Sun Announces Linux Deal With Chinese Government

Infonaut writes "Scott McNealy announced today at Comdex that Sun Microsystems has made a deal with China for a million desktop Linux deployments under the new $50/seat licensing plan for Sun's desktop software, which includes its Star Office 7.0 productivity program. Whether this will translate into renewed profits for Sun remains to be seen, but according to McNealy, it represents 'the No. 1 Linux desktop play on the planet'."

Comments

Linux or Java?

[Audent]

According to InternetNews.com (http://www.internetnews.com/fina-news/article.php /3110131)
it's going to be Java based...

"Sun said the China Standard Software Co(CSSC) will use Sun's Java Desktop System as the foundation for standard desktop development and deployment in the People's Republic of China".

Where does Linux fit into that? (Not being a smart-ass, just genuinely curious).

Re:Linux or Java?

[1lus10n]

The java enterprise desktop is based on SuSe linux. It basically is SuSe with some value add-ons and support.

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

Why did the Chinese go for this? They should know that it is just SuSe and they should know that OpenOffice is available for free from their website. Why now just make their own spin-off of Debian or something like that? Why buy some stupid thing from Sun which is improperly named "Java Desktop" and whose features can be found in any Linux distro. Whatever happened to Hancom linux? I thought that was popular in China?

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

I wonder if it uses the HotJava web browser? Wouldn't that be something?

Re:Linux or Java?

[BladeMelbourne]

I am really surprised by this move.

I thought China had their own "officially sanctioned/goverment approved" distro, based off RedHat Linux, but called Red Flag Linux?
http://www.redflag-linux.com/eindex.html

If China spent money developing this distro, why would they change now?

Nonetheless, 1 million Linux desktops is an impressive number, and should cause Billy boy to loose some sleep. And Sun isn't as fscked as SCO is it?

Re:Linux or Java?

[1lus10n]

Not to go over board with propaganda (I work for Sun).

The Simple reason is: its cheaper to buy this from us than the cost to develop an equivelant setup.

The more in depth reason is: because star office is better than openoffice (MOST of the code is the same, not all) they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro, and they wouldnt have the support structure that Sun has.

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

"its cheaper to buy this from us than the cost to develop an equivelant setup

So what would be an equivalent setup? I mean, if they wanted to use Mandrake (free edition) instead, for example. What does the Sun Desktop have which Mandrake doesn't (besides star office).

"they would have to license a JRE to include in their distro"

Not true. They can use Blackdown JRE.

Re:Linux or Java?

[John Hurliman]

Software is nothing in the enterprise without support.

I was about to delve in more detail, but that says it perfectly.

Re:Linux or Java?

[Mantorp]

Having visited the Santa Clara site the way things work at SUN with access to your desktop from any computer within the organization and the flexible office spaces etc. is just neat.
It's not revolutionary, and you could do it using non SUN stuff but it just works. Your sales people should just invite decision makers from other large corporations to your offices and have potential buyers look around the place.
However, the SUN people I deal with still use Excel and Word rather than the Star office equivalents.

Re:Linux or Java?

[MasterD]

It doesn't. It uses Mozilla for the browser. There is no java component of the Java Desktop except for the JVM. Evolution is the email client. Gaim for IM. StarOffice is the office suite. Totem for A/V. And Gnome 2.4 w/ Nautilus for the Desktop.

Re:Linux or Java?

[Frymaster]

What does the Sun Desktop have which Mandrake doesn't (besides star office).

1. support: having worked in a solaris shop in the past, i know that when you finally lay down the bucks for support you get support. your machine craters so bad that stop-a does nothing? there will be a guy in a tweed jacket from sun at your door in 40 minutes. mandrake doesn't do that.
2. unified solution: the os is backed by sun, the hardware is backed by sun, the application is backed by sun. nothing sucks more than having an issue and hearing the vendor support staff blame each other for the failure. if something fails with this rig you make one call.
3. accountability: no one ever got fired for going with ibm. or sun. if something does fail dramatically and you have gone with a "best of breed" (perceived or real) then your boss will be disappointed in the vendor. if you go with a small "indie" vendor like mandrake, your ass is fired.
4. promise of permanence: will mandrake be around next year? if so, will they still be in a condition to honour their contracts? look at the stunt red hat just pulled - there are a lot of pissed off users out there and a lot of admins of small installations who have to explain to their bosses why the company now has to pony up $400 a seat or switch distros. with sun, the chinese feel confident that their vendor will still be around and still be honouring its contracts this time next year. and next year. and the year after.

