December 14th, 2005
Open source SPARC likely to use GPL license
During an interview at Syndicate 2005 with Doc Searls, Sun President and COO Jonathan Schwartz said that while BSD and Mozilla licenses were under consideration for the SPARC processor design, the most likely candidate is the GPL. Sun is in the process of open sourcing all of its software, and now processor designs. The goal, according to Schwartz, is to create more choice (and competition), and Sun will get its fair share by out implementing and innovating competitors in products and services. At least, that is the theory. Schwartz also challenged the industry to come up with rationalized open source licenses. "How do we sit down with free software foundation and create a license that would be useful to the world. That’s what blogging and trnasparency is about. Let’s have that conversation," Schwartz said.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
