Thursday December 16, 2004 IP Rights - Property or Mineral?
Recently we saw a landmark in the history of open source software, although I'm sure the purists will disagree (but then they always do, that's their job).
The landmark? Sun announced details of the availability of Solaris 10. It's loaded with technologies that make Unix people drool - DTrace, which puts advanced system monitoring into the hands of anyone who can write shell scripts - Containers, which allows you to run multiple system images without having to buy a mainframe (run a whole ISP from a single system) - ZFS, a whole new take on file systems - Janus, letting you run unchanged Linux binaries. Even I can tell these are a leap forward, and the thread on Slashdot that discusses the news was for once full of people crying "more, more" instead of "off with his head".
That's a return to roots for Solaris. Being the thought-leader in Unix is what made Solaris a must-have in every data centre and it's high time the high-school epithets were chased away and the innovation allowed in. But even more radical is the return to community. The hard-core sceptics can't believe it's happening but it really is - Solaris will truly have an open source sister (yes, AC trolls, under an OSI-approved license). My friend Jim Grisanzio is facing a torrent of applications to join the early access programme for OpenSolaris, so those claiming it won't garner a community are also in for a surprise.
How can Sun do this? Well, my former colleague Rob Gingell talks of the difference between the innovator and the patent troll. For the patent troll, intellectual property is like the One Ring - something precious to be guarded at all costs. It's as if, given property rights, I build a house on the site and allow people to rent it from me. I make money through control and exclusivity. For the innovator, intellectual property rights are like the mineral rights to the same plot of land. The innovator excavates, mines, explores, discovers - and it's vital that the minerals are shipped out continuously otherwise they get in the way of fresh innovation.
That 'innovator' role is what made Sun the Unix thought-leader. Solaris 10 is the back-to-the-future move that gets the mineral conveyor rolling again, and OpenSolaris is the way the mines are kept clear to allow new discoveries.
Posted by webmink
( Dec 16 2004, 06:50:49 PM PST )
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