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Project: Linux Sun shines on Linux too!
By Prakash Advani <prakash@NOSPAMfreeos.com>
How does Sun perceive Linux? As competition or does Linux compliment Sun? We really think Linux is a good thing. The combination of Linux and the Internet have changed things completely. Linux and the Internet fill a whole new growth and space of Unix. From a user's perspective Linux is Unix, just as BSD is Unix and we basically grew up on BSD. We are working on compatibility environments for Solaris and Linux. This is to make sure there is a common user experience for the end-user and the developer. The user gets one interface whether he is in Linux or in Solaris. We have done this because we hear that from people every day. Linux and Solaris are quite compatible today and we are going to provide even more consistency by providing layers of API compatibility into Solaris. What contribution is Sun making towards Linux and Open Source?
We are doing everything to help Linux grow while keeping things as consistent as possible. If a user learns on a Linux system, he should be able to work on Solaris too. We are working on a whole range of projects that will help him get started on Solaris. The whole nature of Open Source takes us back to our roots. We are working with the Internationalization part of the Linux and organizations like the University of Michigan. We are contributing code back to Linux. We have contributed code to NFS (Network File System) version 4.0. We have also opened up the Internationalization framework in Solaris and are contributing to the X consortium. This helps Linux grow and unifies the whole Unix market. We are working towards consistency of applications between Solaris and Linux. We are actually helping the Linux programmers who ported Linux to SPARC. We were also the founding members of the Open Source Developer Network (OSDN). Why doesn't Sun pre-install Linux on its computers? In terms of shipping Linux with our systems, we don't even ship Solaris. Solaris isn't pre-loaded on most systems and is an option. A lot of effort is being to made to get Linux running on Sun's product line. In term of ordering Linux for Sun, you can order Red Hat Linux for Sun. Instructions for dual booting Linux and Solaris are available on our Web site. We don't have users asking for Linux on Sparc. We don't see enough of mainstream support by Sun for Linux. It also gives a perception that Sun isn't contributing enough to Linux and open source. What is the reason? All the volume of Linux is in the Intel space. From a systems perspective, it doesn't make sense for us to have Linux on our systems because we don't sell Intel systems. We are actually not building Linux but we are doing a lot with Linux as a software organization. We are working in two areas. One is to ensure that Solaris and Linux are compatible. We are working from the common user and developer prospective to ensure that Linux and Solaris provide the same experience. Why are you doing that? Customers want consistency between Linux and Solaris because they have Solaris. I want a Solaris developer to be able to walk up to a Linux machine and be able to use it instantly. Sun technologies such as Java are available on Linux. The final version of JDK 1.3 for Linux was available within one week of it being available for the Solaris platform. Most traditional Unix companies now embrace Linux. Sun is probably the only company that doesn't. What is the reason? We don't support multiple operating systems and would rather focus on providing good support for the OS that we understand best. IBM supports multiple OS'. Why can't Sun? We are not in the business of supporting multiple OS'. We serve our customers better. In case of IBM, they have a whole range of products which need to be tied to together and they need Linux to bind these together. We don't have the problem IBM is trying to solve. They don't support the OS beyond the first level call. We are providing a consistent environment for our customer. Solaris provides higher-end capabilities that are not available on Linux. As long as there are strong advantages in scalability, manageability and high availability in Solaris, we will continue to focus there. IBM is trying to take the opportunity and ride the wave of Linux right now. We continue to boost Linux. We think continued development of Linux is good thing. We continue to invest in open source utilities. What about SGI? SGI is moving to Linux for Intel only. If we have an Intel product line, we will be shipping Linux too. For the other vendors adding Linux isn't a problem because they were anyway supporting multiple OS'. Is Solaris source code available for download? We are making the binaries free, but we got Unix from somewhere else so we are limited to what we can do with that. Unix came from many many place and the license isn't open source. We are thinking of making the source available for download soon. Under what license will it be available? It is the Sun Public License which is like the Mozilla Public License, with the word Mozilla replaced with Sun. What are the other Open Source projects at Sun? We have opened up the source code of Star Office, called Open Office. We also plan to integrate Open Office with GNOME. We are contributing to the GNOME and the Mozilla effort. We are also adopting Gnome for our future desktop for Solaris. We are also including many open source software such as Apache and Samba in the Solaris box now. These can also be downloaded from sunfreeware.com . What about Solaris applications available on Linux? There is very little today that is not available on Linux that is available on Solaris. In general we are focusing on API compatibility. What you will find is that moving Solaris applications over to Linux doesn't require much extra work at all. There is a good white paper on Red Hat's site. Anyone who has used the POSIX API is in pretty good shape. We want to ensure that Solaris is compatible with Linux. Do you plan to support other platforms such as Intel? We are currently doing extremely well with our Sparc based systems and I don't see any deviation from our Sparc line. On the applications side, it is a different story and I'm not going to comment on that now. What about you acquisition of Cobalt Networks? Do you see it moving from Linux to Solaris there? It would be pure speculation to see any change in direction of Cobalt. They will be allowed to do what they want to do since they have a world class team So you support any other free operating system? There are some elements that are common to other free operating systems in the areas where we are contributing to the open source. What license is Java available and any plans on making it Open Source? Java is community source and not Open Source. The Java community process allows the community of users to define which direction Java is going in. It is available for users free of charge. It offers the flexibility of write once, run anywhere. We would like to make it more open but we have had an issue with a certain large company.
Linux Open Source software @ SUN
Other articles by Prakash Advani
Current Rating: [ 6 / 10 ]
Number of Times Rated: [ 3 ]
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Sun is truly embracing open source. We are not just publishing code. What we are really doing is truly turning these projects into Open Source projects. We have worked with various Linux vendors such as Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE to support Linux on our platform.