From: Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 07 2000 - 14:38:57 PST
Another reference for info on Sun's new license is
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1539840.html?tag=st.ne.1002.
Note that the new license has not yet been formally blessed (Eric
Raymond is worried that the conformance requirements might be subject
to abuse), and that the only code that they are currently planning to
release under this license is a component of their NFS v4 reference
code (not the whole thing, just a new RPC layer).
Perhaps a brighter sign is that they are also sponsoring the
development of an open-source Linux implementation at the University
of Michigan, but looking at the home page of that effort, it seems to
be based on the existing (and somewhat troubled) Linux NFS code, and
not on anything newer from Sun. Which is puzzling --- contributing
code would be cheaper than cash, and probably more helpful as well.
In any case, Bruce Perens is clearly hopeful that this represents the
beginning of cluefulness at Sun, but at least at the LinuxWorld
session I attended, he was careful to point out that right now, that's
a hope, and that Sun hasn't yet committed to applying the ISSL to any
presently SCSL'ed code, particularly not Java. (He suggested that
they might wait and see what happens with the TI-RPC stuff before
making any further moves, but if that was based on concrete
information from Sun higher-ups, he played it pretty close to the
vest).
rst
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