5. don't get me wrong: i think mandrake make a fine product... but when you've got $50 million of yr boss' money to invest you don't put it on papa's moustache to win in the third. you buy a t-bill.

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

Yeah but they're running Linux, the best support would be for the IT people to find a HOWTO on the 'net or ask on a mailing list rather than calling up SUN. Who knows more about Linux, hundreds of thousands of experienced users or all the employees at SUN combined? Besides the support from SUN could get expensive.

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

I'm surprised they use Evolution, I think Mozilla is better, and does Evolution have spam-filtering? I don't think so

Also, had they used KDE they could have gone with kopete and konqueror which are far better apps than gaim and nautilus respectively IMHO.

Re:Linux or Java?

[ericman31]

I'm surprised they use Evolution, I think Mozilla is better, and does Evolution have spam-filtering?

They use Evolution because it interoperates with Microsoft Exchange Server and has an Outlook look and feel to it.

Re:Linux or Java?

[edwdig]

Sun (and most companies) prefer Gnome over KDE due to toolkit licensing. GTK is LGPL, but Qt is GPL. So you can release closed source apps for Gnome without buying any licenses, but you'd have to spend a few thousand on Qt licenses (remember, the Qt licensing is per developer) to make a closed source KDE app.

I personally consider KDE to be far better than Gnome, both from a user's standpoint and a developer's standpoint. I usually avoid C++ when possible, but I really like Qt. Unfortunately it's licensing will kill KDE in the long run.

Re:Linux or Java?

[danheskett]

Whats the phone number for thouse hundreds of thousands of experience users again?

What was it? Ohh, right, you are at their mercy for an answer. And god forbid if you don't format it right, or show deference, or put in a monty python reference you will end up flamed and banned from the list.

If you have a decent contract with Sun, IBM, or hell even Microsoft you have a person who you call with problems. A person. He liases with the appropriate people - inside and outside the company. People who know the code. People who wrote the code, or reveiwed the code, or modified the code. The people who packaged it or defined, or decided to include it.

"Hundreds of thousands of experienced users" will not be able to provide the same level of familiarity with a specific subset of code than 50 professionals working in three 8 hr shifts 24 hrs a day 365 days a year.

Asking a mailing list is fine for your typical small-business server running SAMBA, DNS, DHCP, and qmail.

For most everything else, its a really, really lame way to get support.

Re:Linux or Java?

[AtomicBomb]

You may find that weird why the Chinese govt behaves in such a contradicting way: supporting its own linux company while signing another contract from Sun. The main reason is the economic autonomy is fairly high over there, especially for the few affluent regions (eg. Beijing, Shanghai and GougZhou province govts). It is not that diffrent from, say, California obtains winXP license from MS for every children and his/her dog while Ohio adopts a complete Mac option for secondary school right at the same time. No one thinks that is contradicting

Also, the number of license does matter. Suppose their govt want to spend $50M for licensed software this year. They can either go for 1 million linux desktop support license from Sun, or, less than 100k licenses from MS. Here is the outcome.

Think about that as if you are the guy in charge of the government IT policy.
Option 1: transform the whole xyz dept to linux and free from the control of the evil MS, which matches the agenda of the central govt.
Option 2: waste $50 million to replace 1/10 of the pirated MS copy while the outsiders still blame you for pirating (9/10 of the copies are not legal after spending all the budget).

The answer should be clear.

Re:Linux or Java?

