A project to bring one of the most advanced features of Sun Microsystems’ Solaris operating system to the FreeBSD platform has started bearing fruit.
DTrace Reaches Prime Time on FreeBSD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It is great to see that this has been encouraged by Sun, it kind of proves a point to all those nay sayers that said that Sun had nothing to offer the open source community in Solaris and should just slip over to Linux like every one else.
Edited 2006-05-29 07:15
I doubt many listened to those few nay-sayers. I haven’t even heard of them until now (but then I’ve had other things to do).
it kind of proves a point to all those nay sayers that said that Sun had nothing to offer the open source community
what point, SUN still choose not to GPL solaris and java?
Edited 2006-05-29 07:30
wake up!
GPL does not equal Open Source.
Thick skulls
Happycamper’s post should not be modded down. It’s not offensive, nor off-topic, nor spam.
However, modding it up wouldn’t be correct either.
BTW: It’s Open Source != GPL.
GPL _is_ Open Source, however Open Source is not necessarily GPL.
GPL does not equal Open Source.
GPL is a open source license.
Yes but it is NOT the only Open Source Licence. GPL doesn’t define Open Source. You can be Open Source and not be GPL.
While the GPL has done a lot of the Open SOurce movement it is falsely identified as being Open Source excluding every other Open Source licence. This is incorrect.
A simple example from BASIC geometry. All squares are rhombuses but all rhombuses are not squares.
A simple example from BASIC geometry. All squares are rhombuses but all rhombuses are not squares.
Uuh… I like that one. Simple, pure logic
“Yes but it is NOT the only Open Source Licence.”
I never tought it was before , but now that you are suggecting it aint , I think the question must be ask : Is there any other license that garantee in writing and legally that the source code be always accessible and Open ?
“GPL doesn’t define Open Source.”
History seem to disagree with you many license have been adapted and modified for the GPL. It may not be the definition of Open Source , but it certainly define and help shape it and charactherize it.
“You can be Open Source and not be GPL.”
I am going to play Angel advocate and disagree with you. The other license , to me seems to be shared source rather then Open Source , but thats because I define Open Source by its source code access which must be accesible at all time.
“While the GPL has done a lot of the Open SOurce movement it is falsely identified as being Open Source”
I will agree with you its not Open Source its free software , REAL Open Source , just happen to be a quality of free software , now go and tell that to all your like minded friend and the journalist who claim otherwise.
“excluding every other Open Source licence.”
The GPL dont affect other license , its only affect itself , the others are responsible for how they are seen , perceived and qualified and trusted.
“This is incorrect.”
No , but I am sure your going to whant to offer proof that the GPL is not Open Source. Others have tried and failed , but maybe you got a new angle they havent tried yet. I doubt it , but nothing is stopping you from trying.
“A simple example from BASIC geometry. All squares are rhombuses but all rhombuses are not squares.”
Such a nice straw man argument , that is unrelated to what you previosuly started to discuss , it does not refute nor support any of your previous argument and only serve to show the rest of your argumentation as false , because why would you need to offer something true but unrelated in order to validate your argument ? Does it not stand on its own , seem to me it dont.
Sincerely I wish traitor , liar and thief would stop meaninglessly attacking the GPL , Its an idea who’s time as come and who cant be stopped.
I dont think DTrace on FreeBSD is going to sway over and change the mind of those who use and pay and contribute to the GPL. From a strategy point of view it just made BSD’s that much more competitive with Solaris and Sun offers. With the GPL you at least get some improvemnts back if your contribution is of value and nobody can close its acess.
You don’t even have to have a license to be open source. If I write a program, release the full source on my website along with any binaries and a suggestion to do what you want with it, but do not attach a license, is this not still open source?
No, it is not. In fact, without a license people are not allowed to use the binaries and/or the code. You have to grant them permission or say the code is available under public domain.
To qualify as open source software the license must be compatible with the standards set by the Open Source Initiative. To be considered free software you have to check with the Free Software Foundation.
So by your logic, if I put source and binaries that I created up on a website with a paragraph stating “Do what you want with these, and have fun!” the source isn’t open OR free? Bullshit. If I publish the sourcecode and place no restrictions on it, by definition it is both open and free. Licenses aren’t necessary to make something free or open. In fact, licenses exist solely to LIMIT freedoms. Not to pick on the GPL which I consider a wonderful license, but it does indeed restrict what you can and cannot do with code you write. If your freedoms are restricted then you are not fully free. It may be open but freedoms ARE limited. Saying that limiting freedoms makes it free is utter nonsense and a pure contradiction. You really need a reality check.
