Sun Net Talk On Demand:

Open Community: OpenSolaris, Open Source, and the Future of Software

[1 February 2006]

Length : 42 minutes

Sharing destroys...barriers, that is. Hear the latest on OpenSolaris and open source, and why participation, community, and sharing are the future of software.

Check out this Sun Net Talk on Demand as Sun experts survey the fast-changing open source landscape. Learn how Sun's open source philosophy is driving such innovations as the Solaris Enterprise System, and why OpenSolaris.org has racked up 26,000 downloads, 10,000 members, and 32 community projects in just six months.

Net Talk Agenda • Software Economic Upheaval • Myths of Open Source • Open Source Business Strategies • The Effect on Solaris • The OpenSolaris Community • Participate!

Speakers:

• Hal Stern, CTO Sun Software • Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer • Stephen Hahn, Senior Staff Engineer, Solaris Kernel Development

1 From communications.sun.com/dialog/eventdescription.do#1 30 March 2006 Open Community: OpenSolaris, Open Source, and the Future of Software Get Offers Feedback Program Console Features

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Hal Stern Chief Technology Officer Software Group

Simon Phipps Chief Open Source Officer

Stephen Hahn Senior Staff Engineer Kernel Development Group Software Economic Upheaval

• Open source as mechanism • Initial vs. incremental innovation • Distribution vs. compensation • Coase's Penguin Open Source In A Nutshell

• A community of developers • Sharing a code commons • Creating “wealth” from the commons • Enriching the commons in the process • The “craft guilds” rediscovered... • ... Connected Capitalism Dealing With The Mythology

• Contribution • Anarchy • Security • Administration • Survival OSS Business Strategies 1) “Dual” License > Differentiation of 6) Stewardship open source and > Drives standards, commercial developer capture > Add value to base & sell

2) Subscription 5) Embedded > Combined > Use as a minor offering of part within software and another product support

3) Hosted 4) Consulting > Software as a > Enterprise service integration > With or without consulting data DNA Triangle

Moti

vation

License

Governance Most Freedom for Most People • Class A Licenses – Promote freedom to innovate – Does not protect the commons • Class B Licenses – Balances both freedoms – Protects the commons – Leaves innovators free to do their work • Class Licenses – Promote constant growth of the commons – Limit the freedom of the developer Sun's Activities • Open source projects – OpenSolaris, OpenSSO, NetBeans, Glassfish, , JXTA, OpenOffice.org... • Open standards work – OASIS OpenDocument Format (ISO)... • Software user interfaces – GNOME, accessibility... • Patents covenants to create “open space” Architecture and Rate of Change

• Maintaining architecture stability • Accommodating high rate of change • “Waistlines” for innovation Developing as a Community • Openness presents a challenge: 20 years of software development that worked – How to change safely? – Not that much distance on shared values • Needs communication – Explain and modify existing tools and processes – Learn about newer tools and development models – Describe architecture and influence on design • Being explored by cross-community team Effect on Solaris Why does openness matter?

● New and earliest chance to affect product development or evaluate risk to current use

● Direct communication with implementors

● Active technical contributors can influence technical programs

Intent is to extend participation in a predictable software development process • A credible inquiry should result in a timely and appropriate resolution The OpenSolaris Community Browse Source code FAQs Communities Discussions

Download Source Code Binaries Tools

Participate IRC # Discussions Blogs Communities User Groups Buttons By the Numbers

10,000+ Members (1000+ Sun) 32 community projects 55 submissions, 17 integrations

24 user groups worldwide 26,000+ downloads SchilliX, BeleniX community distros available FreeBSD DTrace port underway

Data available at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/marketing/metrics/ Participate!

opensolaris.org USE interesting profile blog

IMPROVE evangelize del.icio.us/tag/opensolaris EVANGELIZE user groups (OSUGs) irc # opensolaris flickr opensolarisenthusiast buttons Final Thoughts

Hal Stern Chief Technology Officer Software Group

Simon Phipps Chief Open Source Officer

Stephen Hahn Senior Staff Engineer Kernel Development Group Next Steps OpenSolaris community site http://opensolaris.org/ OpenSolaris primary discussion list [email protected] Open Source www.sun.com/opensource Open Standards www.sun.com/standards Speaker blogs http://blogs.sun.com/ {stern,webmink,sch} Hear from the Experts Sun Online Discussion Programs

