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In the same spirit, another alternative is to use OpenSolaris's ZFS/Raid-Z, which is a free, software-raid5-like implementation. Unlike other software RAID5 implementations, it's easy to set up and administer (you don't need a PhD in LVM/RAID management).

It's also wonderful in that it has automatic error-correction AND disk scrubbing. One of the Solaris developers is actually using it with flaky hardware (bad/insufficient power supply), and ZFS/Raid-Z automatically detects the error and corrects it. Note that this is different from the ECC done by the disk drive. Basically, the data on the platter is "correct" (passes ECC and doesn't get flagged as a bad sector), but the data on the platter is not what the OS originally wrote (the data probably got corrupted on the way to the platter due to the flaky hardware).

Now, other software raid implementions can do the same thing, but I don't know of any with the same seemingly mindless ease of setup and maintenance. You should check out the demo video, "100 mirrored filesystems in 5 minutes". Also check out the self healing demo video.

So why not get rid of the Linux kernel completely and use a different kernel with an lx zone?

Um...no. Apple's OS is far from open. Where do i download the source for quicktime? How about spotlight? Dashboard? any of the ilife applications. You see any application or section of the OS that apple builds on top of aqua tends to be closed source. There are small exceptions to that such as the rendering engine for safari.

Of the 8 pictures on the top right of this page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Which of those are open source? I'll give you half a point for the khtml code in safari.

If I were an MIT researcher I would also not go with apple because I could not modify the source code. To fix a bug in an application or to perhaps speed up an application to run on a very low end laptop, the folks at MIT would have to file a bug with apple and pray it gets fixed soon. It's the same problem you will have with any proprietary software vendor. Just because you can write hardware drivers because Darwin is open does not mean that OS X is all of the sudden an open OS. Solaris is open source. OS X is far from open source.

Solaris 9u7 is less than two years old. Free as in beer download, and really quite nice. They even fixed logging UFS! A fitting end to the Sun4m's.

Well, then why they arent opening that or the infamous "Build 22" that bmc refers to in the same manner just so there is no qualms about "unsupported frame buffers" or problems with security patches is something that escapes logic. It's at least so that there's something that properly supports the sun4m (and maybe sun4c) architecture.

What would be a fitting end to the sun4m would be able to run any Sun framebuffer (even the S24), and to have the ability to have even other sun4 platforms (CS6400?) run relatively modern code. With all those fixes put in, and what Build 22 supposedly has in it, there could be something that at least builds cleanly and is not just a binary CD that's dropped 2 years after.

Solaris might be open source soon it already is, thank you very much. Check out OpenSolaris.

...but the CDDL is not compatible with the GPL, and thus, is not free-as-in-speech software... luckily not everybody subscribes to the dim point of view that only GPL is worthy of the name OpenSource. (and what was your definition of FUD again...?).

...Sun regularly has some shady remarks about the GPL... how would a company, in your worldview, express criticism of the GPL, without being shady?

....Novell and RedHat on the other side, who fights SCO, open sources Netscape directory server, shows me that I can trust them. ... and the meek shall inherit the earth...

C'mon JonJ, the world has moved on, time to move along with them. Sun, Novell and RedHat are in the business of making money, they have to act on what is good for the company.

By some previous moderation, I dont think you're correct about me working for IBM if you were implying that, or if that was even your thought.

Unfortunately, once you've been outed maybe you might want to bring some facts, and some sun4m support for good measure.

http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/

Current Solaris source, available under an OSI-approved Open Source license.

The license is deliberately GPL incompatible. So you can't use anything from opensolaris for any other project.

Because all other open source projects under the planet are licensed under the GPL, presumably? On the planet where I live, not all open source projects are under the GPL.

Most significantly, it doesn't honor the most important freedom of Free software - independence from the vendor. If Sun decides to shut the playground gates tomorrow, that's it. If you've grown to depend on any of it, you're stuck inside.

Whose ass did you pull that idea out of? The FAQ for the CDDL (the license under which OpenSolaris is released) says this:

Can Sun ever take away the OpenSolaris source code?

