Talk to Sun's 'Open Source Diva'

Danese Cooper is Manager of Sun's Open Source Program Office. A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results. She's a frequent speaker at IT industry events and conferences, and is, without question, Sun's staunchest internal Open Source advocate. Sun is moving toward Open Source in fits and starts, and Danese is behind a lot of that motion. Feel free to ask her anything you want (one question per post. please) about the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, and how she goes about trying to change that. We'll post her answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions within the next week or so. The only question she can't answer is whether/when Java might be Open Sourced. I already asked her, and she replied, "Sadly, I have no news on that..."

Open source for everything?

[mfarah]

While it's true that a lot of "attractive/sexy" work can be done via open source methods, there's still some areas that traditional programming models (i.e., closed source) still function better (even though ESR says otherwise in The Cathedral & the Bazaar [oreilly.com]). What, in your opinion, is the proper balance between open source and closed source methods Sun should strive to?

Not fully grasped?

[JamesOfTheDesert]

... the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, ...

Um, I'm pretty sure Sun *has* grasped the concept, but it doesn't suit their busines model.

But, for a question, how about "What is the general understanding of OSS at Sun?"

Open Source Java

[ackthpt]

The only question she can't answer is whether/when Java might be Open Sourced.

Me, too. Me, too.

This is the only thing that interests me, and I've often felt the way to keep the Microsoft wolves at bay was to Open Source Java, which I feel would push it much further than Sun can. Keeping a lid on Java may be the best gift to Redmond in terms of .NET acceptance, not that having hoards of PHB's saying, "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM^H^H^HMicrosoft", hurts their efforts.

If I had a question, which she may be demurring on already, it would be, "What's the big obstacle? Or is it one of those Committee things, where nobody will accept respobsibility for standing in the way and points fingers at the Committee"? I'll understand, if in the interests of preserving her position she can't answer that, either.

"Linux" package management / GNU utils

[Erich]

Solaris has had packages for a long time, but nothing compares to Debian or RedHat as far as package management goes. With Solaris I can download patch clusters and run them all in a script, but it's not nearly as easy "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade". Similarly, hunting down some package and all the utilities it requires and compiling them all is much more tedious than "apt-get install that_package".

Do you see Solaris incorporating some of the package management features found in Linux systems?

Also, Unix vendors many times have very feature-incomplete versions of utilities compared to their respective GNU versions. For instance, GNU tar (while lacking some of the Solaris tar options) has many features that are extremely handy. Do you see Unix vendors in the future incorporating more free tools over the proprietary ones they have, and if so what do you think the time frame is? Do you think that Unix vendors that move towards GNU tools and make their installations more "Linux"-like will have an edge, or will moving to unfamiliar tools be a hindrance?

Re:Has StarOffice been a failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the build system is a failure at least.

With such a big project it should MUCH easier to seperate it into the different components and work (hack code, not use) on them seperately.

Fair dinkum, it takes over 24 HOURS to compile open office (why did you talk about star office anyway, its not free), and you require something like 2 GB of free disk space to compile it.

Honestly the way it is i think its MUCH easier for a developer to get involved wiht kde of gnome office components.

Good question - but

[Sanity]

..I would have phrased it differently to make sure there is no room for misinterpretation.

Companies where their core business model is to sell support for Open Source software seem to be dropping like flies. While it is clear that Open Source can be a good way to support another business model (such as Open Sourcing software for hardware that you are selling), do you agree that selling or supporting Open Source software, as a business model in itself, has been a failure?

Re:How does it feel...

[spacefem]

I think it's a damn good question. If you really don't think it's any different being a woman in this field, you're a moron. I could go on, but I think I'd rather see what Ms. Cooper has to say.

You go girl

[geekoid]

How do you convince a company that its not loosing assets on opening source?

Open Source Java = Standardised Java?

[Westley]

Although any potential date of Java going open source can't be commented on at the moment, is there any likelihood that there will be a link between it going open source and being resubmitted to ECMA?

(It seems to me that the only reason C# is really going before ECMA is to rub Sun's nose in the fact that Java has been pulled from ECMA a couple of times before now.)

Jon

Is OpenOffice pushed as internal standard?

[2Bits]

Sun spent money and effort to buy OpenOffice and put resources to improve and develop it. From the impression that we get as outsider, Sun seems to want OO to compete with MS Office.

However, another impression that we have is that Sun wants other companies to use it, but Sun does not. I met quite a few people from Sun, and they don't use OO at all. A few Sun developers have downloaded it and played with it, and went back to MS Office. Funny thing is, those Sun presenters make jokes about Microsoft during their presentation, but they are all using MS Office and MS Windows. For that, I think it's not even funny.

Is this OO initiative a political game only, or is Sun serious about pushing OO to the enterprise environment? What are the efforts inside Sun to push OO as the standard office tools? What office tools do you use? Same for Scott McNealy.