Slashdot Mirror
Is Sun Turning against Linux and Red Hat?
An Elephant writes "Groklaw is reporting,
based on a ZDNet UK story, that Sun's strategy for survival in the near future is based on trying to equate Linux with Red Hat, and then attack Red Hat as too small to support enterprises. This seems strange -- Sun is selling a Linux distro itself (the Java Desktop System). As I write this, there's no mention of this on Sun's website -- neither confirmation nor denial. What's going on?"
This is definitely true, I'm not sure why this would surprise anyone. The first I saw of it was on News.com.com.com on the 20th, two days before the ZDNet UK article. It was based on a telephone conversation with Jonathan Schwartz. Sun wants to find a way to avoid commoditization of software, and to make their HW/SW bundle inseparable. That HW/SW bundle doesn't include Linux, at least any moreso than they have to pay lip service to Linux support.
I'm sorry, did you actually think Sun was an ally? I guess it was their $2 billion deal with Microsoft to try to face IBM head-on (the only company whose Linux support has actually lived up to their promises) that convinced you Sun was completely benign.
Sun has just nailed Red Hat and Linux with a steel chair! Oh no! It's SCO... and SCO is raising Sun's hand! What does this mean?! This can only be settled at Linuxmania!
> As I write this, there's no mention of this on Sun's website -- neither confirmation nor denial. What's going on?
Slashdot is reporting that Groklaw is reporting that the ZD FUD machine is reporting that...
OK, maybe it's true, but I wouldn't take it to the bank yet.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think they missed the point.
/.ers never really needed sun anyway. Its all indoors and its nice here. Wait. Which sun are we talking about here?
Because Sun would certainly come out and say "Hey everybody! Look! We're going to start a smear campaign against xyz tomorrow! And we beat up small children and steal their milk money too!"
Christ...
Oh my god! They're going to act like a company! Quick, run and hide!
Seriously, this idiotic, childish nonsense is exactly the reason that nobody likes to talk about Linux in any serious, business capacity. You have a couple success stories to tout, but Microsoft is still firmly in control of THE sweet spot of computing: the desktop market. Why? Because of crap like this entire stupid writeup.
If this had been about how to respond to a threat from Sun, or a mere analysis of Sun's business strategy (like the article is), that would be fine. This? This is crap. This is some submitter trying to shoot pimply-faced geeks' blood pressure up high enough to pop their zits just from reading Slashdot.
Honest to god... if you Linux zealots would just step back, take a breath, and F.O.C.U.S. on a goal, you'd be MUCH better off...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I'm not sure if I like Sun or not. They don't support Linux, and would rather fight it with FUD and Solaris. Yet again, I like them for OpenOffice.org (which is great) and Java.
Decisions, decisions......
And we all know how objective Groklaw is about Sun. Remember that wonderful negative review of JDS 2, one of only a handful of complete pans?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Cause they are trying to make some money?
I have tried nearly every distro out there and finally settled upon fedora with apt installed. It just feels cleaner... Gnome rocks too.
...they are the MS of the linux world.
Could you elaborate on that?
They support community standards, have a better-safe-than-sorry policy on patent-encumbered stuff, fully support a Free, rapid-release cycle distro with no GPL incompatible components at all (unlike some other large distros have done). They have not bought out or killed off other distributions or done anything else that would be unconcionable. So how, exactly, do they become "the MS of the linux world"?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Remember folks, NEWS?
Same type of tatics and SUN lost..this why SUN's CEo hatees FOSS and OpenGroup a tpoi9nt stating that FOSS stands fro Forever Opossing Sun microSytems..
They will not win this time either
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Redhat is not linux!
Newsflash: Slashdot geeks aren't the types of people Sun is trying to convince. It's the PHBs that matter, and most of them don't know this.
I personally can't stand redhat they are the MS of the linux world.
In what sense? Last time I checked they were giving away all of their code under the GPL, funding kernel development, GNOME development, GCC development... too many to name.
I'm surprised to hear that Novell is being discounted and ignored. Sure, you might laugh, but don't forget that they now own SuSe (which is still the most popular distro in Europe), and Ximian, which owns Evolution and has a stronger influence over the direction of GNOME and Mono.
The job of the CEO is to steer the company. I hope the worlds shareholders are watching and understand that just because someone gets to be a CEO does not mean they know what the hell they are doing.
Where is the innovation? No, not the scientific innovation, the managerial innovation.
Find another distro that beats fedoras boot time without a hack that loads X straight away.. you wont. Its a full minute faster than debian installs.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
I am now cheering on your demise Sun.
The more you know, the less you understand.
"As I write this, there's no mention of this on Sun's website -- neither confirmation nor denial. What's going on?"
Makin' money is what's going on... And the need to position themselves to do just that. Open source doesn't guarantee freedom from making a profit.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
That's the beauty of the thing. It just doesn't matter. Embrace it or don't. No one cares. A setting Sun makes a headline, but it still fades below the horizon.
I personally can't stand redhat they are the MS of the linux world.
Oh I wasn't aware they had a Linux monopoly and were guilty of abusing that monopoly. Oh wait, they're not. This is just a typical Slashdot troll who doesn't like Red Hat, and because he doesn't like Red Hat and he doesn't like Microsoft they must be very similar within their own fields.
Don't blame him for posting this garbage. It's rewarded around here. After all, he has a +3 Insightful.
Sun sells unix. Linux is a free clone of Unix. Why would anyone expect Sun likes Linux.
They tried to make their own distro of Linux and that doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I guess Sun just has to be more competitive and work harder to get support contracts away from redhat.
RedHat might be Linux's Microsoft, but you really can't deny they really pushed Linux in the early days. Without RedHat, I seriously doubt our favorite OS would be the same today without them.
I don't like it much as a distribution neither (it's not bad but I've seen better), but I still show some respect for them.
As for Sun, well, I can hardly get a point of view on those guys. As a developper, I really like Java and like the fact that they let everyone use it freely (as in free beer). On the other hand, their marketting strategies on everything that is OS or hardware are quite unacceptable. They seem to be very opportunist, but forget everything about the long run and making friends.
I can't accept the fact that they are totally evil, but they sure have no feather wings.
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
Type 'cat /dev/core' at a shell. Then see what you have to say about Red Hat.
:wq
This is *news*? Geez.
Sun can't compete against Linux, because it's not a company. They can compete against Red Hat, SuSE, etc. These are companies. They make and sell stuff, including support contracts, etc.
Schwartz also states that he thinks Linux is a good proving ground, but Solaris is better, even at running Linux applications. Sounds like a good strategy, if people buy it. Now that Sun sells AMD boxes, as well as SPARC, it's a lot less of a hassle for their customers to try exactly that.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
BY GAWD this heinous! Its a slobberknocker! That Sun is a hoss!
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Sun is a company, and will do whatever is most advantageous in the current market. It will never follow any ideology, it will only do what is going to make money... who thought any of theses companies really believe in free software as the FSF does?
You guys are going nuts on trying to figure out if Sun is Pro-Linux or against it. The truth the both and neither. If sun can make money off of Linux then they will support Linux in areas. If other Linux companies are cutting into their market share then they will play the Solaris Card and down the disadvantages of Linux. Suns stance on Linux was always this. Linux is good, but Solaris is better. So if people complain that Sun hardware w. Solaris is to big then hey lets use Linux and see if you want Solaris later. But if they want Solaris then they will go lets see if we can get rid of all those nasty Linux systems. Solaris Does have advantages over Linux and some really good scailing features. But for most companies and people linux does the trick. So Sun is Linux if you want but we rather you go with Solaris.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As I write this, there's no mention of this on Sun's website -- neither confirmation nor denial. What's going on?"
Are you serious?! Sun isn't posting their future strategies on a publicly accessible website?!?!? THAT'S INSANE!!
It's not all bad that they're advertising Linux as Red Hat. A lot of my non-tech friends have no idea what Linux is, but they do know what Red Hat is- they heard that name over and over when Red Hat made a strong IPO.
If those same guys even knew that Red Hat was an alternative operating system, that would be a huge step forward. Heck, even if one of them tries it out, they'd learn soon enough what Linux really was. Until then, let's take all the advertisement we can get. Just get Linux, Red Hat, whatever out there as well-known terms.
--
Using GNU/Linux - Windows-free zone!
Okay, so let's assume here, that Sun is successful in "merging" Red Hat and Linux into one. First off, Microsoft has basically already done so, as any benchmark of windows vs. "linux" is Red Hat. Keep this point in mind.
/. linux users gone down as a result?
Have any of you switched your Red Hat (read: any linux distro) systems to windows server?
So, we've had Microsoft preaching that linux IS Red Hat, for a while now.
Have the
I know I know, businesses may have. But have YOU?
Apply the same to Sun, and take note of their respective sizes. Assuming that Sun pulls the "merge" off, just what exactly will it affect, compred to microsoft? MS isn't making any big dents (yet, time will tell), so how could Sun? (In a completly closed-mind view.)
I know, I know, in two years, MS might be a thing of the past, and then in 4 years, if it's not a SCO server then it's not worth anything. I won't debate how the future works, as it really is pointless.
If I may remind you all of a quote of Linus, which goes something to the point of, "My goals were never to destroy Microsoft. That will be a completly unintentional side effect." (Yeah, that's probably a horrible 'quote', but live with it, you get the point.)
So, why should you care if Sun does this? Sun can spout all the FUD they want, as can Microsoft, as can 'Red Hat' (read: any linux distro), but that doesn't change the fact that some PR FUD changed actual benchmarks, it doesn't change the prices, and it doesn't change what really works. If Sun does the job better than linux, go for Sun I say. If linux does it better, go with linux.
Just take note: using the 'PR' view, we should ALL be using Microsoft Server, linux it's worth 2 cents, and Sun is some upstart with millions, who's preaching against a 2 cent OS.
Form your own opinions, people. Chill.
inux & Open Source Center Editor Steven Vaughan-Nichols knows that many Linux fans hate Red Hat. His message to them: Get over it.
... no, not Microsoft, but Red Hat. I often hear longtime Linux enthusiasts say things like "Red Hat has betrayed Linux" and "Red Hat wants to be the next Microsoft."
... there's a lot of hate out there aimed at Red Hat.
After SCO, the company most hated by Linux fans is quite possibly
If you look closely, it's not hard to see why so much ire is tossed on Red Hat. Late last year, Red Hat's CEO, Matthew Szulik, said that for home users today, Windows is probably "the right product line." That's sure to win the hearts and minds of Linux fans right there.
Then, Red Hat decided to kill off its low-end Linux distribution: Red Hat Linux. You would have thought from all the screaming in some Linux circles that Red Hat was proposing dog food be made from kittens. Some Linux fans even said Red Hat is on its way to becoming a proprietary software company.
Red Hat's corporate enemies and, in one case, a purported partner--Sun--are jumping on this last point It isn't true, of course. Red Hat is still an open-source company.
What is true, though, is that Red Hat mishandled the affair. Red Hat 9 had a life span of just over a year with its April 2003 release date and its end of support on April 30, 2004. Business customers, who usually expect to get at least three years of work out of an operating system, were as mad as wet hens to find their support disappearing from underneath them. Indeed, there's been enough outrage that several integrators including at least one mid-major Linux vendor--Progeny--are making a business of supporting Red Hat 9 customers.
The release of Fedora, Red Hat's free and cutting-edge Linux distribution, doesn't appear to have been enough for some of these users.
Of course, what Red Hat really wanted was to have its commercial customers switch to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Some Linux fans were outraged because they felt they were being forced to upgrade.
Rant, rave, rant, rave
But you know what? There's nothing new about this. As early as 1999, I was writing stories about people who hated Red Hat for the same general reasons, which boil down to the fact that Red Hat is getting too big for its breeches. Heck, the ill-fated UnitedLinux consortium was in many ways an attempt by other Linux powers to take Red Hat down a peg.
