[wellylug] Sun confirms plans to open source Solaris

Wood Brent pcreso at pcreso.com
Thu Jun 3 19:37:15 NZST 2004


--- Simon Anderson <oob at wildstar.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Wood Brent wrote:
> > Interesting. Seems to be a response to the competitive threat to Solaris
> posed
> > by both Windows & Linux. 
> 
> Windows and Linux aren't the competitive threat per se, because Solaris 
> outclasses both of them by quite some distance. 

Beta outclassed VHS too :-) Most other O/S's are more efficient & stable than
Windows (IMHO), but none have ever matched the M$ marketing machine.

> The threat (more than a threat, one could argue this is a battle Sun has 
> already lost) is to Sparc RISC technology from commodity x86. 

Yep. Sun has always been primarily a hardware company. IBM faced up to this big
time in '99. Sun seem to have taken a bit longer, but do seem to be moving in
that direction.

> 
> Open Sourcing (which in Sun's case != GPL) Solaris and expanding deals 
> with hardware manufacturers like they just did with Fujitsu are an effort 
> to breathe life into the Sparc platform.
> 
> Sun after all, (as their drunken VP of Marketing for Europe confessed to 
> me one 4am) sells tin.

Agreed :-)

> 
> >I wonder if HPUX, Compaq, SGI, etc. will follow suit
> 
> Where SGI (XFS anyone?) HPUX and IBM have donated code directly to the 
> core of Linux, particularly the kernel, Sun tend to donate to F/OSS 
> projects which are cross platform, that can *also* be used by Solaris, 
> such as GNOME. 

But much of Sun's software is focussed around Java. Designed to be hardware
independent from a company "selling tin". I've always wondered about the logic
in that.... (not that I'm complaining...)
 
> The difference between Sun and the other traditional Unix vendors is that 
> Solaris is still in the game.
> 

But is that a side effect of the Sparc CPU being still around. Look at Mips,
Alpha, HP 64 bit RISC variants, as the hardware fell by the wayside, what use
were their proprietary UNIX O/S's? Are we gonna see an x86 Solaris being pushed
as Sun become a Dell, pushing other peoples' hardware under their logo?


Just to ensure this is on topic:

As I recall, Sun were gonna drop Linux for the Sparc, but negative user
feedback wrought a change of mind. If Solaris is so much better, why does Sun
develop a Sparc port of Linux, & why do users demand it?


Brent




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