Sun Net Talk Series Online, on demand seminars sun.com/nettalk

Sun Expert Exchange Live chat forums sun.com/expertexchange Thank You! Sun Expert Exchange “OpenSolaris Participation, Licensing, and Innovation” Wednesday, February 1, 2006

(Q): How does the OpenSolaris team expect important kernel updates to flow to the various distributions? Linux is terrible in that an important bug gets fixed in mainline, but the distros have to backport the patch themselves (sometimes they never do). Stephen Lau (A): This is indeed a problem we see upcoming. One thing we have talked about is figuring out a way to track bugs upstream from bugs.opensolaris.org to various other distributions bug trackers (like Nexenta for example). Currently, most distributions pull the ON kernel source periodically which brings in the most current kernel updates. So if we have upstream bug tracking, it will enable us to at least notify upstream distributions that an important bug has been fixed in mainline. Obviously, we can't force them to pull in the bugfix. This becomes more complicated once Nevada is released as a stable "Solaris 11" and we release security fixes/patches - and this is something we definitely need to think about.

(Q): What is your thought on contributing code to open source product that's "owned" or "managed" or "shared" by competitors? From a different angle, to develop OpenSolaris on Power, do you want help from IBM? If so, what will you do to make that happen? (i.e. why would IBM do that) Liane Praza (A): Sun has contributed to a number of open source projects which are sponsored by competitors (e.g. Derby). From an OpenSolaris perspective, we're happy to include anyone who wants to contribute and can sign a contributor agreement! There's already a thriving community working on getting OpenSolaris running on PowerPC.

(Q): Can OpenSolaris be built in several different ways to meet the special needs of database servers or web site servers, etc? This will make system administrators' work much easier. Thanks! Al Hopper (A): In general, you don't need a specific build of OpenSolaris to support different and varied workloads. There has been a long term goal within OpenSolaris to eliminate requirements for tuning of kernels. There is also an active community interested in building a "minimal" OpenSolaris which could be used in embedded applications and small memory type appliances. Typical applications would be dedicated firewalls etc. Search for "appliance" at opensolaris.org .

(Q): Any chance Open Solaris can be run on a SUNpci3 card in a Sparc based box? Stephen Lau (A): Solaris 10 supports SunPCI3 as a host. I'm not sure if it is supported as a client. But Solaris 10 was supported on a SunPCI3, so I would hope we would continue to support it. If it doesn't, we would certainly like to know why so we could fix it. If you try it and it doesn't work, please file a bug so we can work on it.

(Q): Does Solaris support superpaging? Dan Price (A): Yes, very well. We tend to call them "large" pages, so it took us a while to work out what you meant. The answer is yes, we support them for heap, stack, text and the kernel nucleus is allocated from a large page (typically 4MB). On our newest SPARC systems, we support 8K, 64K, 512K, 4M, 32M, and 256M pages, and the system will by default automatically supply them to applications as needed. On Opteron systems, we support 4K and 2M pages. You can always find out what pages are supported by using the “pagesize -a” command.

(Q): Why has Linux compatibility (Janus project) taken so long to be available in OpenSolaris? Liane Praza (A): The BrandZ project is the name of the project we're pursuing to support running native Linux (and other types of) applications. It doesn't yet meet the criteria for integrating into the Nevada consolidation (it's not done yet!), so remains a separate project. We encourage you to look around the community for more information. (Q): Can you point to any commercial uses of OpenSolaris today and any web sites powered by OpenSolaris ?? Dan Price (A): I think the question is better phrased as: is anyone running a web site using an OpenSolaris distribution? The answer is yes, at least for users of "Nevada" which is Sun's SX distribution. That said, I don't know that I can disclose the name of that company without lawyers in my office :) .

(Q): There is not much literature on OpenSolaris Internal to help interested hackers, as compared to Linux. Are there any portals that are built to consider this matter? Stephen Lau (A): Please see my answer I just posted on the Nevada community for some references. The Solaris Internals book is also a great reference. We would love to see more documentation/literature on this though. The Documentation community is probably the best place to discuss literature/docs.

(Q): What build of JDS is supported on Nevada 31? Liane Praza (A): Sun does not offer support for any Nevada releases currently. However, JDS based on Gnome 2.6 is included in Nevada 31. The new JDS based on Gnome 2.10 is available through the JDS community.

(Q): What is the advantage of pushing Xen for Solaris instead of using Zones? Dan Price (A): We're not pushing Xen instead of Zones. We're planning to do both. The goal is to offer our customers a portfolio of virtualization products, and help them to pick the ones best suited to their specific needs.

