of suing open-source developers," said Tom Goguen, head of Solaris marketing. However, he added, "We haven't put together a fancy pledge on our Web site" to that effect.

Some kind of pledge is possible, Goguen said: "We're definitely looking into what would make sense and what would make the community feel more comfortable with the patent grant we have made available."

To me it looks like an announcement along these lines is iminent. I look forward to watching a few pundits remove egg from their faces. Really folks, we are not the bad guys, and we are trying to do something worthwhile. There is no great conspiracy here.

Again, it's worth noting that all of the patents covered by this grant are directly relevant to the software in question, and not simply patents that we are chucking over the wall because they are about to expire and might or might not be useful.

Technorati Tags: Solaris, OpenSolaris

Posted at 11:52AM Feb 01, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in Open Source Solaris  |  Comments[4]