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.
> 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
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
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.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Its true that Sun's claim to fame - was there Enteprise worthy Unix clone tuned to a particular hardware (theirs) for which they provided - support and solutions - (Sounds familiar ?) Consider Sun's positioning for a moment- 1.Their IP in the Unix space is almost but gone - with Linux and RH offering cheaper alternatives. 2.And with the demise of their Solaris stronghold - Cheaper off the shelf assemblies from Dell is eating their server (hardware) market. 3.They still haven't figured out how to make money out of Java. 4.They have a lot of cash on hand - thanks to selling out to Redmond. So what would you do if you were in their position ? Embrace RH and write your eulogy ?
..And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon gods they made.
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."
You guys are going nuts on trying to figure out if Sun is Pro-Linux or against it. The truth is both and neither
The situation with Sun reminds me a bit of the competing units within Sony. In many large corporations, there are divisions that are not always pulling in the same direction. Sony, for example, makes consumer electronics that can, among other things, play, record, or otherwise distribute music. The goal of this division is to make money by making this easier for the consumer. Another division of Sony distributes music and anything that makes it more difficult to record, copy or distribute "unauthorized" copies is bad and should be fought. Well, what does Sony do? Sony tries to do both, and if you listen to Sony reps, they can say one thing today and a very different thing tomorrow. They are big and they are conflicted...
Sun is at a really tough juncture and there might be global influences pushing Sun to be anti-Linux (e.g., it will eat them alive), but there are units that are supportive to varying degrees of Linux and free software. This support doesn't come from the Company as a whole but it serves a more limited constituency of that unit of Sun. Upshot? Expect lots of mixed messages but understand that many parts of Sun have been very very good to FOSS and that deserves to be recognized. Now, lets get back to bashing Sun, the company!
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)
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.
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.
1) Sun workstations were the primary development environment for FOSS from about 1987 till the early 1990's.
True, but as far as I know.. once I've bought a machine, it is mine to do with as I please. The reason that so many Sun machines were used for this purpose was because that is what most students had to use at college at the time.
2) How many copies of Linux and related software were dowdloaded from a "sunsite"?
Sunsites are independent sites, not run by Sun Microsystems.
3) TCL came from where?
Who cares about TCL. Does anyone actually use this? And since when did they contribute it to FOSS?
4) Java came from where?
We have to thank them for that steaming pile of crap?
5) NFS, as we know it, came from where?
The concepts, not the software.
6) RPC's, as we know them, came from where?
Again.. the concepts, not the software.
So.. there you have it ladies and gentlemen, Sun, the saviour or Free Software... NOT!!
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
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.
Answers:
1) Plenty of students had DEC's, IBM's, etc. Why was so much done on Sun's? May I sugggest tha Sun was a much more open system?
2) Sunsite's were never run by Sun, but if I am not mistaken, the machines and the bandwidth were contributed by Sun.
3) TCL is a tool used by many FOSS developers.
4) I am no big fan of Java, but regardless, it is open and used by many FOSS projects.
5) The concept tends to be the hardest part.
6) See #5
I never said Sun was a savior of FOSS, but I did want to point out that Sun has made substantial contributions to FOSS, as we know it. If a commercial interest's contributions are not recognized, they will have little incentive to continue. When integrated over time, IMHO, Sun has made the greatest contributions to FOSS, to date, from a large commercial entity.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Funny, I think that's a pretty lousy rebuttal. I think the big sticking point here - at least the big sticking point I would be looking at, if I were Sun - is the binary incompatability. And yet he doesn't have *any* good arguments for it. Most of them sum down to "it's too hard". And, you know, if he thinks it's too hard, that's fine - but "it's too hard" isn't a reason that Sun should look at and say "oh, okay, that's fine then".
Windows has binary compatability. Windows runs in both SMP mode and single-processor mode. Windows might not have as glitteringly perfect of a driver model as Linux, but let's be honest here, it gets the job done.
He's given a lot of good reasons Linux doesn't have binary compatibility. Okay. Sure. How about listing the reasons Sun wants binary compatibility and showing how those goals are achievable in other ways, instead of just throwing away Sun's requirements as insignificant?
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
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.
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.
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
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.
Or you could just check http://docs.sun.com:
(from the Solaris 9 9/04 system administrator collection).
