Sun to Linux: Can't We All Just Get Along?
Sun is reaching out to Linux, and specially Linus Torvalds, in an effort to explain its motives in placing Solaris under GPLv3, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said Wednesday.
Torvalds in recent days has indicated that he was suspicious of Sun's motives surrounding the upcoming version 3 of the General Public License. He has expressed interest in Sun's ZFS, however he felt that Sun might use the protections afforded to patent holders in GPLv3 to keep it out of Linux.
He also accused Sun of taking from Linux and not giving back adequately.
Schwartz responded to those fears directly, saying Sun had "no intention of holding anything back, or pulling patent nonsense. To prove the sincerity of the offer, I invite you to my house for dinner," he said.
"I'll cook, you bring the wine. A mashup of the truest sense."
He also pointed out that Sun had indeed contributed a lot to the free software movement, including the open sourcing of OpenOffice and Java, as well as freeing elements of Gnome and Mozilla among other contributions.
Solaris is governed by the Community Development and Distribution License, whereas Linux is licensed under the GPLv2. Torvalds has publicly expressed his concerns about the next version of GPL, however Schwartz seems to feel it would be adequate for use with Solaris.
With both under the same license, it essentially gives Sun the ability to include some of Linux's code, such as its driver support, to Solaris. But Schwartz wanted to make it clear that Sun wasn't out to use the GPL to pillage Linux.
"It's not predation, its prudence," he argued. "Let's stop wasting time recreating wheels we both need to roll forward."