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Thoughts on CommunityOne and OpenSolaris
(5 votes, average: 3.8 out of 5)
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Sun finally pushed out its Project Indiana yesterday, in the form of a packaged version of OpenSolaris that looks quite a lot like a Linux distro — minus, of course, the kernel that gives Linux its name. On the one hand, I’m pleased to see any FOSS project moving forward. On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems Sun can solve with OpenSolaris that it can’t solve by participating in the Linux community?
The OpenSolaris release was timed to coincide with Sun’s CommunityOne conference yesterday, where I was invited to give a talk on openSUSE and appear on the distro panel with community leaders from Ubuntu (Jono Bacon), Fedora (Karsten Wade), and OpenSolaris (Glynn Foster) and moderated by Sun’s Barton George. (We also recorded a podcast shortly thereafter, which should be released in the next few weeks.)
Removing redundancy
The panel discussion was probably one of the most lively, and certainly the most fun, that I’ve been on. One of the things that we all seemed to agree on — there wasn’t a lot of strong disagreement on any topic, believe it or not — is that there’s a great deal of room for additional collaboration between projects to remove redundancy between distros and the efforts to fix bugs in upstream projects.
Glynn noted a few times that, when wearing his GNOME hat, he sees a lot of waste in different Linux distros fixing or developing things internally with respect to GNOME rather than doing so within GNOME itself.
I think we’re (we in this case being the Linux community in general) getting better in this regard and I’ve observed a lot more willingness to collaborate between distros and projects like GNOME and KDE in the past year than ever before. As Karsten points out “It turns out that, surprise surprise, for the vast majority of concerns, we are all in violent agreement. When you get down to where the differences exist, the less than 5% area, it is hugely gray.”
However, Karsten also compares the panelists to football captains “and it turns out that, aside from the uniforms and different team names, we’re all footballers and think the game should be played the same way.”
I think that’s true, with the exception of Sun — we’re all suited up to play “Linux,” and Sun’s taking the ball to its own field. While Sun collaborates in many of the same communities that Linux vendors and projects do, I’m a bit disappointed that Sun is trying to replicate the Linux experience with OpenSolaris while remaining separate and trying to build a parallel community to ours.
To abuse Karsten’s football analogy further, it’s like the difference between what the United States refers to as football, and what the rest of the world refers to as football. Similar in the respects that each game has a community, but the players are not interchangeable.
Control
Ultimately, I can’t help but think that the problem that Sun is trying to solve with OpenSolaris is not a technical one, but one of control. Specifically, the company is not ready to cede control over its operating system to the community at large, and so it is instead trying to build a community around OpenSolaris rather than joining the larger Linux effort.
If you look at the design decisions behind OpenSolaris — a GNOME-based desktop, an APT-like package manager, timed release cycle — Sun is clearly trying to ape Linux without actually being Linux. Perhaps Sun thinks its operating system is technically superior, and I’m sure there’s some of that — but the company could choose to license its software in a compatible manner and attempt to bring its benefits to Linux rather than pursing a silo-ed strategy.
Before the objection is raised, I’ll concede that control is also an issue for Linux vendors, but to a much lesser degree. As Sun’s Ian Murdock discovered with the failed DCC Alliance, major vendors and projects weren’t quite ready to cede control over the base distribution — but we all have the same general goals, and the work that Novell, Red Hat, Canonical, and others do towards Linux usually benefits the entire community. I don’t see a great deal of benefit in trying to create a parallel community controlled by a single vendor.
Even if Sun is successful in building a strong external community around OpenSolaris, it will take years of effort, and I think that Sun would benefit much more by concentrating on Linux than by trying to clone the Linux community with itself at the center.
I think that it’s in some sense ironic that Sun made its OpenSolaris announcement at a conference titled “CommunityOne” — community is in one sense about the individual members giving up some control in the interest of the greater good. It’s something Linux vendors are starting to learn, finally, and I hope that one day Sun learns it as well.
Greetings,
I think the root of all is that openSolaris does not use a Linux Kernel, the kernel is Solaris, the Unix product of Sun, which has its customers and story. Making Sun participate in the Linux community would be like, I think, putting aside their work or completely liberating it (which may start some problems, I think) for usage of the community.
So, its not that Sun doesn’t want to participate, indeed they are learning lots from the Linux Community, is that Sun can’t open all. Going to the football analogy would be like forgetting players names or positions.
I guess that is not really clear. Would be more like being the father of the kid and giving the name.
Anyway, I don’t think there is a problem, there is the BSD group and the closed source group, and we are all playing on the same field (OS), learning and playing. Giving their best by their own means. Doesn’t it feel great?