(Q): The Solaris Kernel code is not exactly trivial, is there any project like Linux kernel-newbies for OpenSolaris? Stephen Lau (A): The best place to start is the Nevada community for the Development Process & Developer's Reference. We don't have something as newbie-friendly as kernel-newbies, but that's definitely something we would like to see. We also have the opensolaris-code mailing list/forum where people discuss code development.

(Q): What is the relationship between OpenSolaris, Solaris Express and Solaris 11? Rich Teer (A): Essentially, OpenSolaris is the cutting edge, Solaris Express is builds of OpenSolaris that have had some soak time to prove their relative stability, and Solaris 11 will be the next "major" version of Solaris. For a more detailed answer, please see my article about building OpenSolaris or Stephen Lau's blog entry.

(Q): Which new features or drivers contributed by the OpenSolaris community were included in Solaris 10 so far, and what we could expect in the next Solaris 1x release(s)? Dan Price (A): You might want to take a look at my blog, where for fun I document what changes in each Solaris Express release. Since SX is derived from OpenSolaris, this is a reasonably good way to keep up with the major new features.

(Q): What do you plan to do to address the fact that grub will not load Solaris on machines that used to work with the loader that was used by older versions of Solaris? Stephen Lau (A): This is a definite bug. Please file a bug if you find this scenario, and we will work to fix it. (Q): One of the main concerns for OpenSolaris is hardware compatibility and porting drivers. Has Sun planned to emphasize these themes ? For instance: providing an "enhanced" HCL w/ an updated list of associated drivers ? Bonnie Corwin (A): Sun realizes that lack of available drivers has been an issue. We are excited about the possibilities OpenSolaris provides in this area and look forward to collaborating with the entire community to expand the set of drivers that work with OpenSolaris. There is a Drivers community available on opensolaris.org and a device drivers email alias/forum.

(Q): What is the relationship between OpenSolaris and other projects like Nexenta. Is OpenSolaris just a technology generation project where users should look else where for a bundled solution. Using Debian package tools on Solaris does really seem to make sense but is there danger of a project drifting too far from the main OpenSolaris development cycle/process/vision or is there a control in place to prevent this kind of drift? Stephen Lau (A): Yes, OpenSolaris is a technology. Think of it like the Linux kernel - it's the difference between downloading a kernel from kernel.org or downloading a full distribution like Fedora, or SUSE. Users can use Solaris Express Community Release, Nexenta, Schilix, Belenix, etc. for a more "bundled solution". Distributions are free to take their distribution as far or close to the OpenSolaris vision/goal as much as they want.

(Q): Is there any target date for releasing libm sources ? Bonnie Corwin (A): Yes. The work is in progress, and we expect to be able to post the source tarball in the next two weeks.

(Q): What is the link between OpenSolaris developers and Sun Solaris developers. Is this only one community now? Jim Grisanzio (A): Sun's Solaris engineers *are* OpenSolaris developers. We are expanding the Solaris engineering community and in the process Sun's engineers are starting to collaborate openly with developers outside the company. The OpenSolaris Constitution (currently in draft on list) and Development Process (currently in draft on list) will articulate *one* OpenSolaris community.

(Q): Is the Solaris system compatible with Software like DirectX? Can we develop multimedia aplications like games for this plattform? Moderator (A): DirectX is tied specifically to Windows. There has been discussion of creating a Games community recently on the opensolaris-discuss mailing list/forum., and there is very much an active desire to further multimedia development for Solaris/OpenSolaris.

(Q): Solaris is known for its low multimedia support. Will this be improved with OpenSolaris? Liane Praza (A): Multimedia support in OpenSolaris is improving, and we are bundling Real Player in Nevada build 31. There are other improvements in the pipeline, but if you have specific requests, please file bugs at bugs.opensolaris.org.

(Q): On what platform would you say most OpenSolaris development work is currently taking place. SPARC or x86? As for SPARC, what would be the oldest SPARC hardware you would recommend for trying OpenSolaris? Al Hopper (A): Probably on x86 or AMD64 platforms - simply because of the great price/performance that these platforms offer. However, if you were to take all OpenSolaris development done to date, the majority of it would have been performed on SPARC based platforms. Any UltraSPARC chip that runs at 250MHz or faster, will support OpenSolaris.

