I’d drop everything I am doing if I can be a fly on the wall during this dinner. Jonathan Schwartz has just invited [tag]Linus Torvalds[/tag] to his house for dinner and even offered to cook. BTW, does anyone know how well he cooks ? I am not sure if that’s a privilege :)
The whole thing started with a GPLv3 vs GPLv2 conversation on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. As part of this conversation, which is really instigated by others, Linus went off blasting SUN about its open-source initiatives and claims that Sun’s initiative is one-way, i.e. take all from open source and provide none.
In response, Jonathan’s responded with an open letter to Linus and invited him to a dinner to talk things over.
Reading the thread somewhat and Linus’s own postings, I am immediately reminded of an earlier posting I had made about the etiquette of the open source developers and engineers. I have an utmost respect for all of these guys but I do not want to have any part of their manners. I find the tone in Linus’s posting quite adversarial (subject matter aside) and at times, he appears like someone who is making arguments and counter arguments, and reaching for closure in arguments all by himself.
“Ergo: they sure as hell don’t want to help Linux. Which is fine.
Competition is good.”“So they want to use Linux resources (_especially_ drivers), but they do *not* want to give anything back (especially [tag]ZFS[/tag], which seems to be one of their very very few bright spots).”
Really ? When was the last time these guys looked at this page ? Not to mention that the basis of the argument also has a self-admittance that they have not looked at ZFS, not played with it, yet can make arguments about its benefits and its comparisons with XFS.
Linus has a strong argument with respect to the time lines and the speed with which Sun moves things along. [tag]Sun[/tag] does take quite a bit of time to get things moving. Reminds me of Verizon. But surely someone who is in the stature of Linus Torvalds ought to conduct business and communications in a slightly more professional manner.
“(like core Solaris: who are you kidding – Linux code is _better_).”
I expect this out of a 2-year old sysadmin who claims he is a sysadmin because he has a home computer and he installed Linux. Not out of Linus.
I am not a Linux basher or a Linus basher. I just am appalled at the obvious lack of communication skills the community demonstrates. Take a course in communications, people. Even if it is based on an open source OS, using an open source e-learning software and using an open source browser.
Coming to SUN, for the first time, they seem to have a guy who seem to see the world with the same glasses as the rest of us. Better or worse, Jonathan has taken the first step and may be the higher road and asked for a conversation to take place. To not take that up and instead sit behind email will only show that one is not as “open” as one claims to be.
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