[danheskett]

WTF! What other ways of support do you suggest.
I suggest that you call your support contact at your software vendor. Lots of software is sold this way. That person is an *expert* in the package you purchased. He or she knows the details of your setup, of your hardware, and of your network. They have remote access most likely. They are knowledgeable, well trained, and have sufficent time and energy to dedicate to you. This is very often how software is sold. I know you probably think "Free free free" is the best there is, was, and ever will be, but its not always! For commodity stuff yeah, chances are lots of people have the same problems as you. But in complex environments it is likely there won't be an analog to your environment. A support person will have to synthesize an answer from diverse information sources.

Oh, geez I'm on hold, fuck this shit, I'll type in a few words in Google and find my answer
See, here is what you miss. That $30 software package you buy at Staples has crap for support. 99% of people who call need to find the anykey. Now, if you buy a serious piece of hardware or software, from a serious vendor, your support contract is a little different. My wife works for a software company with 150 clients. They have direct line access to their support person. They have test setups to replicate client networks. They have remote access, and they are available within 10 minutes. You don't wait on hold, they call you.

Or, I'll write to a mailing list, which is basically the same thing, since most Google hits will be from mailing list archives.
Which is all great, if you have a few days or a week to wait. Again, comoddity stuff - "how I authenticate users against the same user list for two different Linux servers???" - fine. When the question is "I am experiencing unusally high latency between two of my servers and reduced bandwidth throughput. I've checked the obvious, but am thinking that my MTU settings are incorrectly configured. What do you think?" a mailing list probably isn't going to help.

Jesus what do you think Windows users have been doing for years, even in the "enterprise" environment.
Windows is hardly enterprise. And real enterprises that do use Windows have Premiere support contracts, which work as a I described with a real live person assigned to you and a real live support group who knows how your network operates.

It is much more efficient to find someone else who had the same problem and documented the solution.
Someday you will realize there is more to IT than dealing with a few lame x86 Windows boxes and a few toy Linux boxes. Someday you will realize that for commodity software and commodity hardware and simple problems Linux is a great way to go. Do-it yourself gung-ho kick-ass OSS attitude will get you far. But it won't get you a server room that goes 3 years without downtime - scheduled or otherwise. What places like Sun, IBM, and to a lesser degree MS can provide is a person, with a name, whose home phone number, cellphone number, and direct work line are written down in your rolodex. They can provide you assurance that the latest bleeding edge patch to come along isn't going to cut your performance by 50% or break backward compatability.

I hope you can take a second and really think about what these places offer. I am not on the clock now. But rest assured. I could take an axe to my server room, and reps. from the various vendors would be here onsite in the middle of the night within 45 minutes. Our disaster recovery company would automatically fail over the broken equipment to their backups located offsite. And my users would be grousing that they lost 5 minutes of productivity.

Stick to Google whne you can, and then get back to me when you discover what the rest of the IT world does.

Re:Linux or Java?

[Geekenstein]

Spam filtering? Why would China want to kill its number 1 export?

Re:Linux or Java?

[CanadaDave]

With Sun or IBM, you have someone you can call who (eventually) has access to the people who wrote the code causing your problem.

Hmmm, if it's all running Linux, won't the IT department at company X have just as much access to the person who wrote the code as IBM or Sun does? Most of the developers work for free right? so unless Sun or IBM hires them they don't really have any special access to these people who wrote the code.

My main point, which I tried to make long ago was that we don't NEED Sun's support for this. The China deal was for Desktops and it doesn't seem like they would need Sun's support much for that, just like you don't need to call Microsoft for problems with Win98 on the Desktop. What you need support for is the servers, which is a totally different ballgame (but which everyone who replied to my post seems to be referring to).

Re:Linux or Java?

