Sun brings Start-up Essentials to the UK

Paul Robinson writes:

It's been a long time coming, but it has now been announced that those of us in the UK are able to get "enterprise-grade products at ridiculously low prices" from the Unix king of old, Sun Microsystems. At first this seems general sales shill talk, but when Sun offered this programme in the US last November, it caused quite a few 'alpha-geeks' to take another look at this once-mighty giant of the Unix World.

Sun, it would seem, is now keen to talk to us geeks here in Europe, starting with the UK. Over the last year they have become involved in various community projects, sponsoring events from product pitch/demos all the way down to BarCamp events.

The issue they're trying to fix is that whilst they once had a huge amount of prestige in the technical community, they changed their focus around the dot.com era to talking to heads of finance and CEOs. That left many geeks out in the cold, and they never quite had the dot.com sheen about them, so they suffered on both flanks. Bringing Startup Essentials to the UK - a programme designed to have as much geek/tech appeal as it does financial - is just another step forward in bringing them back to the fold.

So what's in the goody box if you have been trading less than 4 years, have fewer than 150 employees, are based in a country where they offer the programme, have a "verifiable company presence" and don't mind the maximum spend of £75,000/year? (phew!)

Well, first off there's discounted hardware. This isn't a few percent off - it's deep enough to make Sun price-competitive with big-box pushers like Dell. I'm yet to be convinced that their discounted storage solutions are going to be as keenly priced, but at least you know it's going to make people in suits warm and fuzzy inside.

Then there is the emphasis on free software. Sure, you can download and manage Apache, MySQL and the gang yourself, but Sun is trying to show their geek-cred by making it all out-of-the-box easy. Oh, and Solaris and a whole bunch of development tools are now in the wild as well, albeit only free in the sense of a child wearing reins near an interesting looking cliff.

Next up is a spot of training and free advice. With the last decade of the geek community treating Sun like an unwanted grandparent at Christmas, it's no wonder that they felt we might all need a refresher course. If the $49/incident tech support costs make you a little ruffled, there are of course the well tracked official forums (amongst others) to give you a hand.

Lastly, just in case you're the kind of person who really doesn't like hardware - and hey, in the Web 2.0 World, who wants hardware, right? - Sun have also partnered up with some hosting companies that will do all the leg-work for you, again offering discounts if you qualify. Unfortunately for those of us based in the EU who care about not having our data move outside the EEA, the only current EU-based partner has an air about them that suggests your invitation to a meeting will simply read "Bring Money".

Time will tell if this is going to play out well for Sun. My gut instinct is they're making the right moves, and it's great that the EU is starting to get some attention. I wonder if it's too little, too late, but at the same time find myself reading through server specs from a company I hadn't considered in years...

Comments

[Simon Phipps]

OK, I'll bite. In what sense are OpenSolaris and OpenJDK not Free software?

[Paul Robinson]

I'm a BSD guy, and I therefore consider the GPL not to be free in the sense that it places restrictions on use in proprietary software (which is a legitimate use of ideas) - as did Sun when evaluating it.

The CDDL (IMHO) lacks the freedom of the BSD license, but oddly the GPL guys hate it too. More background:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License

[Simon Phipps]

So you're saying nothing under the GPL (like OpenJDK) is free software? And that nothing under OSI-approved licenses (like CDDL) other than BSD is free? C'mon, this sounds like a criticism of Sun for the sake of it...

[Paul Robinson]

Yes, it's a criticism of Sun. I'd rather they BSD licensed everything.

I'm entitled to my opinion, but I respect yours as well. Please don't turn this into a license flamewar.

[Simon Phipps]

OK, fair enough - as long as that's clear to all your readers.

[Gilles Gravier]

The debate about which license is free or open is an ongoing one. I doubt it will ever be solved. In fact, in many cases, it verges on the religions war.

There seems to be an authoritative source which is the Open Source Initiative which published a list of approved Open Source licenses at : http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

The BSD license is listed there. Same as CDDL, GPL, MIT, and quite a few others. All these licenses share common aspects defined at http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ... and which qualify them as being "Open Source" licenses.

These clauses guaranty a certain set of liberties to the user and developer (which make the "freedom" part of the license)... but also impose a set of constraints... which are there to guaranty the transmissibility of this freedom.

But even with the BSD license, you are not FREE to do everything you want with it. In particular, you are not allowed to redistribute the source without the included license text. This means that you are not completely FREE to do as you want... since you are not FREE to remove the license from the modified files.

Freedom is something strange. It is riddled with constraints to ensure it remains there. Every open source license (BSD, GPL, CDDL, MIT, Apache, Mozilla...) guaranties some freedoms by imposing a set of constraints.

One can make the claim that BSD is one of the less constraining licenses... but it still has a set of 3 clauses that BIND you. You are not FREE to do as you want with BSD licensed code. You enjoy a significant amount of freedom, but not completely unlimited.

So now the philosophical question... is freedom still freedom if there are some constraints to guaranty that it stays as initially defined?

Sun's OpenSolaris is published with an OSI approved Open Source license. This license guaranties a certain freedom for the user and developer. This freedom is defined by a set of clauses that constrain the user and developer in certain ways.

Other software licensed by BSD license are, just as well, covered by an OSI approved Open Source license. This license also guaranties a certain freedom for the user and developer. This freedom is defined by a set of clauses that constrain the user and developer in certain ways.

I believe that the above 2 paragraphs are 100% correct, they describe CDDL licensed software... and BSD licensed software. Details differentiate them, but Open Source Initiative approves both of the licensing schemes involved. Both are open source license, both guaranty a certain (yet different) amount of freedom at the price of a certain (yet, also, different) set of constraints.

Gilles

[Gilles Gravier]

Ah... I realize I forgot a possibly important element which I assumed would be clear when I entered my e-mail address (but it doesn't appear in my post)... I work for Sun.

I'll take advantage of this to precise that Sun isn't opposed to any kind of license. In fact, we've been using various licenses in different projects. Each to satisfy specific needs.

Our OpenSparc processor is licensed under GPL as we want enhancements brought to commercial derivatives of the processor to come back to the community.

Our OpenSolaris is licensed under CDDL as this allows commercial vendors (and there are a few) to make products embedding our OpenSolaris kernel without having to publish source of their additions, but while enjoying protection from things like patents lawsuits.

Roller, our blogging system is under the Apache license (Roller version 4.0).

Looking Glass is GPLv2.

The Java Duke logo is GPL licensed.

We ask people who contribute to http://www.sunsource.net/TUPPCP.html to contribute under the BSD license.

Demo and samples shipped with the Java Development Kit are also under BSD.

So we have no specific aversion to BSD (or any other OSI approved license). We pick our licenses after a considerate thought so that it best suits the need of each one of our projects and the target users (in some case developers) of the project.

Sometimes it will be GPL, sometimes LGPL, sometimes CDDL, sometimes Apache, and sometimes, yes, BSD.

Gilles

[Dalibor Topic]

Obviously, the only truly free license is the WTFPL! ;)

http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/