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Not forgetting that in that price (unless I'm misreading the Sun website) is that you get a 3 year next day warranty - http://www.sun.com/service/warranty/entrylevelserv ers.html

I wouldn't bet on that: http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jsent erprise/index.html Anyway, different tools for different purposes. Emacs (or vi) will always be the tool of choise for individuals doing system-level c programming (among other things), but for corporate teams developing enterprise-class business applications, emacs probably isn't even an option; both Eclipse and Sun's Java Studio will see plenty of use. Not to mention other environments. The more the merrier.

... and here's the link for those of us that don't have glasses thicker than our forearms.

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/korn/Weblog/20051 113/

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/korn/LargePrintWe blog/20051113

They don't offer support?

That's news to me!

http://support.openoffice.org/index.html

I'm so glad that /. story submitters are not contributing to FUD.

You can most certainly get support for OpenOffice from the primary sponsor of OpenOffice.org (Sun Microsoystems) as well as for the commercial product, StarOffice.

OpenOffice.org has come a long way. In fact if they clean up the I/O and fix the related I/O performance bottlenecks I plan to buy StarOffice as an upgrade to OpenOffice for all of my users next year. We've already switched most of our users from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice and have lost little to no functionality (and have gained some functionality in some ways).

They don't offer support?

That's news to me!

http://support.openoffice.org/index.html

I'm so glad that /. story submitters are not contributing to FUD.

You can most certainly get support for OpenOffice from the primary sponsor of OpenOffice.org (Sun Microsoystems) as well as for the commercial product, StarOffice.

OpenOffice.org has come a long way. In fact if they clean up the I/O and fix the related I/O performance bottlenecks I plan to buy StarOffice as an upgrade to OpenOffice for all of my users next year. We've already switched most of our users from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice and have lost little to no functionality (and have gained some functionality in some ways).

-in Impress, so far there is no way to embed sound or other multimedia files. In PowerPoint I used to do this. I would like to be able to have a music file play while the slides autoadvance. I can do the second part easily, but I can't get sound to play. I also have not yet been able to embed a short film clip on a slide.

Insert -> Movie and Sound.

Quite easy, isn't it? If the format is unknown, then do the following (from the OOo help system): "On UNIX systems, the Media Player requires the Java Media Framework API (JMF). Download and install the JMF files, and add the path to the installed jmf.jar to the class path in Tools - Options - OpenOffice.org - Java."

HTH!

I thought libm was glibc based, but according to: this it's FreeBSD based ... but whatever, it's certainly very different from the binary blob you get from Sun, which was the main point.

As for SunONE Studio 10 compiler being better than GCC, well, how about I take a bit of number crunching code and compile it on Opteron with both GCC and SunONE Studio 10 and see which runs faster

You did read what I said right? "By every measurable comparison" is not the same thing as x% faster at number crunching code. Sure llnl.gov might like it, but personally I'll stick with decent warnings. If it wasn't for the semi useful first comment I'd assume you were trolling.

It's hard to deny some of the points the article makes, yet I like Ajax a whole lot more than I ever liked frames. I hated frames. Still do. There's not much you can do with frames that you can't also do without. The onlly frame-based site I really like is Sun's Java Docs, and even that could have been done without frames.

Ajax, however, lets you do things you really cannot do without it. Can you imagine Google Maps without Ajax? Or all those spiffy desktop-in-your-browser sites? The company I work for has written and sells a (Open Source, btw) CMS that runs mostly in Ajax, because we want it to work in a normal browser instead of requiring customers to install a special piece of software, and a heavy overdose of javascript is the only way to get all the stuff done that the CMS has to do.

In fact, it was Ajax that actually convinced me that javascript wasn't really all that bad. I used to hate it, because too many websites used javascript mostly for frivolous junk, messing with my browser, and replacing perfectly good html functionality with something that doesn't work in half of the browsers. So I'd like to propose two ground rules for the use of Ajax. (And they go for regular javascript too.)

1. Do not use frivolously.
2. Only use it when nothing else will do.
3. Absolutely never ever use it because it's "hip" and "cool".

it follows logically that Massachusetts should also turn its back on OpenDoc and OpenOffice.org because development is underwritten by Sun:

Current Employment Opportunites Sun Microsystems India

  Sparc is screwed as an architecture I reckon. It lagged behind the other Riscs in terms of performance

See the T-1000 benchmarks page.