[danheskett]

so unless Sun or IBM hires them they don't really have any special access to these people who wrote the code.
No, no. Sun and IBM have people - or would have people - on staff that know the code in and out, as if they wrote it. On top of that they likely will have modified it and keep daily track of changes, conversation, and the whole status of the package. IBM already has these people - people who contribute to the kernel, keep up on general development issues, etc. Sun did last I knew.

which I tried to make long ago was that we don't NEED Sun's support for this
No, you may not. But China the government may. I am sure Chineese end-users wont be calling SUN for help configuring printing under KDE. What a contract would do is give IT people, developers, integrators, planners, etc access to the experts at SUN that someone downloading an ISO from a website won't. When they have a new feature request they have will a process for getting that to SUN. When there are scalability problems, or bug reports, or memory leaks or whatever goes wrong with Linux desktop software (and there is a lot, trust me) they have a contact to help the IT and support people onsite to get a resolution worked out. When they need help getting a package to work with a local characterset, or a driver ported to the right language, or a patch put into wider distribution, they have direct, accountable, verifiable resouces.

The community based approach works good for most things and many cases. It is not the be end all, even for end-user support. Frankly, any organization planning for thousands and thousands of seats who does not standardize against a single platform, a single vendor, and a single point of responsibility is living in a dream world of unhearlded proportions. Managing thousnads of identical systems will be hard enough. Managing thousands of variations on the Linux distro managed by disparate IT staffs, with no central point of responsibility while still managing thousands and thousands (millions?) of active seats is untenable.

Large scale IT is about efficency, coherency, and policy. The people involved in this deal are seaking that. Posting a message on a public forum that amounts to "help me.. ?" isn't a efficent, it's not coherent, and its not good policy.

I suggest you re-think your position. If you want we can chat about whats involved in managing 2500 desktop systems. You will have a big appreciation for how IT works in a larger sense. I can also put you in touch with a friend who is on a team of planners who manage 45,000 desktop systems spread out over 15 nations. Finally, I have an acquaintance who can talk to you about whats involved in managing 8000 servers.

The bottom line is that, even if you DON'T believe me, I would wager that 90% or more of all non-tech companies (ie, not HP, IBM, etc) who have significant computer needs have a contract with a top-level vendor. Whether that vendor is Dell, HP, MS, IBM is besides the point. And the OS is besides the point.

In a large scale environment you must have true experts on your side to deal with systems issues. There is no other way. There are two ways to get them: hire them in house, or hire them through contract with another organization. China choose the latter. Hiring or building inhouse talent would likely have been way, way more expensive.

Re:Linux or Java?

[gilgongo]

> Now, if you buy a serious piece of hardware or > software, from a serious vendor, your support
> contract is a little different.

Of course, we're talking generalities here, but I have to say that's just not my experience. We are Oracle and BEA partners, and have developed systems using OpenMarket (now "Divine Content Server") and MediaSurface.

Without exaggeration, I can say that *every single* time we have had a significant problem with those applications that cannot be solved by looking in a manual, the support lines have been at best marginally helpful and usually completely hopeless. We usually work the problem out ourselves, or get it a fix from somebody on usenet.

There is a HUGE gap between the theory of commercial software support, and the practice. The reason this isn't visible to most people is that the people who PAY for the support contract are hardly ever the people who have to USE it.

Why the gap? I can only think that the high complexity of modern software, combined with the high cost of licenses, ensures that most people who buy that software don't need to rely on support desks. If they did, well, our company for one would now be out of business.

Amusing

[C_Kode]

Sun says Linux isn't the future, yet they have no qualm of selling a million of them to China :)

Re:Amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

They said Linux is fine for the desktop, they just believe Solaris is better for the server.

Price wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is pricing itself right out of the developing world. Newsflash: 90% of the world can't afford to fork over $500 for office.

Re:Price wars

[N1KO]

I'm pretty sure they know this... maybe they make more money charging $500 to those who can and let the others pirate the software instead of charging everyone $50.

Chances are, they're using the pricing scheme that makes the most money for them.

Re:Price wars

[ldecours]

I can't believe China is actually going to pay for their software, to begin with. Historically, I think they've made more off of American I.P. than Americans have. It's kind of telling that they're moving to Linux shortly after they received the Windows source code from Microsoft (and launched major vulnerability-based attacks against Taiwan). They must have seen some really scary stuff in there. Anyone care to venture where all these newly- discovered Windows vulnerabilities are being unearthed?