“Making Sun participate in the Linux community would be like, I think, putting aside their work or completely liberating it (which may start some problems, I think) for usage of the community.”
I wouldn’t like to *make* Sun participate, but I do think they should. And yes, it’d be a good thing for them to liberate the Solaris kernel, IMHO.
Ultimately, I can’t help but think that the problem that Novell is trying to solve with Mono is not a technical one, but one of control. Specifically, the company is not ready to cede control over its applications to the community at large, and so it is instead trying to build a community around apps that use this .net clone than joining the larger FOSS effort.
It is not necessary for Linux to be the only Unix in the world. There are other Unix OS too, and Solaris is one of them. Just as OpenBSD and the other BSDs too provide KDE, etc to the users, so is Indiana(OpenSolaris.com).
A colleague runs OpenBSD on his laptop. He’s got KDE, OpenOffice, etc running there. Would you now say that the BSD folks are now trying to become another Linux ?
Note: I am myself a long time Linux user, and I help maintain Linux servers at work. My family uses Ubuntu at home.
The OpenSolaris.com distro is aimed at giving Gnome users an environment they are used to - the GNU userland, Gnome, etc, while at the same time maintaining a the regular Solaris userland, the Solaris kernel, and the Solaris technologies that differentiate it form Linux and other Un*x OS.
The Belenix development team certainly thinks that giving a familiar desktop environment is a great way to get software developers to start to use OpenSolaris’ features. We like KDE and offer users a KDE desktop. Our desktop provides links to documentation on DTrace for starters. We’re going to work with the documentation community to help improve documentation as needed, and will also figure out what other documentation we can include on Belenix to get users started with OpenSolaris.
We also believe that though Indiana may not be as “community developed” as we’d all have liked it to be, it’s good that Sun is retaining control over what they’re going to provide paid commercial support for. (None of these beliefs have been stated explicitly, though I’m increasingly convinced that we may have to state these beliefs explicitly somewhere.)
I personally believe that there are enough advantages in the Solaris kernel + technologies that Sun need not abandon Solaris altogether and invest time in the Linux userland (and to the extent that they would be allowed to change things - the Linux kernel).
I continued onto Karsten’s blog before I continued reading yours. Wow! It’s as if you two were at two completely different events.
First let me state that I do not work for Sun or on the OpenSolaris project or any corporate sponsored/affiliated open source project. I have used a number of different Unix OS’s as well as Linux in the forms of Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Ubunto and DSL for that POS laptop I still keep around.
You say “On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems Sun can solve with OpenSolaris that it can’t solve by participating in the Linux community?”
Linux is a small part of GNU/Linux. It’s just a kernel. When most people talk about Linux, they mean the whole OS, contrary to what RMS would like. Not just the Kernel but the userland tools, windowing systems and other applications that make “Linux” usable. Most of us users of Open Source software and those of us that distribute our own, do so at a level far removed from the Kernel. We may not right the next new filesystem but we may build a tool that makes it easier for someone to build their web application as an example.
The Linux Kernel community is small in comparison to the open source communities that are built on top of it. Your post seems to try and blur the line. Which is the opposite of what Sun’s intentions of the CommunityOne conference were. That’s what Ian Murdoch seamed to be saying clearly anyway.
Sun contributes a lot to the “Linux Community”. In the 2006 “Study on the: Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU” When comparing contributions to Debian, Sun was by far the greatest corporate contributor of source code with 51,372 person months with an equivalent cost of 312Mil Euros. Number two was IBM with 14,865. Three was RedHat with 9,748. Novell was not in the top 10 though Ximian was at 8 with 4,985. Sun’s contribution doesn’t seem to include OpenOffice.org which is estimated at 79,237 at a cost of 482Mil Euro. Other Open Source projects like Netbeans, OpenJDK, OpenSolaris, GlassFish, etc that Sun has started and the large number that they participate in, donate to or fund development of is very large as well.
It’s not uncommon to see email sun.com email addresses on the LKML. As an example, in 2004 Mike Waychison of Sun posts a very detailed specification of the Solaris automountfs system so that Linux’s autofs better. http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/1/6/167 Was this because Sun wants to sell it’s expensive and lucrative autofs products!?!?!?!
You seem to have missed the whole point of CommunityOne at least my take on it. The Open Source Community is supposed to be the tide the elevates all of it’s individual members whether their boats be big or small. While Windows continues to grow in the server space at the expense of Unix, Linux seems to be aimed at making a dent in the Unix market. Let’s say Linux completely takes over the Unix space. What then? Microsoft already ate most of it away. Is that going to stop?
