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Sun Microsystems, SuSE Link Up To Sell Linux

Posted by timothy on from the left-hand-meet-right-hand dept.

ChilyWily writes "Reuters is reporting that Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to resell and support closely held German software firm SuSE's version of the Linux operating system, the leading variant in Europe, the companies said on Friday. This agreement follows a similar one in May between Sun and Red Hat Inc. While I'm happy to see Sun's finally beginning to warm up to Linux (aka if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy) I wonder if this is too late for Sun?"

26 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. It's about time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...that Sun capitalized on their immunity from whatever craziness that SCO comes up with next -- no matter what, Linux from Sun is free and clear from litigation.

    1. Re:It's about time... by melete · · Score: 5, Insightful

      no matter what, Linux from Sun is free and clear from litigation.

      Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code. For SCO to win, the GPL has to be invalidated, at least in a limited sense, which will leave everyone, including SCO and Sun, scrambling for legal cover.

    2. Re:It's about time... by vsprintf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not neccesarily. In the unlikely event that SCO were to win their case, Sun would be distributing any tainted parts of Linux without a valid license from the original copyright holder of the tainted code.

      How so? Sun has been in bed with SCO for months. They paid some portion of many millions of dollars for the right to the Unix code. To me it looks like Sun is playing both ends of the game, and in the middle is Solaris. I certainly wouldn't construe this as a friendly move -- just another move for Sun.

  2. it never too late by McAddress · · Score: 4, Insightful

    to go to linux. however, sun is making a big mistake. if they are not marketing solaris, they are losing their main product. why would you use a sun chip if you can get a 4 chip 64-bit x86 system running at speeds greater than 3.0 ghz? for much less. if linux takes off, it will not only destroy microsoft, but there will also be some friendly fire deaths involved as well.

    1. Re:it never too late by epiphani · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There will always be a market for Sun boxes - of all the higher-end server machines that have been out there, sun has outlived most. They're now the defacto non-intel platform in the server arena. From my experience, sun hardware is the first platform out there that you'll run into if you cut out apple and i386 hardware.

      Plus, Sun is much more than just a hardware/OS company. They're diversifying - thats good. They probably see the threat that linux/open source represents to their sun/solaris product lines, and are moving to embrace it, so they can have a peice of the linux pie when it starts eating into their solaris cashflow.

      --
      .
    2. Re:it never too late by Kenja · · Score: 4, Informative
      Your right, why run on a platform that scales to 128+ CPUs with 16megs of cache per CPU when you can run on a consumer platform that cant scale higher then 4 CPUs and has poor IO?

      Have you ever realy used Sparc systems? The things are tanks, no matter what sort of work load I throw at them they just don't stop. On a single task a PC will be faster, however under heavy load the PC just falls apart.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    3. Re:it never too late by __past__ · · Score: 3, Insightful
      And you know how linux is making leaps and bounds ? take a look at some of the more recent code that has been put into the kernel, and in userland. Sun is a major contributor.
      Not only the Linux kernel. Sun is who came up with NFS and PAM, they are major contributors in the Gnome project, they open-sourced Star/OpenOffice, they are an important part of the DocBook community, they invented the Morphic GUI now used in Squeak for the Self language, employ several hacker legends like Richard Gabriel, Guy Steele or Bill Joy (well, if you want to call that employment) etc, etc.

      I mean, this is slashdot. We should not forget that, all objective topics aside, Sun is just one heck of a cool company! If only they would get rid of that annoying Scott McNealy...

      --
      Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
  3. nah by thesadjester · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's never too late really when you dominate the high end unix market (with IBM). But really, when it comes to running large oracle databases that are mission critical, sun shines, and that is where their market is. They just want to expand more and keep some of the smaller market to help supplement their main focus. You may argue that the high end server market isn't their focus, but that is the area that they differ from all the other providers, which is an important thing.

    --
    -gabe
  4. Too late for Sun? by antarctican · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No, I don't think so. They've been fantastic in the setup of the cluster we bought from them, full of these new Sun V60x machines. They even threw in 13 extra nodes at no extra cost for a total of 43 nodes.

    What will kill them is their supply chain however. We've been waiting a few weeks for mounting rails for the V60x machines.... however this isn't Sun's fault, they aparently OEM these machines straight from Intel. It's Intel who is now able to supply the part, it's actually effected another server we bought straight from Intel. It seems with their linux initiative they're simply relying on the services of others.... Intel for the x86 machines, RH and SuSe for the linux support. They're becoming a reseller when it comes to linux rather then a producer/supplier.

    Then there's the NAS system which has been held up in QA for the past 3 months.