No. The code is available to the community forever.

Are you saying the FAQ misrepresents what the license allows you to do? If so, could you explain specifically how?

If they don't want to port it to architecture X (that you need to run it on), you can't fork it. Decision made.

You seem to have a wide assortment of readily-available asses out of which to pull "creative" new ideas. If it can't be ported to another architecture, then why is there already a project to port it to PowerPC?

Also, on what do you base the idea that you can't fork it?

You're forgetting that Mozilla is dual licensed under the MPL and GPL.

Nope, I'm not forgetting that. To be pedantic, they are working on triply-licensing stuff under MPL, GPL, and LGPL. But why is that relevant? BSD stuff isn't under the GPL. Are you saying it's bad to license code purely under the BSD license? As far as I can tell, the CDDL is more supportive of keeping the software open since the CDDL requires changes to the source to be publish (if the binaries are published) but the BSD license does not.

In fact, if someone had their own source for a new project that they wanted to release and they were considering either the CDDL or the BSD license, can you make any kind of argument (other than "the BSD license existed first") that the BSD license isn't worse for maintaining the principles of open source software than the CDDL is?

And what about Apache? That's licensed under the Apache License, and it says on apache.org that "The Apache Software Foundation is still trying to determine if this version [the current version] of the Apache License is compatible with the GPL."

And what about PHP? It's not licensed under the GPL either. It uses the PHP License. php.net has an FAQ that says:

Why is PHP 4 not dual-licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) like PHP 3 was?

GPL enforces many restrictions on what can and cannot be done with the licensed code.

I really can't see what is wrong with the CDDL. In the end, the only real problem I see with OpenSolaris being truly open is the patent issue. Unmodified files definitely have authorization to use any Sun patents, but modified files might or might not. This is not a problem with the CDDL, but it might be a problem with the OpenSolaris code base if you think Sun is going to sue anyone for using patents in derived works.

Well, Solaris 10 is a proprietary Sun product. It's no surprise that there are additional or conflicting terms for it. There are plenty of analogues to use; for many years, BSDI sold (without source, and under very restrictive terms) various derivatives of the open source BSD operating system. Perfectly acceptable, and when Solaris 11 comes out I'm sure it will have terms different from those of the OpenSolaris technology too. The license allows this, and you shouldn't be surprised by it.

If the Solaris license makes you unhappy, don't use Solaris. Use one of the other OpenSolaris-based distributions instead; each distributor is free to offer you any terms he or she likes, provided that the source files they use that come from OpenSolaris are made available to you. You really should go read the license.

I guess I have to actually download the disks to know for certain what I can or can't do as the information from their website seems contradictory.

Actually this term exists partly because a lot of the software included in Solaris is open source, and you have additional rights to that software that aren't specified on that page. Do you really want to read 500 pages detailing all the licenses and what they cover? Especially since many of them are familiar licenses you probably know and love, like BSD and GPL? I sure don't want to.

Wow, thats not very open, and what is the point if the source is available?

You've answered your own question...the parts of Solaris that are open don't need to be reverse-engineered. The parts that aren't, well, Sun can license those under whatever terms they like. Again, if you don't like the Solaris license, you have a choice of distributions, just like you have with other open source operating systems.

My, a bit touchy about how people may talk about us, are we?

If you look at the Solaris Express (for Solaris 11) license terms, you'll notice that this has been removed. Again, Solaris 10 predates OpenSolaris and is not an open source operating system. Of course the benchmarking term does not apply to source or binaries you receive via OpenSolaris, either, only to the official Sun distribution.

I still wonder how supportive Sun is of open source. Do they only support it if they have little choice and then only if you use it in a way that will not benefit anyone else?

Check out the other distributions available already and other projects people are starting to work on. Sun gets nothing directly from these - neither revenue, nor opportunity to sell services or other software. Of course Sun does benefit, too; it gets increased mindshare for Solaris and perhaps a larger installed base of Solaris-compatible operating systems. But to say that these uses don't benefit anyone other than Sun is just wrong.

