From: Ernest N. Prabhakar (ernest@alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 27 2000 - 17:40:56 PST
Actually, I've seen it as their way to retain existing customers (for whom
this is huge win relative to a fully closed source model) so that they don't
defect to Linux. So, in that sense, yeah, I see it as competitive to open
source. But that doesn't mean that they are deceptive or confusing - it
just means they are different. Sure, they think their approach is better -
why shouldn't they? Freedom is the right to be wrong, and let people
decide.
Besides, I think they're mostly targeting institutions.If a hacker can't
figure out the difference between open source and community source, do you
really want him hacking on your project anyway?
-- Ernie P.
on 1/27/00 8:27 AM, Robert S. Thau at rst@ai.mit.edu wrote:
> Ernest N. Prabhakar writes:
>> Now, that seems a little unfair. I'm no big fan of SCSL, but from what I've
>> seen Sun has always been very up front about their license NOT being open
>> source. They've never claimed it is, nor (as far as I can tell) tried to
>> lure the open source community into using it.
>
> They've never claimed it meets the OSD, but they have spilled an awful
> lot of ink about how it is "a better approach" which supposedly does a
> better job of "protecting the community". I'm not aware either that
> they've tried to lure existing open source projects into using it.
> However, I'm also not alone in viewing it as a way of putting a
> "communitarian" veneer on what remains their proprietary technology,
> as a way of confusing the issue for folks who might otherwise choose
> genuinely open source alternatives.
>
> rst
>
-------------------------------------
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D.
ernest@drernie.com
http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~ernest
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