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It's frustrating that this idea persists. Yes, the GPL was explicitly rejected, but no, it wasn't because of fear of Linux compatibility. It is true that we refused to dual-license (we didn't want to create a license-based fork), but the reason the GPLv2 was rejected is actually very simple: the strong copy-left left way too much ambiguity for our IHV partners. In particular, we wanted to allow proprietary, closed-source drivers to be shipped for OpenSolaris without a Linux-esque "taint" of the system. We also wanted distros to be created that had entirely proprietary components -- including the binaries that constituted elements of the system that we could not ourselves open source due to third party restrictions.

So yes, we rejected GPLv2 -- but it was not because we were afraid of becoming an organ donor to Linux, but rather because it would have overly restricted the freedoms of our community. In this regard, we were forward looking: it is now broadly accepted that the GPLv2 is an anti-collaborative license[1], explaining its acute decline for new work.

[1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/08/01/post-revolutionary-op...

If those were the concerns, it could have been dual licensed.

Or used an Apache-style license.

Do you recall why other popular licenses at the time (apache-2.0, MIT, BSD(new), etc) were rejected?

None of those are copyleft.

Ha. Good point.

>it is now broadly accepted that the GPLv2 is an anti-collaborative license[1],

Broadly accepted where? You certainly draw grand conclusions from head-bobbing at a talk you made.

It's the licence used for I dare say the largest collaborative open source project in the world, Linux. GPL is the most widely used open source licence, used in tons of collaborative projects, from the top of my head: gcc, git, mercurial, qemu, ffmpeg, x264, blender, gimp, inkscape, mplayer, emacs, etc are all examples of other collaboratively developed GPL licenced projects.

And how exactly would it be 'anti-collaborative'? If anything it's a great licence for 'collaborative development' as all participants are legally bound by the licence to release their changes in source form when they distribute.

IF you are the author you are free to license your work under as many licenses as you want, and not bound by the GPL at all - you inherently have that right.

The rest - agreed.

> GPLv2 is an anti-collaborative license

I see quite the contrary.

Any license that allows you to release your derived work as a proprietary and closed-source decreases the amount of collaboration because now nobody else can collaborate on your proprietary fork. One of the reasons for, say, IBM not to give part of AIX to FreeBSD, is that they fear, justifiably, HP may take their collaboration and incorporate it into HP-UX, giving it an advantage over IBM's proprietary product. If IBM incorporates some übercool part of AIX into Linux, HP cannot use that to benefit HP-UX. Fear of becoming an organ donor is lessened because the receiver can't run away with your liver.

The CDDL was a great harm to the broader community

In the same way as GPL did, no doubt. FreeBSD is chock full of CDDL tech, but can't use GPL. Illumos can use *BSD code too, but not GPL.

This is back to the BSD vs GPL debate. That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Sun drops some really nice tech out in the open, which is the only reason Illumos can exist (and is now firing on all cylinders). FreeBSD nabs many of the good bits to good effect, as does OSX. And all some people do is complain. Bizarre.

Obviously, yes, this is a long standing flame war. But your analogy is wrong. FreeBSD can use GPL code, legally. They just can't release the combined work under anything but the GPL, so they choose not to. The CDDL is itself a copyleft license, it's simply not possible to deliver a license to code that derives from both CDDL and GPL components.

Obviously it was better for Sun to release OpenSolaris under the CDDL than not. But it was a very poor choice, and again in my opinion a great harm to the community.

And frankly I don't see the Linux people complaining about anything. The linked article was written by a ZFS proponent...

FreeBSD can use GPL code, legally. They just can't release the combined work under anything but the GPL, so they choose not to.

I think the distinction is academic. In practice FreeBSD can use CDDL code, but not GPL.

And frankly I don't see the Linux people complaining about anything.

Every time some piece of Sun tech comes up on a nerd site or aggregator, a licensing flamewar erupts. No matter how cool or useful that piece of tech is, some twit beats the CDDL vs GPL horse once again. Typically this argument then dominates the discussion. Sometimes it's the only comment. Every time.

It's the ultimate manifestation self-entitled bike shedding, because the doers have more interesting things to do. What I find repulsive is that the doers have made cool blue Ferraris for free, and we have giftzwergs complaining that they aren't cool red Ferraris, which is demotivating for the people creating all this. How would you feel if you created something neat, gave it away for free, and were thanked with a wall of people complaining about your choice of OSS license?

I apologize if I come off unfriendly. It's just that I'm interested in the actual tech, and this noise is really growing old.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. The linked article wants Linux people to use ZFS instead of btrfs. How on earth is it "self-entitled bike shedding" to point out the clearly correct reason for ZFS not being in Linux?

I'm sorry you're interested in "actual tech". But in the real world stuff like the legal ability to use software sometimes gets in the way of our geeky aspirations.

This may be one of the few discussions where the licensing discussion is apropos, so consider my prior rant as something broader.

But it doesn't help when "great harm" hyperbole gets thrown around. The world has benefited from the gift, unless anyone is daft enough to argue that Illumos' existence, FreeBSD's incorporation of ZFS and DTrace, and OSX's incorporation of DTrace, are a bad thing. Hell, DTrace is even being used for PS3 game production.

> FreeBSD can use GPL code, legally. They just can't release the combined work under anything but the GPL, so they choose not to.

Linux can do the same as easily, they "just" have to relicense the kernel in BSD.

Please stop trolling.

No, no, no. This is flatly wrong (so I'll let you guess who's the one trolling). BSD doesn't need to "relicense" anything as the license to the existing code already permits combining with the GPL; a putative FreeBSD kernel with a GPL driver (i.e. a combined work) would need to be distributed under the GPL, but the rest of the code would remain unencumbered. None of the existing copyright holders would need to take any action at all, because the distribution would be within the bounds of the license they already granted.

There is simply no equivalence with the GPL vs. CDDL. Neither license permits redistribution at all when combined with the other. The only way to do this would be to, as you say, "relicense" the kernel by getting every copyright holder (there are tens of thousands by now) to redistribute their code under the CDDL.

> Obviously this also insulated Solaris from any of the drivers in the Linux tree, so 4.5 years later it still doesn't run on anything but custom designed hardware and a handful of vanilla x86 server configurations.

I used to work on this stuff. I used ThinkPads and Dell laptops bought from the store, random white boxes I had lying around, and a particular Dell workstation. Custom designed hardware? Oh, and btw, my ThinkPad had a wireless card that was supported by Solaris. Never gave it much thought, except when I switched jobs and installed Linux, which at the time didn't have the particular driver...

It does not require custom hardware, it runs on any server.

Pfft. What thinkpad did you have with an unsupported wireless card? I find that hard to believe in any case, but especially hard to believe since you had the thinkpad for more than a week and therefore it was not something brand new. I've never had any linux support issues with my multiple thinkpads.

> 4.5 years later it still doesn't run on anything but custom designed hardware and a handful of vanilla x86 server configurations

Oddly enough, I have a laptop that runs OpenSolaris better than it does Ubuntu. 12.04 wouldn't even find the ethernet controller...