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Economist article on Sun's Linux Strategy
DavidNWelton writes "The Economist has a well-written article about Sun's Jonathan Schwartz and his Linux strategy. It also mentions Microsoft, and the SCO lawsuit."
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Sun is taking measures to provide source code under their community license, That doesn't matter quite as much as M$ releasing the Windos source because Sun doesn't deliberately hide their better APIs for internal use nor use deliberalely incompatible interfaces.Solaris is an open system, you don't -need- the source code. Sun has not, say, modified the way their CDE or NFS or DNS or X11 or POSIX implementation works to prevent other people's software from working with it, which a certain OTHER company has as a nasty history of ...
... I only wish. Can you replace the NTLM Domain crap?).
Sun has a history of being open with their stuff. The SPARC architecture is downloadable off the web, ferchrissakes, and there are many Sun clone vendors . Their hardware division actively works with other companies to help them port to SPARC, which was why everything and its brother ran on Sun machines in the early 90s. Their NFS protocol was documented and now used by pretty much everything. Sun machines can also use DNS and other non-Sun resolvers just as well as Sun's own NIS system.
On the other hand, there is this OTHER company who deliberately does not release documentation to outside developers, deliberately obfuscates how their stuff works, breaks other people's protocols or refuses to use them (can you completely replace NetBIOS name resolution with DNS
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
FYI:
Sun likely to use AMD's Opteron chip
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 8, 2003, 3:47 PM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1010-996060.html
Sun Microsystems will likely adopt the Opteron processor from Advanced Micro Devices as it extends into new branches of the server market.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sun has been testing the forthcoming Opteron chip for servers in its labs, and has found interest for the chip among customers, said John Loiacono, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group. Although he couldn't commit to any definite product plans, Loiacono said that the chip, which comes out April 22, would probably end up in a Sun product.
"Can we commit to using Opteron today? No," Loiacono said. "Can we use it? Are we likely to use it? Yes."
The probable endorsement from Sun is one of the strongest yet for the upcoming chip. Although RackSaver and a host of second-tier manufacturers have come out with product plans, no large manufacturer has done so yet. AMD declined to comment.
Sun's guarded optimism for the chip is a good sign for AMD, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst for Mercury Research. Opteron is designed for servers running up to eight processors, and that market is still largely controlled by the small circle of multinational computer makers. These manufacturers, moreover, tend to be fairly conservative when it comes to new technology.
"If you can get a Sun or IBM interested, that is crucial," he said. Virtually all of the major manufacturers are testing Opteron, according to Jack Steeg, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Newisys, which is licensing designs for Opteron servers.
According to Sun executives speaking at the company's quarterly product update, Sun-branded servers containing so-called x86 chips from AMD or Intel will also occupy a more prominent place in the company's overall product line, which is currently dominated by servers running Sun's own UltraSparc chip.
"You will hear a lot about Solaris x86. There are over 1,000 applications on Solaris x86," said Sun CEO Scott McNealy, referring to the version of Sun's operating system that's tweaked to run on servers containing Intel and AMD chips.
Sun, in fact, will update its LX50 server, which is designed for x86 chips, in the very near future, company executives have said. Although Opteron comes out in two weeks, Loiacono cautioned against drawing too strong a connection between the Opteron release and the pending update to the LX50. The chip requires a completely new motherboard. Sun is also working on other AMD chips.
Change of heart
The fairly buoyant endorsement of technology from the PC world represents something of a change at Sun. The company has engaged in a heated battle for years with Intel, deriding the performance of servers based on Pentium chips and mocking, whenever possible, the sales of the Itanium processor.
A year ago, Sun deferred "productization" of a version of Solaris for Intel servers. Intel, for its part, has repeatedly noted how servers containing RISC-based chips, like Sun's UltraSparc, have become a smaller part of the overall server market.
The shift appears to derive from equal doses of opportunity and desperation.
On the opportunity side, Sun is positioning itself as a complete technology provider that will earn profits from sales of hardware, software and services.
Intel- or AMD-based servers from Sun will be outfitted with Solaris and a variety of server applications, McNealy said. Even if these typically less-expensive servers don't carry the same margins as Sun's UltraSparc boxes, they will serve as vehicles to sell Sun software.
The company is kicking off a Chinese menu-style licensing program called Orion to beef up software sales.
"They (Sun) are making a bigger commitment to supporting other platforms, and what is the best way to do that? By having Linux or x86 in-house," said Kevin Krewell, senior editor at the Micropr