(Q): Is the x86 hardware support as good as Linux? Dan Price (A): It's certainly not as broad. We do think that the drivers we have are of good quality for the hardware they support. We test them as rigorously as we are able. (Q): How can we get Solaris freeware? Stephen Lau (A): There are many freeware repositories online. Sun makes the "Solaris Companion CD", and Blastwave, and SunFreeware are also popular freeware repositories for Solaris.

(Q): What is being done to make OpenSolaris more "simple" and user friendly for managing a single PC and not having to be a Solaris SA.. i.e. Mac like or even Windows? Liane Praza (A): We're working on a set of projects, which will be conducted publicly on OpenSolaris, to improve ease-of-use for single system and small workgroup management. Keep an eye on the Approachability and SMF communities for more details as they emerge.

(Q): Do you see a more refined release schedule coming as OpenSolaris becomes more mature? It seems this would help many w/ the issues surrounding a moving target. Stephen Lau (A): The release schedule is moving towards weekly, and eventually nightly/realtime source syncs via source repositories. We anticipate that OpenSolaris-based distributions will snapshot the source tree, as they see fit, to sync with to use within their distributions.

(Q): Will OpenSolaris run on a dual core Intel platform? Stephen Lau (A): OpenSolaris currently runs on many dual core platforms including Intel's & AMD's.

(Q): When will my panic be answered by someone on zfs discuss? Dan Price (A): I suggest re-posting it to [email protected]. Sometimes you have to ask twice, as people are very busy.

(Q): What percentage of submitted code has been included into OpenSolaris so far? Were there many errors found? Bonnie Corwin (A): There is a table available on opensolaris.org that includes all offers for contributions and their status. See http://opensolaris.org/os/bug_reports/request_sponsor for the detail. Overall, most submissions have been included. No submission has been rejected because of quality concerns. Rather, we have encountered situations where a bug had already been fixed by a Sun engineer or a fix was in progress as part of a bigger project. The quality of submissions has been very high.

(Q): The latest Solaris Internals book is a bit dated. Having access to the code now seems great, but a guide would be more helpful. Does Sun Press plan to publish something soon about the Solatis 10 kernel/ OpenSolatis kernel? Dan Price (A): Rich McDougall and Jim Mauro are updating the book. Watch Rich's Blog for updates and a draft TOC. Of course blogs.sun.com is a great resource too.

(Q): How would I find out about or start an OpenSolaris user group in my area? Jim Grisanzio (A): OpenSolaris has a user group community that can help. There are about 26 or so groups active and more starting all the time. Check the community page for resources, mail lists, presentations, photos, videos, etc.

(Q): Going forward with the regular Solaris releases, how do you see them changing because of OpenSolaris? Will a wide gap open, or will most of the features added into OpenSolaris come back into regular Solaris? I assume it ultimately depends on customer demand, but how much of a demand will customers need to make to have an OpenSolaris features available in the standard Solaris releases. Rich Teer (A): All OpenSolaris features that are accepted into the main trunk will, by definition, eventually appear in Sun's branded version of Solaris. Whether it will appear in a future update of Solaris 10 or "Solaris next" depends on the scope of the change. If someone forks the OpenSolaris code, then there's no guarantee that changes to THAT code will get absorbed into Sun's Solaris. (Q): Our product is currently licensed by Sun for Solaris-8 and we are in talks to move to Solaris-10 binaries. As we use it as an appliance we pay royalties to Sun. Can we utilize an open Solaris distribution for this purpose and if so what would the licensing terms be? Stephen Lau (A): The CDDL license was designed to be as friendly as possible for business's wanting to use it for things like appliances. Please see the CDDL license text, or see the CDDL FAQ. There is also an Appliances Community where people are discussing use of OpenSolaris in Appliances.

(Q): Will the Solaris system be available for standard PC's? example: Pentium 3 RAM 256. Dan Price (A): It should already work on such PCs. That said, check the HCL.

(Q): When is ZFS goning to be bootable (for / and /var) and available through OpenSolaris ? Stephen Lau (A): It is currently being developed, please see Tabriz Leman's blog for more info.

(Q): Are there any supported or recommend IDEs? Liane Praza (A): The Sun Studio tools are now free to use, and include both compilers and an IDE. If you're interested in support, you can talk to your Sun sales representative. Download Sun Studio at sun.com/download.