Linux is not important, OpenSolaris is not important OpenSuSE, RHEL, the BSD’s etc are not important. It’s the communities that are important and it’s important that they work together rather than fight each other for the scraps MS leaves behind.
“Wow! It’s as if you two were at two completely different events.”
I don’t think that’s true — we just have a different take.
“While Windows continues to grow in the server space at the expense of Unix, Linux seems to be aimed at making a dent in the Unix market.”
I’d disagree that Linux is “aimed” at making a dent in the Unix market — though it is a natural replacement for proprietary Unix. I’d like to see Windows displaced — or at least blocked from new deployments — in the server room as much as possible.
” It’s the communities that are important and it’s important that they work together rather than fight each other for the scraps MS leaves behind.”
I agree - which is why I see little room for Sun to build a parallel community using OpenSolaris (i.e., fighting with Linux over MS’s “scraps”).
On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems Sun can solve with OpenSolaris that it can’t solve by participating in the Linux community?
On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems you can solve with openSuse that you can’t solve by participating in the Fedora community?
At least Sun has a totally different kernel. What is so different in openSuse which is not in Fedora (except layout and appearance of the desktop)? If appearance is the difference you want, Sun has differentiated there too with its Nimbus theme.
“On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems you can solve with openSuse that you can’t solve by participating in the Fedora community?”
When possible, we are trying to work with the Fedora community on tools that can be shared between distros — and the work we do on the Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, and everything else benefits or has the potential to benefit Fedora as well.
Sun is saying, “hey ISVs - build something that runs only on our platform, hey community, work on OUR kernel, and trust us to dictate the direction of the OS.”
I might also note that Novell might have taken the same approach as Sun, by trying to open source Netware under a Linux-incompatible license and tried to build its own community. It didn’t - Novell chose to participate in a larger community, and it has shown enormous benefit for Novell, and a benefit for the larger community as well. So the argument that Sun couldn’t possibly give up control over its OS holds little sympathy for me.
“I agree - which is why I see little room for Sun to build a parallel community using OpenSolaris (i.e., fighting with Linux over MS’s “scraps”).”
You don’t get it the Linux Kernel is not the community. The majority of people that use open source software probably couldn’t even accurately tell you what a kernel does or could care less. It could be Mach, Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. It just hast to work, and except for Mach they all work. They don’t care how the kernel handles memory, they want to know if they can run Apache, Tomcat, or whatever software they need.
People like open source OS’s because they’re similar and they offer choices. If *BSD is the best choice for them they can choose that, if RHel, or SuSE or Debian is they can go with that. If OpenSolaris is then they have that option. Solaris and AIX are also still options if those suit them better though not open. While there are differences there are more similarities from a user’s perspective.
You’re giving a very narrow definition of what the community is and ignoring all the other contributions Sun has made trying to paint them as someone that doesn’t participate. Like I said, which you ignored, look at their contributions that are in Debian. Ubuntu and other popular distros are based on Debian.
You can’t claim you’re not aware of Sun’s contributions as they touch on some of your projects. The GNOME accessibility enhancements being one. Sun didn’t make those just for JDS or Solaris.
“I might also note that Novell might have taken the same approach as Sun, by trying to open source Netware under a Linux-incompatible license and tried to build its own community.”
Or you could have open sourced Novell under a GPL compatible license. But nobody is screaming “set NetWare free”. It doesn’t have the same demand/market that Solaris still has. GPL isn’t the only game in town and it has it’s problems. Maybe GPLv3 will fix them but it doesn’t seem likely that Linux wants to or even feasibly can switch to it.
“and except for Mach they all work.”
I meant Hurd not Mach
On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems Sun can solve with OpenSolaris that it can’t solve by participating in the Linux community?
On the other hand, I’m wondering what problems you can solve with openSuse that you can’t solve by participating in the Fedora community? At least Sun has a totally different kernel. What is so different in openSuse which is not in Fedora (except layout and appearance of the desktop)? If appearance is the difference you want, Sun has differentiated there too with its Nimbus theme.
Value diversity, the community isn’t Linux and Linux isn’t the community. Sometimes the prevailing attitude I sense from the Linux camp is “If you don’t use Linux, and only Linux, then clearly your’re an idiot”. I use Linux happily, but then also use Windows, Mac and Solaris (to a lesser extent) to - they all have their place and no one system is better than another.
The sooner the better the OS is commodotised and made as unimportant to a user as a chipset, the sooner we can move on and have the available talent pool produce actual stuff of value. Jeez, OS wars are so 1980’s.