On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 at 2:11pm, Joe Landman wrote
Douglas Eadline wrote:
Is there someone on the list who is following the Oracle/Sun Grid Engine
situation that can explain what the plan is?
I have read that it is no longer freely available.
http://insidehpc.com/2010/08/20/sun-gridengine-now-100-less-free/
Although previous version up until 6.2u5 are under the SISSL
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/sisslpl.php
Short version as I understand it
1) binaries are 60 day evaluation limited by license. You want different
options you either a) pay Oracle (a reasonable thing to do, and no, I am not
in their employ), or b) build your own.
To clarify a few minor points here (again, as *I* understand it), the eval
period is actually 90 days and does *not* apply to the "courtesy
binaries", which are available up to and including 6.2u5 and are missing a
couple of modules. The concerns on the SGE list seem to have arisen
because a) there are no courtesy binaries for 6.2u6, b) no post-6.2u5
patches have made it to the source repository, and c) there has been
little to no word from Oracle as to future plans for source code access
and courtesy binaries.
I am not sure the issues is as problematic as it seemed at first glance, it
depends upon the license cost, terms, etc. for commercial support.
I think it's rather problematic for some users. As I mentioned on the SGE
list, IME academic clusters keep their licensing costs as low as possible
(PIs *hate* spending money on anything other than cores). Whatever Oracle
is charging (and especially if it's based on core/socket/node count), I
practically guarantee you it's more than most academic clusters would pay.
In short, ugh. Its a little bit of a mess, but largely because the community
wasn't prepared for the changes. Some folks are re-evaluating their usage
over this, some are taking a wait and see. I'd advise the latter. I don't
think its the end of the world. Its SISSL, so in theory anyway, its open.
You just can't admix it with other good open tools, the vast majority of
which are decidedly non SISSL. At least not easily admixed.
I agree with the wait and see stance, although if the already-started
"fork" can work out some of the bugs in 6.2u5 (as they seem highly
motivated to do), it will probably gain traction pretty quickly (barring
more open movements from Oracle).
--
Joshua Baker-LePain
QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin
UCSF
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