    They have some great products coming out and good linux knowledge and service, however until they streamline their supply chain they might be in trouble. The rep told me they're putting quality as the top priority, however it seems to have created more problems then good. This new 3310 NAS system was suppose to begin shipping in May.... it's now August....

    That will be there downfall, not meeting ship dates. They have the knowledge and inovation to survive, they just need to ride their hardware guys' asses a little harder.

    1. Re:Too late for Sun? by Biolo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I really wish I could say more about this, but contracts kind of restrict me. What I can say is that Sun really are putting their money where their mouth is when they say quality is their number one priority. You saw it with the Broadcom chip incident, where they did the right thing and stopped shipments, even though it hurt the bottom line. That is just one incident that got widespread attention. Right now, more so than ever before, they are taking no risks that a customer will get a product that doesn't work just right when it gets installed in their server room. You've got to admire that sort of attitude, especially in this financial climate.

      Bombproof computing, they are really making it their goal -although having just come back from watching Terminator 3 I'm no longer sure thats a good thing! :-) . You have to wonder how many other vendors, when faced with something like the Broadcom thing, either 1) don't notice it, 2) notice it but pretended they didn't, or 3) did the right thing even though it hurt them.

      As for the holding onto Solaris thing, you can understand that. Solaris is and was a really great product. Having used AIX in a production environment I can understand why IBM aren't so bothered about loosing it to Linux. Given a choice I'd certainly pick Linux. When it comes to Solaris though, it's still not so clear cut, I'd go for Linux on the desktop because that's what everyone is targetting, but I would be sorely tempted for Solaris on the server, and it's a shoe in on the SPARC platform. If you truly believe in your product, like Sun does, it's much more difficult to accept that there may be a real alternative. Part of the problem is that Linux isn't (yet) a real alternative across Suns product range. SGI's Altix scales Linux to 64 processors, but that's the high end limit for now, until Linux gets to being capable of running on the top of the line Sun kit they can't fully commit to it, and by this I mean 128 CPU's, and be capable of handling 256 cores (coming soon(tm)). You've got to look at Suns selling point ever since it was started, Solaris from the lowliest workstation to the highest end servers. Your developers build and compile and test on the low end and deploy straight onto the highest end. Binary compatibility, surprisingly compelling, and Solaris still does this better than Linux, especially across OS/kernel versions.

      That said if it was me who made those decisions I'd be sponsoring a major push to get Linux running on the SPARC platform, after all Solaris doesn't really make much money for Sun by itself but its SPARC hardware certainly does, and who cares if the customer runs Linux on Sparc or Solaris on Sparc, as long as they chose Sparc.

      Disclaimer: I work for Sun, so obviously I'm biased, and none of the above statements are sanctioned by Sun in any way.

      --
      Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
  5. It is too late for Sun. by reporter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The revenue of Sun Microsystems in the quarter ended June 2003 fell sharply from the revenue in the same quarter of 2002. Please read "Sun Earnings Trail Expectations". The revenue fell far short of Wall Street expectations, and the stock promptly crashed.

    Linux brings no value to Sun and actually destroys Sun's profits. Why? For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system. Sun focused its marketing message on "the whole system" and said that performance is only one part of the system value. Most of that system value outside of simple performance came from Solaris.

    Now, with Linux, the Sun salesperson can no longer argue that the operating system has some intrinsic value over the operation system of, say, an IBM machine. The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance. In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware. In this area, Sun falls woefully short. Look at the results for the ""SPEC benchmark" or the "TPC-C benchmark".

    1. Re:It is too late for Sun. by n3rd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The revenue of Sun Microsystems in the quarter ended June 2003 fell sharply from the revenue in the same quarter of 2002

      There is no mention of this in the article you posted.

      The revenue fell far short of Wall Street expectations, and the stock promptly crashed.

      "Crashed"? Come on, quit with the exaggerations. Look at this graph. Thus far they have sunk $1 per share or ~20%. When your stock value is that low it's easy to lose a large percentage over a small amount.

      I find it strange that Red Hat's stock is higher than Sun's and yet Sun brings in billions every quarter and has 6.6 billion in the bank. I think it says a lot about the relavance of using stock prices as a note for discussion.

      For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system.

      Please, tell us about your experience with Sun. Have you administered it and if so for how long? Are you a user and if so for how long?

      They have one of the most stable OSes out there, superb hardware and some of the best support which I'm sure amounts to nothing.

      The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance

      Once again, you seem ill informed. The Linux offerings are on x86 servers, not SPARCs. With x86 hardware there aren't many ways to differentiate one box from another at a hardware level.