(Q): Are you saying OpenSolaris could be used for production systems? Could existing Solaris 9 and 10 users move to OpenSolaris and still get the support they need? Rich Teer (A): Different OpenSolaris distributions have their own support policy, so the answer is "it depends". Given that the most recent builds of OpenSolaris are bleeding edge (and therefore not necessarily tested to Sun's usual high standards), I'd advise against using OpenSolaris on important production servers. Other, non-Sun, distros might offer better support for production. That said, Sun internally uses OpenSolaris on many of its servers, so there is a lot of incentive to keep it stable!

(Q): If I download OpenSolais, I can just start making my own distribution? Stephen Lau (A): Yes, it's not trivial - but yes you can do it. Joerg Schilling also makes a distro kit available that lets you roll your own distribution. Please see the Schillix homepage for more info.

(Q): Is it possible to upgrade an OpenSolaris without doing a complete, fresh reinstallation? Al Hopper (A): If you've downloaded a release of Solaris Express, then those releases are not supported by the patching process that would apply to Solaris. Most people will say that they have used the "upgrade" option to move from one release of Solaris Express to the next - without any issues. However this is not a supported or recommended method to stay current. A good strategy is to layout your disk(s) with another partition large enough to support a 2nd (or 3rd) release and use Live Upgrade (LU) to install the next release. Then you can use a LU command to select the particular release you want to boot. Using this strategy, users often keep 2 or 3 separate releases on OpenSolaris on a single system. If something goes wrong with your installation of the latest/greatest release, you can simply reboot one of the other, working releases. Search for "live upgrade" at www.sun.com/bigadmin .

(Q): Are there any attempts, for replacing the Binary license binaries with the CDDL source. Any on going steps? Cliff Allen (A): Sun is always striving to release the maximum amount of source code, including replacing the Binaries, but Sun does not always have the license rights to do so and may not be able to obtain them.

(Q): What about ZFS on OpenSolaris? Dan Price (A): ZFS is included in OpenSolaris, and has been since its first public debut. (Q): Judging from the mailing lists, there have been problems with licensing eg. drivers. Have these been resolved? Bonnie Corwin (A): It depends on the driver. Some driver source was withheld at launch simply because we ran out of time, so some code has become available in more recent builds, and more will become available over time. There are some drivers that we cannot make available as open source.

(Q): What is the purpose, for Sun, of OpenSolaris -- does it help to sell more hardware? Does it promise to put more applications on Solaris? Jim Grisanzio (A): We are building a community because communities help build markets. Sure, Sun intends to sell more systems and services into new markets, but those markets will have to be supported by more developers writing apps and drivers and more companies creating distributions, etc. It starts with developers collaborating in an open community.

(Q): Will there be any "Easter Eggs" in OpenSolaris - to provide recognition for developers? Stephen Lau (A): Yes, we will integrate a "Doom" version which will allow you to shoot all contributors/developers. Seriously, no. We make a point to keep the codebase stripped of cruft and to make it as lean and efficient as possible. This means no Easter eggs. Developers are recognized currently in putback messages, and we are coming up with ways to recognise developers and contributors to the OpenSolaris project. If you have some ideas for developer recognition, please contribute them to the opensolaris-discuss mailing list/forum.

(Q): Can OpenSolaris be used in x86 platform? Liane Praza (A): Yes! Almost all of the panelists on this exchange are typing their answers on x86 laptops running OpenSolaris. Solaris and OpenSolaris run well on x86/x64 hardware, and Sun is even shipping AMD servers and desktops. If you're interested in more information on running Solaris/OpenSolaris on your x86/x64 laptop, you can visit the laptop community.

(Q): Does OpenSolaris have the Janus run-time libraries that make the x86 version able to run Linux binaries? If this feature is in OpenSolaris, how much support is there for third-party software built for Linux to run under Janus? Rich Teer (A): The scope for Janus was expanded into the BrandZ project, which is currently available for build 31. Support is planned for Red Hat and SUSE, and others have booted other Linux distros on BrandZ.

(Q): Are there any best practice documents and references available on the site? Bonnie Corwin (A): Sun's BigAdmin site (www.sun.com/bigadmin) has best practice information available about system administration, migrating to particular releases, security, etc. Is this what you're looking for?

(Q): Would OpenSolaris eventually run on Itanium servers ? Dan Price (A): If there was a community project to port to Itanium-based servers, then yes; as far as I know there isn't at this time. But Sun is currently strongly backing AMD's 64-bit platform, Opteron, and so Sun-funded efforts are around Opteron. We also run on EMT64 based platforms.