Now, this isn't to say that Red Hat hasn't made mistakes. Both the timing and delivery of its message concerning the end of life for Red Hat 9 were awful. It placed many of its customers in the awkward position of having to upgrade before they were ready. It left others, including yours truly, completely bamboozled as to whether Red Hat would even continue to have a desktop distribution. As it happens, Red Hat is offering a Linux desktop, but there never should have been any doubt.
Nevertheless, the move itself was one that Red Hat had to make. For better or worse, Red Hat has decided that it wants its Linux distribution to be a high-end, profitable business distribution. Given that, the Raleigh, N.C., company had no choice but to leave Red Hat 9 behind so that it would no longer have two competing lines.
You know what? It's been a successful move. Red Hat's last quarter was its best ever. Why? In large part, it was because RHEL sales increased by 87,000 during the quarter while RHEL renewal rates remained at about 90 percent. Red Hat is a profitable Linux company, and it's getting more profitable.
Perhaps that's the real reason why Sun has been so grumpy with Red Hat. Sun is much bigger, but it's been declining, in large part due to competition from Linux in the server market, while Red Hat has been growing.
And maybe too that's the real problem some Linux fans have with Red Hat. The company has always been about open source and profits. To these fans, the idea that Linux is becoming mainstream, that their da
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If SUN really wanted to do this it could happen... But let's first face facts SUN's java desktop is ass. When they finish the 3D desktop enviornment "Looking glass" you'll finally have somthing on the x86 side that looks as good as OS X. then next is their new filesyatem ZFS... which sounds awsome. All this openedsourced and where would you go? I know I'll be downloading it! Solaris's backend is probably the best in the system and then have a desktop that's beautiful too? What more could you possibly want in an OS?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I know it's all business, but it seems kind of immature to me to put down other projects. Is Solaris so horrid that Sun can't trust the good features to outweigh the bad? Personally, I'd be more impressed if companies laid out all the facts, good and bad, about BOTH products and let the end-user decide. If Solaris is so awful that the only way they can get customers is to belittle the competition...maybe Sun needs to take an objective look at themselves instead of blaming everyone else.
What's happening is that Sun is being run by chaos theory. How many different strategies has Sun had toward Linux over the past few years? How many different "philosophies" regarding open source? How many different strategies regarding x86 support? Maybe somebody who follows Sun more closely than I can answer some of these questions. I know it seems to me as if Sun changes direction more often than the wind. Name any important issue in the past few years and Sun will have had two or three positions on the issue - even more if you count the "unofficial" positions. They need a strong leader and sense of direction more desperately than any group except, maybe, the Democratic Party.
If I'm wrong, PLEASE let me know. I'm a Sun user and I like Sun, I really do... I just never know where they're going from one day to the next.
No problem. Let MS and Sun go right on believing that Linux == Red Hat. Let them even try to kill Red Hat if they can. We'll just keep doing what we've always done: building better software in and for the open source community. To use "their" terminology -- our Value Proposition continues to improve, year after year, relentlessly marching on, happily coexisting with (but not depending on) the corporations who operate within our space.
Seriously, if MS and Sun think they can beat Linux by beating Red Hat, let them believe that. It'll keep them off our backs while we build the next generation of superior software.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
McNealy is known to keep a "decapitated penguin" on his desk...
Don't be sensationally unfair; it's the head from the penguin costume that he WORE the year before to declare his company's embrace of Linux.
I don't know if SGI qualifies as large and powerful anymore. But I do think they've made some significant contributions and have been friendly players. XFS is pretty nice.
Not only is it too nebulous, it doesn't exist. I know, that's why you put it in quotes. There's a free software movement, but there's really no point for Sun to compete for freedom. They want money.
You missed the point. Sun is a company. They need to make money to pay employees and investors. They will compete with those that are making money. Is the "Linux movement" making money?
And a good rebuttal from a linux kernel hacker.
My photolog
Linuxmania Six Man Tag Match featuring Sun, SCO, and Microsoft vs. Red Hat, Novell, and IBM.
Tux interview: "Tell me, SUN, do you like pie?" "Well, I'd like a bigger slice..." "it doesn't MATTER what you like! Tux says this -- Tux says he's gonna take all of you java-sippin, clippy kissin, lawsuit makin jabronis and beat the living hell out of you. Then he's gonna take some IBM big iron, polish it real good, turn that sonabitch sideways and stick it straight up yer candy asses! When Tux is done with you whiney bitches, you're gonna make that goatse guy look normal. If you smellllllllo what Tux IS cookin!"
RH has nothing to worry about.
Your troll-fu shows promise grasshopper. This is one of the better comedy trolls I've seen in a while.
Duh! They thought they could milk that cach cow for a lot longer. Dorks.
why can't other companies provide support for it? This is why we need open source.
I doubt Sun hates Linux, but it is clear why they would dislike Red Hat. Red Hat is a true competitor against Solaris and Sun's own Linux distributions. Sun would play along with Red Hat as a reseller only as long as it takes to replace any Red Hat-branded software with Sun-branded software.
I still don't understand why the common culture at Slashdot is to bash Sun at all costs, even if it requires misinformation to do so. It's almost as bad as some of the rants for and against Microsoft, HP, Intel, etc. (not IBM, of course, because IBM paints penguins on sidewalks--that makes them all nice sugar and spice).
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
is to gradually lose all of their customers by taking the middle of the road in all cases, until they promptly run themselves out of business.
I don't think this is anything to get worked up about. One cannot equate this with SCO's maliciously litigous actions, nor do I view this as an unfair turnabout on Sun's part. To claim that Sun is duplicitous for using Linux as part of a desktop solution while it is stating that the Solaris line of Operating Systems and its proprietary architecture is better suited to various aspects of enterprise computing is mob mentality.
Did anyone imagine the millions of dollars Sun has invested over the years in its products would simply be forgotten upon Sun's first exploration of supporting Linux commercially? Competition is the mother of all commercial software improvement. Sun is free to make the claim that its non-Linux products will serve enterprises more efficiently in certain capacities just as we are free to vet those claims.
As far as Sun being more prepared than Redhat to support large enterprise, it would seem to me that this goes without saying. Linux is still a relatively virgin product in large scale enterprise deployments and I think Redhat has yet to stake its/Linux's rightful claim in the enterprise computing space. I love Linux and choose to use it over Solaris where I work, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't consider Solaris for a larger deployment if Sun could come up with some compelling reasons.
The corporate world is aware enough of Linux now that mindless marketing will not dissuade companies from its use. Let Sun throw the gauntlet and we'll see where it goes. Who knows, maybe it will result in a couple of improved OS's.
Is Sun turning against Linux and Redhat? Well, based on the article, no. What they are doing is turning against Redhat and all other Linux distro COMPANIES that commercially SELL distros in the business-to-business market.
I don't think they're trying to equate Linux with Redhat either. It sounds like what they're doing is trying to equate all commercial business-to-business Linux distro companies with Redhat. The idea seems to be that, if you are a business buying Linux for your servers, etc., then you're going to buy from Redhat or some other company which is essentially equivalent to Redhat. And after all, they have a point. Is there an x86 Linux vendor that has the kind of experience that Sun (or any other big Unix companies, like IBM) has at engineering and supporting complete systems? In my mind, there really isn't. They're not all exactly the same, and you may have your own preference, but basically they're all fairly similar in terms of experience as a company.
So, it sounds like a better way of putting this is that Sun isn't going to say anything bad about Linux. Instead, the idea is to attack the experience of using Linux that is provided/supported by a new, relatively inexperienced company in a business-to-business situation.
To make an analogy, think about a restaurant making a deal with a vendor to deliver them fresh apples. Sun has been delivering expensive Granny Smiths for years and now a new company is delivering Red Delicious somewhat cheaper, and there's kind of a buzz about Red Delicious apples. So, whereas Sun could say "Red Delicious apples suck; what you really want is Granny Smiths", what they've now (apparently/supposedly) decided to say is, "Yeah, to some extent an apple is an apple, but we think Granny Smiths are one of the best you can get, and furthermore, keep in mind our decades-long history of sending trucks out to your restaurant that always show up on time to deliver apples that are always really fresh and free of blemishes. And then think of how those other companies show up with Red Delicious apples that are usually good but every now and then not very fresh, and how they're sometimes late."
Of course, whether you believe Sun's apple delivery trucks really always show up on time is another question. But the point here is not whether Sun's marketing hype is accurate (whose really is?); the point is whether they're attacking Linux or what.
Thanks, I do my best to educate slashdotters about Linux. I am even thinking of creating an account!
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020 390,39166542,00.htm
0 36 3,39167437,00.htm
Sun sets up open-source Solaris project
Martin LaMonica
CNET News.com
September 14, 2004, 11:05 BST
The company aims to be an 'innovative leader' in the developer community
Sun Microsystems will create an open-source project around its Solaris 10 operating system by the end of the year, company executives said on Monday.
<---remainder edited--->
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,3902
Sun: We've turned over a new leaf
Stephen Shankland and Marguerite Reardon
CNET News.com
September 22, 2004, 08:20 BST
We didn't listen to customers, says Schwartz. Now, says the COO, Sun has had a change of heart
Sun Microsystems' executives have rarely been known for meekness, but the company's new chief operating officer took a tone of humility while arguing that the company has mended its ways.
<...edited...>
At the event, Sun announced a host of products and plans to try to seize the initiative from competitors, including IBM, Dell and Red Hat, that have gained customers at the expense of the Santa Clara, California-based server and software company. Among the new items: a plan to sell computing power for $1 per processor per hour; round-the-clock technical support for the Linux open-source operating; the new StorEdge 6920 midrange storage system; and a promotion that gives customers credits of between $560 and $1,250 for trading in servers with Intel Xeon processors for Sun servers with Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips.
-------
so, they're going to outprice everybody, make 'em subscribe for "value-added" services, take on linux (that's open source, isn't it?), and open up Solarix as open source. Sounds like a focused business strategy to me!
Wait up?! I thought that RedHat was supposedly the MS of the linux world.
Wow.
That was about as fun as kicking myself in the nuts.
I think I need a new sig here.
For the large-system, huge-customer market, this might be a real Sun marketing push. The PHBs at that level are unlikely to recognize the word Linux, but have heard about Red Hat, as they've read about it in Forbes.
For these folks, Sun might well need to say "Sun is bettter than Red Hat". For a consultant or a publisher specializing in talking to PHBs, this sort of ovrsimplification actually sounds intelligent. That might not be my opinion, but then I'm Dilbert, not Wally.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
If Red Hat were in fact the Microsoft of linux the following would be true:
1. You could only get RedHat Linux because any other kind of linux would be a EULA violation.
2. RedHat would sign agreements with third-party vendors to offer them incentives to only create
software on RH Linux.
3. RedHat would create proprietary API's in the kernel so the RedHat Office 2004 works better than the competition.
That said, there are some people who are pissed at the decisions RH makes, like relegating KDE to GNOME's back seat. My Solution? Release QT as LGPL.
I like how the story articulates that sun is trying to avoid being a powerless drone... When it's clear they have become a powerless drone via MS, and hence are just the next step in MS's plan.
Step 1. MS get SCO to do bidding
Step 2. MS get Sun to do bidding
I notice that SGI comes between SCO and SUN in the phone book.. so yay for SGI.
Also I notice MS bought SAP. Maybe they just like S?? companies?
big deal do you think any linux zealot whether corporate admin/tech officer or home user could
care less about sun beating on Red Hat if they have adopted Red Hat over Sun Or Microsoft its
probably because they have weighed the options
and found that Linux, in this case RedHat is the best solution to their needs, and if Sun succeeded in this gambit then a distro change probably is not the hardest fix, but a change of OS/OS,Platform would probably be a bitch to implement. Sun might succeed in hurting or Killing RedHat but then they would need to switch over to attacking SUSE, then Mandrake, then oh dear I hope they have deep pockets, and forgiving investors
They make a profit and they support GNOME, that is enought for some of the kids on /. to hate RHAT.
