I found an interesting article at The Register yesterday, “Is ‘GNU/Solaris’ emerging from the Microsoft-Novell deal?” It would be awesome if Sun released the Solaris kernel under the GPLv3, because I think that would be a chance to observe differences between idealistic and pragmatic approaches to free software.

Looking around, I see Linux Today picked up the story, and in comments there I found out there are already projects in progress around an existing free/open Solaris, including OpenSolaris.org and the Nexenta Operating System, which combines GNU with OpenSolaris. But OpenSolaris is based on Sun’s CDDL, and not the GPL, which I strongly prefer.

Why am I writing on these matters of which I know very little? Because I’ve run in to some interesting reading about the GPLv3 debate over the past few days, and it gets me thinking about the reasons I’m trying to move to free software and why I’m running this web site. So please allow me to spew out a bunch of related links and then offer my $0.02 about it. For whatever that’s worth.

Open… (dot dot dot)

I found several articles from Glyn Moody, and have quickly become a fan. I was happy to see he noticed Moving to Freedom and linked here today from his blog, “Open…” (opendotdotdot.blogspot.com). I was already writing this before I saw that, though. :-) He also writes for Linux Journal.

Let’s begin with “The Great Software Schism”, where Glyn looks at the GPLv3 debate from an angle of cultural differences:

The constant bickering between those who talk of “free software” and those who prefer the term “open source” is hard to avoid in the computing world. [...] This eternal disagreement can be invigorating entertainment at best, or, if you’re not in the mood, enervating in its tediousness. But this fundamental difference of viewpoint has not really been a serious danger to the overall free software/open source movement. Until now.

(You can decide for yourself how tedious are my own views on the topic of “free” versus “open.”)

It’s a good article, followed by interesting comments afterward, and then he followed up with “GPLv3: What the Hackers Said” to share some feedback he solicited and received from several of the involved parties, including Stallman, Linus, and Alan Cox. The Linux Journal article contained excerpts and pointed back to two entries at “Open…” that have the complete responses of what RMS and the Linux hackers had to say. (Along with additional interesting commentary from the peanut gallery.)

I found all of this to be a page-turning thrill read, and began thinking a lot about the “politics” of the debate. However, this post is already growing long, so I think I’ll get the rest of the links in here, and then we’ll continue on another day.

(Too many links and not enough value-added goodness? Please go ahead and turn away now, but! If you don’t read below the fold, you won’t get to see another cool hawk picture…)

Simon Phipps and Luis Villa

The Register article pointed to an entry in Simon Phipps’s blog, “Engaging Positively on GPL v3″, which in turn has many more links of interest, including to Luis Villa’s blog, whose writings I’ve taken a shine to as quickly as I did Moody’s work. There is: “what the kernel guys got wrong,” “What the kernel guys are and aren’t (and really should be) saying about GPL v3,” and “what fsf got wrong.” I see that Luis is attending law school, and with any luck we’ll have another legal freedom fighter to work alongside Eben Moglen and others like those at the EFF. These are the good guy lawyers, as opposed to the ones that Shakespeare was talking about.

I also like what Simon Phipps has to say in the linked post and in general. I saw him give the keynote at the 2000 O’Reilly Conference on Java when he was still with IBM, and it seemed to me that he really “got it” by the way he talked about free software.

All of the linked articles above are from before the announcement of GPLv2 Java, which I think is a delicious wrinkle in the GPLv3 debate. Since the announcement, there has been discussion of a GPL Solaris at slashdot, which pointed to an article at open.itworld.com.

It might be assumed that Sun picked GPLv2 without the “and later versions” qualifier for a reason, and that they don’t support v3, but Mr. Phipps dismisses that idea in a more recent post, “Will Sun Use GPLv3?”:

Over the last few weeks, I have had a few people ask me why Sun didn’t choose GPL v3 for Freeing the Java platform. “Does this mean you’re siding with Linus?” they have asked me. “You must be,” they have said, “because you chose ‘GPL v2 only’ rather than ‘GPLv2 or any later version’ as the license for the Java platform, preventing automatic use of GPL v3. You must be critical of it.”

Those conclusions are not true at all. The answers are actually pretty straightforward, and when I discussed this matter with Richard Stallman he actually agreed we were making an acceptable choice here.

[...]

So will you use GPL v3?

See above! We obviously can’t commit to that yet – the license isn’t finished. However, as things stand I would be very surprised if the final GPL v3 was not an effective tool for some of the communities Sun sustains or will initiate in the future. We are certainly not opposed to it, and it would be a huge mistake to read our use of the GPL v2 that way. Any change to the licensing of OpenJDK would naturally be made with the same caution and attention to compatibility and the affected ecosystems as characterised our previous decision.

–Simon Phipps, “Will Sun Use GPLv3″
   http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/about_gplv3

It certainly seems possible now, given their involvement in the process and choice of the GPL for Java. Phipps has a lot of praise for the GPLv3 process, so I’m hoping for v3 Java and especially v3 Solaris.

Phew! Lots of links. I read all of them (except for the slashdot discussion, which I’m looking forward to) and it consumed a good chunk of the day yesterday. Your homework assignment is to take a look for yourself and come back later for my decidedly less keen analysis and opinions on the subject. I realize I promised some other articles last week that I still need to write also.

Related: Does Free Software Taste Greate, or is Open Source Less Filling?