(Q): What is Open Solaris? Jim Grisanzio (A): OpenSolaris is a source base and a community. Source currently available includes core kernel, networking, libraries and commands, storage drivers, desktop and drivers.

(Q): Are security alerts/patch made available? Stephen Lau (A): For OpenSolaris, no - since it's very much a moving target. Security alerts/patches are released for our (Sun's) supported releases, namely: Solaris 8, 9, 10. But since security fixes/patches are integrated into the current development release which is Nevada, they make their way into OpenSolaris as bug fixes. But they aren't available as separate binary patches. (Q): Currently, there is a problem with grub for Solaris 10. It won't load if it thinks there are holes in the ram, does OpenSolaris also have this problem? Specifically, I installed patch 113000-07 and Solaris no longer will boot. Dan Price (A): I don't know whether Nevada includes a fix for this problem, or not (or if there is a bug filed, or not). I'd suggest you come over to [email protected] and post some details about the problem. Or, if you have a support contract for your Solaris installation, please escalate with that support contract.

(Q): Can you elaborate on the Sun Freeware consolidation item in the roadmap for January through March of 2006? Liane Praza (A): The Sun FreeWare (SFW) consolidation is a home for open source software delivered in Solaris and supported by Sun. It contains software that either is required by other consolidations or Sun considers critical to the Solaris business. We're looking to release the source code to that consolidation through OpenSolaris in the next couple of months, using the same basic model as the ON consolidation uses -- a buildable source release with the ability to submit changes through [email protected]. Look for an announcement within the next few months.

(Q): What is the latest release of OpenSolaris and is it stable? Stephen Lau (A): The most recent source drop (2006-01-18) is Nevada build 31. You can see the full Nevada build schedule to see how often our builds close. Since Nevada is a moving target and is what we're developing *right this minute*, there is no guarantee of stability. We recommend people use Solaris 10 01/06 if they want stability. That being said, many people run OpenSolaris based distributions with great stability.

(Q): What kind of problems are there when anyone wants to develop a virus for open source software, could anyone include the garbage in the real code? Dan Price (A): All code included in Solaris is subjected to rigorous code review. Additionally, the code is itself open source, and so subject to inspection by the whole world. We strongly believe we have policies in place to prevent these problems.

(Q): Hello everyone. How does Sun go about choosing what OpenSolaris content gets put back into Solaris proper? Liane Praza (A): Providing that the code complies with Suns high standards for all code that is part of Solaris and passes the necessary reviews, performed by Sun and non-Sun OpenSolaris community members, there is no barrier to prevent code from being incorporated into Solaris. The first draft of the developer standards and processes have already been published on the OpenSolaris.org site. However, the current process is hampered, somewhat, by a lack of tools to make this process more convenient and more automated. So far, that has not been a barrier for the many code submissions that have become part of Solaris.

(Q): I do my development on a laptop. Which laptop do your recommend for Solaris? Are there any online support communities to help me get it installed and answer my laptop brand-specific questions? (I don't mind fixing problems, but I hate going it alone.) Stephen Lau (A): Many of us internally in Solaris Kernel Development use Acer Ferraris (both 3200 & 4000), and Toshiba Tecra M1. There is a http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/ on opensolaris.org. Phil Brown also hosts a http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/x86-laptops.html that is also a good resource. (Q): How goes the progress on open sourcing the remaining consolidations that make up Solaris? Bonnie Corwin (A): Progress is being made on some consolidations. Other consolidations are busy working on current deliverables and then will start work on open sourcing their code. There are more than a dozen consolidations that make up Solaris. Three are available today: O/N, JDS and NWS. And there is a roadmap available at http://opensolaris.org/os/roadmap that shows target dates for other pieces. Some consolidations are working to get technology out in pieces. For example, libm, SCCS, make and packaging tools are available in binary form, to be followed at a later date by source.

(Q): Do you expect/anticipate third party software providers to certify their products on OpenSolaris? Rich Teer (A): Given that Sun's Solaris is essentially one distribution of OpenSolaris, the answer to your question is yes: third party ISVs already support OpenSolaris. As for them supporting other OpenSolaris distros (e.g., SchilliX, Nextenta), I guess that's up to the individual ISV (in much the same way that ISVs support only a certain subset of Linux distros, I would expect ISVs to support only the most popular subset of OpenSolaris distros).