But, if Sun attacks redhat like this perhaps redhat will join SUSE in supporting MONO.
Mostly because I didn't believe Sun to be that incredibly stupid.
I mean, it's not surprising that Sun isn't real happy about Linux. There are only three enterprise Unixes left: Irix, AIX, and Solaris. Only one hasn't been phased out by it's parent company for Linux. Sun's betting on being THE enterprise Unix vendor. Fighting Linux is a reasonable strategy.
But the Redhat == Linux == No Enterprise Power strategy is so dumb even MS figured out it was wrong. Fight Redhat, cool, Redhat is a competitor. But trying to fight Linux by pigeonholing it will never work. Linux is a technology. It's like AOL trying to fight the open Web by saying the Web == Earthlink == None of our wonderful proprietary content. It doesn't make any sense.
Sun will loose because the quality of their products doesn't matter because that quality only means anything in an IT world that is slowing ceasing to exist, and Sun can't figure out how to deal with it. Linus Torvalds is not your competitor! Your competitors are still IBM and SGI for the high end, custom hardware market (with Apple scooting in), and Redhat and Novell for the midrange commodity hardware market, even if they are all running Linux. IBM still has the resources to support Linux richly, so you can't win this battle this way, you'll just loose to IBM with Linux instead of Redhat.
I'd like to see Sun get this right. Linux needs someone to keep it honest, and the BSD's are becoming less and less general purpose, loosing their ability to compete in the exact same area's as the distros. Linux needs a competeing strong Unix kernel, and a competeing strong desktop kernel. We've got OS X and Windows - where is our enterprise server OS?
The site isn't about facts anymore, apparently. It's mostly about anti-this or that propaganda.
Just look at the banner - it no longer says 'run by a paralegal' but 'run by a journalist with a paralegal background'. This implies objectivity that just doesn't exist. I couldn't send my management there to read stuff, they'd think I was an OSS nutjob. So how is it helping, then?
Professionalism and evenhanded analysis was the hallmark of the initial articles on Groklaw, and what made it very popular. It was a much better site when it seemed run by an amateur and concentrated on the facts instead of spewing pro-OSS FUD, for that's what it is doing in many cases.
I thought FUD was bad.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Well, if Sun turns on Redhat, it will allow Novell and the rest to profit. Basically, the others will be out in the field to tell companies that Redhat is not Linux. This shows that Linux easily survives a company.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just ignore the FUD pusher and keep on doing business with Linux. Idiots will eventually show themselves to be just that and then they fade off into obscurity.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I respect/like/admire/trust Sun more than I respect/like/admire/trust Red Hat. Nuff said.
I fail to see where the problem is, or how this exactly equates to Sun being anti-Linux.
Red Hat sells Linux. Sun sells Linux in the form of JDS. Sun is coming up with a strategy to encourage potential buyers to purchase from them by claiming that Red Hat isn't up to handling large enterprise accounts.
This is what competition is all about, folks. One of the great things about Open Source is that we can have multiple competing distributions. Mandrake and SuSe aren't buddy-buddy with Red Hat -- they compete with them as well. Do you somehow think that when they're competing with Red Hat for an account that they don't go in and try to show the potential buyer how they are better that Red Hat, or where Red Hat's weaknesses (perceived or otherwise) are?
This is the nature of competition. It doesn't mean that Sun is anti-Linux (although I don't believe that Sun is a great friend to Linux either). It's simple competition. This is news to anyone? Would anyone expect anything different between two competing companies? This is a complete non-story if I ever saw one.
Yaz.
Sun had alot of interesting technology that could of kept them on top. Only if they weren't profit minded with certain parts of it. Their management doesn't seem to see things longterm but who could truly blame them. Who would of thought opensource would of been viable.
A while ago I read a paper by Larry McVoy which essentially detailed the current threats to Sun at the time. One of those threats was NT (well no one who actually knew anything about Unix at the time saw it as a threat but those were geeks not business minded people) and the other was Linux and what he termed Sourceware at the time.
The paper is still available http://www.bitmover.com/lm/papers/srcos.html to read.
I had the good fortune of speaking with LM about what happened to the Spring OS which is mentioned in the paper. His response was that nothing happened, it essentially died. Some of the interesting and functional bits made it into Solaris but thats about it.
From the paper A royalty free operating system. Sun wants this so badly that they are currently spending roughly the same amount as the Unix royalty stream to fund development of a royalty free operating system called Spring.
Obviously Sun didn't want it so badly and instead of seeing Linux as a moving target gaining speed many just shrugged it off. This, again, a mistake. I like Sun, they have extremely good hardware, documentation and support. They need to find a viable business plan and it would start by maybe re-reading this paper and compiling a new one assessing their current and future threats.
If Sun genuinely wanted to they could be a dominant player in the linux market, ahead of Redhat and Novell. No one does support like Sun; period. However, they just let the ball drop way too many times. If you read the paper carefully you'll see that Novell even though they are late to the game are pushing through with what they want. I wish them the best of luck.
Sun still has enough money to make a change but sometimes it's hard to let go of certain things. The reality is that Sun doesn't have to let go of it's main babies such as the Sparc or Solaris. If they truly want to keep them they could recommend them for high end usage in certain critical performance server areas. There's a whole host of different configurations they could keep those things specialized for but they just aren't serious.
Still, I wish Sun the best of luck. If this rumor is true, they are going to fumble the ball one last time.
>
SGI have contributed to numerous projects, and are only narrowly behind IBM in terms of how much they've put in. They'd be contributing more, but their Apache accelerator unit was shut down because the Apache group wouldn't take their patches. Fools that they are. (Apache, that is. Those were some damn good patches.)
SGI also ships the Altix platdorm and contributes to Linux' NUMA development, SMP development and numerous other projects. (You don't build 1024-way systems unless you're going to make it run a 1024-way OS.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
that's a bullshit solution.
GPL for Free Software, commercial licence for commercial software is a perfect fit.
Any company too cheap to purchase a QT license for a commercial application doesn't deserve your business in the first place. Try comparing it with things like a JBuilder Enterprise license - now THAT's extortion....
Sounds like an outstanding plan, to me. Sun will be just another dead body in the wake of the Linux.
I want to be knee deep in the dead corporations, listening to men with marketing degrees lamenting their fate, and a trail of destroyed psyches marking where I've cut a bloody path. Wailing and gnashing of teeth over the com radio, just like Doom 3; but with Operating Systems.
God Damn, it's going to be glorious.
When I was a kid, my Mom told me not to touch the stove because it was hot and would burn me. How hot? Would it hurt that much if I touched it? What if I touched it really really fast? Would that hurt too? What if I could touch it fast enough that it would not hurt too much? I stood there for a few minutes, transfixed by the red glow of the stove eye, trying to overcome the irresistable urge to touch it...
I have that same feeling riiiiight now.
They've open-sourced AND GPL'ed a couple of things that SUSE had previously kept to themselves, YaST being one of them.
And who is paying the bill?
This guy did not call ZDNet out of the blue or the goodness of his heart. It reads to me like pure FUD and when I hear FUD, I know what company springs instantly to my mind!
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1592544,00.as p
From May 14, 2004 nonetheless.
Scan through it for a while and you get a bit of an idea of the direction he thinks in, publicly at least.
For example:
Or:
Sun definitely seems to think they have a strong competitor to Linux with Solaris 10, especially with adding support for running Linux applications. Their pricing for Solaris x86 is ballpark with suse or red hat enterprise.
Sun realizes that Linux is making certain layers of the stack a commodity, and is fighting strongly both on the front of bringing Solaris into the market while providing some added value (what a change from when they were killing Solaris x86 just a short while ago...) and moving up the stack (java desktop, application servers, etc.) while at the same time trying to expand their offerings of commodity servers that can run any platform... and using that as an entry point to get Solaris in the door.
I mean, "duh" Sun competes with Red Hat, and makes a big deal about being able to be a vendor that has a full hardware and software stack of their own. I don't, however, see any signs that Sun is betting the farm on Solaris.
By collapsing Linux into Red Hat, Sun now has a clear target. It can hammer away at a company, as opposed to waging the impossible task of fighting a social movement.
Dear Red Hat,
I bet the decision to abandon the social movement (Bluecurve, Fedora) and become a "clear target" looks a little different from where you stand now, doesn't it?
Y'know, sometimes I think that all the /. crowd wants to see is All Linux, All The Time. God, how boring. Despite what most of you have experienced, there are actual other OS's that are very good. Some *gasp* might even be better than Linux. And I think the day when Linux is the only OS in the datacenter would be a terrible day. Variety is what made Linux so powerful. It was a good/cheap alternative to Solaris/Windows/AIX/HP-UX.
Sun is trying to be competitive. They can't say "Linux sucks, go with Solaris" because it impossible to compete with an ideology. And besides, they sell Linux for the desktop. BUT they CAN say "Redhat sucks, go with Sun" which is what they ARE doing. Seems fair, right? I mean, for years, Linux advocates have been saying "Windows/Solaris/'All other OS's' suck, go with Linux"
Bah, who cares. Ill still recommend Linux for 1-4 way, and Solaris for anything heavier.
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
LOL
so true it's sad... =/
Red Hat's main product is Enterprise Linux, designed for the server market -- Sun's bread and butter. Java Desktop System is targeted (obviously) as a replacement for Windows desktops. This is still a relatively small market, mainly consisting of companies with a need for volume lightweight deskop installs (e.g. call centers and the like). So there's not really a contradiction here. Sun's position is that Red Hat can't support mission-critical enterprise infrastructure to the extent to which Sun's products and its service organization is able. It's not like they're trying to destroy Linux. They're just trying to discredit their competition. They're well aware that Linux will go on as always, supported by the OSS community, no matter what they say -- and the JDS will continue to benefit from that.
It'll be more interesting to see how they go after Novell.
Breakfast served all day!
It does not help Sun's case that they ship Linux, that they've been forced into shipping Solaris as Open Source (or some derivative thereof) and that Java has been pushed from being utterly closed into being semi-open. Customers have already accepted the fact that Sun believes that it cannot compete with Linux.
It is irrelevent as to whether this is true or not. What is important is that it is generally accepted.
Sun can quite easily survive in the mid-to-high end of the market, where Microsoft dare not go. SGI, for all its stupidities of the past, has done very nicely from focussing itself on a market that - by nature - tends to be picky and has very specialised needs. Likewise, IBM has long-since abandoned the low-end market. There's not enough money per seat, there. The market can't handle the costs of heavy R&D, it barely copes with the costs of minimum-wage labor (or sometimes prison gangs) assembling mass-produced junk parts.
By targetting Red Hat, Sun is also missing a far more serious threat - SuSE/Novell. Novell has a very substantial image in the server market, and SuSE has grabbed the attention of a great many European Governments. SuSE is also the only DoD-certified distribution, making it the only (legal) player in the US military markets - and they're the ones with the serious money.
Sun's tactics are about as suicidal as SCO's and I honestly doubt either company will survive the use of scare-tactics in the end. Think about it for a moment. You're a customer. You're scared that the wrong choice will cost you a lot of money. Your existing system - whilst no great - does at least work. What do you do? Probably nothing. Doing nothing is cheap, predictable and doesn't tie your hands. It's also politically safe, as it means you can blame the last guy in charge.
Doing nothing, however, would also put Sun out of business.
For Sun to survive, it has to induce customers to spend more, not dig in for survival. Survivalists are misers. They don't buy big iron. Sun sells big iron. Survivalists don't buy leading-edge technology. Sun sells leading-edge technology. (They were an early adopter of IPv6, for example.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Groklaw is reporting, based on a ZDNet UK
> story, that Sun's strategy for survival in
> the near future is based on trying to equate
> Linux with Red Hat, and then attack Red Hat
> as too small to support enterprises.