Re:Price wars

[the_womble]

Be letting people priate they destroy the cost advantage of free software and gain market and mindshare. When an economy develops to the point where more people can afford $500 everyone will be already be locked in and then MS (and others) wills tart enforcing their copyrights.

Clunk!

[mark_space2001]

That sound you hear is bricks hitting the ground in Redmond.

So is "Sun" in Chinese phone books now?

[Fux the Penguin]

Another article in a similar vein

From the article:

Sun Microsystems Inc. has scored a deal with a Chinese technology consortium to distribute its Java Desktop System to citizens of China, the company said Monday.

The China Standard Software Company (CSSC) has selected Sun as its preferred technology partner to help provide a nationwide standard desktop software system to China's 1.3 billion citizens, according to Sun.

100% of 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE. That's some hella marketshare right there. Ballmer must be scratching his big hairless monkey-head.

Re:So is "Sun" in Chinese phone books now?

[Brandybuck]

I'm still trying to figure out why China needs a "nationwide standard desktop software system".

I just hope...

[TWX]

...that narrow-minded politicians or lobbyists don't use a large deployment in a communist country as propaganda against open source.

Of course, taking a cue from the '50s (and from Dr. Strangelove):

"Mr. President! We cannot allow an open-source gap!"

With apologies to Stanley Kubrick...

Re:I just hope...

[Ezubaric]

I just hope that narrow-minded politicians or lobbyists don't use a large deployment in a communist country as propaganda against open source.

"Mr. President! We cannot allow an open-source gap!"

Uhh ... I don't think you get the point of the joke. We do want this. The "missle gap" or the "mineshaft gap" was our concern that Russia had more missles/mineshafts that we did and we couldn't maintain the balance of power. Politicians being concerned about a "open source gap" and then closing it would be good.

Unless you don't want federal money and legal support for open source ...

Re:I just hope...

[pavon]

Except that the US can't own open source and thus can't leverage it. The only thing that the success of open source can do is kill proprietary software companies that put alot of money into the economy and pay lots of taxes. These big American companies do not like open source, and I garrentee you that once open source gets widespread to where there is a real chance of them going out of business there will be huge lobbying and propoganda attacks against it. (Nevermind the millions of dollars that are saved by free software, and the thousands of jobs created in IT deploying and improving free software.) So if anything widespread use of open source software by the Chinese will influence the government to crack down on free software in support of current companies, not fund it.

Re:I just hope...

[RevMike]

Except that the US can't own open source and thus can't leverage it. The only thing that the success of open source can do is kill proprietary software companies that put alot of money into the economy and pay lots of taxes.

That is a "straw man" argument. For every less dollar spent by business on the products of a proprietary software company, a dollar will be saved by that business. That business will pay taxes on that additional dollar of profit.

Meanwhile, as the portion of the IT budget spent for "commodities" like OSes and Office Suites drops, companies will take that savings and reinvest it in custom software that promises real productivity gains for that business. developers will find fewer jobs at software companies, but more jobs at companies that use software.

Over the long run, the economy and the standard of living overall rise as the economy becomes more efficient. What is more efficient than free software?

The world is changing. IBM has their boat all ready. Sun is just starting to build theirs. Microsoft is still standing on the shore cursing the rising tide.

Why Sun, and why Linux?

[Faust7]

The China Standard Software Co., a consortium of government-funded companies, selected Sun as its preferred technology partner to deploy Linux-based desktops. The deal is part of China's deliberate policy to diversify away from Microsoft.

Hopefully there's more to it than just diversification. Don't get me wrong, heterogeneous computing is a wonderful thing, but I'd also hate to see governments, corporations, or anyone else making decisions based on computing philosophy instead of technical need and justification. (Some might argue that the first is the second, of course.)

The article doesn't mention other reasons why the Chinese government felt Linux was ready to deploy Linux on desktops, why the available software such as StarOffice was adequate, or why Sun was chosen as the "preferred technology partner." I'm very interested to know exactly what it is about the overall computing infrastructure of the Chinese government that made it choose all of the above. What technical differences exist between their situation and, say, that of the U.S.?