(Q): Just a few days ago there were musings of possibly having some kind of dual licensing with OpenSolaris, i.e. CDDL and GPLv3. Is this likely to go beyond high level musings any time soon? Cliff Allen (A): This is a matter that is under consideration by Sun. The GPL v.3 has only just been released as a draft. It may take sometime before it is finalized. Thus, dual licensing will have to wait until the GPLv.3 is finalized.

(Q): Now that you've open sourced Solaris and have started building a community around it, what are your expectations for the future and what do you think will be the key to OpenSolaris' success? Jim Grisanzio (A): We are open minded regarding the future and have always been. That's why this is so cool. :) We want the unexpected to occur (and it is). In general, though, the key to success will be growth and diversity within the community. We are not only looking for kernel hackers to get involved, but also application developers, sys admins, users, marketers, evangelists...

(Q): How often does OpenSolaris come up with new releases? Stephen Lau (A): When I do them. :-) The source/BFU archives are delivered more frequently than the Solaris Express Community Release ISOs. Typically, source/BFU releases come out roughly every 2 weeks, this will be increasing in frequency to weekly (very soon), and eventually we will see nightly or real-time source availability via source repositories.

(Q): Hi! I just read OpenSolaris and Linux will be incompatible due to the license versions involved. Why? I don't get it. Could you explain me that, please? Thank you. Cliff Allen (A): This is a complicated issue involving license interpretation. What follows is my personal opinion, not the opinion of Sun Legal or Sun. In general, the Foundation has taken the position that certain licenses are (in their opinion) incompatible with the GPL (under which much of Linux is licensed). Per the FSF Foundation, the CDDL is not "compatible" with the GPL - hence the issue of compatibility.

(Q): Is Process Rights Management (PRM) part of the open source? Dan Price (A): Yes, it is! Check out priv.c, the heart of this subsystem in the kernel.

(Q): Will there ever be a completely open source distribution of OpenSolaris from Sun? If so is there a guess on when? Bonnie Corwin (A): The percentage of code that is currently closed is very small right now. And the goal of OpenSolaris is to open as much of the source as humanly possible. There are a couple of reasons why some source will remain closed: a) the owner of the software is a Sun/Solaris competitor and will do everything in their power to "help" (sarcasm) OpenSolaris. IOW - they will never give their permission to open source their code. b) Performing the "due diligence" that it takes to open source some code it arduous and time consuming. Companies get bought & sold, go out of business etc. And the Intellectual Property (IP) that these companies own goes to the new owners. In some cases, companies don't even know what IP they actually own. Locating current owners can be difficult and time consuming. c) Where a piece of software cannot be open sourced, the last resort will be to do a "clean room" redevelopment of the code - to ensure that the functionality is available as open source. Again the goal is 100% open source. We will get there.....

(Q): Since Looking Glass deals with the X server, is the OpenSolaris project still looking to use Sun's X server for SPARC, or are there plans to convert to X.org's X server like what has happened on the x86 architecture? Dan Price (A): I'm not on the X server team; but I think there is a long term goal to move SPARC- based platforms over to X.org. But I don't think that is going to happen soon.

(Q): How does patching work in OpenSolaris as compared to regular Solaris? Rich Teer (A): OS patches are not supported in OpenSolaris. Bug fixes are integrated into the release under development first (i.e., Nevada) first, and then after a period of soak testing they may be backported to Solaris 10 and previous releases. So, as far as patching OpenSolaris components goes, patching (in the patchadd sense) isn't supported: one upgrades to a newer build instead. But for OpenSolaris distros that include the patching tools (and the packaging tools they rely on), patching unbundled stuff is performed in the usual manner.

(Q): What has been your biggest surprise so far. And what would you change if you had the chance to do it again? Jim Grisanzio (A): No big surprises, really. We had very few expectations going in since no one has done this at this level before. We are happy that Solaris developers are getting involved, they are contributing code, they are helping each other, distributions are being built, user groups are growing all over the place, governance and dev processes are being discussed -- and it's all in the open. It's pretty wild, actually. If we had to do this all over again (gasp!), I think I'd prefer to have some of the dev process and governance issues worked out before we opened. That's just me, though.

(Q): When can I find a simple walkthrough for creating an installable version of the latest builds. I've got the downloads and know how to make a server. Stephen Lau (A): The easiest way is just to grab the Solaris Express Community Release CD ISOs (or DVD ISO) and use those to make your jumpstart server.

