Sun Plans Solaris Subscription Model

heliocentric writes "As reported in this CNet article. In an effort to make its version of Unix compare more favorably to Red Hat's Linux, Sun Microsystems plans in coming weeks to begin selling its Solaris operating system through a subscription model." On the down side, there was coverage of the announced layoffs, as well as the MSFT case being won. The article makes a good point, that Sun has reinvented itself before, and that no one should write Sun off.

Comments

Re:Subscription model or source code model?

[phaze3000]

Realistically though, this move would seem to be targetted at stopping existing Sun customers from migrating to Linux rather than tempting RedHat customers away. As Sun's customerbase is geared more towards the higher end of the market I suspect they are less likely to be swayed by arguments about openness.

Having said this, it's not like Sun doesn't use openness when it suits them - Gnome (Sun Java Desktop) being a good example.

Re:Subscription model or source code model?

[steve_l]

I'd argue something different: RedHat's current subscription-only policy is going to kill it if they keep it up.

If the current pricing model of RedHat is relaly such that Solaris or Windows costs *less* that a RedHat sub, then it is in trouble.

I know I will get pointed at fedora, but given that fedora kills the network on a any laptop whose network is on a PC-card, isnt supported by all those binary things I use (nvida, vmware), I dont view it as a broadly tested or stable enough solution to work with.

Sun are just going to put pricing pressure on RedHat; the real test is what penetration Novell/SuSE linux has. If a version backed by the suits gets picked up by the PC vendors and sold mainstream, it can put serious pressure on RedHat's position as "the" north american commercial Linux distro.

Sun are probably still doomed, either way :)

Subscription model == customer lock-in

[morelife]

And customers don't like it. Do you think they're stupid? Generally subscription models mean the customer pays more, for not necessarily more service or features.

People are in general moving away from RedHat, not toward it. RHEL means lock-in, with less features. It may be OSS, but if you change the code - is Red Hat going to support your changes? No.

So this is the model Sun wants to emulate? Sun is already perceived as too expensive in general for a Unix. The people that have stuck with Sun tend to be those running specialized platforms they couldn't migrate out of too easily. Sun's best bet is the Chinese desktop deal, not trying to compete with Linux here in the States..

Summary of previous poster...

[MosesJones]

"I've never looked at Microsoft or Sun in detail, and run all of my assumptions from Slashdot"

"On Slashdot I only read the articles about Linux and hate SCO with a religious fanaticism, all of my views on software companies are therefore based on the SCO case"

"I have been working in Software only a few years and have no understanding of the history of either Sun, Microsoft or IBM and am not aware of what Sun actually does"

I'm sorry to be so rude, but to base an opinion on either Sun and MSFT around the SCO case is like saying that Sony and Philips are the same company because of the Intertrust case.

Re:Sun is in quicksand

[mrm677]

They will slowly lose more and more to the PPC based systems and better OSes (Linux/MacOS X).

Better OSes? Solaris is arguably the best Unix OS in existance. If you think that Linux is "better", and it may be for your needs, I urge you to think again. The key to Solaris is its scalability. It scales to hundreds of processors. This is key for throughput computing, and you will see Sun come out with chips that have a dozen or so UltraSparcs on the same core in the near future.

Yes pundants, point me to the links about Linux running on 500 processors. I frankly don't beleive that a single Linux kernel image can run on 500 processors. I mean it still uses test, test-and-set spinlocks!