Paraphrasing from that...
The single CPU 1 GHz 8-core T1000 system hs about 3x faster on SPECweb than dual 3.8 GHz Xeons, 2x as fast on SPECjbb business apps benchmarks than dual Xeons, etc

Your typical FPS game will vary, of course, until Carmack gets around to massively multithreading...

RedHat, Suse, Mandrake, etc all offer linux as OSS

OpenSolaris has an OSI license. It is called the CDDL. Welcome to open source.

This includes not just the compiler but a very wide array of tools.

Sun offers the Sun ONE Studio tools for free. Vastly superior to GCC in every measurable way. Of course that is my opinion based on years of code crunching. The fact is that these are available for free. Download and go.
I believe that the source is being made open also.

ALL of the source code of anything marked OSS is available

Absolutely. All of the components under the CDDL are open. Have fun.
More on the way.
Heck, Sun just spent FIVE years working on an entirely new filesystem called ZFS and they released it and open sourced it at the same time. How cool is that?
See : http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-11/sunf lash.20051130.1.html

Now, you mention DELL and IBM. Well they both sell hardware with services.

I have heard that .. somewhere. I think Sun does that too. So does my corner store.

Neither of them directly deal with Linux

see : http://www.redhat.com/sundown/
Why is there an IBM logo on that page? Why is there an edition RHEL for POWER but not for Sparc ? Why does it say in big BOLD graphics there "Migrate to Linux with IBM + Red Hat"?
Now go look at : http://www.redhat.com/en_us/USA/rhel/compare/serve r/
The absolute cheapest edition is $349 and the top is $2499 !!
I can get Solaris for FREE.
For UltraSparc or for Intel or AMD Opteron.
The cost of an OPTIONAL software support contract is less than 34 cents a day.
I ought to know .. I bought one because it was five times cheaper than my daily coffee intake and I can't live with that either.
See my blog : http://www.blastwave.org/dclarke/blog/pivot/entry. php?id=107
While you're surfing, look at the three guys at :
http://www.novell.com/linux/unixtolinux/
They are all parked on a bench outside the IT Directors office waiting to tell how reiserfs screwed up their data again and they lost the corporate database because of some messed up kernel patch.
But that is just me guessing.

You can buy just about any size machine from these 2 companies that
is both smaller/cheaper to larger/more expensive than what Sun offers.

Sure. I agree with "cheap".
Show me a 64-bit Opteron that is faster, cooler and less costly than a SunFire X2100.
Really. Anyone can make junk that is cheap and monsters that are massively expensive.
Show me a 64-bit machine that has more horsepower than an 8-core 1.2GHz SunFire T1000 or a 64-bit AMD Opteron machine with more horsepower than the SunFire X2100.
For less money.
Oh, and the Opteron gear has to be certified to run Windows as well as Linux as well as a real UNIX.
Good luck.

when I look at the top 500 fastest computers, where is Solaris in there?
Does it hold the majority of the top 10, let alone the top 500?

Take a long hard stare at my blog from a little while ago :
http://www.blastwave.org/dclarke/blog/pivot/entry. php?id=113
I count, what? 16 e

So? RHEL is a support contract. I doubt Sun is handing out service contracts for free or even price matching RH.

Perhaps you should start comparing prices, then:

• Sun Support is available in three levels: Basic, Standard, and Premium. The prices are $120/yr, $240/yr, and $360/yr for a single processor-socket system. $360/yr gets you unlimited live phone support 24/7.
• Meanwhile, Red Hat offers a wider variety of support plans, including separate workstation and server plans. The cheapest server plan is $349/yr and the most expensive is $2499/yr. You'd have to get the $2499 plan to get 24/7 phone support.

So, it would appear that Sun's support prices are actually lower rather than beating Red Hat's. In fact, for one of Sun's cheapest server systems, you can get Platinum support for $2304 for three years. Platinum support includes both 24/7 software support and 24/7 two-hour response time on-site hardware support. That's cheaper then one year of Red Hat's software-only 24/7 support.

Sun hardware is getting competitive, which is a good thing but 'dirt cheap'? Put down the crackpipe.

