__/ [ BearItAll ] on Monday 30 April 2007 16:11 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> Sun Mulls Deeper Open-Source Dive
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | It has been five years since Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott
>> | McNealy donned a penguin suit at a San Francisco conferenceto
>> | demonstrate Sun's détente with Linux. Rather than dis the
>> | open-source operating system as an inferior competitor, Sun
>> | would sell it, albeit in select corners of the market.
>> |
>> | [...]
>> |
>> | Now, amid falling sales of its bread-and-butter servers and mounting
>> | pressure on Schwartz to cut more jobs and boost a stock price that's
>> | dropped more than 22%, to $5.26, since early February, Sun is
>> | considering its most radical open-source move yet: releasing Solaris
>> | under the love-it-or-hate-it GPL.
>> `----
>>
>>
>
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070430_095211.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
>> http://tinyurl.com/yudo53
>>
>
> I hope they do and I am sure it would be good for Sun. Solaris is a first
> class product. Many an IT would choose it particularly for mid to high end
> servers. The worry at the moment is that it sits in a sort of middle
> ground. Fully capable as a mid to top end server OS. But what is it really?
> Where do you place it mentally, in the UNIX camp or the Linux camp? If the
> UNIX camp then will it be around in ten years time, will there be a need to
> re-port anything written for it now to a Linux version at a later date?
> With Linux you can be certain that it will be around for ten years and
> beyond, what about Solaris though.
>
> You could say that UNIX is suffering because of Linux, but you can equally
> say that the UNIX idea is benefitting from inclusion into Linux. But UNIX
> itself is not very likely to survive. Of cause there are situations where
> to port Linux applications would be far too costly, also places where IT
> folk are not so certain of Linux capabilities as their trusted UNIX. But
> still, in time those situations will be few and far between.
>
> Solaris could be the edge, in that it is UNIX enough to convince the timid
> but Linux enough to let them move forward.
>
> To start this process though, go open source let the developers commercial
> and otherwise attract peoples interests, build confidence. You will never
> hear IT/developers criticising Solaris, it's just too bloody good, so there
> is no risk from opening it up, and the praise will echo through the canyons
> of IT world repeating the name Solaris in all the right places with all the
> right possitive attitudes.
>
> Solaris-Oracle is a major boost for the sort I am talking about, that has
> to be good for both Oracle and Solaris, but more is needed.
>
> For the other side, Solaris as a desktop I would be less certain. Seems a
> bit like training an elephant to squeeze oranges for your breakfast. Except
> that Sun always made the best of the workstations. Sun know a thing or two
> about desktops and applications,
>
> By the way Sun, I praised you a little while ago and have not yet received
> my complementary Sun SPARC M4000 with Solaris for my personal home use !!
> Could you check with the courier you used I think they must have lost it.
I think it's worth adding that Google have tested OpenSolaris on their
servers. If Sun equates itself to Linux on 'moral grounds', it could truly
give Linux a run for the errr... money? Where's our money? ;-)
--
~~ Best regards
Roy S. Schestowitz | Proprietary cripples communication
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
roy pts/2 cg001a.halls.man Mon Apr 30 14:44 still logged in
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