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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?"
> 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'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.
>I'm sorry, did you actually think Sun was an ally?
And why should they be? Linux installations are killing commercial unix, moreso than MS's server offerings. These are the mechanics of market competition. On top of it, even if Sun is serious about the Java Desktop they can still push it and attack other linux distros at the same time. All they have to claim is that their solution is better than Red Hats (or whoever).
The world of business makes for odd enemies and bedfellows.
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
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Companys that begin to struggle and can see their future dying are apt to do all sorts of vile things. Partnering with Microsoft is not a good sign, for we all know how Microsoft view Linux. Now we may have another sign from Sun about how they view it. Thanks to Groklaw, despite all the naysayers, I've seen Sun's schizo "we love Linux / we are going to destroy Linux" behavior for what it is: No real friend to the FOSS community.
As for Groklaw not being objective, I'm so glad. I've had enough of objective news coverage that refuses to call people on their statements. Politician X tells his lie, then Politician Y tells his opposite lie, the story ends right there, and that's considered good journalism?! No thanks. Give me the Groklaw approach every day of the week. You do wrong, you get called out. You do right, you get praised. If you don't like it, start your own advocacy site where you can call it as you see it. But don't put down Groklaw just because it's on the side of FOSS.
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.
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?
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.
And yes, the site is about facts still. Check out the court transcripts. Those are facts you can check yourself. How many other news sites give you the direct source material to check for yourself?
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."
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)
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]...
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they can just take NFS back until they get it right, though.
The place where I see buggy, unreliable NFS performance is on Linux, not on anything Sun maintains.
So your comment seems laughable. Are we supposed to fall back to SMB??
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
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.
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.
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.