Sun considers GPL 3 license for Solaris

Sun Microsystems is considering a dual-licensing move that could raise tantalizing possibilities of open-source cooperation between Linux and Sun's Solaris operating system, but legal issues complicate the possibility.

The server and software company is considering releasing Solaris under the forthcoming version 3 of the General Public License in addition to the Community Development and Distribution License that currently governs the Unix variant, Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said in his blog Friday.

"We want to do what we can to drive more efficiency and cross-pollination between Linux and OpenSolaris," Schwartz said. "Why recreate the wheel with technologies like DTrace and ZFS--or GRUB and Xen?" (DTrace and ZFS are Solaris technologies for sophisticated performance analysis and file storage, respectively; GRUB and Xen, technologies for booting computers and running multiple operating systems, were first developed for use alongside Linux, but Sun is building them into Solaris.)

But there are legal barriers that could curtail sharing between different open-source software realms. Linux kernel project leader Linus Torvalds has said Linux will stay under the current version 2 of the GPL. That means that if Solaris is released under version 3, it's not necessarily the case that software from one project could be incorporated into the other.