Well, Red Hat *is* pretty much viewed as a
synonym for Linux in the marketplace. Secondly,
if you think that Red Hat / Linux can provide
the same level of service to enterprise customers
as Sun / Solaris then you're just a fanboy
suffering from serious delusions. The idea that
Red Hat / Linux is on par with Sun / Solaris is
embarrassing.
WTF are you talking about?
sun's message is that using linux does not mean compatibility with everything that has "linux" in it's name. this is true. i really don't think a lot of non-technical people, the ones that make purchasing decisions in the enterprise, realize this.
... duh! they've embraced it. solaris 10 runs all redhat binaries for christ sake. that's pretty cool.
sun isn't trying to kill linux, that's why they have their own dist of it
redhat is COMPETITION for sun. competition for both sun's linux dist and solaris. what do you expect? just because sun challenges it's competitors doesn't mean they are bad mouthing linux.
I think it's far too late in the game for what will simply be perceived as more FUD.
I was at the Sybase Tech Wave conference that was held near Orlando Florida in August. The conference was buzzing with Linux talk. A Sybase engineer told me that last year people were just talking about Linux but this year they are switching to it.
I was talking to one employee from Boeing who told me that they had switched a 32 processor box running UNIX with an 8 processor box running Linux. They saved a fortune and the Linux box out performed the older Unix box.
Groklaw's article quotes George Coloney as saying:
"The operating system is not about world peace and the charitable work of the world's great programmers. It's like every other operating system ever created: It's about the foibles, greed, mistakes and engineering prowess (or lack thereof) of one vendor -- in this case, Red Hat."
He clearly does not understand the nature of Linux and off handidy admits that SUN is about "greed."
It's too late for FUD which means we should brace ourselves for more SCO like actions. Let's not forget that the SCO thing got started with the help of Microsoft and now SUN is in the same bed.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
They support community standards, have a better-safe-than-sorry policy on patent-encumbered stuff, fully support a Free, rapid-release cycle distro with no GPL incompatible components at all (unlike some other large distros have done).
Really? This is news. I was not aware that Red Hat had quit shipping:
Apache
OpenSSL
PHP
Mozilla
Because all of these use licenses which the FSF says on its web site are not compatible with the GPL.
I can put Sun's problem with it's Red Hat strategy in one word:
Novell
Ok, two words:
Novell->SuSE
Ok, ok, three words:
Novell->SuSE->IBM
They had better watch their asses or else in some years time you will be able to hear this when discussing Sun: "Wasn't Sun that company that used to make purple servers?"
I think they are doing nothing wrong technically - they are just making a fatal marketing mistake. They should have spotted the fashion trend towards linux and followed it wholeheartedly rather than half-heartedly. They should be saying they are a linux company, and lay much less public emphasis on solaris. This way the media would love them - like it does Novell now - and they can still sell Solaris as their top-end solution, just more quietly.
Every dog has its day, and the media like the latest and greatest bandwagon. However, instead of using the buzzword "linux" for their linux distribution and earning media points, Sun aren't even calling it linux, but calling it the "Java Desktop". Java may have some good associations for some developers, but I suspect it's trendyness may be wearing off. (Unless they "open sourced" it when it might become trendy again.)
It just looks like Sun are at a cross-roads, and are about to take the path towards denial like SCO and Microsoft, rather than the path that the market wants to take. The worst thing about it is they have all the open source technology in place to take the right path, but are still looking to go the wrong way.
I personally can't stand redhat they are the MS of the linux world.
:
God I hate when people act that way. You sound like a 15 year old saying:
"I won't listen to Bad Religion anymore cause they signed to Geffen records, they're sellouts, they're too popular. All they care about is money. I listen to Aus-Rotten cause they are old skool and would never sell out. People who like Bad Religion are poseurs. Bad Religion is the Brittny Spears of the punk world."
Just change it to:
"I won't use Redhat anymore cause they are trying to make money, they're sellouts, they're too popular. All they care about is money. I use Debian cause they are old skool and would never sell out. People who use Redhat are poseurs. Redhat is the microsoft of the linux world."
Grow the fuck up. Thx.
Tried it out 9/21 on a Dell 2xP3500 512M, and an AMD xp2400 512M, after listening to their web event on friday. Next I want to install it on a 2x2.8 Xeon, 2G.
s 10x86.html solaris looks great, if it was 1990s, but I don't think Sun realizes how advanced (at least in terms of eye candy, user-friendliness, and gui tools, but not necessarily system stability) some of the linux distros are.
-Installation time: 1hr-2hr
-Drivers: what drivers!
-Gnome 2: Crashed first time on, but stable after.
-Couldn't mount floppy to install 3rd party net driver - need to read docs.
-Docs... what docs... Docs iso does not exist, docs available on line.
-couldn't start scm? (manager tool) because it couldn't find the server - net problem I believe - see above.
I'm not saying most of the problems are Sun's fault, and with Gnome's crash exception, I should be able to fix most problems after browsing the docs, but not having a manageable system (for whatever reason) after a clean install is not good for business.
I really want to give Sun a chance on x86, but history is not in their favor, especially after they almost pulled the rug from under x86 users.
On paper http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/ds/solari
It seems that they have become so desperate in the past year ago, they don't know who there friends are.
Linux is a threat to them in the low end server market, but they need Linux to keep them competitive on the PC platform.
If they think PC Solaris has any kind of chance competing with MS, Linux, FreeBSD they are dreaming. the quality and range of drivers for the PC version of Soloaris is abismal. And it nothing in the way of features that can't be had on Open Source OSs, or cheaper commercial OSs either.
Tux is not the Rock. The Rock is funny. Tux is never funny. He's a fat, retarded piece of shit. Real men prefer Peng, who besides being a cool logo that doesn't make a grown man embarrassed once held the X-division title.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I read this, on Johnathan Scwhartz's weblog posted on July 21, 2004. He explicitly talks about Linux == Red Hat.
I then posted on my own weblog about it on July 26th.
And here I thought they were going to form an alliance with IBM and become the Blue Sun corporation....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
No matter whatever you say they are going down. If they don't go I will put my effort to see that Sun is out of business.
That being said--why I am so pissed ?
There is one thing you can never do and get away in Enterprise computing--lie to your customer.
This is back in 1997/1998 when MSFT was not considered a enterprise level system. So we were happy running the latest E3500 and 4500 systems. Then one day the Memory problem started taking place. If there is any Sun hardware admins there they will probly remember the "J3200" error in the syslog just before the system crash.
Sun did not tell us that was a memory problem and took us through painful route of upgrading/patching/replacing components etc. . We trusted Sun and went with that.
Then I have found out they were going to major customers and signing out some kind of NDA where they will fix their server only at a condition the customer can not tell that to anyone.
So, I guess the 1.5M budget we had for Sun gear was not enough for Sun. After we found out ( BTW the sales guy's name was "Steve Introcaso" -- normally works in North East Division--one smooth talker, just hope that he is not in your account ) what was going on we called Sun and they again denied about it.
My job was on the line since I was the architect of the Stock Market Data Processing System. I have finally convinced our management with proper value proposition to start the migration from Sun to Linux since it was not possible for me to "trust" Sun anymore and IBM/HP was too much effor to port the systems.
It took over 5 years to get rid of Sun--but I am glad I did it.
Whatever you do--don't lie when you are dealing with a company's lifeline systems and who buys >1M worth of gears from you every year.
And not to mention about the Java BS they did ... but that's for another day.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
blogs.sun.com They are posting their future strategies to an extent. I'm sure a sun employee would get fired for breaking an NDA but overall it seams like the blogs provide a good uncensored look at the people and ideas of sun.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
really, I like linux, but the mixing of linux trolls and mod points is a bad thing. please if anyone has mod point read the post and correct this.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
In addition to being disturbingly phallic, Peng does not meet the original requirements.
Quoted from the article:
> Sun's view is that Linux is nothing more than Red Hat. The operating system is not about
> world peace and the charitable work of the world's great programmers. It's like every
> other operating system ever created: It's about the foibles, greed, mistakes and
> engineering prowess (or lack thereof) of one vendor -- in this case, Red Hat."
If this is truly Sun's view, then they're fucked. Nothing can save them.
Anyway, Linux isn't an operating system. It's a kernel.
Contrary to popular belief, Sun has done more for FOSS than any other company out there. Integrated over time, Sun's overall contribution has been unmatched. Let's look at a few key points:
1) Sun workstations were the primary development environment for FOSS from about 1987 till the early 1990's.
2) How many copies of Linux and related software were dowdloaded from a "sunsite"?
3) TCL came from where?
4) Java came from where?
5) NFS, as we know it, came from where?
6) RPC's, as we know them, came from where?
I'm sure I could find many more, if I went digging.
Sun has been a less then perfect partner in FOSS, but they have been there longer than anyone else, and have made many significant contributions.
I truly hope, and expect, this trend to continue. No commercial partner of FOSS will be perfect, but Sun's record, to date, is really quite good.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...once held the X-division title.
What is that, the Association of Professional Transvestites?
Let's start with "out-engineer everybody in the x86 space". Now THAT is funny. Sun has very little talent in the x86 space. Their x86 work comes from SunSoft South, which used to be the old Interactive Systems Corporation. I'm told these guys lost the race to deliver the first ATT UNIX port to the IBM 386 PC back in the 80's to Microport; even though Intel paid ISC to port System V to a similar platform first. And not too long ago they were quoting 9 months to write a device driver for any new hardware. Heck, you could port Linux to a new CPU in less time than that.
Oh yes - and let's not forget how well Solaris NFS works with Linux. There are definite problems there. And NetApp has put Trond on a basic retainer. Hmmm. Where does that leave Sun?
Secondly, the folks at SunSoft South have always been looked down upon from within Sun as second-rate by the Solaris kernel engineers. In good part, with good reason.
Perhaps Schwartz is going to put the Sparc kernel hacks on x86? That will go over real well. But it's kind of irrelevant, as almost all of the best Solaris kernel people are gone.
So where's the talent, Jonathan? Perhaps he's going to hire Linus? Oh - let's not forget that Sun doesn't pay well enough to attract and keep good people anyway.
Let's see, what else? Ah! "Sun's view is that Linux is nothing more than Red Hat". Ahem. Maybe at the IT level he might persuade a few customers with this. But let's not forget that the reason RedHat got where it is is in large part based upon the goodwill of the Linux community.
I guess he doesn't understand the concept of "goodwill", and hasn't learned anything from the SCO fiasco (which Sun has helped finance, as we all know).
No, I'll place my bets on RedHat over Sun anyday. And let's not forget SuSE/Novell. These folks are making some impressive moves. If they do them right, I'll put my money on SuSE in the corporate IT world.
But Sun? They're a zombie, IMHO. They're still walking; they just haven't realized that they are dead yet.
The guy in the ZDNet article makes a good point about how Microsoft is not above betraying partners. Sun is a competitor for Microsoft in the small to medium server arena, and Microsoft will in all likelyhood make sure that Sun doesn't get one little bit of marketshare that Microsoft would want. If Sun offers Windows on its low end x86 machines, then Microsoft would be in the position to use that against Sun's Sparc machines. (The usual paid for FUD "analyst studies"), and Sun wouldn't be able to do anything about because it would lose revenue otherwise.
He's extremely tempted to type 'cat /dev/core' at the CLI...
I gotta say I felt the same way, but after quickly checking the size of that file, I decided that having a 256M avalanche of binary data inundate my monitor wouldn't be all that exciting
5468652047616D65
I don't want them to disappear - they make great gear - but I know so many ex-Sun people and they all have the same grim view: stick a fork in it.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Actually Red Hat's policy on bundled software has more to do with the software being compatible with community redistribution of the CD's than with the material being released under a GPL friendly license. Open source helps, of course, but I remember when Netscape was standard....