Good points
In regards to how “free,” one can’t consider the source code in isolation from the people. Technically a “license” makes it legal to do something which is otherwise sinful and/or illegal for a person (or a corporation, which is a legal-fiction persona). The GPL license is granting more freedoms to a subset of people (the developers and future developers of that source code) at the expense of other people (those who would rather distribute the code, often modified and/or closed-sourced, in a way prohibited by the license. The license is forcing developer-distributers to make their modifications available to the world rather than a small subset (often a corporation). These developer-distributors would rather only offer the world a black-box solution with an incompatible license and a price tag rather than the GPL and source code to whoever wants it.
> To be considered free software you have to check with the Free Software Foundation.
Why FSF, dont you think they would be abit biased. It is like asking IBM, where should I buy a server.
Ok all this “Free License” rubbish is getting very boring. Lets talk about dtrace. It is great to see it on other platforms as it is a really cool technology. If you want to know more about dtrace go visit
http://www.brendangregg.com or purchase the latest edition of Solaris Internals –
http://www.solarisinternals.com
DTrace aside, there are many other new features Open Solaris has or is being developed that thanks to Sun will be availiable to platforms such as FreeBSD. Cross pollination is great for the gene pool. Pity Linux people only want to focus on licenses, rather than sharing. BSD and Solaris Rock.
GPL is a hard core Open Source license, supported by hard core Open Source people, and has viral effect to make every applications that link to a GPL infected application to be a GPL application (hence, also GPL infected).
“GPL is a hard core Open Source license, supported by hard core Open Source people, and has viral effect to make every applications that link to a GPL infected application to be a GPL application (hence, also GPL infected).”
Everyone should read:
Microsoft’s Windows is a hard core closed source/proprietary license, supported by hard core closed minded people, and has a viral effect to make most applications that link to microsoft’s Windows to be a closed source/unstable/unsecure/pricey application (hence windows infected)
GPL is a hard core Open Source license, supported by hard core Open Source people, and has viral effect to make every applications that link to a GPL infected application to be a GPL application (hence, also GPL infected).
Nonsense. The GPL is an open-source license created by people who are interested in software freedoms as well as the mere access to the source. This means that not only can you look at the source, but you can use it yourself to create new programs.
This is a privelege however, and the GPL charges a “fee” for this privilege: that fee is that you release your code under a license (not necessarily the GPL) that provides the exact same freedoms. Thus users of your program can benefit as much from it and its source as you did from the original program.
As a developer, if you value your work, the GPL is the better license under which to release code, as it means no-one can take your work, close the source, and sell it as their own. It means every change is visible to you, and that you are free to incorporate the changes other people have made to your product back into it, or into other projects you are working on. This encourages collaboration, and thus helps the advancement of software engineering.
Note that this “fee” the GPL enforces only applies when you distribute the work: anything you do at home, or within your organisation, can stay private if you wish.
Personnaly , I think its sickening that someone would accuse the GPL to be similar to Cancer , obviously , those who repeat and made this comment have no respect for life itself and to those who are suffering from this hillness , I do not wish cancer on anyone , not even people who falsely think they are my enemy ( I have only myself as an enemy ) , its only showing a tottal lack of respect. I prefer people with value and respect of themself and other to those who dont care and dont respect anything. It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak and not prey on them or mock there fate.
The original poster never mentioned cancer, and cancer itself is – of coures – not a virus[1]. While I think the post was inflammatory and ill-informed, I think yours is equally so. This is all entirely off-topic. The GPL is superset of open-source (hence the square/rhombus argument is correct) and the unfortunate Kororaa business has given people the entirely wrong idea about it and its motivations, but I don’t see how emotional outbursts will help.
-5, here I come!
[1] It is true, though, that a virus, as it penetrates the cell, can be one of the triggers that lead to cancer.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=ballmer+linux+can…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&…
Because this has floated off the main page, I’ll respond.
With regard to your first link, when did Steve Ballmer appear on OSAlert.com? You weren’t replying to Steve, you were replying to “Babi Asu” who said the GPL was “viral”. I know he got that by way of Ballmer, but you seem equally biased as you responded to something (“cancer”) that he didn’t actually say.
With regard to my second point about cancer not being a virus, if you look at the footnote attached to that comment you’ll see I did mention that a virus can be a trigger for a cancer, and your link only confirms this. In this case you have told me something that I already said.
Giving out to people for things they didn’t say, and telling people to look up things which they have already confirmed, is not going to earn you much respect in this world. You should pay more time reading what other peole write, and less time leaping in to write hurried, redundant and emotional responses.
That’s a bit harsh, I know, but I actually support the GPL, and ill-thought and emotional arguments in its favour actually damage the work its adherents – such as myself – do to promote it.
I can’t wait to see DTrace on the other architectures that FreeBSD supports, like Sparc, PPC and amd64. When it’s available on PPC I might just go and get me a PPC box to run it on just for the heck of it
Clearly those who said Sun would never allow their code out, let alone help people port it to other OSen, now have egg on their faces.
I don’t think anybody ever said that.
Sun has released quite a bit of code as “Open Source” (e.g. OSI-approved licenses).