Again, compare prices:

• You can buy a 1U, Opteron server system from Sun for $745.00. It doesn't have a disk, but you can add one for $150, bringing the price to $895.
• Meanwhile, the cheapest rack mount server of any kind you can get from Dell will cost you $999. It does include a disk, but its processor is a Celeron with 256K cache.

So, the Sun server may not be as cheap as building a system out of spare parts lying around in your basement, but it really is pretty cheap compared to the competition in that space.

So? RHEL is a support contract. I doubt Sun is handing out service contracts for free or even price matching RH.

Perhaps you should start comparing prices, then:

• Sun Support is available in three levels: Basic, Standard, and Premium. The prices are $120/yr, $240/yr, and $360/yr for a single processor-socket system. $360/yr gets you unlimited live phone support 24/7.
• Meanwhile, Red Hat offers a wider variety of support plans, including separate workstation and server plans. The cheapest server plan is $349/yr and the most expensive is $2499/yr. You'd have to get the $2499 plan to get 24/7 phone support.

So, it would appear that Sun's support prices are actually lower rather than beating Red Hat's. In fact, for one of Sun's cheapest server systems, you can get Platinum support for $2304 for three years. Platinum support includes both 24/7 software support and 24/7 two-hour response time on-site hardware support. That's cheaper then one year of Red Hat's software-only 24/7 support.

Sun hardware is getting competitive, which is a good thing but 'dirt cheap'? Put down the crackpipe.

Again, compare prices:

• You can buy a 1U, Opteron server system from Sun for $745.00. It doesn't have a disk, but you can add one for $150, bringing the price to $895.
• Meanwhile, the cheapest rack mount server of any kind you can get from Dell will cost you $999. It does include a disk, but its processor is a Celeron with 256K cache.

So, the Sun server may not be as cheap as building a system out of spare parts lying around in your basement, but it really is pretty cheap compared to the competition in that space.

Sun's microSPARC processor has been available for download for quite some time. It is available as synthesizable verilog source code and I think it comes with a PCI master. If sparc is not your style, download their picoJava processor instead.

Sun's microSPARC processor has been available for download for quite some time. It is available as synthesizable verilog source code and I think it comes with a PCI master. If sparc is not your style, download their picoJava processor instead.

"If and when the product comes out, it's often a let-down"

The product is already out..... http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmseer#get_ready

Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Our Most Valuable Intellectual Property

And now you have a pretty good idea of what's in store for tomorrow. (Pay careful attention to the "open market for parts" comment - we're planning on delivering an extraordinary surprise to the industry. No sense in letting the software folks have all the fun...)

Wow. Just wow.

I look at Solaris (err, OpenSolaris) and how it can now push a 10Gb/s interface at line speed (or close to it) and MS has struggled up until recently to get satisfactory speeds above 10Mbit/s ?

Yet another "how do users/admins accept this as OK" thought going through my head re: Windows internals.

Sun has released its T1 chip which boasts 8 cores capable of running 4 threads each. As mentioned on slashdot before, its considered a "green" chip becuase it only requires aprox. 70 watts to run (think lightbulb). Sun has a 2U server with this chip, 32 Gigs of ram and 2 SAS drives all for around (or under) $30k. This is complete redesigning my future datacenter planning. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention, This is shipping now and runs only Solaris 10.

Need more than 2 CPU cores? Dont want to wait 5 more years for it? ... http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml Sun to the rescue...

36 * $29.95 is $1078.20. The same workstation sells for $895. For that $895, hardware support is already included. I think Sun's Opteron hardware is great, but how is this a good deal?

Unfortunately, this is not the case with Solaris, which is under a convoluted and restrictive license which basically exists for no reason other than to be incompatible with the GPL.

Nice troll. The CDDL is the same as the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Everyone loves Mozilla for being open source, but they rail on the CDDL at every available opportunity. Why?

I see you're simply not willing. Because if you were you'd be going at it web based for $640,- instead of going for something which contains several courses + an exam to present a certificate. I'm not going to present all the other alternatives, this one only demanded one single click on "web based" and since you're obviously unwilling to do that I think you just wish to focus on the negative. Nothing wrong with that ofcourse, but a waste of my time in my not so humble opinion. Sorry for the late response; it seems that /. doesn't like people to place multiple posts within 40 minutes. Rather weird; but when you realize the software can't even remove useraccount without getting trashed while its using a SQL backend I guess we know where it comes from.