Red Hat is the MS of the Linux world in one very important and strangely positive way. Microsoft unleashed a all-consuming trend of commoditization when they licensed PC DOS to IBM and MS DOS to Compaq. Red Hat has similarly, with their attitude towards freely redistributable software and open source created a similar trend among Linux distros. This has allowed them to corner a large piece of the market share. Unlike MS, however, they could easily loose it if they betray the policies which have made them successful.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Yes, but it's not Linux alone, I believe might be the fact that Linux runs on Intel PC commodity hardware that kills commercial unices more than anything else.
And that they go is actually a shame, because they are very stable and highly standard compliant, exactly what a developer expects from his or her box [there's a HP 715-100XC sitting here under my desk]...
--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
I agree, companies don't usually have and probably shouldn't have ideologies. However, companies should have certain business value systems. A value system makes it possible for a customer, reseller, or investor to make an intelligent longer term investment in product/services and/or shares of said comapny.
Part of a company's value system should probably be to avoid screwing anyone over, like customers, resellers or shareholders. Judging by quite a number of the stories, that I've been reading, they may have done that while they were riding high with the dotcom bubble.
I personally have been deeply affected as a customer, when Sun purchased the Java application server company called NetDynamics, and promptly discontinued to properly support it, and when J2EE came along, there was no proper migration path from NetDynamics to a J2EE version of NetDynamics. NetDynamics customers were told to convert to Sun's J2EE server. Since my company had built an entire software product suite on top of NetDynamics, this action by Sun created a significant problem for us, both in terms of wasted time and wasted money to perform a conversion, rather than evolving our software.
Not surprisingly, we migrated to a non Sun J2EE application server.
I suspect we were not alone. And I further suspect that this type of behaviour over the long term loses a lot of customers and revenue.
Maybe, if there was all new company leadership, who would make Sun trustworthy again, there would be a chance of survival. What good is all the best engineering, if you can't trust someone?
Haaaahahahaha. Boy, that is a good joke. CEO's are the highest paid douchbags on the planet! Therefore, we can conclude that they *must* know what they're doing.
Sun have about as much chance of impacting Linux's momentum as SCO do.
I mean, what are they gonna do, refuse to release the specs for their new CPUs so Linux can't run on them?
I bet the managment at Redhat are losing lots of sleep over that.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
There is no economic or business reason for the nebulous Linux entity to exist. Perhaps it will take everyone starving and unable to waste free time contributing to such efforts for the bell to ring and wake everyone up, but the end will happen.
Yeah, wouldn't it be cool if Linux were a stock on the stock market? Oh, wait. It doesn't make any money for anyone. In fact, it just hurts the profits of real companies that try to sell similar products. That doesn't sound very good. What a stupid idea, trying to make Linux a stock... it's like rewarding economic damage.
The truth of the matter is, Enterprise installations of Linux are no more free then any other Intel OS competitor, and I think there is a little fear and FUD because Sun is eyeing that market -- albeit later then what some wanted, and there are people with sufficient monatary interests in Linux who like to spread that FUD about Sun.
I read Groklaw for legal machinations between high tech companies -- not for PJ's opinion on he state of the industry. I've written off PJ's opinion as just somebody who has some sort of financial interest in Linux. PJ has shown nothing but hostility towards Sun. Even in PJ's area of expertise (legal) PJ doesn't report objectively on Sun ... I.E Sun's 2 billion dollar settlement with Microsoft. It's contantly portrayed as something evil, rather then what it was. Expedient, neccessary and a win for Sun.
Sun is driving towards Open source code Solaris, but they still want to (and deserve to be) the gatekeeper and ultimate authority on Solaris.
I repeat again, PJ's and Groklaws opinions on the state of the industry regarding *any* company are just that ... opinions, and not even expert ones at that. They are however the premier source of the legal wranglings that are going on in the industry.
The real enemy is/are software patents and software IP. Fight that, not a company like Sun that helped nourish the industry, and even blazed the trail and created the market (need) for Linux.
I survived 4 layoffs at Sun, I've seen many fine Engineers and innovators leave. Management has never been more open to us and forthright with us on what we have to do to survive and none of it involves cheating or fuddling the Industry. It's all quality, innovation and execution.
...a bunch of jerks who's back should be the first against the wall when the revolution comes! ;P
I've had nothing but trouble with Sun. I've learned to cope with Solaris even though it's no where near as nice as HP-UX or (God rest it's soul) Digital Unix/Tru 64. Their support sucks. Their online forums suck compared to the HP forums. And it's damn near impossible to find any kind of Sun community online that is anything like the support from the Linux community. I'll be happy if SUn ever actually dies. Then HP-UX could take it's rightful place as the #1 Unix.
Un-news
What you are saying is that you can have a great team with a bad leader or a great leader with a bad team.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
NFS works pretty damn well on every FreeBSD and NetBSD box I've used. Sometimes I forget its not a local filesystem. Maybe linux/whatever you're using just has a crappy implementation? Sun can't control that.
You use Solaris box with a monitor attached to it? You're weird.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
With the release of Solaris 10, things will really get interesting. Assuming Solaris 10 can live up to the promise of running Linux apps natively without any porting then they have a big OS contender. Couple that with DTrace & a beautiful GUI like Project Looking Glass and Sun has a really nice package on its hands. Right now they're selling Red Hat to compliment their new AMD merger (and might I add the V20z is a sweet machine), but Solaris 10 is also being developed for the x86 (and it's suppose to have decent performance unlike previous x86 Solaris). With regard to their Sun Java Desktop, I don't believe that will have a major affect on Red Hat as it seems to be targeted at coporate desktops as opposed to servers. The permission levels and security changes over the next couple of releases sound interesting, and the lead engineer (nice fellow, met him at LinuxWorld) mentioned he hopes to have it running Looking Glass by version 4. I wouldn't be surprised if Sun cuts ties with Red Hat after the release of Solaris 10, but I don't know how much this will affect RH. They still have strong ties, especially with companies pushing blade technology like HP (who has their own plan to bring people away from Solaris).
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Yeah, well the original requirements were to create a non-corporate, non-business oriented clone of UNIX for use by hobbiests.
Linux has, in the meantime, grown out of the lazy hobbiest requirements into a full blown industrial strength high performance yet immensely flexible kernel and toolset slash political movement. It has outgrown the fat penguin metaphor. I like the image of the sleek, powerful, art deco Peng, I think it fits. It conveys reliability. Tux conveys a powerful warning about drinking and Down's Syndrome.
And have you ever SEEN a phallus? Mine does not look like that. It's mostly cylindrical with a mushroomy bit at the top. Peng, on the other hand, is distinctly triangular. In fact, the only thing in nature as sleek as Peng that I can think of is, well, a penguin racing through the water.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"Is Sun Turning Against their Biggest Competitor?"
Somebody tell these geeks to take some business 101. Eventually a company has to compete and differntiate his product enough vs the competition. Money doesnt grow on tree's
if they don't deny it means it must be true, and if they DO deny it, that means that they are just lying to us, and the article is true
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
I have written before that most of IBM's actions over many years seem to attacks against Sun. IBM is killing its own software offerings to try to control Java. IBM even partnered with MS to take standards away from Sun.
Now Sun is partnered with MS. That alone could kill Sun if it is not very careful. But MS is running scared, and could die before leveraging their partnership to destroy Sun.
Sun wants to equate Linux with Redhat. That might have worked a few years ago. Redhat is American; SuSE was German; Mandrake is French; TurboLinux is Asian; Lindows is playing a different game. Now SuSE is American, owned by Novell, and IBM is investing in it. Does Sun not realize that SuSE moved into the neighborhood? Redhat is attempting to emulate MS, and earning MS-like badwill, but there is an American alternative. Of course, SuSE has the similar problems in putting proprietary programs into its distribution. It is difficult to find a totally-free but commercially-viable American distribution, but that does not affect Sun's market.
IBM and Sun are still focused on powerful hardware. Google has demonstrated that many applications work well with a large server farm of low-power computers. IBM realizes that the only way to keep the hardware prices high is to commoditize software. Sun has great engineers, but their business strategies do not reflect today's market.
I like Sun, and wish them well. Dell is winning on hardware, MS is struggling to stay viable in software, and everybody else is wondering how to stay competitive. Sun does not have a good answer yet.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
The CEO of my company had lunch with McNealy early last year, just prior to the announcement of the SCO/IBM suit. McNealy mentioned that the suit was coming, and that SCO had retained Boies which meant that it was serious. Apparently McNealy had a huge smile on his face and couldn't stop talking about it .
So, a decapitated penguin doesn't seem that unbelievable to me...
it's nice to have karma to burn.
two less points with a double -1 offtopic, here it comes!
My prediction is that if Bush wins again in November, Microsoft will tell the DOJ to get bent, acquire SCO and Sun and mount a huge legal attack on IBM which, while doomed to eventual failure, will keep the business community out of the UNIX/Linux market until they can get Longhorn on the shelves.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Debian? Of course, there's no such thing as national boundaries in free software. It's commercially viable the same way all free software is. IBM is demonstrating that you don't have to have software secrets to make money. Consulting and hardware sales pay manyfold what you might put into software development.
IBM realizes that the only way to keep the hardware prices high is to commoditize software. Sun has great engineers, but their business strategies do not reflect today's market.
IBM realizes that their hardware has to do useful things if they want to sell it. Bill Gates taught them a big lesson about non free software. When your software has owners, so does your hardware.
Sun, on the other hand, seems to have gone insane. Without community involvement, Solaris will continue to fall behind free tools. No one company can compete against the free software world. If they start spewing M$ FUD, the community will desert them. That will leave them with nothing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
How many of these apps have they 'open sourced'? The one possible example, openoffice.org, is under threat due to their new contract with MS. While it allowed them to pull out a positive quarter (noticed ol' Scotty never mentioned that in his 'Sun's headed back to profitability' quip), as usual FOSS is left wondering what the hell SUN really represents.
All Boies managed to prove is that
- Not even the owners of Unix can find infringingn code.
- IBM will defend Linux IP.
- HP will provide indemnification for Linux IP
- Large companies (Daimler/Chrysler, Autozone) like Linux so much they'll defend it.
- Novell and Redhat will defend Linux IP
Meanwhile, Sun and EV1 managed to prove (by buying SCO licenses) that they're really dumb suckers who'll pay anyone who has a bogus IP claim; so if you have any patents filed, valid or not, go call them first.I don't think Sun gives a flying fuck about eye candy or GUI tools. Which is exactly why I like Sun products. Also, they do care about system stability, which is the other main reason why I like Sun products.
Solaris 10 is still a beta product! It's not exactly a fair comparison...
Red Hat sells service contracts on top of 100% Free Software.
Microsoft sells snake oil.
As for free tools, the performance of code compiled by GCC is usually below the performance of code compiled with commercial compilers. OTOH, GCC is much more portable than any commercial compiler.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Sun's customers aren't ditching them for Suse or Debian. They're ditching them for Red Hat, who has ex-Sun sales staff, Sun complementors (Veritas most recently) porting their apps to RHEL, and Sun customers looking for a large, dependable company they can do business with for Linux.
:^)
Oh, and Sun staff who keep asking me what working at Red Hat is like.
Sun are just making fools of themselves - they haven't had any clear direction since the dotcom bubble burst. I propose that the icon for a Sun story becomes a massive ass. And the headlines should all read "Sun are complete asshats".
Their secret plan is to license and/or sell some future version of Java Desktop System on Solaris only, forcing all established customers to migrate away from Linux. Silly idea. Microsoft money, of course. Maybe, two or three years?
My clean solution: make mental note to ignore java now. It's too slow for me, nor open either. Why the hell the j2re1.4.2.05 is missing SSL support in non american downloads, while j2re1.4.2.04 had it?
There you are, staring at me again.
Not the first time Sun has taken a stance that if not carefully balanced was self-damning. Sun hasn't made one of these work yet. One of these days they'll get a cohesive corporate strategy because they'll either get it right or get left behind in such a small niche there'll be no self-damning stances to take.