(Q): There are two licenses in OpenSolaris, one is the CDDL, the other is a binary license. What is the difference? Cliff Allen (A): There are many differences between the CDDL and the binary license. The primary difference is that the CDDL is an open source license which allows you to view the source, modify the source and release it under the CDDL. The binary license is for code that Sun does not have the right to release under an open source license. It basically allows internal use in binary form only and distribution in conjunction with OpenSolaris.

(Q): What is the guarantee that source code is bug free? Dan Price (A): There's no guarantee. (Q): Is ZFS part of OpenSolaris, or will it only appear in Sun Solaris at some point. If so, when? Stephen Lau (A): It's already a part of OpenSolaris now. It will also appear at some point in an upcoming Solaris 10 Update release, as well as the eventual Solaris Nevada/11 release. See the ZFS community at opensolaris.org for more info.

(Q): If a PC won't boot with OpenSolaris for some hardware reason where can we find solutions? Dan Price (A): Come on over to the OpenSolaris mailing lists; [email protected] is a good place to start.

(Q): What makes OpenSolaris better than Red Hat or SUSE Linux? Al Hopper (A): First: stability. You'll find that uptimes 500+ days are common for OpenSolaris. Second: backwards compatibility. You can take a 5 year old binary and run it on the current release of OpenSolaris. You'll also find that you can recompile that 5-year old source code, using a current gcc or Sun cc and it'll "just work". Third: Developer productivity. You'll find you spend less time rebuilding/recompiling/patching code on OpenSolaris than on different versions of Red Hat or SUSE. Again, this is due to the stability of the programmer APIs. This is a huge win for a developer. Fourth: Standards compliance. OpenSolaris follows all the Posix and other mainstream standards. Compliance with standards is very important for OpenSolaris developers. Oftentimes OpenSolaris is the reference platform for anyone researching software standards. Hope this help whet you appetite to try OpenSolaris.

(Q): Can we get a binary run from CD version, similar to ? (This could allow us to test it on a server, without having to replace or upgrade our existing environments!). Stephen Lau (A): Yes, there are a few OpenSolaris distributions that support LiveCD booting without affecting your already-existing/installed operating systems. (Schilix, Belenix, & Nexenta)

(Q): When the thirty-party software licences are installed several times does the client need buy more licences? Cliff Allen (A): You do not need to buy additional licenses to internally install multiple copies of either the third party open source software or the binary code included with OpenSolaris. These software components are free, but you need to observe the license terms.

(Q): What is targeted audience for OpenSolaris? Do you expect large corporations to make use of it? Jim Grisanzio (A): OpenSolaris is for developers, system admins, and users. Yes, engineers from large corporations are participating in the community, they are downloading the code, and building the source. There are about 12K people signed up to the site and hundreds talking on the 89 lists we have.

(Q): Where is the best site to obtain OpenSolaris code? Bonnie Corwin (A): The OpenSolaris website is the best place to find information about and source for OpenSolaris. Go to http://opensolaris.org. If you click on 'Downloads' on the left-hand side, you will go to the page that contains the detailed information about what is available for download. There are multiple sites listed there from which you can get code. You can try out the different sites to decide which is most convenient for you. In addition, some of the communities on opensolaris.org have code posted, for example, the Java Desktop, Storage, Drivers, etc.

(Q): Are there any plans to integrate Looking Glass into OpenSolaris? Dan Price (A): The answer is a little complicated. One thing we're working on now is getting the necessary underlying support for Looking Glass into the Solaris X Server. Looking Glass itself has its own community, at java.net, and we're not looking to take that over. But I expect that different OpenSolaris based software distributions (Solaris itself, Nexenta, Schillix, etc.) will make their own decisions about whether to add Looking Glass to their distributions. Will Sun add Looking Glass to its Solaris distribution? I honestly don't know. (Q): I have significant code to contribute. How do I get a sponsor? Liane Praza (A): You should send a mail to [email protected] to request a sponsor. Generally, you'll first need to sign a contributor agreement, get a bug filed for your changes at http://bugs.opensolaris.org, and get your changes ready for review by a sponsor. You can get more information at the URL I've referenced here.

(Q): Would you please review the licensing terms for OpenSolaris plus the related tools located in the Tools Community at OpenSolaris.org. There are tools available, e.g. compilers, that Sun typically charges to obtain a license. Stephen Lau (A): There is a FAQ for the CDDL license on the opensolaris.org site that reviews the license for OpenSolaris. CDDL FAQ The tools are available for free as part of our Solaris Enterprise System now. Solaris Enterprise System See the SES FAQ for more info on the free download and right to use.