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Here's what I see:
1. The quotes you provided mean nothing about what is or is not open source. Re-read them if you have to: noen of them say anything in particular is "open source" or "free software".
2. The pages at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/ and http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/faqs/general.jsp don't say anything useful about what was or was not open-sourced in terms of the OS. They talk a lot about the "enterprise system" and some Java tools, some of which is clearly open source and some of which is not, but is offered for free anyway.
3. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about is more helpful, probably because it has content on it not designed by Sun's marketing department. Relevant quotes from this page follow:
"The main difference between the OpenSolaris project and the Solaris Operating System is that the OpenSolaris project does not provide an end-user product or complete distribution. Instead it is an open source code base, build tools necessary for developing with the code, and an infrastructure for communicating and sharing related information."
"The Solaris OS is Sun's operating system distribution and is branded, tested, maintained and supported as a Sun product. Future releases of the Solaris OS will be built from the OpenSolaris source code, but will still be supported in the same manner as current versions of the Solaris OS. At any given time, there may be some software in either the OpenSolaris project or the Solaris OS product that is not present in the other."
Based on the URLs you provided, I see no evidence of an open source Solaris beyond what was originally reported, that Solaris 10 for x86 would be the only version released under a FLOSS license. However, I did some more digging, and discovered more information from pages for which you didn't provide URLs. The most succinct summation of what I found is at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/general_faq/:
"There is only one source base for the Solaris operating system for both SPARC and x64/x86 systems, and we build the binaries from that common source. By open sourcing the common Solaris source base we automatically open the code for both SPARC and x64/x86 systems."
Based on that, there is indeed an OpenSolaris for more than just x86, so you were right about that.
On the other hand -- based on the above quote from http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about -- it looks like a case could also be made for the position that no OS at all was made open source, only some basic parts of an OS around which an OS called OpenSolaris was built. Furthermore, OpenSolaris is not the same OS as Sun Solaris OS: they will be subject to divergent evolution as the former is developed by the OpenSolaris community and will gain new "genetic" material as Sun decides what to release under the CDDL, and as Sun decides what it wants to include from OpenSolaris and from its own closed-source development in the commercial offering.
In other words, the situation is more complicated, and less clear, than suggested by either of our previous statements. Neither one of us really presented an accurate assessment of what was going on.
2. The pages at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/ and http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/faqs/general.jsp don't say anything useful about what was or was not open-sourced in terms of the OS. They talk a lot about the "enterprise system" and some Java tools, some of which is clearly open source and some of which is not, but is offered for free anyway.
3. http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about is more helpful, probably because it has content on it not designed by Sun's marketing department. Relevant quotes from this page follow:
"The main difference between the OpenSolaris project and the Solaris Operating System is that the OpenSolaris project does not provide an end-user product or complete distribution. Instead it is an open source code base, build tools necessary for developing with the code, and an infrastructure for communicating and sharing related information."
"The Solaris OS is Sun's operating system distribution and is branded, tested, maintained and supported as a Sun product. Future releases of the Solaris OS will be built from the OpenSolaris source code, but will still be supported in the same manner as current versions of the Solaris OS. At any given time, there may be some software in either the OpenSolaris project or the Solaris OS product that is not present in the other."
Based on the URLs you provided, I see no evidence of an open source Solaris beyond what was originally reported, that Solaris 10 for x86 would be the only version released under a FLOSS license. However, I did some more digging, and discovered more information from pages for which you didn't provide URLs. The most succinct summation of what I found is at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/faq/general_faq/:
"There is only one source base for the Solaris operating system for both SPARC and x64/x86 systems, and we build the binaries from that common source. By open sourcing the common Solaris source base we automatically open the code for both SPARC and x64/x86 systems."
Based on that, there is indeed an OpenSolaris for more than just x86, so you were right about that.
On the other hand -- based on the above quote from http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about -- it looks like a case could also be made for the position that no OS at all was made open source, only some basic parts of an OS around which an OS called OpenSolaris was built. Furthermore, OpenSolaris is not the same OS as Sun Solaris OS: they will be subject to divergent evolution as the former is developed by the OpenSolaris community and will gain new "genetic" material as Sun decides what to release under the CDDL, and as Sun decides what it wants to include from OpenSolaris and from its own closed-source development in the commercial offering.
In other words, the situation is more complicated, and less clear, than suggested by either of our previous statements. Neither one of us really presented an accurate assessment of what was going on.
Posted by apotheon
14th Apr 2006