There are companies that truly believe in open source and its philosophy and there are companies like sun. This is a hail-marry effort to stop their impending demise. Their market share has been dwindling for years and it's starting to tank even more, especially with the linux options

I can see where you're coming from, and honestly, it feels a bit like that to me as well. Sun didn't make their fortune on open source (although they have been involved with open software and open standards for quite some time), so I suspect the attitude towards it is mixed.

In fact, I recently went to an OpenSolaris users' group meeting at my local Sun facility, and one of the Sun people did mention that open sourcing Solaris was kind of a hard sell with the management, but that the "a rising tide benefits us all" argument did eventually win out. So, are they true believers? Undoubtedly, many Sun employees are, and surely some are skeptical. But even if 100% of them aren't behind it, you have to give them credit for being willing to try new things.

Now, on to the question of whether this is a Hail Mary. My own opinion is that if it were just this one thing in isolation, that wouldn't be a good sign. But, over the last year, Sun has done lots of things that kick ass. Solaris 10 kicks ass. ZFS, which they've just released, kicks ass[1]. (As the ZFS slides say, "ZFS Objective: End the Suffering", and that refers to the tedium of storage management on ALL platforms.) Sun is already working on projects and starting new projects to address shortcomings with Solaris on the desktop. Though they of course support gcc, the newest version of their own proprietary compiler (and dev environment), Sun Studio 11, is now free as in beer. And it's available for both Solaris and Linux, and pretty clearly generates better code on SPARC and is pretty competitive on x86.

Some of their new Opteron hardware is quite cool and cost competitive with similar Dell systems[2]. And they also have their 8-core, 4-simultaneous-hardware-thread Niagara chips.

The point is, like in years past, it can once again be said that Sun is doing cool stuff. So if you want to go with the football analogies, it could be a Hail Mary, or it could be that halftime has just ended, Sun has just studied the films to see what they need to adjust, and they're back on the field and ready to make something happen.

[1] Check out the (PDF) slides about it, or either of the two demos, or some of the other documentation.

[2] In fact, compare the cheapest 1U Dell server with the cheapest 1U Sun server. The Dell has a Celeron with 256KB cache in a server (!!!), and the Sun has an Opteron with 1MB cache. And the Sun is $745, whereas the Dell is $999. The only negative with the Sun is that it has no disk, but that option is $150, leaving it at $895, still over $100 cheaper than the Dell. Oh yeah, and the Sun hardware is qualified to run RHEL, SUSE Linux, Solaris 10, or Windows.

There are companies that truly believe in open source and its philosophy and there are companies like sun. This is a hail-marry effort to stop their impending demise. Their market share has been dwindling for years and it's starting to tank even more, especially with the linux options

I can see where you're coming from, and honestly, it feels a bit like that to me as well. Sun didn't make their fortune on open source (although they have been involved with open software and open standards for quite some time), so I suspect the attitude towards it is mixed.

In fact, I recently went to an OpenSolaris users' group meeting at my local Sun facility, and one of the Sun people did mention that open sourcing Solaris was kind of a hard sell with the management, but that the "a rising tide benefits us all" argument did eventually win out. So, are they true believers? Undoubtedly, many Sun employees are, and surely some are skeptical. But even if 100% of them aren't behind it, you have to give them credit for being willing to try new things.

Now, on to the question of whether this is a Hail Mary. My own opinion is that if it were just this one thing in isolation, that wouldn't be a good sign. But, over the last year, Sun has done lots of things that kick ass. Solaris 10 kicks ass. ZFS, which they've just released, kicks ass[1]. (As the ZFS slides say, "ZFS Objective: End the Suffering", and that refers to the tedium of storage management on ALL platforms.) Sun is already working on projects and starting new projects to address shortcomings with Solaris on the desktop. Though they of course support gcc, the newest version of their own proprietary compiler (and dev environment), Sun Studio 11, is now free as in beer. And it's available for both Solaris and Linux, and pretty clearly generates better code on SPARC and is pretty competitive on x86.