So pay up. If you've been through this before you should know that those instructors cost money too. And if you still wish to cut down on costs just follow some Web based training or even a Live virtual class. Its not as if there's nothing available, it just costs money. Big deal; those teachers deserve a living too you know.

So pay up. If you've been through this before you should know that those instructors cost money too. And if you still wish to cut down on costs just follow some Web based training or even a Live virtual class. Its not as if there's nothing available, it just costs money. Big deal; those teachers deserve a living too you know.

Sun Studio
Sun Java Studio Creator
Sun Java Studio Enterprise

High-performance AMD Opteron processor-based system at Pentium 4 workstation prices

So what is the difference between this and Sun's Directory server? The screenshots are the same exact thing only instead of Sun it say Redhat where before both products said Netscape. Sun already has it ported to linux so what is the big deal? Also SUN is open sourcing the JES stack from slashdot's posting last week so the their's will be open source too. So where's the beef?

Sun's directory server: http://www.sun.com/software/products/directory_srv r_ee/index.xml

Does fedora have a version of proxy server to use with it? As without that load blanacing/fail over is a pain as the app if forced to hold the interlligence.

Secondly the huge market is identity mangement, so does fedora's product intergrate with Identity manager/siteminder/ ie is it FULL version 3 compliant?

Inquiring minds would like to know!!!

Also if anyone wants i can mark up benchmarks next week off slamd to get it going..

HOPEFULLY REDHAT KNOCKED OUT o=NETSCAPEROOT too thats embarrassing for sun i bet, but that graphical gui is dependent on it...

I hear people in IT community (well, mostly Linux community) that Sun is making drastic moves, they lose control and soon it'll be all over because they don't innovate. But who is actually catching up with who ? If you look at those screenshots then I merely see the same as my Java Enterprise Directory Server (current version 5.2).

Don't believe me? Well, take a look here for a glimpse at the administration portal and here to see a little more directory server action.

Now I wonder... Sun released lots of their source code and suddenly the first Enterprise directory server is released on the Linux market. And you still say Sun is doing the catching up here? ;-)

I hear people in IT community (well, mostly Linux community) that Sun is making drastic moves, they lose control and soon it'll be all over because they don't innovate. But who is actually catching up with who ? If you look at those screenshots then I merely see the same as my Java Enterprise Directory Server (current version 5.2).

Don't believe me? Well, take a look here for a glimpse at the administration portal and here to see a little more directory server action.

Now I wonder... Sun released lots of their source code and suddenly the first Enterprise directory server is released on the Linux market. And you still say Sun is doing the catching up here? ;-)

One year porting to linux?
I think that the mindless post is your post.

There was Netscape Directory Server for Linux many years ago. By example a link:
http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/20 0201/msg00054.html

Please inform before sending thse e-mails

I think that Java Directory Server is a better product, and a more mature product. And this is free. (It is based on Netscape Directory Server). I think it is pointless the move of RedHat with Netscape products. I think that they give free, because Sun gave it free.
(Look at http://www.sun.com/ Java Enterprise System, it includes directory server and provisioning, etc)
They can't charge for a product, if there is a better and free alternative.

Regards.

I think that Java Enterprise System is a best product, it includes directory server and provisioning software, and a lot more of software that integrates with Directory Server.
And it is free. See http://www.sun.com/

I think that the Fedora directory Server is late, and it is based on old versions of Netscape Directory Server.

By "biggest" I mean "most copies installed." But you say that in any case, OS X isn't the answer... so which Unix OS has more copies installed than OS X? Seriously! I want to know.

When you make a statement, it is your responsibility to back it up. We're talking logic 101 here.

As for your question: there isn't really an easy way to determine the answer. It's easy to get a good guess of OS X licenses, as another poster noted.

I would guess that the answer is Linux, and this is the most difficult to determine because of all the distributions. Also, are you counting the US, or the world? In other parts of the world (Europe in particular), I would venture that Linux is more widespread than it is and the US, and probably outnumbers OS X installs by a significant margin. And we're talking about servers and desktops here. Look at netcraft and check out the stats. Most are running apache, probably on Linux, and that millions in itself, even accounting for virtual hosting.