IE:
*) If the goal of Java was to make lots of money, then they failed. If the goal was to be really "cool" and sell books and classes then they succeeded.
*) If the goal of selling Linux was to take the Linux marked... fail. If the goal of selling Linux was to have a cheaper to maintain 'nix to sell... success.
Sabotaging the Linux market may be in the best short-term intrest of Sun because they win more dollars than if the Linux market was thriving. But, it's not a good long-term strategy because they'l have to work against their own press.
It's like demanding a handi-cap for your team because it's your ball and if you don't get it you're going home. Then when you get beat bad enough getting mad and asking for the rules to be changed. It won't make you many friends. But, then you may not care about friends... you may just care about winning.
Now, if you were playing a ball game for you life wouldn't you think about cheating too?
[signature]
Good rebuttal? Uh, he's reading the original blog article like the devil reading bible... and then doing plenty of strawman attacks.
Original article didn't say anything about "Sun not wanting to help with Linux kernel development". It is only saying it wouldn't make sense to (try to) dump Open Sourced Solaris code in Linux, to port Solaris features. Neither does the article claim that Linux developers do not value good engineering principles -- just that highest priorities are different from those of Solaris kernel development team. What's wrong with such a statement? Quite obviously priorities are different; what else would you expect between a "traditional" engineering effort of a big corporation, and a leading-edge open-source development effort?
What a crappy rebuttal. Wonder why the linux kernel hacker even bother with such a knee-jerk writing I have no idea. I'm not sure if he even read the writing he was replying to; and certainly didn't try to understand it even if he did.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
apparently the latest version (including Sun Open Source release) fixes that problem.
And they're damn good on the x86_64. It's hard to even consider the suggestion that they're not supporting this platform. If they keep this up, I'll never have to buy another Intel chip again.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Contributions from Sun to FOSS: NFS, RPC, TCL, Java (debatable), etc. Also some others that didn't make it.
How many Linux users got their first distro from a SunSITE? Guess who supports those servers (hint: not IBM).
Sun is among those companies that at least occasionally try out the "don't be evil" mantra.
They say they will open source Solaris in some fashion. When IBM open sources AIX or SGI opens up IRIX, let me know.
Not to bang on IBM, of course: they are just the largest.
Sun makes money selling systems. They "add-value" to their hardware by providing good software a.k.a. Solaris. Their hardware, by itself, is not very impressive.
Now, if Sun made Solaris on x86 just as good or better than Solaris on SPARC, then that would seriously de-value their hardware-software package. It would be death.
Sun is running out of options. Commoditization is moving up the enterprise stack on both the hardware (x86) and software (Linux) sides. Big enterprise apps such as Oracle run on Linux and IBM is adding more and more enterprise features to Linux. On the hardware side, Intel and AMD are utterly destroying SPARC with huge economies of scale advantages.
It will be extremely difficult for Sun to survive in this harsh competitive environment. The squeeze is on from the cheap x86 boxes on the low end and the killer IBM boxes on the high end. Their software is becoming less and less relevant as linux matures in the enterprise thanks to IBM and others.
I would suspect that the kernel patches these people have posted are indeed business-related.
Why you gotta be like that, Sun? You know, deep down, we love you. We always have. We hate it when you make us hit you sometimes. Come on, baby. Come back to us. We can work this out.
Game... blouses.
All this would just be mildly amusing if it weren't for two things. First, Schwartz has been busy trying to redefine the meaning of "open" (which cleverly starts with "I can't define terms, but here is what the term 'open' should mean"), both in "open standards" and in "open source". In his definition of "open", apparently, proprietary software can be "open").
The second, more dangerous effort is to misrepresent Java as an "open standard", as something that the industry should standardize on. Everybody should carefully read the legal verbiage at the beginning of Sun's Java specifications and search for Sun's patents at the USPTO; Sun's efforts are subtle, but they own and control the Java platform, specification, technology, patents. This is particularly worrisome given that Sun is having increasing problems staying afloat--dying companies can do real damage if they own widely used standards.
Here is another choice comment from Johnathan's Blog: This claim is disingenuous; yes, Sun was started with open source, but Sun made a business out of making open source software proprietary and then adding more proprietary extensions. Sun tried to control window systems with proprietary systems (NeWS) and failed. They generally released software only when it looked like a business failure (Tcl/Tk) and created open standards only when competition forced them to.
Overall, the message is: don't trust Sun. When they release open source software, thank them for it, after checking the license carefully. A open source release like OpenOffice may have been self-serving, but it is still useful. But just because a company releases some open source software doesn't mean that their goals and interests are aligned with open source efforts. Ultimately, Sun is on a collision course with open source, they know it, and sooner or later, there will be a showdown.
What do you mean with ally? What are "we" trying to accomplish?
As for me: I am a UNIX developer that loves the system and its design (from a technical point of view). That is my ally. And in that sense, Sun with Solaris is and remains in the same camp of my allies like Linux, *BSD, HPUX, AIX and what have you.
All of these sell and advance UNIX. Of course there is competition among them, but what is with that? There has always been a healthy competition in the UNIX camp, which is the reason that so many variants (including Linux) exist and that so much incentive for each "vendor" has been to improve their version and to copy from each other and to innovate.
As long as its not sinking to the purely destructive level of SCO, who don't want to "win" by making a good UNIX but only with lawsuits, I'm all for it.
It does not make Sun the enemy, and it should not to anyone! Sun, like it or not, sells one of the main UNIX variants and still is doing a lot of new and interesting things (ZFS comes to mind). Without Sun, UNIX and with it also Linux would not have nearly as much general credibility, and Linux profited hugely from its bigger and older brothers as example and inspiration.
Healthy competition inside our UNIX/Linux family is OK, but this "them against us" enemy thinking is really sad and damaging to all UNIX friends.
From the News.com.com article:
Sun Microsystems seeks to avoid oblivion by pursuing a simple but powerful strategy.
Was I the only one that assumed the author was going to tell me that Sun had rolled a warrior and put all its stat points into strength after reading that headline? Or perhaps had found a powerful ring that had increased its skill and given it an advantage over its opponents?
Me thinks the author has been watching too much made for TV fantasy..
What you meant to say was that M$ bought the rights to 86-DOS, repackaged it as PC-DOS for IBM and MS-DOS for the other guys - poaching Tim Patterson from SCP, etc.
The real commodization came from the folks at Compaq (and later Pheonix) who successfully cloned the PeeCee BIOS. The early versions of MS-Windoze and Flight Simulator would only run on an IBM PC or a really good clone (which from 1983 to 1986 was basically Compaq). The clone wars really didn't take off until after Pheonix started distributing their BIOS.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
I'm sorry, did you actually think Sun was an ally?
Nope, it's just the Java Bots around here that want us to think so, so they can continue to stick their heads in the sand.
Sun was something to reckon with once - but now both the hardware and the software (like Java) is outdated and/or too expensive.
Wake up and smell the coffee people, that was then (During DOT-COM for christs sake!). Now we have better alternatives all around.
1) Sun workstations were the primary development environment for FOSS from about 1987 till the early 1990's.
:-) See http://www.tcl.tk/doc/tclHistory.html
This is true, but it is not clear how much credit for this can be given to Sun.
2) How many copies of Linux and related software were dowdloaded from a "sunsite"?
Millions. I think this is probably your strongest point, as Sun indirectly (and probably knowingly) sponsored the embryonic GNU project.
3) TCL came from where?
Berkeley
4) Java came from where?
I've got bad news for you. Java isn't Open Source. The confusion over this has created a lot of problems for Free Software, and even now Java support in Linux is quite poor.
5) NFS, as we know it, came from where?
When Sun invented NFS, they were still a small upstart Unix vendor, so the only way they could get it adopted was for other vendors to support it, and they only way they could do that was by giving it away.
Personally, I wonder if something that sucked less might not have arisen had Sun not done that.
6) RPC's, as we know them, came from where?
I think you mean Sun RPC, as there are several other RPC systems floating around that suck in different, though broadly similar, ways. Note that due to the inate suckage and insecurity of RPC, Linux systems have never used it as pervasively as Sun systems, a fact for which I am truly grateful.
As everyone else has mentioned, you missed Open Office, possibly Sun's most impressive contribution to Open Source.
I still think the most remarkable thing about Sun's contributions is that they come from a company that is so openly hostile to Free Software. It's kinda like when Microsoft inexplicably gave their fonts away, at one stroke curing the most intractable weak spot in the Linux desktop, except that Sun keep on doing it again and again.
fish and pipes
Back when I used SUN kit (now we're a 100% linux shop) we used to put the GNU tools on it to make it work properly as the sun shell/file tools were so god-awful. Have they fixed that in Solaris 10?
Sun should be competing with RedHat. Get the idea that RedHat equals Linux out of your head because it isn't. And you all know better. RedHat may be behind the free Fedora, but they sell Enterprise RedHat Linux and Enterprise Linux support. They price Enterprise RedHat Linux above Solaris. Yes, it's more expensive. Anyway RedHat is a private company in the business to make money and Sun competes with them to make money. And RedHat is the dominant player when it comes to corporations using Linux. So Sun going after RedHat customers makes sense. And wait, Sun can sell you Solaris, Solaris support, Linux, Linux support, and the hardware too? 64bit x86 or 64bit Sparc? What's that? Sun matches or beats Dell and IBM's prices? Wait, RedHat doesn't sell hardware? Oh and RedHat doesn't sell the complete software stack. Sun has their own OS (it's called Solaris). Why should they spend all their time and money developing a Linux distribution? Is that what you want? It makes no sense. Now don't think Sun is anti-Linux and anti free software. They've made GNU/Linux more credible with OpenOffice.org and they do contribute to GNU Linux projects like Gnome. IBM, HP, SGI, do you know why they contribute to Linux? Because it's cheaper for them to develop Linux than it is their own operating systems. It's not because they love you. And get this evil SCO-Microsoft-Sun conspiracy out of your head. In case you forgot, Sun was fucked over by Microsoft and the recent settlement was a result of long standing litigation! Sun hurts MS everytime they sell a JDS license and they aint trying to get in bed together.
Yummm. Usss likessses ittt.
Yes, but that area of SlashDot with bathe you in a horrible brownish light... a time that geeks have come to fear (along with manual culling of the url in the address bar).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I do not know why, but if you read her articles she never has a good word to say about them.
They fixed that in Solaris 7.
I can easily recall E-Caché errors in some US2 chips with 4MB/8MB (333 Mhz - 400 MHz), and also receiving the most obscure information possible from Sun.
Patches and more patches, temperature and humidity control, and finally, an engineer from support services told us off-the-record that it was a hardware design mistake that made single bit flips in one of the two chips from the L2 caché. That flip were causing kernel panics, and obligated Sun to replace large amount of chips in some preferent clients. We replaced too, but it made me think.
Of course, we decided not to buy big Sun iron any more.
cheers
It is my understanding that Sun is equating Red Hat as the competition, NOT Linux.
In other words, Linux is not a competitor to Sun; the commercial entities that sell linux and linux services represent the real competition.
In which case, Sun is competing with other Linux vendors to provide the customer with what they want. Just like Novell competes with Red Hat, competes with Linspire competes with Xandros.
Like GNOME competes with KDE. Like OOo competes with Abiword.
Why can't Sun be allowed to compete for business? Everyone else is doing it?
After all Solaris 10 is an open source product as well (or soon will be). They are really now just support companies and it isn't like redhat doesn't try and attack sun and solaris. So let them have at it and may the best man win.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Sun have always been against Linux and its pretty easy to see why. For some time their business model has been to lock big companies (particularly Wall St & Fortune 500) into the datacentres full of slow Sun hardware on the premise that that's the only way to run a reliable bullet-proof O/S. Linux has provided a viable alternative and as such challenges their profitable hardware business.