Some of their new Opteron hardware is quite cool and cost competitive with similar Dell systems[2]. And they also have their 8-core, 4-simultaneous-hardware-thread Niagara chips.

The point is, like in years past, it can once again be said that Sun is doing cool stuff. So if you want to go with the football analogies, it could be a Hail Mary, or it could be that halftime has just ended, Sun has just studied the films to see what they need to adjust, and they're back on the field and ready to make something happen.

[1] Check out the (PDF) slides about it, or either of the two demos, or some of the other documentation.

[2] In fact, compare the cheapest 1U Dell server with the cheapest 1U Sun server. The Dell has a Celeron with 256KB cache in a server (!!!), and the Sun has an Opteron with 1MB cache. And the Sun is $745, whereas the Dell is $999. The only negative with the Sun is that it has no disk, but that option is $150, leaving it at $895, still over $100 cheaper than the Dell. Oh yeah, and the Sun hardware is qualified to run RHEL, SUSE Linux, Solaris 10, or Windows.

There are companies that truly believe in open source and its philosophy and there are companies like sun. This is a hail-marry effort to stop their impending demise. Their market share has been dwindling for years and it's starting to tank even more, especially with the linux options

I can see where you're coming from, and honestly, it feels a bit like that to me as well. Sun didn't make their fortune on open source (although they have been involved with open software and open standards for quite some time), so I suspect the attitude towards it is mixed.

In fact, I recently went to an OpenSolaris users' group meeting at my local Sun facility, and one of the Sun people did mention that open sourcing Solaris was kind of a hard sell with the management, but that the "a rising tide benefits us all" argument did eventually win out. So, are they true believers? Undoubtedly, many Sun employees are, and surely some are skeptical. But even if 100% of them aren't behind it, you have to give them credit for being willing to try new things.

Now, on to the question of whether this is a Hail Mary. My own opinion is that if it were just this one thing in isolation, that wouldn't be a good sign. But, over the last year, Sun has done lots of things that kick ass. Solaris 10 kicks ass. ZFS, which they've just released, kicks ass[1]. (As the ZFS slides say, "ZFS Objective: End the Suffering", and that refers to the tedium of storage management on ALL platforms.) Sun is already working on projects and starting new projects to address shortcomings with Solaris on the desktop. Though they of course support gcc, the newest version of their own proprietary compiler (and dev environment), Sun Studio 11, is now free as in beer. And it's available for both Solaris and Linux, and pretty clearly generates better code on SPARC and is pretty competitive on x86.

Some of their new Opteron hardware is quite cool and cost competitive with similar Dell systems[2]. And they also have their 8-core, 4-simultaneous-hardware-thread Niagara chips.

The point is, like in years past, it can once again be said that Sun is doing cool stuff. So if you want to go with the football analogies, it could be a Hail Mary, or it could be that halftime has just ended, Sun has just studied the films to see what they need to adjust, and they're back on the field and ready to make something happen.

[1] Check out the (PDF) slides about it, or either of the two demos, or some of the other documentation.

[2] In fact, compare the cheapest 1U Dell server with the cheapest 1U Sun server. The Dell has a Celeron with 256KB cache in a server (!!!), and the Sun has an Opteron with 1MB cache. And the Sun is $745, whereas the Dell is $999. The only negative with the Sun is that it has no disk, but that option is $150, leaving it at $895, still over $100 cheaper than the Dell. Oh yeah, and the Sun hardware is qualified to run RHEL, SUSE Linux, Solaris 10, or Windows.

There are companies that truly believe in open source and its philosophy and there are companies like sun. This is a hail-marry effort to stop their impending demise. Their market share has been dwindling for years and it's starting to tank even more, especially with the linux options

I can see where you're coming from, and honestly, it feels a bit like that to me as well. Sun didn't make their fortune on open source (although they have been involved with open software and open standards for quite some time), so I suspect the attitude towards it is mixed.