As for the scoffing by another poster about the Solaris install base: 3.4 million licenses of Solaris 10 alone have been distributed. Consider that few serious production systems have been updated to it (since it's still in its first release). My pretty small company has over 1000 installed systems. A large bank I know of in town has over 30,000. I'd bet that the worldwide total is greater than the cited ~17 million OS X installs.

Again, I don't have solid numbers and my claims are essentially baseless. But so are yours. You can't make a claim without backing it up, period. But we've wasted enough time on this. I'm going to go enjoy my weekend. You should do the same. :-)

No, it hasn't always met those requirements. It has always met what Microsoft has claimed to be "Multi-User". They didn't invent the term, they just applied a brand new meaning to the term and people, like yourself, buy it as the "only" definition that matters.

It's important to understand the "user" part of "multiuser" doesn't refer to actual people. The ability to host multiple interactive sessions doesn't make an OS multiuser (otherwise OS/2 running a BBS server would be considered multiuser) any more than the lack of doing so makes an OS not multiuser (else a unix workstation with only one person in front of it wouldn't be multiuser).

That's Microsoft's new definition talking, once again. When the term was developed, it meant the capability of the OS/System to serve multiple actual people simultaneously. You get an "A" for sticking to the party line, but you should study more of the history of computing.

I say NT is "more multiuser" because access to just about everything in the OS is based around per-user ACLs. (Traditional) Unix, OTOH, only really has two different user contexts at its core - root and "not root" (this is why you *have* to be root to perform certain actions and so many applications use the clumsy hack of starting as root and then "dropping" to a regular user context). User groups are also used to further divide the "not root" aspect and access restrictions to resources are typically implemented by hacking some presentation layer together that looks like a filesystem, but fundamentally it's a primitive system that can't deliver fine-grained permissions.

It sounds like you haven't really spent anytime studying permission control on UNIX. With groups, it is entirely possible to create controls with nested layers of access. I use that all the time. There just hasn't been a need to implement ACLs on the business servers that I am running right now, there's no benefit to implementing that at this time.

However, if you are so uppity about ACLs, just check this. It is the command listing for Solaris 2.5's ACL system, released in 1995. It's UNIX and it had ACL's in 1995. Oh, I bet you didn't know that.

What are you talking about ?

Create a shortcut to the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel applet. Make sure you do this as an unprivileged user. Right-click and click on the "RunAs"... oh wait, it's not there. Hmm... Seems like you have to login with an Administrative account to "Add/Remove" programs from your system. That is an important, yet missing feature of the "RunAs" command. (I thought you knew Windows.)

You know why it is like that? I am taking an educated guess here, but having attempted to run installs after creating a shortcut and then using "RunAs" on the installer shortcut. I believe that "RunAs" only works for the initial application being called, it's not capable of spawning off sub-processes under the elevated privileges the application inherits from the initial "RunAs" activation.

Granted, there is a bit of security in doing so, at the same time, there's no reason that these sub-processes couldn't be ran in a sandbox under the control of the first process, similar to how UNIX handles parent and child processes. It could be written to make "RunAs" the primary process with ALL of the processes called by "RunAs" as subprocesses off of the parent. Thus, all processes spawned from child processes of the "RunAs" process are subservient to "RunAs". When "RunAs" is done with its job, all of the child processes would thus also be done as well.

See, with UNIX I can open up a shell, su to root and then open up an application. Unless I specifically choose to (with a flag), that application w

Sun has attempted to undermine linux by quasi-open sourcing their stuff... the two companies more likely to get hurt by the sun moves are Novell and RedHat

I don't think Sun are attempting to undermine Linux. I believe one aim would be to increase Solaris' exposure. But more-so, I think it's to give customers another reason *not* to migrate away from UNIX (including Linux) to Windows, which would likely be run on IBM or Dell hardware with Intel processors.

Of course I'm sure they'd prefer you run Solaris on a SPARC box, but Suse on an Sunfire Opteron box is fine, or even Windows if you must.