      In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware.

      You forgot cost and what's most important to companies, support.

      or the "TPC-C benchmark"

      Sun hasn't submitted a TPC-C benchmark since late 2001, and it was on old hardware. This may or may not be a good thing, but you cannot tell.

      Before you keep bashing Sun I would seriously consider doing two things: Getting out into the real world to see how many people trust and use Sun/Solaris and do some research.

      Until Sun is unseated as #1 in the UNIX server market (as reported by Gartner) and has less than it's 6.6 billion in the bank along with 13 billion in total assets I don't think Sun is too concerned.

      Your post is nothing more than the often repeated "Sun is dying" chant that is not backed up by any relavant facts.

  6. Nice article but its missing alot by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The reuter story highlights the difference between information and knowledge.

    The reporter completely misssed pricing issues, platforms that sun would be selling it for, the support that would be entailed with the license, ETC.

    What is truly missing is there is no comment on the SUN-REDHAT, SUN-SUSE licensing vis a vis the SCO suit and licensing. We know, to the extent that SCO's statements may be believed that sun pretty much has a license to do whatever they want with unix. The question is if they sell/distribute a linux under the GPL does that spill over ? Is it protected ? If I buy redhat from sun is it covered by SUNS rights, if it is how does that affect the GPL that comes with the distribution ?

    IT would have been wonderfull if the article instead of just being a parrot had of addressed the questions.

  7. What's the point? by Trurl's+Machine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK guys - I know that questions like this most often are modded down as "flamebait" or "troll", but I HONESTLY want to know, what is the point now of buying a non-x86 and non-PowerPC workstation. Mod me down if you please, but also mod up an answer that would provide an insightful, informative and interesting explanation. I mean, I understand it for the early 1990's. When "Jurassic Park" was a big hit at the movies, the sitiuation was pretty obvious - you had these single-user, single-tasking OS'es like Windows 3.11 or MacOS 7 on one hand, and those powerful Unix boxen on the other hand. It was obvious, that you need a special dedicated machine to run high-end graphics tasks and another machine just to read the MS Office documents or play Doom. But now - what is the freakin' point, if you can run MS Office and all the latest games on a high-end personal computer (be it the PowerMac G5 or some x86 machine) and ALSO have your favorite Unix flavor running on it like charm? Where is the market niche for a workstation incompatible with the majority of commercial software?

    1. Re:What's the point? by bobintetley · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One word: Quality Would you trust your mission critical application to some cheap Intel chip with bog standard non-parity DDRAM and low quality components? Alright, you can swap it out for another if it fails, but how much time will that take and to business, time is money. x86 might be cheap, but if you want hardware you can really rely on that's going to operate without problems for years, you buy a Sun box.

    2. Re:What's the point? by niko9 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I honestly don't understand your reply. I'm not trolling but you said "cheap Intel chip"

      Is that how Intel's CPU's are thought of in the computing indusrty?

      I just purchased an Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz and specifically chose an Intel 875PBZ board for it's stability and reliabilty. With The P4's heat spreader and inergrated heat protection, I consider it a high quality product.

      After nearly 3 years of worry free opertaion with a dual Pentium box running almost 24 hours a day without so much as a hiccup on Debian Linux, I thought I made a wise choise with buying Intel.

      Can anybody shed some light?

    3. Re:What's the point? by I_am_the_man · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...running almost 24 hours a day...

      You proved his point right there. *Almost* is something that someone buying Sun does not want to consider. Almost is not good enough.

    4. Re:What's the point? by cartman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One word: Quality Would you trust your mission critical application to some cheap Intel chip with bog standard non-parity DDRAM and low quality components?.. x86 might be cheap, but if you want hardware you can really rely on that's going to operate without problems for years, you buy a Sun box.

      I've had sun boxes on my desk for years, and from what I've seen, this hasn't been true for quite some time. If you opened up a Sun Ultra5 you'd find that it was made almost entirely out of low-end commodity components. The drive was a Seagate IDE drive, the power supply was relatively cheap, the graphics chipset was ATI/rage, and although the RAM was nonstandard it wasn't ECC and it wasn't superior in quality. For a comparable price you could get an x86 box with far more reliable SCSI drives, and with redundant high-quality power supplies, and with ECC RAM. Such a box would be far more reliable (and far faster, incidentally) than the comparably priced Sun workstation.

      Of course it's a different issue entirely when you enter the arena of servers, where Sun still has many reliability features not found on any x86 boxes. But in the server arena, Sun is competing against HP and IBM, both of which make sturdier equipment than Sun. Although all 3 unix makers offer vastly superior equipment to what you'd get from, say, Dell.