In fact, I recently went to an OpenSolaris users' group meeting at my local Sun facility, and one of the Sun people did mention that open sourcing Solaris was kind of a hard sell with the management, but that the "a rising tide benefits us all" argument did eventually win out. So, are they true believers? Undoubtedly, many Sun employees are, and surely some are skeptical. But even if 100% of them aren't behind it, you have to give them credit for being willing to try new things.

Now, on to the question of whether this is a Hail Mary. My own opinion is that if it were just this one thing in isolation, that wouldn't be a good sign. But, over the last year, Sun has done lots of things that kick ass. Solaris 10 kicks ass. ZFS, which they've just released, kicks ass[1]. (As the ZFS slides say, "ZFS Objective: End the Suffering", and that refers to the tedium of storage management on ALL platforms.) Sun is already working on projects and starting new projects to address shortcomings with Solaris on the desktop. Though they of course support gcc, the newest version of their own proprietary compiler (and dev environment), Sun Studio 11, is now free as in beer. And it's available for both Solaris and Linux, and pretty clearly generates better code on SPARC and is pretty competitive on x86.

Some of their new Opteron hardware is quite cool and cost competitive with similar Dell systems[2]. And they also have their 8-core, 4-simultaneous-hardware-thread Niagara chips.

The point is, like in years past, it can once again be said that Sun is doing cool stuff. So if you want to go with the football analogies, it could be a Hail Mary, or it could be that halftime has just ended, Sun has just studied the films to see what they need to adjust, and they're back on the field and ready to make something happen.

[1] Check out the (PDF) slides about it, or either of the two demos, or some of the other documentation.

[2] In fact, compare the cheapest 1U Dell server with the cheapest 1U Sun server. The Dell has a Celeron with 256KB cache in a server (!!!), and the Sun has an Opteron with 1MB cache. And the Sun is $745, whereas the Dell is $999. The only negative with the Sun is that it has no disk, but that option is $150, leaving it at $895, still over $100 cheaper than the Dell. Oh yeah, and the Sun hardware is qualified to run RHEL, SUSE Linux, Solaris 10, or Windows.

Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun will be opening its enterprise software in a manner similar to Solaris 10.

So... not very much then.

Looks pretty open to me. I can browse the source online or I can go download it.

And it's all under a license which is quite similar to the Mozilla Public License.

If you think this is "not very" open, could you be more specific about why and how?

Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun will be opening its enterprise software in a manner similar to Solaris 10.

So... not very much then.

Looks pretty open to me. I can browse the source online or I can go download it.

And it's all under a license which is quite similar to the Mozilla Public License.

If you think this is "not very" open, could you be more specific about why and how?

Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun will be opening its enterprise software in a manner similar to Solaris 10.

So... not very much then.

Looks pretty open to me. I can browse the source online or I can go download it.

And it's all under a license which is quite similar to the Mozilla Public License.

If you think this is "not very" open, could you be more specific about why and how?

Apparently nobody bothered to tell you that Sun Studio 10 and 11 IDE, C, C++ and Fortran Suite are free-as-in-beer.

You can get these state of the art tools here:

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/sun_stud io_tools/

And BTW, these compilers trod GCC into the ground, on GCC's native platform, namely x86 and x64 in every respect.

Consider yourself notified.

I'm sorry, I don't often reply on Slashdot, but I have to reply this because it's so pointedly wrong. Sun didn't open source solaris to win support contracts and sell hardware. They open sourced it to generate a community around it and to increase developer and academic interest. The engineers working on Solaris have been wanting to open source Solaris for ages to try and increase adoption. I'm on the OpenSolaris engineering team, so I'm pretty certain I know what's going on around me here.

Because it does not have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems?

But I would say that it does have the latest and greatest in debug tools and Filesystems. With regard to debug tools, it has capabilities like DTrace, truss, kstat, pstack, plockstat, cpustat, etc. built into the OS. And on Tuesday, they somewhat quietly released Sun Studio 11 (http://www.sun.com/software/products/studio/index .xml) as completely free (as in no cost, unless you want support) software. This includes their latest compilers, debugging utilities, performance anlaysis tools, and NetBeans-based IDE. I'd say that dbx compares pretty favorably with gdb, and they have achieved several performance world records with their compilers.