From http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4200/features.js p ...
Options are good: With Sun Fire X4200 servers, you can run Solaris, Linux, and Windows. And you can get support for all these operating systems from Sun. No problem. Stick with your favorite OS while deploying faster, more efficient servers that give you flexible options for the future:

• Included at no cost in the new Solaris Enterprise System are:

• The award winning and open sourced Solaris 10 OS, with the recently announced PostgreSQL database;
• The entire Sun Java Enterprise System infrastructure software platform, including the Sun Java Identity Management Suite, Sun Java Integration Suite, Sun Java Communications Suite, Sun Java Application Platform Suite, Sun Java Availability Suite and Sun Java Web Infrastructure Suite;
• The N1 Management Software including the Sun N1 System Manager, the Sun N1 Service Provisioning System, the Sun N1 Grid Engine;
• All tools for C, C++ and Java development, including Sun Studio 11, Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8 and Sun Java Studio Creator;
• SunRay ultra-thin client software;
• Sun Secure Global Desktop Software.

I'm downloading Sun Studio 11 for Solaris, x86, and Linux right now.

• Included at no cost in the new Solaris Enterprise System are:

• The award winning and open sourced Solaris 10 OS, with the recently announced PostgreSQL database;
• The entire Sun Java Enterprise System infrastructure software platform, including the Sun Java Identity Management Suite, Sun Java Integration Suite, Sun Java Communications Suite, Sun Java Application Platform Suite, Sun Java Availability Suite and Sun Java Web Infrastructure Suite;
• The N1 Management Software including the Sun N1 System Manager, the Sun N1 Service Provisioning System, the Sun N1 Grid Engine;
• All tools for C, C++ and Java development, including Sun Studio 11, Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8 and Sun Java Studio Creator;
• SunRay ultra-thin client software;
• Sun Secure Global Desktop Software.

I'm downloading Sun Studio 11 for Solaris, x86, and Linux right now.

I hope some day Sun Cluster and Sun Management Center will be included (you pay through the nose for those two products).

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.

First, if you are certain that Java is vulnerability free right now it follows that Java will remain vulnerability free indefinitely (assuming no new vulnerabilities are introduced). This holds regardless of source code availability.

Second, the Java source code is already available for download on Sun's site assuming you accept the Sun Community License (SCSL). It is hence safe to assume that black hats looking for Java vulnerabilities already have access to the source code.

In summary; the score 5/insightful of the parent of this posting is a mystery :-)

Huh?

Really, Sun has nothing to hide for security reasons. Your JDK already comes with the source code for all the public libraries found in the standard JRE distribution -- see src.zip in your JDK folder. And Sun doesn't try to stop you from writing your own JDK and JRE -- it is all spelled out quite clearly here.

The only problem is that writing all this in a clean-room fashion takes a lot of time and effort. You have to write your own JDK or classfile generator (which isn't too hard -- Eclipse already includes its own, so you can make class and JAR files on a system with only a JRE), your own JRE (which is substantial if you want it to have the efficiency of Sun's -- see the escape analysis they're including in Mustang), and most laborious of all: you have to write all the standard libraries that come with the JRE. That's why we haven't heard much from Harmony in awhile, and the cleanroom version that IBM produces is a version or so behind.

Sun is giving everyone, including open-source, the blueprints to Java; it just isn't giving them the assembly line.

- shadowmatter

Also, it's not clear to me what they have actually opened up. They opened Solaris, JES, etc., fine. What else? Compilers? Drivers? SunRay? Is there a list somewhere?

As far as "opening up," though, as of today Sun has opened nothing new, as far as I can tell. It is just "reaffirming its commitment to open source this software," to quote the press release.

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?

Also, it's not clear to me what they have actually opened up. They opened Solaris, JES, etc., fine. What else? Compilers? Drivers? SunRay? Is there a list somewhere?

Finally can somebody decipher their license, CDDL? http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:9125 :200412:dmcacncfamieofeochbn
Let's say I take Sun's source code, add some modification and nice packaging, etc., may I sell it to customers?

Java's source code is available for free. See http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/source_license.html .

"I want some software (security stuff) to stay closed-source forever"

The source isn't closed. It's not Free Software, but you can see it. I guess now this means you shouldn't use Java, seeing as all those evil hackers are gonna be rummaging through it.

And if you hadn't recalled, there already was a Java runtime from Microsoft. Wasn't compatible with Sun's Java. Doesn't exist anymore. Trademarks are sweet.

