Saturday, October 04, 2008

Does Jim Zemlin harm the Linux Foundation?

Jim Zemlin recently in an InfoWorld article claimed Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

In this article, Zemlin only gives Linux and Microsoft a chance for the
future. He then continues with the well known stereotypes we already
read many times before from people who believe the best way to support
Linux is to belittle other OpenSource projects.

If DTrace was a minor feature as Zemlin claims, would FreeBSD, Apple
and IBM adopt it? If ZFS was a minor feature, would FreeBSD and Apple
adopt it? DTrace and ZFS have been adopted by others because the people
behind FreeBSD Apple and IBM believe that they are important
innovations and because the license is free enough to allow them
to use DTrace and ZFS with their OS.

At the same time, some people from the Linux camp still try to hide
their missing will to integrate behind a so-called "license
incompatibility". A license like the CDDL that allows to combine code
under CDDL with code under any other license is supposedly incompatible
with Linux? Do some people from the Linux camp really believe that the
GPL is a non-free license? Well, the GPL is a free license and thus
cannot require other projects to change their license if they are just
delivered together with GPL code.

There is no license incompatibility but a VFS incompatibility between
ZFS and the Linux kernel. A code incompatibility can be resolved if there
is a will.

Some non-open-minded people cannot make a free license like the GPL
non-free. POSIX compliant operating systems (like Solaris) and system
that are similar to POSIX (like Linux) should not be enemies. People
who develop OpenSource software should cooperate against non POSIX
systems like Microsofts OS. People like Zemlin who like to drive a
spearhead between different OpenSource projects have no place in
our world. They should resign to allow other open-minded people to
take their place.

Our OpenSource world does not need Zemlin but visionary people who
sopport OpenSource.