And with regard to filesystems, on Wednesday Sun released (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/) the complete source code to ZFS and Solaris Express build 27 which contains the first publicly-available version of ZFS in a form that anyone can download and play with. It offers quite a lot of features in areas like ensuring data integrity via strong checksums, and 128-bit addressing capability for virtually unlimited filesystem sizes (http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bonwick?entry=12 8_bit_storage_are_you). Its performance is already generally faster than UFS, and if you enable compression then it generally goes even faster due to the smaller amount of disk I/O. It is certainly a pretty advanced filesystem compared with EXT3/Reiser/XFS/JFS.

Sorry, the information I referred to is in a PDF that is linked to the article. It's at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/z fs_last.pdf. Its a pretty good read - exciting times for filesystem fans.

Dan Price has just put up a new screeen cast demoing trashing one side of the mirror without harming the contents. It's at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos/ selfheal

Tp.

Obviously not! I read http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/, which is what we're linking to hear, and which doesn't talk about any of those things. But I guess I should have assumed that rollbackability is a fundamental feature of any new file system.

Man pages and a PDF slide show convering of the more interesting points:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/
(ZFS itself has just two commands btw)

Some basic UFS vs ZFS benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/roch?entry=zfs_to _ufs_performance_comparison
(I guess we'll have to wait and see if ZFS can beat UFS on all benchmarks by the time it ships with Solaris proper)

Party trick - silently recovering forced data corruption:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timc?entry=demons trating_zfs_self_healing

A user example of how ZFS's built-in error detection and correction can find hardware errors:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/elowe?entry=zfs_s aves_the_day_ta

Some background on RAS in file-systems:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/relling?entry=zfs _from_a_ras_point

ZFS vs Veritas for simplicity:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf?entry=zfs_is _that_it

You can config ZFS from a browser too if you want:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/talley?entry=mana ge_zfs_from_your_browser

How to trash your OSs with benchmarks:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bill?entry=zfs_vs _the_benchmark

Can't yet be used as the boot file-system, but it's being worked on:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tabriz?entry=zfs_ boot

Watch a demo of it here: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/demos/ basics/
They create 100 file systems in 20 seconds! Amazing!

http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/ for most of the code with a link to download most of it.
http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/on/usr/src/ uts/ for the Solaris Kernel

http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/ for most of the code with a link to download most of it.
http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/on/usr/src/ uts/ for the Solaris Kernel

Well... it kind of is

I think it's about GNU/Solaris vs GNU/OpenSolaris (not about prefixing it with Debian). It is based on the OpenSolaris-Kernel not the kernel of Solaris.

Solaris is now free for the taking, and it beats OpenBSD on every front, hands down! If you're going to pay for "free" software why don't you consider instead downloading the ISOs from Open Solaris (iso availability one more thing Open Solaris beats Open BSD at!) and instead send your donations to a Worthwhile charity!

If, as you just said, you "stick to machine words" what does field reordering have to do with anything?

Because we're in a new century. I/O isn't performed one word at a time anymore:

Device command queues
Example struct for SCSA1394 (see scsa1394_cmd struct)

Field reordering breaks device communication.

But it says nothing about alignment, so even though its more predictable, its still completely useless.

And once again, as I've stated before, this is what pointer arithmetic is for. If you have alignment requirements, then you need a host-specific alignment-check. Yes, it's worse than Ada which can specify alignment portably. Unfortunately, Ada has other problems, but I've mentioned them before so I won't repeat myself.

Well, you can, but its completely unportable.

The number of non-portable features are small, and isolatable. Yes C forces you to do more work than other languages in this regard. Unfortunately, it's the only language with an implementation that has the other required features. Sucks, but there it is.

So I take it that you've looked at the new features that were part of
Solaris 10
and the community that has already formed around
OpenSolaris and the new
Niagara-based line
along with the new AMD64 servers, before deciding that there isn't anything
original being done?

Who would you say is doing original things in these areas then?