The technical stuff: Users were running on ageing Sun hardware with relatively low performance (Blade 1000s, Ultra 60s). The applications they run are technical applications for which ports exist for both Solaris and Linux. The new hardware is high-end HP workstations with more memory and processors than you can shake a stick at, combined with Nvidia FX3000/3400/3450 GFX cards. OS is RedHat 3.0. That was forced upon us by the key application which is only supported on that distribution.

Rationale behind the move: Move to Linux because the applications run faster. That's it.

So what worked well?

The major factor in the success of this rollout was the relatively low degree of change in terms of what was presented to the users. The applications they use were simply ports of the Solaris versions. Nothing new to learn. The only difference is that they work a whole bunch faster. Instantly the user base is won over and there's buy-in.

Another, seemingly small, item was the look of the login screen and the desktop environment on first login. First impressions do matter, and getting this right turned out to be very good PR. As the desktops were deployed, users would crowd round the first of the new systems in their areas and "kick its tyres". People were genuinely interested in what they were seeing, and a buzz spread round quickly. On our feedback forms many commented on how much they liked the new, tricked out, environment. In reality little had changed in terms of usability and people weren't frustrated that they couldn't find their favourite application (or analog, where none existed)

There was a relatively low impact for the support team too. Accustomed to Sun's jumpstart, kickstart is an intuitive and easy mechanism for deploying to a large number of identical desktops very easily. Power on, press F12, and the whole thing is automated from that point onwards.

What didn't work well?

The desktop environment was customised from the standard Redhat KDE login so that the right click menu displays a cascaded list of technical applications. Non-essential stuff was removed. Working out how the KDE menuing system hangs together wasted 2 days of my time. Redhat support were useless and I had to use a combination of strace and the source to prove definitively how it works. My major gripe with this whole process was the total lack of adequate documentation. If you're coming from a commercial Unix vendor's platform you'll be accustomed to good quality documentation that gives you all you need to deploy in a couple of hours. Just compare the CDE guides on docs.sun.com to the KDE manuals on www.kde.org and you will see what I mean. This is a fundamental weakness in the OSS world that must improve before large organisations will consider widescale deployments.

What else?

There was no desire or justification to migrate the backend office applications to the Linux desktop. Don't go there - it's a hiding to nothing. If the rest of your enterprise is using MS Office and Exchange there is no sense in trying to fudge things with OpenOffice or Evolution or their ilk. If you do, you *will* have problems. Somethings just don't work, and the support team don't want to spend the rest eternity trying to figure out why a particularly obtuse Word document with some recondite macro is refusing to display in OpenOffice. So how do those users get their standard office tools? Citrix. It just works. Leave the pain of MS support to the masochists and get on with your day job

I wouldn't trust an M$ application to report on M$ operating system and other flaws even if I were offered large sums of money to do so.

It all depends on how large a sum of money. If they give me a check for say $2 million dollars, then no problem, Microsoft is the answer. Of course I would retire at the end of the week. :)

A real fix would be for Microsoft to use this http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp or even this http://www.redhat.com/. Of course this would cut into their revenue stream but these are real fixes for the problem not bandaids like anti-virus software and spyware removal tools. I am sure an OEM branding deal could be setup for Microsoft to use either of those options. They just need to port some of their other applications to either of those choices. Of course they would then be competing against the likes of Apache, postgresql, mysql, and Openoffice/Staroffice.

In the long run that is what is going to happen anyway. Real alternatives are available today for most things running on Microsofts OS. As more and more companies and governments learn they can reap significant savings by moving away from Windows products Microsoft will either have to adapt or slowly become irrelevant. (I am sure some on /. would argue that is already the case)

I've said it before and I will keep saying it, Microsoft is in a downward spiral. They will continue to lose customers at an increasing rate. Today there are viable alternatives to all of their products. A year or two ago that was not really true. Today things are much different. And now that Sun is releasing their development tools for free there are even more alternatives. We have reached a tipping point, expect to see over the next two years a steady increase in developers moving to one of the many alternative systems available. As that happens the third party products available for Solaris and Linux will explode which will in turn have users demanding to run something other than Windows.

And watch Microsoft continue to try and reinvent themselves. I expect any day to read where Microsoft will release their OS in a form that is zero cost, probably not as open source but using a license scheme where they can claim they compete directly with Solaris and Linux. They may even claim to have invented open source at some point, assuming they fail to attack it successfully in the courts.

For everything else I'd go with the Solaris Enterprise System.