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Solaris under GPL 3? Not so fast

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Stephen Shankland
2 min read

A board set up to advise and govern OpenSolaris, Sun's effort to make its Solaris operating system an open-source project, has urged caution when it comes to releasing the software under the forthcoming version 3 of the General Public License (GPL).

Sun is looking warmly at the idea of dual licensing Solaris under GPL 3 and the current Community Development and Distribution License.

The OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board, which is evolving into a group called the OpenSolaris Governing Board, is not so enthusiastic. "OGB, having carefully weighed the available options, concludes and decrees that...any option related to GPLv3 dual licensing be re-assessed no sooner than six months after the GPLv3 has been published and approved," the group said in a position paper on the Solaris CDDL/GPL 3 dual license issue after a long mailing list debate.

Al Hopper, one member of the board, said in an interview that Sun could go ahead and dual-license Solaris if it so chose. However, there would be political repercussions: "For starters, they would loose the trust of the OpenSolaris community at large," he said.

The board gave several reasons for its conclusion. "There is little, if any, benefit to dual-licensing OpenSolaris with CDDL and the yet to be approved/upcoming GPLv3 license--aside from possible short-term good press for the project," the group said. On the flip side, "There are significant downsides to dual licensing, including, but not limited to, license complexity, confusion and the possibility of long-term bad press from any exception language that such a license would inevitably require."

And the group argued that GPL fans won't be mollified. "GPL licensing OpenSolaris would be yielding to a small, vocal minority of FOSS (free and open-source software) developers who use the lack of GPL licensing purely as a means of fostering FUD (negative propaganda in the form of fear, uncertainty and doubt) towards OpenSolaris and who will, in all likelihood, find some other workable mechanism to continue to foster FUD towards the project."