SunMink: Simple Is Better | Linux Today

SunMink: Simple Is Better

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Nov 23, 2006

“Licensing simplicity was one of the goals of the Open Source
Initiative. By having licenses pre-approved as ‘freedom promoting’
by a group of experts, the plan was to save developers from having
to make decisions about which licenses were OK and which were a
problem. I regard it as a huge irony that this approach was so
successful that the number of approved licenses has proliferated to
the point where one needs legal advice to choose between them. So
one of the very first things we did when I became Sun’s Chief Open
Source Officer in 2005 was to start the process of simplifying
Sun’s approach to licensing by retiring an old open source license,
SISSL, which I assume no responsible company will now choose to
use…”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.