Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz has come out against GPL licensed Open Source Software and for (naturally) their own CDDL license recently, which begs the question, can we trust this guys opinion? Let us look at some points of consideration.
1. Sun and Microsoft were the bitterest of enemies for many years and took regular potshots at each other during that time.
2. Microsoft’s settlement with Sun involves payments totalling around 1.95 billion dollars.
3. Sun now takes potshots at Open Source GPL licenses and Linux’s biggest distributor RedHat in much the same way as they used to target Microsoft.
4. Before the MS settlement Sun used to like the GPL, they bought the StarOffice office application suite and released the code as GPL which resulted in the OpenOffice.org office suite, Sun are now apparently working around that by making OpenOffice dependent on Java, which as we all know, isn’t Open Source or GPL.
5. After the Microsoft settlement, Sun creates the new CCDL license with is incompatible with the GPL and plans to release OpenSolaris under that license.
Does anyone else see a trend developing here? What I see is that Sun gets a massive payout from Microsoft, and then decides Linux and the GPL makes a much better target then Microsoft, while at the same time releasing OpenSolaris under their GPL incompatible license in the hope of attracting Open Source developers while keeping the ability to release proprietary software based on the work of others and keep a ironclad hold on Solaris development. Microsoft has done much the same thing by releasing some small pieces of code under various Open Source licenses and also starting the “shared source” initiative.
What they don’t seem to understand, is that the GPL became so popular not because it was Open Source, (because the BSD license has been around for allot longer) but instead because the GPL means you cannot take somebody else’s code, add your own additions and release it without offering the improvements back to the community so that everyone benefits. Many programmers prefer that as it means that their work is being shared by millions and co-opted by none. Look at it this way, If Linux had been released under Sun’s license, it’s development would likely have stagnated long ago. Why? Well because there would be no incentive for developers working for proprietary software companies to return the benefits of their work to the community, so you’d have lots of potentially incompatible forked proprietary versions (which we know about because it happened to UNIX well over a decade ago) and the base source code would be missing most or all of the benefits contained in the forks. Everyone gets to benefit from Linux precisely because of the GPL. Improvements made by companies like Redhat, Novell, SGI and IBM all end up being available to the rest of the community. Will the same thing happen in OpenSolaris? It’s possible I guess, but somewhat doubtful. It seems the things that Sun doesn’t like about the GPL are those very things that make sure everyone benefits from source code improvements and additions.
We can guess Microsoft’s agenda in this, they have already proven they can out-market and out-smart Sun, and they have failed to out-market and out-smart Linux and the GPL community and their customers/users. Getting Sun onside and fighting the GPL and Linux makes sense because they think it can only hurt Linux uptake and that they can handle Sun with their traditional tactics in the event that they win.
So to answer my own question, can you believe Sun’s rantings? No, I don’t believe you can, their agenda and motivation is simply too obvious. Another point I should bring up, is that many online news sites have been saying that the CCDL is based on the Mozilla public license, without mentioning that Mozilla themselves have been moving away from the MPL and towards a tri-license system whereby the code can be available under the GPL:
mozilla.org is working towards having all the code in the tree licensed under a MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license; for more information, see the Relicensing FAQ.
Update:
One last point I’d have made is in regards to this quote from Schwartz’s diatribe:
The GPL purports to have freedom at its core, but it imposes on its users “a rather predatory obligation to disgorge all their IP back to the wealthiest nation in the world,” the United States, where the GPL originated
As some kind soul on Groklaw pointed out: “Schwartz fails to mention the reverse is also true; under the GPL, the wealthiest nation in the world must disgorge its IP back to the poorest nations in the world.” Which is the whole point, GPL allows you to benefit from the work of some of the worlds smartest programmers (be they in the “richest country” in the world or not). So by the GPL forcing developers to contribute their improvements and extensions back to the community, you can be assured of a fast developing and well supported code base. It’s basically a tit for tat license, You get to stand on the shoulders of giants and save years of development cost yourself and the giants get to benefit from your input as well.
What Schwartz hasn’t told you, is that with the CCDL license, other (perhaps competing) companies can benefit from your code, if you are community aware enough to release it, but with no obligation that your competitors will contribute any of their improvements. So what they have created is an “Open Source” license that actually discourages the sharing of improvements and enhancements. It allows them to get some of the good press that Open Source projects are getting, without having to support the concept at heart.
INSERT2:
Matthew Broersma of Techworld now has an article along similiar lines here, which is well worth a read as he makes some additional points not covered by us here.
INSERT3:
To read a rather good review of Sun’s CCDL license, you could do worse then head over to Shirky to see why Sun’s Open Source license isn’t real Open Source and why it isn’t likely to work in the way the GPL has with Linux.
