"We do more Opensource than anyone else"

BANGALORE: "Linux is not

opensource and opensource is not Linux," stressed Matt Thompson,

director, technology outreach and opensource programs office, Sun Microsystems,

addressing developers at the Sun Tech Days meet in Bangalore. The company is

going at great lengths to evangelize its opensource strategy ranging from

OpenSolaris to the latest project Harmony for opensource Java. In a conversation

with Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News, he shared some of the company's

views on opensource and developer collaboration.

 



What is Sun's opensource strategy?

 



We are putting more of our source codes into opensource projects than anybody in

the community. In relation to some companies its three or four times more than

what they have released. Open Solaris, Genie, JXTA, Open Office have been

released. Then we have the open collaboration projects like Peabody and

Glassfish. People say that we are not opensource because we don't have an

opensource license. But when you ask developers what they want, it is access to

source code and ability to fix bugs and to make changes and try them internally

and compatibility. Open standards and opensource do not necessarily lead to

compatibility. OS in Linux has led to non-compatibility. You have so many

distribution systems which has its own flavor. You can't take an application

and run them on all. We believe compatibility is critical and we have opened the

Java platform. It does not have an opensource license.

To our critics, I say I challenge them to disprove what I

said. We are very supportive in terms of sponsoring projects like the Apache

Foundation, working within communities of opensource developers.

Why has Sun gone in for the Common

Development and Distribution license (CDDL) and not the General Public

License (GPL) license?

 



We felt that GPL license was not a great license for Solaris. There are a lot of

our ISVs who build on top of opensource whether it's a firewall, router or

devices. We want them to continue to embed Solaris in any application without

forcing them to take the GPL license.

We can't tell our partners what license to take. It is

wrong. There are about 30 licenses available. We chose the CDDL as it is a more

generic license and adds value to the community. We want to protect our own IP

before we put it out to the community. Most legal systems don't understand the

concept of handing over IP to the community. They understand the concept of

individuals, companies and government doing this. Opensource community is still

working on this. Around 1600 patents built into Solaris are now free to use.

 



The theme this year was to get developers to collaborate. Can you elaborate

on this?

One of the reasons why we created java.net was to enable

collaboration. Before this we had 12 different groups of developers working

around the same platform without knowing what each one was doing. Collaboration

provides a platform to bring all these communities can cross-pollinate. Java.net

is a portal that has 18 different communities, 19,000+ projects and 140,000

developers. Each has their own interest. Through the website we can profile the

vitality and activity of the developers.  

How do you compare the developer community in India with

other emerging countries?

India scores in terms of sophistication. When we started in

India seven years ago, they were behind the curve but they are now ahead. In

Singapore and Cambodia it is slowly growing. Malaysia has strong government

support for Java and openness. But, the students are not innovative. Philippines

is a strong competitor to India. So, Indian industry has to keep in mind that if

it is winning business on cost alone, they will eventually lose. There will be

places cheaper than India.