  8. Re:Um No by Znork · · Score: 4, Informative

    If they have any separate licensing necessary for Linux then they may not distribute Linux. The GPL prevents distributing GPL code together with code that is licensed under terms not compatible with the GPL.

    SCO can try to license their alleged 80 lines in whatever way they want. The problem is you just are not allowed to distribute the other millions of lines together with those 80 lines in any case. Which means any license to do so is worthless.

  9. Great! That means they'll... by Santabutthead · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..be giving legal guarantees because I'm sure they wouldn't want to go against the CEO's words.

  10. Nice Microsoft advertisement by FatAssBastard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...right below the article for Linux being sold by Sun. "Microsoft Windows 2003 Server: Do more with less". That's rich (is it ironic? I can never tell...)

    I think Sun is just hedging their bets here. Plus, they can offer 'immunity' since they have the license from SCO. I know, I know, it's all crap (the SCO issue), but they can trumpet the fact that they have a proper license to all the code no matter what. None of us gives a shiat, but some PHB's might find it puts them at ease.

    --
    /.: why the hell am I here?
  11. You people have really missed the point. by EoRaptor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Sun offers 'big name' support contract for Linux.

    2. Fortune 1000 companies require this type of backing on any new 'deployment'.

    3. Sun now has an 'in' for their sales and support team.

    4. Eventually, the solution to further growth will be something linux is 'unable' to do.

    5. Experience with Sun, means Solaris is a natural upgrade choice.

    6. Profit!

    Sun doesn't care at all, they'd support windows if they could figure out some way to convince people that Solaris was the natural upgrade path from that. Linux will always have the 'hobby' stigma attached (mainly becuase Sun will always be whispering in the right ears. After all, they have access.) and thus Solaris is an easy sell, along with the dedicated, lock in hardware for it. Sun can't lose, even if they cna't upsell the client, they have still made a truckload of money on the support contract.

    Grow up everyone, Sun isn't run by technologists, and doesn't give alick about Linux (or Solaris for that matter). What they want is money, and this is a means to that end. It may align with some peoples goals to promote Linux, but don't get confused about what Sun is really doing.

  12. Solaris 10 by dodell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I've got Solaris 10 alpha test CDs. Solaris 10 is coming out and has some killer features. I don't think this is an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation at all. Sun has spent years developing and marketing Solaris/SunOS, and I don't think they'll stop here. It's very profitable for them to sell a true UNIX OS.

    I imagine it's also just as profitable for them to do support/development for Linux. And I think that they're expanding, not downsizing or rethinking an entire business model.

    --
    www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
  13. Re:Why not DEBIAN?? by brsmith4 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Because, the only way to get any relatively new packages or software for debian is to go with their distro that is dubbed "unstable". Who the hell in their right mind would do that? Plus, does the Debian group offer support for their product in the corporate sense of the word? I don't think so. Your average CIO/CEO etc. is not going to be happy knowing that any problems with their IT infrastructure will be handled by some guy on a mailing list from some other country. This scenario is not at all attractive to the corporate big-wigs that run companies.

  14. Missing the point about SuSE by panurge · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The garbled Reuters (close company) I think is trying to say that SuSE is not public. It's an AG. It's German. It doesn't have to be bought by anyone. It may well be a sales benefit in the German speaking world for a US company to have a local business partner. Patriotism is not limited to Americans, you know.

    Sun has also always had a strong Indian connection and it is unsurprising that it should leverage that.

    The "Sun is doomed" crowd closely resemble the "Apple is doomed" crowd. They seem to think being a mere $12G player in a huge industry is somehow a guarantee of failure. Depends. Spreading your alliances, being perceived as more rest-of-world friendly than Microsoft, being good at big tin that has to run with low outage, these could be good strategic positioning.

    And the short-term opinion of the NYSE on this counts for precisely zilch. (as does the instant opinion of the typical /. reader, me included.) Stock exchanges are not able to make rapid long term evaluation of strategic decisions by enterprises. If they were, they would be economic analysts, not traders.

    --
    Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
  15. Throughput Computing by thanasakis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Have a look at that (3rd time I post this link in /.)

    Sorry guys, but Sun is a great company. They have supported open standards before anyone had a clue about it and they have already given a lot to the community. Java gains groud where microsoft still tries to enter the market (mobile phones etc), solaris is a mature product (solaris 10 is being used/tested inside sun for almost a year) and their hardware may soon fill the performance gap.
    I do not see why it may be too late for them.