I don’t see the point why the “BSD Packaging” article needs reposting here. Thom posted it already below.
I will comment on D-trace because i don’t want to see this thread be about what defines open source.
I glad dtrace was ported to freebsd.
I think this is good news and really hope that Dtrace will be ported to other free UNIX-like OSes.
That’s just another good example of how FOSS can share their talents and experience in order to build higher quality softwares/OSes.
Just keep on the good work !
This is very exciting. I’ve played with DTrace on Solaris machines, but I’d really love to see it running on FreeBSD. We have quite a bit of in house code that I am dying to use dtrace on.
Now someone needs to port ZFS to FreeBSD. Nice work on DTrace though.
doesn’t get DPoint
LOL, so true. Just leave the GPL clan with their KProbe and SystemTap, if they don’t want to use DTrace because it’s not GPL.
Sun Solaris recently make me tempted to try it. First, ZFS. Who desn’t droll having file system like ZFS? Almost no maintenance effort needed. But I already used to maintain FreeBSD box, and migration must invite several problem. Hope after DTrace, ZFS will follow, if possible shortly after it is officially used in Solaris
. Currently don’t know what is practical use of DTrace.
LOL, so true. Just leave the GPL clan with their KProbe and SystemTap, if they don’t want to use DTrace because it’s not GPL.
There’s not a single person on Earth who doesn’t use DTrace because it’s not licensed under the GPL. DTrace is open source software, and it’s also Free software. Its license is not compatible with the GPL v2, but it probably will be compatible with the GPL v3. That incompatibility is a minor annoyance, not a show stopper.
Just stop with the open source flamebait/trolling/nonsense, will you ?
We don’t care what open source licence you worship,
Please stay on topic. !
I welcome this (promising/partial) porting of Dtrace. I definately hope that there will be other atempts to port these fine features of solaris to other architectures/Oses and I hope too that some great features/drivers get ported to Solaris.
In the end, if the quality of oses improves, we all win !
Lakedaemon
ps : thanks again sun, to have released the code under an OS-approved licence.
Everybody on every newssite on every page on the internet is talking about Dtrace. Howcome nobody explains what’s so useful about it?
It traces systemcalls, OK? Cool? No? I don’t know, no article want to tell me about it.
A good place to start might be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dtrace – however, it doesn’t say all that much.
Edited 2006-05-29 14:47
You’re on the right trail at the wikipedia site, now just start following the “External Links” section….start with http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace/
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/dtracehowto.jsp#0
I don’t think i could answer this in 8,000 character osnews.com limit, so I blogged about it at
http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/what-is-dtrace.html
It includes a general description
and links to the following:
* documentation,
* extensions allowing dtracing of scripting languages and apps without lots of low level clutter
* links Brendan G’s excellent Dtrace toolkit so even week end coders and sysadmin can benefit from dtrace in just minutes after starting.
* People using Dtrace to solve REAL PROBLEMS
* media stories
*sigh*
Please stop calling the GPL “viral”. Linking to another program is completety VOLUNTARY. No-one is forcing you to link to a GPL’ed program and opensource and free the software you wrote. If linking is allowed at all, it must happen under the conditions of and with the permission of the author of the linked software. If you think those conditions are too strict, then don’t link, write your own replacement program and shut up.
Then you the “Freedom advocates” should stop whining about ATI and NVidia because they choose not to GPL their drivers, after all is “completly voluntary”, right? then respect their desition.
“Then you the “Freedom advocates” should stop whining about ATI and NVidia because they choose not to GPL their drivers, after all is “completly voluntary”, right? then respect their desition.”
IMHO “Freedom advocates” deserve much more respect than blind sheeps… Don’t you think ?
On the ATI/NVidia/”blob” makers side , you miss the point since the FOSS developers don’t ask for GPLed drivers from those company but for specifications (slightly different…) so that FOSS devs can built hight quality GPLed (or BSDed) drivers.
Whether you want it or not, LB06 is right in his post which you responded to, and you’re wrong… Sorry!
As you just said, then Open Source != GPL
Thanks for proving my point.
“As you just said”
LOL… Where did I say that ?
“Open Source != GPL”
Yes, just like fruit != banana…
“Thanks for proving my point.”
You’re welcome, but could you please quote the words where I prove your point ? Thanks.
Oh, for a proper way of describing sets with plain text!
GPLv2 is not the entirety of the set of things correctly referred to as “Open Source”. It is in fact a member of that set of things.
The set of things which can be correctly referred to as “Open Source” includes more than just GPLv2-licensed things.
Roughly: {OpenSource} (= {GPLv2, GPLv3, CDDL, MPL, BSDL,…..}
And while we’re at it, let’s leave the licensing foo for licensing articles. How about we discuss the technology which is DTrace and the technology which is FreeBSD. I seem to recall that that’s what the article was about.