I work for a big Wall St firm, and in my job I used to get heads of various trading desks asking if they could get their $250000 suns "upgraded" to be like one oof our $2500 commodity Linux boxes because of the difference in computing power. Sun completely misread how to play the reliability game too and decided to go for huge, expensive boxes, whereas the whole beowulf thing has lead a trend to large numbers of inexpensive boxes such that if multiple components fail you're still ok. You don't need a 64-CPU box if you can get 128 2xCPU machines with 8 times the processing power for less than half the price.
I thought the world would know by now. I really hate the fact that when I try to install some software on my Linux box some stupid vendor wants me to use a product I don't like...
In Europe Red Hat is not as big as it is in the States. Suse is more of an issue in Germany (the worlds third software market). There is lovely Mandrake. I know of some companies running Gentoo and Debian.
Hello Sun!? Wake up! That story might get you somewhere in the US, in Europe people are going to break you for it. Please focus on your own stuff. Most places I come you are refered to as Slowaris. Now maybe you can improve on that one.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
For ./ers who actually RTFA: This guy looks like he's got his wires crossed.
/proc as compared with kstat.
./ers only the kernel is Linux) doesn't stack up to Solaris, and isn't really cost effective anymore. I can get a Sun operteron-based system with Solaris for cheaper than a Dell, if you include the Redhat AS license! Sun is offering a superior product for cheaper.
Per Schwartz: "...Red Hat is not linux, despite what they say, and despite what the media (and IBM's ads) seem to conflate."
I think if Sun was trying to equate Linux with Redhat statements like this would be counter-productive.
On to attacking Redhat:
The *truth* is, from a sysadmin that's used both for actual enterprise applications, is that Redhat AS does suck. Its cludgy, and disordered, like
Just because Redhat sucks, tho, doesn't mean that Linux sucks (which on the whole it doesn't). Its just immature-- probably at the same level of maturity as Solaris 2.51 or maybe 2.6. That's not bad, considering the amount of time that its had to grow.
Redhat's enterprise OS (remember
As per usual groklaw is full of shit and spreading FUD. Just look at their "SCO guy talks filth"-story. The guy didn't even say "hell". There was NO swear words AT ALL. Groklaw has overshot objectivity and ended up in the normal fanatical camp where all drooling morons dwell.
Am I not the only one who has realised that Groklaw is a very successful attempt at viral marketing? IBM saw the grass roots revulsion at SCO when they tried to scupper Linux, and used a website fronted by a third party to put across their case. After all, who had heard of Groklaw before the SCO-IBM case? What else did it report on in the early days other than the SCO-IBM case? Now that the credibility of Groklaw is established in the eyes of Linux users, IBM are pushing more obvious astroturfing articles onto it. Sun are IBM's biggest competitor in the high end markets, so we see an increasing amount of Sun bashing articles. The one mentioned in this Slashdot article is a classic - unsubstantiated rumour and the musings of researchers (and a Forrester one at that) reported as Sun's official policy.
Groklaw has done a great job uncovering the shaky basis of SCO's case against IBM, acting as a huge network of paralegals. However, don't lose sight of the likelihood that PJ's family connections to IBM are not her only links to Big Blue.
Sun has no beef with Linux because companies don't buy Linux. Companies buy RedHat and that is whom Sun is going after. The idea that different Linuxes are interchangeable is very naive. Companies are not buying 16 or 17 different varieties of Linux. They're buying RedHat and finding themselves locked into it. And RedHat is taking advantage of this. Why else do you think RedHat can charge so much for RHES and get away with it?
Linux is a kernel plus a set of utilities such as compilers and editors. RedHat is a very specific distribution. Companies are buying RedHat, not Linux. In particular, they're buying RHES, not Fedora. And that means that software makers that "support Linux" are not supporting Linux. They're supporting RHES. How often have you seen some major enterprise software that purports to run on Linux but then says "Requires RHES". That stuff won't work on Fedora, let alone Gentoo or Mandrake. RedHat is not your friend and is hijacking Linux. You shouldn't trust them anymore (less even, since they're wearing sheep's clothing) than Sun or Microsoft.
You do NOT have Solaris 10, the final build is not even available within Sun.
You have Solaris 10 Express. Maybe it should have called S10 Beta. But that certainly wouldn't stop the mad conspiracy theories from arising here. Johnathon Schwartz's and other Sun blogs completely contradict this Zdnet article.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bnitz/20040709
GNU/Linux != Red Hat
It's not actually even at Beta yet.
It's got all of the hallmarks:
:)
:)
1) Getting paid by MS...
2) Betraying it's own open source/free software product.
3) Turning against Linux.
The only thing they haven't done is filed changes against Linux users.
Ah well.. we knew that Sun would turn out to be a bunch of assholes anyway. We've beat them for years and we'll just have to continue to do so.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Wouldn't Sun shit if MS/Thorn evolved to run on the Linux Kernel :0
"Is Sun Turning Against Linux And Red Hat?"
Whoa, is it Friday already?
Yes, of course Sun turns against Linux on Fridays. I recall their Building On Linux day is Wednesday. (And on some of the Java Is Our Strategy Tuesdays they support Linux when disguised as a Java Desktop.) Hope this helps those who are confused about Sun's strategy -- it's really a refreshingly simple weekly arrangement.
Where I live people like to say "if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it will change."
That I believe is the same strategy sun under McNealy operates under. Wait five minutes and they'll change their mind. "Solaris 9 x86 - no (wait), yes, (wait), you really shouldn't want to run solaris on x86 because we might not support it, (wait), we are fully committed to solaris on x86...
blah blah blah blah blah.
Brian Seppanen
Minister of Information and Propaganda
Area 54 The Secret Government Disco Labs Provo
Yes, just look at HP, for example.
Linux (and whatever the flavor du jour is) was something Sun was forced to deal with as a competitive threat, not because the company truely believed it. The Intel server side was halfa**ed from the beginning, and only existed to protect the rest of the business when they were being substantially undercut by Dell, IBM and the likes at the low end server market.
Time for /. community to identify defensive competitive behavior of a corporation, rather than drinking excessivlely from the open source koolaid, where everyone looks pretty afterwards..
Sun is very successful with spinning 'open systems' and 'open software' their way, where it serves to substantiate their raping of a market segment. They are the quintessential company where mediocrity in products breeds success.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/trackback/eschrock/Web log/analysts_on_opensolaris
This guy's blog puts things nicely in perspective. Some excellent points.
>>How many commercial linux systems out there scale to above 64 processors
And how many companies really need that? That is nothing but a tiny niche market. Even in that that tiny niche market sunw pust must compete with IBM, HPQ, and SGI. And it won't be long before Linux catches up.
Jonathan Schwartz gives me some heebie jeebies, I am not sure what to think of him.
:-)
I say ZDNet has no credibility running this story. I think each new source should be ranked, as what is news, what is propoganda, what is advertising?
In laymans terms, do you really believe all those reviews in the official N64 / PS2 magazine?
Sun are going from a, lets make money from all this good hardware, to making money from thier top end hardware, and trying to float to the top (and play catch up real bad) on the intel chain.
If I was running sun I would offer what is best for the market, and diversify offerings, but with a core thrust.
Offer AMD64 + JDS / Yoper (burning yoper on other machine now... I think it is SuSE + better KDE + faster load times)
With all thier knowledge, sun could have *the* killer distro - I mean *the* killer distro. I am looking forward ot the new solaris. I am not looking forward to Microsofts rip off of GNU software (re: longhorn).
Lets all play nice, you cannot beat sun hardware when you need 90gb of ram, 24 processors, and these need to run at 99% load at 75% of the time.
I think the EC are quite clever when they stock up on Sun equiptment, but that market is static, as people (google et al) are creating a plug and play grid architecture that makes the cheapest components have realiability and redundancy that reduces TCO and maximises performance AND is future proofed in terms of investment (you never throw the whole rig away)
I love variety, if there was one linux distro, or one window manager, or one desktop system (I would like a new breed of application here) then it would suck.
Gripe regarding KDE. Klipper, good, KToolbar, good, KWM, fine.... dump the rest of the stuff!
Seriously. GNOME, it knows what it is. Window managers, they know what they are, KDE is too blurry for me. or bloaty?
Anyway, rant over.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Sunw just thinks that Linux should know it's place. Which - according to sunw - is on the desktop, competing with msft. Sunw has specifically stated this.
Notice the name of Sunw's Linux? "Java Desktop" ? It has nothing to do with Java, but sunw thinks Java = Sunw. And notice it's only "desktop" there is no "Java Server".
Come on Scott...first you love Linux, then you don't. One day you're saying Linux is the wave of the future, and you buddy up to Red Hat and to SuSE, then when the SCO lawsuit come out you say you wouldn't touch Linux. Then you develope the Sun Java Desktop...a very nice desktop I might add. But now this. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING SCOTT? Stick to what SUN does best...hardware. Start playing in the Software arena and you'll get crushed. Solaris was the perfect compliment to your servers...which rock. But turning against the community who stood by you when you were going at it with Microsoft...bad form...big time.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Whereas Apple DID pick the right horse - BSD based UNIX.
Sun built its empire on the back of BSD UNIX - Sun OS.
VS
Look at the millions of investment dollars lost by firms pimp'n their variant of GNU/Linux.
Does your company have managers or leaders?
Seriously, the headline is laughable. Sun turning against us? Newsflash: THEY'VE NEVER BEEN FOR US.
/.?
Holy crap, why does this keep coming up on
Do you have ESP?
No, not yet. But Solaris 9 on x86 Opteron blew RedHat Linux away
Solaris is far in advance on Linux. Linux will catch up though, some day.
You misunderstand.
My comments about RedHat have nothing to do with selling out.
I don't hate MS; don't hate RedHat.
But MS sometimes makes there stuff easier to please the masses but makes it harder for those who know to get things done.
RedHat does the same thing read my journal for more info.
So maybe you shouldn't make wild accusations, or you end up sounding like the 15-year old.
Whoaaa I don't think redhat is evil. They're in business,
they need to make money.
I just don't like what they have done to linux.(see my journal)
And I don't like working with RPM's.
I must not explained myself very well, because every one has misunderstood.
I don't like what RedHat did to linux.(See my journal)
I don't hate MS, I would actually be considered a fanboy around here.
I don't hate Redhat.
I just feel RedHat has dumbed down linux the way MS has dumbed down windows to please the masses.
I am all for making things easy to work with, but at times both companies go too far.
And now I am -1 TROLL though I wasn't trolling.
>In what sense?
First person to acutally try and qualify my statement.
Basically see my journal and my one entry.
They thought it was "Amateur computers can use any OS and that's where Microsoft plays. We're PROFESSIONALS so these little amateurs won't hurt us". Notice their emphasis on Linux on the desktop and Linux for small servers.
Now, they're realizing that the reality is that Linux absolutely kills them since their customers (and former customers) are seeing the battle as "Free (as in beer) unix on cheap hardware vs really, really expensive unix on really expensive hardware - and either way it's unix which is great for our glass-house stuff but not for our users".
How could this really be Flamebait?
It's the same damn thing the topic is about.
When I read this in Wired a while back I was really suprised, at the time I believed Sun to be a "good" company...
Get your Unix fortune now!
And if you have noticed that this truth is evident. Take a look at http://www.sun.com/desktop/ . It seems they are supporting Windows desktops with their workstations too. I am getting one :)
In the enterprise world (read, the real world) Linux is equal to RedHat at least in the states.
Obviously now with Novell Suse things may change.
And why is competition between Solaris and Linux bad? Why does it always have to be LINUX and nothing else? Do you really want a world where there is only one OS? Nothing improves software like a little competition.
And lets be fair, while Linux is a nice OS at the kernel level Solaris is a far superior kernel. Religion aside not everything in Linux is perfect and many ideas (most?) come from other OS's.
I hope there are always choices when it comes to editors, OS's, computer languages.
