Sun Opens First Linux Competency Center

McGarnacle writes "Looks like our friends at Sun have opened the first Linux training centers at the headquarters of a Belleville, Ontario firm: beONix Technology. Now there's a worthwhile summer activity for the kids :)"

Comments

Re:Why Sun?

[squiggleslash]

They do, and it's Unix-like too. (Actually, it is Unix, but the point is that they have something in common.)

From Sun's point of view, they need diversity. They've always worked with various groups from Sony to Apple to the open source and free software communities to ensure that there isn't one single platform everyone uses. As long as there is diversity, Sun will be free to innovate.

The moment Giant Software Corp Inc takes over the entire industry and makes it impossible to produce computers that do not run its software, the game is over. Sun would have to choose between selling hardware of a spec defined by GSCI or throwing in the towel, and if it chooses the former it becomes yet another supplier of commodity boxes. Right now, GSCI is Microsoft, and choice means supporting, passively or pro-actively, platforms from GNU, Oracle, IBM, and a whole host of other so-called rivals, because there is a bigger threat to Sun if these disappear than if they continue to compete.

Sun, incidentally, are a pretty good software citizen. They've lead the trend creating open platforms, released the specs and source to things like OpenLook, NIS, NFS, OpenOffice.org, and others right from the get-go. I suspect they'd be more liberal with Solaris if it wasn't for the fact that other people own the copyrights to a lot of the code. Java is the exception, but then Sun knows how easy it would be for a GSCI to kill Java, and it wants to give it a chance. I'd be surprised if Java isn't freed within the next decade though.