Solaris can never be Linux

By Sam Varghese
Sunday, 13 May 2007 23:00

Opinion and Analysis

The company's paranoia was evident - the licensing ensured that no Linux developer could include technology from OpenSolaris in Linux. Sun claims that Solaris - and hence by extension OpenSolaris - is a better Unix than Linux. Then why try to prevent Linux from taking technology if it was only playing catch up?

The problem with Sun is that it wants the best of both worlds - it wants to keep selling proprietary software and at the same time benefit from open source. Both are not possible so Sun keeps talking about its dedication to the open source ideal and holding on to its code.

Last year, Sun was literally dragged kicking and screaming to the table to release Java under the GPL. For years there have been calls to do this but Sun resisted. The act was finally done but who is interested any more?

Now Murdock says Sun wants to make Solaris a better Linux than Linux.  This is the latest tidbit that Sun has tossed out about its intentions - a few months back there was talk that there would be a GNU/Solaris under the forthcoming third revision of the GPL.

The project to make Solaris more Linux-like is apparently going to be called Indiana. They might as well call it mirage. It isn't going to happen. Solaris isn't Linux and will never be anything like it. If anything, trying to morph one in order to make it like the other will result in something that is neither fish nor fowl. And we all know what happens when things turn out that way.