Re:Why Sun, and why Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chinese government has been shown the source code for MS Windows.

Re:Why Sun, and why Linux?

[madfgurtbn]

Don't get me wrong, heterogeneous computing is a wonderful thing, but I'd also hate to see governments, corporations, or anyone else making decisions based on computing philosophy instead of technical need and justification..

If you are the Chinese government, or any other government who may one day end up on the wrong end of a war with us, avoiding US computing domination may be enough of a reason.

Imagine if they become hopelessly locked into MS products then the US government decided to stop allowing the export of products to China.

Most of the disadvantages of Linux based computing are the chicken and egg problems of no apps because there is no market for apps, and there is no market for apps because there are no apps.

China just laid a big golden egg which could make the difference. And in this case, Microsoft has built their own cage. They forgot that the market for computers is still in it's INFANCY, and have been so arrogant in the treament of their installed base that they have managed to put Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt into the minds of the governments of the world.

Microsoft has shown plainly to the world why they should not trust Microsoft, with BILLIONS of new users still to come online in the next two decades.

Oops.

Re:Why Sun, and why Linux?

[fiddlesticks]

> What technical differences exist between their > situation and, say, that of the U.S.?

1) the fact that there's no entrenched install base 'dependent' on a home-OS and asking for support for that in their work OS

2) Language, languages, langui:

China has many different langauges and dialects, of which Manadarin Chinese is just one. Support for 'minority languages' (like, what, 1% of the China's 1.3 bil people) does not figure highly in US purchasers' minds. It maybe does for the PRC

3) Something you _can_ not separate from non US governments' 'technical need and justification' - the wish to dictate their own standards, be they of security, or of ability to spy on their populace.

You have no idea how weird it would be if the dominant OS and apps for it were written for, and by, the Chinese people, say, just like Windows is if you look at it as a Chinese/ Peruvian/ whatever IT-purchaser

4) Maybe they liked Linux and Sun more? Christ knows if I had to deploy a million desktops it'd be on 10 year old Amigas before I bought Windows XP, say - never mind the cost implications

Oh, and finally - much better to ask - 'What technical differences exist between their situation and, say, that of (all other countries aside from ) the U.S.

Re:Why Sun, and why Linux?

[Seraphim_72]

Because the Sun never sets on ..er...the British Empire - till Hong Kong ... er, um, nevermind

overlords..

[js3]

so they switched from their American Windows based overlords to the new American Java based overlords. good move

Plan for Profit

[use_compress]

1. Make one million Linux desktops with a secret backdoor.
2. Have US military pay you for software to invade backdoor.
3. Have China secretly pay you to patch the backdoor.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Of course, the caveat

[Call Me Black Cloud]

The deal is for one license. McNealy was initially puzzled at how a single license could possibly be enough for the Chinese population, but when your stock is trading at $3/share, $50 is $50.

In the meantime, the quiet hum of CD duplicators echoes across the middle kingdom...

Re:Linux wins again

[Leroy_Brown242]

You must mean BeOS?

Sun also rises

[segment]

yes! Now I could finally stop hearing all that Sun is dead talk. First the AMD news, now this, and wow then my gerbil talked! yes!.

Seriously... I think it's good news for Sun, hopefully instead of spending millions chasing MS in court, they could put that money into R&D and kick some ass/arse/arslet/culo ..

Re:I Don't Think It Is Linux

[rbrander]

DOH! A moment's further reading would have found me:

http://wwws.sun.com/software/learnabout/desktops ys tem/index.html

about the Java Desktop, which clearly says its a JVE on top of Linux. A poster at a GNOME Board said it was: .. based on SuSE 8.2 and not on Red Hat Linux as it was originally said about a year ago. Yast2 and other SuSE/administrative utilities are only accessible via the command line and not from the graphical menu system. The desktop is based on Gnome 2.2, though Sun's engineers have tweaked it quite a bit.