I'm not sure what your argument is, so please explain it to a slashdot known-no. Pick a Random header file and point out where you don't see #ifdefs that somehow relate to the used architecture.

Next, go to the directory marked as "common platform-independent kernel sources" and type "asm" to prove that no assembly is in there. See what i mean?

Now explain to me why this code is fundamentally easier to port to, say, XScale processors, than is Linux? Or 80286, for that matter?

Yes, in theory all machine specific aspects could be encapsulated in a single (set of) modules. But in reality, stuff like conceptually different memory models, endian, stack direction are bound to leak through different levels within the OS.

I'm not sure what your argument is, so please explain it to a slashdot known-no. Pick a Random header file and point out where you don't see #ifdefs that somehow relate to the used architecture.

Next, go to the directory marked as "common platform-independent kernel sources" and type "asm" to prove that no assembly is in there. See what i mean?

Now explain to me why this code is fundamentally easier to port to, say, XScale processors, than is Linux? Or 80286, for that matter?

Yes, in theory all machine specific aspects could be encapsulated in a single (set of) modules. But in reality, stuff like conceptually different memory models, endian, stack direction are bound to leak through different levels within the OS.

Its been what, 2-3 years since the open-source solaris announcement came out? How much has been open sourced? AFAIK, all the have opened sourced is DTrace (a very cool tool/framework), but nay else.

Well, it's good that you said "AFAIK", because what YK turns out to be out of date. Browse the Solaris source code right here.

Lets see them open up the kernel internals like the thread model

OK, here's the directory with the dispatcher stuff and here's thread.c specifically.

Its been what, 2-3 years since the open-source solaris announcement came out? How much has been open sourced? AFAIK, all the have opened sourced is DTrace (a very cool tool/framework), but nay else.

Well, it's good that you said "AFAIK", because what YK turns out to be out of date. Browse the Solaris source code right here.

Lets see them open up the kernel internals like the thread model

OK, here's the directory with the dispatcher stuff and here's thread.c specifically.

Its been what, 2-3 years since the open-source solaris announcement came out? How much has been open sourced? AFAIK, all the have opened sourced is DTrace (a very cool tool/framework), but nay else.

Well, it's good that you said "AFAIK", because what YK turns out to be out of date. Browse the Solaris source code right here.

Lets see them open up the kernel internals like the thread model

OK, here's the directory with the dispatcher stuff and here's thread.c specifically.

OpenSolaris source code *is* available.

Download it http://www.opensolaris.org/os/downloads/

Or search the source online http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/

Please, next time do your homework before posting, you just look like a troll otherwise.

Also, your Sun rep should be fired--lying about Linux like that.

Sun is a hardware company, yes, but they're a software company too.

http://www.sun.com/software

http://www.sun.com/download/index.jsp

Sun have been pushing the Java Enterprise System, Java Desktop System, and StarOffice products pretty hard--to the point where it seems like they're forgetting that they are still a hardware vendor too. However, they know Solaris isn't the only OS, or even the best one for particular needs--which is why they sell both Sparc systems for Solaris and x86_64 systems for Solaris_x86, Linux, and Windows. Of course they would prefer you buy Sparc/Solaris, but they're trying to compete in a much wider marketplace.

Incompatible licenses are are one of the deterrents to cross pollonization of the Unices; compare CDDL with GPL. The other is significant differences in the underlying software architectures and interfaces. You can't just copy and paste code for both reasons. Ideas can still flow between kernels, and they do. But frankly, independent implementations of similar ideas is better for software biodiversity. Software needs variety. Keep using Solaris, Linux, and all the *BSDs. Don't rule out any of them yet.

OpenSolaris source code *is* available.

Download it http://www.opensolaris.org/os/downloads/

Or search the source online http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/

Please, next time do your homework before posting, you just look like a troll otherwise.

Also, your Sun rep should be fired--lying about Linux like that.