But, hey, flaming is easier.
First off, this is an argument that no user cares about
This statement from the rebuttal is the most moronic thing I've ever read. The fact that I couldn't use my hardware properly for nearly 4 months when I upgraded to the 2.6 kernel BUGGED THE HELL OUT OF ME! (nVidia graphics card), further, just this week I could finally use cisco's vpn client again (yes its been "working" for longer, but only officially supported on 2.6 in a release 2 weeks ago). This is a huge issue, that ALL USERS care about.
To say that no users care about driver compatibility is just insane. It would be nice if there was some sort of API that binary device drivers could write against that never changed... but who knows thats probably really hard (I don't know anything about kernel devel) His argument for why the linux kernel can't and won't do binary compatibility is good, not having crap code sitting around just because it was the best we could do in 1982 and someone touched the api with some scsi card driver and now we're stuck thats good.
I'm mostly just pissed that he's decided to write off what "all users" think, and that "no one" cares that they can't use their nvidia card for 4-6 months after every kernel release.
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?
Have you ever tried getting "Secure NFS" working? Just on Suns of different releases, not including Linux, NetApps, MacOS, network file servers, or any other of the NFS implementations, or getting server fallover behavior to work correctly?
It's pretty damned painful. Give Sun credit for buying up OpenOffice and keeping it alive, and give them credit for Java, but NFS should go back to the drawing boards.
I'd go further than that, I'd say it was the one of the biggest piles of self-righteous wanking I've read for a long time.
There are so many pathetic, useless "arguments" in that rebuttal I don't know where to start. He tries to claim that binary compatibility for drivers is "impossible" and anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't "understand the technology". Say what? Solaris engineers don't understand UNIX kernel technology? Microsoft engineers don't understand backwards compatibility?
He brings up pointless details like gcc alignment (Wine uses gcc and controls struct alignment exactly to be compatible with Win32), config options like CONFIG_SMP as if this is some fundamental unarguably facet of kernel design (it's not), and driver interfaces taking up memory (that's what modularity is for, yo).
He seems to live in a fantasy world where the total lack of backwards compatibility doesn't hurt users, it actually makes them happy, and where it's impossible to have both a good kernel and a backwards compatible one - the NT kernel is a 'good' kernel in many respects, yet it still preserves compatibility. Ditto for the Solaris kernel.
He also makes some incorrect statements. Apps written for Linux 1.0 will not necessarily work correctly on 2.6, not if they were broken by NPTL, or if they were shipped as static binaries (which also were broken at some point). OK, these aren't totally problems with the kernel, but if you ignore userspace entirely then you might as well stop talking about "users" and "apps" and go back to embedded work or whatever.
Basically, if there was ever an issue that'd cause the kernel project to fork, it'd be this one. So-called rebuttals from people more interested in straw men and insults aren't going to make that any less likely.
It's not hard. Backwards compatibility isn't rocket science, it just requires you to value utility above artistic license.
The kernel, regardless of what some of its developers may think, is not an art project. The most fundamental mission of an operating system is to run the users software and hardware - an OS that refuses to do that on the grounds of API prettyness has got its priorities wrong.
The techniques of maintaining backwards compatibility are well known. You use structure padding, create a new foo_function2() rather than change the prototype of foo_function(), ensure you don't make semantically breaking changes to the behaviour of the APIs, and so on. Most of all you have good testing procedures in place, long beta cycles and such to catch any breaking changes you made that slip through the cracks. It's about management of change.
The arguments about keeping old cruft around are mostly bogus. Backwards compatibility doesn't imply keeping it for ever, even keeping it within stable kernel series would be a big improvements. Likewise, if you take "cruft" out that people are relying on they simply won't upgrade to the newest version and people will be evaluating your software based on buggy, old versions which is no good at all.
The fact that key kernel developers are so far removed from reality is something that should worry us all. Backwards compatibility is viewed as "evil" by far too many people without understanding how essential it is in mass-market software (no, an OS with 1% of the desktop market is not mass-market software, sorry). If you want to make the most academically perfect kernel possible fine, go do it but for heavens sake don't pretend you're writing a production kernel!
"However, don't lose sight of the likelihood that PJ's family connections to IBM are not her only links to Big Blue."
What family connections? Does the B in IBM stand for br3n?
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".
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.