Re:Is KDE effectively dead for business?

[CanadaDave]

A lot of your points are true, but doesn't Lindows support KDE as their standard desktop manager? They are commerical aren't they?

Mandrake is quasi-commerical and they've always favoured KDE over GNOME as well.

" the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it."

I have no idea where you came up with this. There is no pointless eye-candy, and I don't have any of it enabled if it does in fact exist...and I find KDE to be extremely functional in all respects. GNOME on the other hand never seems to work for me, and as far as usability goes, whey the hell do they have that second menubar on the top of the screen and another on the bottom? Getting GNOME set up the way one would like out of the box is a nightmare.

Business innovation

[geekmetal]

``This I believe makes us the No. 1 Linux desktop play on the planet,'' McNealy said today at the Comdex technology trade show in Las Vegas. ``That's not the only opportunity. We're calling on every ministry of information technology on the planet.''

I guess Sun is taking their definition of innovation beyond the realms of technology. This is a good thing, certainly for Sun. I believe the focus is strongly shifting towards the markets in India and China with their increasing buying powers. The outsourced jobs, after all are creating business opportunities in those areas. Might be too early to call it good a move, but a little pointer to that. Here is another article with comments from Australia's Reserve Bank Governor on the Indian and Chinese economies

On the streets of China...

[bobthemuse]

I can see it now...:

Pssst, hey, you wanna buy a cracked version of Linux for only $2.88

The real reason the Chinese government chose Sun..

[psyconaut]

Sun's logo has much better Feng Shui than the Microsoft one!

-psy

Re:Is KDE effectively dead for business?

[joshsnow]

I just knew that some idiot would start trolling about KDE vs Gnome.

The reason Gnome has commercial support is purely and simply due to there being a company producing a commercial version of Gnome back when Sun and HP etc were looking at Linux Desktops.

Yada Yada Trolltech, QPL/GPL, C++, yada yada.

Don't worry about what anyone says. The reason Gnome was chosen was because of Helixcode, pure and simple. Sun and the rest are businesses and as we all ought to know, business deals with business. If Trolltech were producing a commercial KDE, you would have seen something very different happening.

As for Ximian being the future of SuSE and KDE being "legacy" - be afraid, be very afraid. Novells only interest in Ximian was MONO, which happens to fit their new Linux story very well.

Go over to go-mono.org and read Miguels report on the recent Microsoft Professional Developer Conference. Look for references to XAML and other plans Microsoft have for Longhorn. Check Miguels assessment of what this means for non-Microsoft desktop Operating Systems. Then check his "solution" to this.

Once you've done that, come back here and tell me with a straight face that Ximian gnome as the standard Linux desktop is a Good Thing.

SCO got $50M just to be a pain.

[Proudrooster]

Someone tell Sun there is an easier way to make $50M than having to work this hard. Simply tell Microsoft you'd be willing to sue a major Linux distributor and the checks will start coming your way. Act irrational and scream something incoherent about source code and intellectual property and you might get $100M.

I guess this qualifies as a 1,2,3 Profit!

Good news for sun, but how good?

[katarn]

This is good news for Sun and all, I'm sure. But I think it's more of a marketing win for them then a financial win. $50/license x 1,000,000 licenses is 50 million dollars. That's nothing to sneeze at but to put it in perspective, a little while ago Sun was hemorrhaging One *Billion* Dollars (finger in side of mouth) per *quarter*. So I don't think this deal by it's self is going to make a big impact on Sun's finances. But it's a good start, and certainly lends credibility to part of their business model.

Re:Good news for sun, but how good?

[bstadil]

Sun was hemorrhaging One *Billion* Dollars (finger in side of mouth) per *quarter*

Not really they had a small profit from operations and substantial positive cash-flow.

The took a charge for loss on holdings like Cobalt and HighGround.

This is akin to you still keeping your salary (maybe a little reduced) but your house is worth less than you bought it for. That is a bummer alright but will not kill you.