And last, the ONLY reason companies side with Linux is when they realize their OS can't compete which is IBM's and HP's story. It's not a sudden love of FOSS.
The sad thing is, after reading the first sentence, I thought this was a reference to Frank Francisco and the rest of the Texas Rangers bullpen...
Sun would be in a better position if they were just honest. Their hardware has really been sucking - memory problems, system board problems, we have systems that are brand new and the system boards need replacement. go figure I have a sun blade 100 at my desk that has solaris 8 and their piece of shit gnome desktop. Tried to put linux on there but since I upgraded to their newest firmware on the eeprom it will only boot off of the cdrom solaris 8 cd's - what a crock of shit - it is basically a pc why can't it boot off a fricken cdrom that isn't solaris. glad I upgraded the eeprom. just shit like that is what makes me hate sun - they think they are these engineering marvels when all we want is the stuff to work. this is why linux on amd64 and xeons are replacing them in the data center - it is cheaper and just works. plain and simple - I get less calls about hardware at night - okay I am done - I just hope openoffice doesn't get hosed somehow with the "partnership" with Microsoft. Why was it mentioned in that agreement anyway - has anybody from sun mentioned that like their CEO McNealy who is best buddies with Steve Ballmer and not just so PR drone. They sure are keeping quite about that subject.
"Sun wants to find a way to avoid commoditization of software, and to make their HW/SW bundle inseparable."
That is just ignorant. Sun makes the bulk of its money by selling HARDWARE, not software. Cold hard hardware generates cold hard cash, unless you're Micro$haft (which I guess Sun is trying to be, but will never, ever get there by partnering with M$).
Sun lost any direction or ingenuity it had a very long time ago. Who gives a rat's ass what software the machine runs? Make good machines, make good money. (But I guess that was Sun's first problem to begin with. Anyone could make an Intel-based machine for pennies. No one was going to be fooled into buying another Sun workstation for $20'000 anymore.) Anyway, back to the point. Any business that partners with M$ sells its soul. Anyone remember Corel?
Sounds more like a death-wish (almost like a prelude to death). Maybe they should go see the late Charles Bronson. I'm sure Majestik Melons can help.
Anyways, they should really think about targetting RedHat and other enterprise linux companies not Linux itself. I'm sure they can make an uber-slimmed down version of linux that can work as a public internet terminal (like Knoppix, etc.) for libraries and still make some much needed money. Or they can also borrow/use the Harden Debian project and pre-config enterprise systems for their hardware (or sell hardware with HD config'ed).
It can help cut software development costs and be geek-friendly. Hell, look at Microsoft....the un-geek-friendly one...they are getting sued left and right by govt's and corporations.
Come to think of it, maybe this new "strategy" has to do with the $900mil and their new M$ overlords.
Maybe I'll go buy an old sparc as a momento of what was once a great company.
This is not a troll.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
RedHat may be a frontend for Linux, but on the backend commercial companies such as IBM and SGI have started focusing less on their own *UX implementations and more on Linux... JFS, XFS, NUMA, etc... All contributed by IBM and SGI. And IBM and SGI both offer workstations and servers that ship with Linux AND technical support.
:P)? And what of the Sun Linux PC announcement made a while back on Slashdot? How could they one minute try to discourage Linux sales and the next begin selling products that use Linux? :)
:)
:P
I think Sun is one of the only reputable companies left who're actively trying to fight Linux (obviously SCO and Microsoft, but they don't count as reputable companies
If anything, I'd say you're MORE likely to be supported on Linux than Solaris. RedHat is merely one distribution of the GNU/Linux environment. Solaris on the other hand ONLY HAS ONE distribution, thus you can't shop around to find the vendor who offers you the best support.
IMHO, the best support are smart sys. admins and Debian
At any rate, Sun's got their work cut out for them
Okay.... for all of you Solaris guys... here's the latest:
:)
http://www.networkitweek.co.uk/news/1137880
SGI launched a supercomputer earlier this year using Linux on an altix which can theoretically have up to 2048 processors using a *single system image*.
Um.. I have yet to see an installtion of Solaris which can match it.
Solaris isn't everything, and even if it is better than Linux as far as performance (which is doubtful) it won't be for long.
Death to Solaris.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
If there ever was an article which deserved a "troll/flamebait" moderation it's this one. What's the motivation for continually dumping on Sun?
Especially for a non-news topic like this one. Gotta keep the hate furnaces stoked by dredging up crap on which the ignornant fanbois can proclaim their faith eh?
If the only purpose of an article is to re-hash the same old flames then don't press that post button!
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
on Linux only. Then they fixed it silently apparently. See here
If it's true, I'm wondering why their QA or TCK didn't catch it.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Part of software engineering is making a usable product.
If the usability is shit so that only geeks who only come out of their parents basement to watch japanese cartoons have the time to figure it out then you have failed as a software engineer.
I know it's bad for you becuase you can't feel "leet" anymore just for using Linux but for everyone else who has actually work to do we thank Redhat for its contributions.
What a prick you are.
You speak with ignorance and arrogance at the same time.
I am not 'leet' nor do i have a desire to be 'leet'.
I have a wife and three kids with a regular job.
But many times making something more usable means taking functionality away. or changing the way something has worked for 15 years because becuase you think it will be easier.
When it actuality it just makes things worse.
I did not say all other distributions were worthless. I did not say that other distributions do not have a place in business.
I used the term "commercially viable" to mean "able to be sold for money". If you have a completely FSS-based company, you are not the target market for IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, SAP and anybody else trying to sell software. A "commercially viable" distribution will be on the short list of supported distributions for Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, Lotus Notes, and other non-free software packages.
I do not have time to check at the moment. What proprietary software is advertised as supported on Slackware?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I apologize. I do not have the time to find my old posts. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can look through my old posts and link to the relevant ones.
To summarize:
1. IBM sees itself as a "big computer" hardware company. Sun has been one of the largest competitors in that market. IBM hates Sun.
2. Sun got much publicity from Java. IBM hates Sun:
- IBM tries to wrest Java away from Sun by setting standards by providing libraries for new technology.
- IBM releases Eclipse to take the IDE from Sun.
- IBM partners with MS to create standard-setting groups that affect Java, but they do not include Sun.
3. IBM moves Lotus Notes applications to WebSphere. WebSphere's main purpose is to have an IBM-controlled Java application server. Lotus Notes is a much better development environment, and included a Java application server, but IBM lobotomized LN's Java server so it could market WebSphere. IBM is pushing WebSphere as the expensive alternative to using free software, at the expense of other IBM software offerings; that makes no sense from a business perspective, but makes much sense when you realize the goal is not to sell software, but to take control of Java from Sun.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Where've you been hiding? MS is doing everything it can to keep its stock price up. Linux and OpenOffice threaten its cash cows: MSWindows and MSOffice. No other MS products have any respect, market penetration, or profits.
I'm late to a meeting. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can link to my relevant posts.
I used to believe that MS would die this year; I did not think that Bill understood how much trouble his company had. Paying dividends puts money in Bill's personal accounts, and stalls the decline of the stock price. Trying to push DRM on things like USB devices are attempts to delay the demise of MSWindows. It may take a few years, but Bill, Steve and I believe the company needs a new direction, and none of us have any idea where they can go.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Sun has just ported their Sunray Enterprise software to run on Linux commodity boxes and on different LAN environments. Why would they port the Sunrays and then try to kill Linux. To get rid of their Sunray product line, I doubt it.
I think Sun is making efforts on all fronts and nobody is giving them any credit for any of it.
They seemed to be poised to be a strong UNIX/LINUX company for the future.
I don't see why some people think RedHat is acting uncompetitively... They've been one of the 'fairest' distributions out there, and have been responsible for a lot of the generalized linux success.
To prove my point, RedHat gives pretty much ALL of its source out (under GPL), which allows virtually identical forks such as Whitebox Linux, Tao Linux, and CentOS to copy them and thus provide free versions of the expensive RedHat Enterprise Edition.
On the contrary, Suse, Linspire, and most annoyingly Xandros have tightly guarded proprietary software which they aren't willing to share. It is THESE distros that don't play fair and act anti-competitively!
I hope I am wrong, I like Sun and I want to see them continue to survive, but I don't see that happening. I don't know first hand, about Sun's HW or Solaris, but from what I read, it seems that they had excellent engineering and great products. But now, they seem to be throwing their fists at everyone. How can such a company, that was so highly thought of, act like such a cornered rat?
Within the last 1-1/2 years or so, it's been hard to tell where Sun stands. Bill Joy no longer works for Sun. With the cancellation of UltraSPARC V and joint venture of between Sun and Fujitsu (here) and from this AMD news link, can anyone say "HP and Itanium". Sun's talent pool has gotten considerably smaller and now management is scared, so they play the FUD card. Anyone really surprised? Management has watered down the talent, taken the Darl Mcbride school of business 101 class and is hanging on to Uncle Bill's pants hoping to catch a crumb or 2, by bashing GNU/Linux - oops- I mean Red Hat and taking on IBM.
To all you anti-IBMers, if you've read the "fists" link above, you'll catch that Sun is porting Solaris to the POWER architecture (guess it ain't that bad after all).
gotta a light for my Sig?
I have a Fedora devel box and a Debian unstable/experimental box, and they behave identically to each other most ways you describe in your one-post "journal". Their ls behaviour is different, which is odd, but I don't care enough to check who patched it.
Fedora:
/tmp/fedora /usr/local mylink; cd mylink; cd ..; pwd
/tmp/fedora
/tmp/fedora/foo.a
# pwd
# touch A B a b; ls
a A b B
# ln -s
# mkdir foo.a foo.b; cd foo*; pwd
Debian:
/tmp/debian /usr/local mylink; cd mylink; cd ..; pwd
/tmp/debian
/tmp/debian/foo.a
# pwd
# touch A B a b; ls
A B a b
# ln -s
# mkdir foo.a foo.b; cd foo*; pwd
This is what i am talking about almost all unixes i have used to it the way debian does.(aix, solaris, unixware, hpux, freebsd)
But redhat had to change it, why?
I guess cause they thought it would be easier.
But there is all kinds of things like this they have changed.
I understand why they changed things, to make things easier for new users.
That is fine but hen I call them the MS of the linux world.
I like windows but MS has done things in the past to make things easier when it really made things harder.
Isn't that heresay? Groklaw should know better!
Apart from IBM, Sun was the only large company that didn't drink the intanic Kool Aid. Look what it did to SGI and everyone else. They all cancelled development of their own RISC processors (MIPS, Alpha, PA-RISC) in order to get the "jam tomorrow" itanic.
Now that itanic has all but sunk, SGI and HP are in a very tricky situation, and are going to have to turn to Opteron (on in HP's case, intel's inferior clone "Nocona").
If itanic has been a technical and commercial failure, it has succeeded in one way. Namely, intel managed to kill of large swathes of its competition by persuading them to abandon their existing, working and accepted processor for the promise of itanic. intel may not rule the world from the bridge of the itanic, but it may dominate with its Opteron clone, by virtue of tha fact that HP will be putting it in all its Compaq Proliant servers.
Only a week ago,HP announced that it was buying $1.3 billion of its own shares because they were "undervalued."
Maybe this was the clue that itanic is getting scuttled, put out of it misery, at long last.
What next for HP? Will they resurrect Alpha and PA-RISC? I'm sure their good friends at intel will be more than happy to develop and fab them for them.
Stick Men
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Isn't obvious after all of the on again, off again, flip flopping with regard to Linux, that Sun's marketing group is just making sure that their name makes the headlines all the time???? Look at the history of their announcements, and how many of them turned out to be total vapor... They are simply working on getting name recognition, just like politicians. They just want to make sure everyone knows their name again. Just recently they announced they were thinking of making their Solaris operating system, Open Source (check the archives on Slashdot). Like that will happen... How else can you explain that last year or two of announcements from Sun?