Q & A
Q&A With Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems
Monday, April 4, 3:00 PM PT
Today marks another step forward in the evolution of the OpenSolaris initiative. In the following Q&A, Sun Microsystems' Simon Phipps provides perspective on the newly formed OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board (CAB), his goals for the community and development of OpenSolaris, and share his thoughts on why he's excited to be working with the other CAB members.
Q: What is your role at Sun? Why are you interested in participating in the OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board (CAB)?
Phipps: My job title is "Chief Technology Evangelist" and one of my roles is to coordinate between Sun's many open source projects. I was asked to participate in the Community Advisory Board to bring a broader Sun and open source perceptive to the team.
Q: Are you excited to work with the other Advisory Board members? What expertise do they bring to the OpenSolaris initiative?
Phipps: Of course! The new OpenSolaris CAB includes industry experts such as Roy Fielding, co-creator of HTTP and the first to detail the "REST" model of web services; and Rich Teer, author of "Solaris Systems Programming." Such a varied and balanced Board, with a track record of independence, integrity an innovation is exactly what OpenSolaris needs to guide the decisions of the OpenSolaris community, including Sun, and to ensure the transparency and inclusiveness of the process.
Q: What do you see as the primary charter for the Advisory Board? What will be your goals?
Phipps: One of the first tasks for the new Advisory Board will be to define its own charter. Its initial role is to bootstrap the governance of the OpenSolaris community and my role is to represent Sun's wider vision of open source, which stems from its extraordinarily broad and deep support for community-based development historically and for open source more recently.
Q: Do you see strong community support behind OpenSolaris initiative?
Phipps: Oh yes! The Pilot community is wildly oversubscribed and the rate at which Solaris 10 is being downloaded and registered is stunning. What's important to recognize is this community already exists the OpenSolaris initiative empowers it. This is not a zero-sum game for the rest of the open source meta-community, we are empowering thousands of new contributors and participants and greatly increasing the reach of open source as a methodology and as a movement.
Q: How has the pilot helped drive the overall direction of the OpenSolaris initiative?
Phipps: The Pilot participants have been enthusiastic, positive and invaluable. More to the point, they have seized the OpenSolaris source code with both hands and already built and booted it and started enhancing it. Every day they bring new energy and encouragement to the project.
Q: What do you envision the relationship between OpenSolaris and the Linux community will look like as it matures?
Phipps: I'd expect the two to develop a spirit of friendly competition. OpenSolaris starts on day one with innovations that are either absent from Linux or available in a much less evolved form, and I'm sure the Linux community won't take that laying down! Having real peer competition is good for both Linux and OpenSolaris and each will catalyze the innovation of the the other.
Q: What opportunities are open to developers working with the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)? How is it different, and is it more limiting than GPL?
Phipps: Under CDDL, developers are free to incrementally introduce existing code to the open source project, without having to use the same license throughout on day one. In addition, CDDL creates a "patents granted" zone where developers can be sure they have the rights to the patents the original developers filed during development and where a strong, meshed patent defense builds up over time as more and more developers contribute. So we believe CDDL is much more empowering than GPL.
Q: What do you see as driving factors for customer adoption of open source operating systems?
Phipps: Well, that's a big question because there's such a range of options. Linking almost all of the driving factors for each option though is the desire for a freedom of choice.
Information can be found on the Net: www.sun.com/news and www.opensolaris.org.
For more information on today's announcement contact Terri Molini or Jessica Bookach.
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