Sun is a hardware company, yes, but they're a software company too.

http://www.sun.com/software

http://www.sun.com/download/index.jsp

Sun have been pushing the Java Enterprise System, Java Desktop System, and StarOffice products pretty hard--to the point where it seems like they're forgetting that they are still a hardware vendor too. However, they know Solaris isn't the only OS, or even the best one for particular needs--which is why they sell both Sparc systems for Solaris and x86_64 systems for Solaris_x86, Linux, and Windows. Of course they would prefer you buy Sparc/Solaris, but they're trying to compete in a much wider marketplace.

Incompatible licenses are are one of the deterrents to cross pollonization of the Unices; compare CDDL with GPL. The other is significant differences in the underlying software architectures and interfaces. You can't just copy and paste code for both reasons. Ideas can still flow between kernels, and they do. But frankly, independent implementations of similar ideas is better for software biodiversity. Software needs variety. Keep using Solaris, Linux, and all the *BSDs. Don't rule out any of them yet.

The official announcement was last January (nine months ago). Rumors had been out earlier, of course.

"How much has been open sourced? AFAIK, all the have opened sourced is DTrace (a very cool tool/framework), but nay else."

That's what was released in January; as of April, the answer is (per the FAQ at http://opensolaris.org/ :

Initially, the OpenSolaris project includes source for the Solaris OS core kernel, networking support, libraries and commands. This set of source is often referred to as the OS/Networking consolidation (O/N).

"Lets see them open up the kernel internals like the thread model..."

Done.

It mainly has to do with historic reasons. Until a few months ago, Solaris was a proprietary, closed source system running only on Sun's SPARC-based hardware, and on some x86-based systems (albeit with fairly poor hardware support). Sun had very little reason to perform ports to other platforms, and since the source code was not available to others under an open source license, such ports were not performed by a third party.

But we're seeing that change now. There's a PowerPC port in the works, for instance.

P.P.S. Here's the source code for JDS. I knew it was around here somewhere. :-)

and ever think you'd see this?
http://www.sun.com/service/support/windows/

Certainly, licensing should be a primary issue.

How does Sun lower prices further?

Both Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris are free for SPARC, x86, and AMD 64-bit. You can pay for support if you like, just like you can with Red Hat (at prices starting at a fraction of Red Hat's).

I am not surprised at linux's lower cost, I am surprised Solaris was so high. Other than Sun's high licensing costs I'm at a loss on why Solaris would be so much higher.

Had the report not come from IBM, I would have been suprised also. Solaris has come free of charge from Sun in one form or another since ver 2.6 (current version 10). And currently, it is not only free but also open source - http://www.opensolaris.org/

Solaris, afaik, is currently the most popular and widely deployed commercial unix implementation, with IBM's AIX coming in somewhere behind that. Other popular (YMMV) commercial unix's would include SGI Irix, HP-UX and SCO

At the least one can submit a bug report at http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/index.jsp

You could just read the source and compare. I believe you will find that (just as advertised) it's SVr4 and not BSD down deep. But why take someone else's word for it, use the Source .... http://opensolaris.org/os/

The CDDL is a genericized version of the MPL (Mozilla Public License).

Here's a link to the CDDL FAQ.

The GPL license is not very attractive to many commercial software companies, and may also conflict with other contracts that they are already bound to.

Yes. Sun chose the Common Development and Distribution License because the GPL would not allow Sun and others to freely redistribute OpenSolaris in its entirety. Due to third party licensing concerns not all of Solaris could be GPLed and the GNU Public License essentially requires all linked components to be GPLed.

More importantly Sun is the only classic commercial vendor for which "if Google used Windows, or any other non-open source software program, to make changes to that system he would be required to essentially ask permission from that vendor" no longer is true, with the OpenSolaris project. I know that a lot of people have ideological and political problems with Sun's approach, but it quite clearly offers the same practical business advantages as other OSS while also playing off Sun's classic strengths a bit.

In addition Solaris 10 does run quite well on commodity x86 machines, not as wide hardware support as Linux sure, but if you are buying the machines for the purpose you have no trouble.

Is Open Solaris on SPARC and x86/AMD/AMD64 dead too?