Re:On the streets of Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

I made $80 selling Knoppix CDs "on the street" in Vancouver, BC, Canada last saturday ($5 each). And I told them it was free and they could download it themselves if they wanted, and that to install Linux they'd need to download a complete distribution. People seemed to like the Idea.

This is great news for OpenOffice.org

[Micah]

With Sun's sinking fortunes, I for one have been a bit worried whether they could continue to fund OOo development. They absolutely need to sell quite a few StarOffice 7 licenses, and it looks like that is happenning!

They have a good plan in place for OOo 2.0, probably released in the first half of 2005. Good luck to them!

Time to wheel out the old Ghandi saying again

[hayden]

1. First they ignore you.
2. Then they laugh at you.
3. Then they say it's a toy OS.
4. Then they say it's great.
5. Then they change their minds again.
6. Then they write it off as crap somemore.
7. Then they realise their market share is going down harder and faster than New Zealand in a World Cup semi final.
8. Then they team up with an unethical has been company in an attempt damage you.
9. Then they bite the bullet and rip off somebody elses distro.
10. Then they proclaim they are the shining light of the OS and all should follow them.

Re:Renewed profits?

[SmallFurryCreature]

On the other hand, they already spend the money on the development of the software and I really doubt they are going to press 1 million cd's for this. So it could be seen as pretty much pure profit.

Remember software != normal products. Just like MS can afford to cut the price of windows for certain countries when people hear about linux, Sun can afford this. It is for them either 50million dollars they get, or they don't get. The investment has already been made.

Of course if this is going to work in the long run is anyones guess. Can you continue development when you only get $50 a seat? MS says no and charges more then tenfold. I hope sun is right. For 50 bucks an OS noone is going to bother with piracy in the west.

Oh So Sweeeeeeeet

[thedbp]

I have to say, this could be one of the biggest boons for Linux on the desktop yet.

And $50 a seat, including Office-type software? Fugedaboudit. No way in hell MS could EVER match a deal like that.

Once the world's most populous nation starts using Linux as their day to day "this is just the way a computer works" OS will show the rest of the world that yes, Linux on the desktop is a perfectly viable solution, and just because there may be some migration pains in places where MS software has a stranglehold doesn't mean that the migration shouldn't occur.

Every addiction has a painful withdrawl process ;) But the user is usually better off kicking the habit! The only problem I could see is a bunch of redneck Americans going around saying that Linux is a Communist operation system.

oh, wait, they already do that. ;)

Bravo, Sun.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

This is good for everyone. It's good for Sun, who will hopefully continue to stay afloat now that they seem to be scoring some new big customers. They also will be more strongly motivated to stick with the Linux game in earnest this time around instead of being schizophrenic about it. It's good for Linux, with yet another big name player now firmly in the open source camp. And it's good for all of us, who depend on OpenOffice in order for our Linux desktops to remain viable and interoperable in an office suite dominated world.

The only party for whom this is a bad thing is Microsoft. And that's exactly how it should be. While it is certainly way too early to declare the Great Satan of Redmond defeated, we can call this one more important step on that journey. I applaud Sun for this and hope they score more Linux wins.

Re:Star Office 7 versus OpenOffice 1.1

[1lus10n]

I agree that them realizing that OOo was better than SO 6 was big, but most of the original SO wasnt even written by Sun.

Besides i dont think performance will be a very large issue since these systems are being geared towards "office use". Not to mention that most people preffer features as opposed to minor speed increases. this is evident simply by looking at the current desktop demographics.

I'm not much for getting into a holy war about things i dont use much. and i dont use office suites at all.

You realize, of course, that this means war.

[Stephen Samuel]

Expect Darl and company to pull SUN's perpetual and (very recently) fully paid up license any time now.

They've pissed off everybody else, why not piss off their (minority) investors, too?

What do they want?

[Art Tatum]

They want one...million...desktops.

Re:Hurray!

[tho 1234]

MS lost a total of 1 sale to China... However, the blank CDR makers just lost 999999 sales...

No Loss to Microsoft here

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody in China buys software.

And its now official...Linux is for commies.