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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?"
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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And a good rebuttal from a linux kernel hacker.
My photolog
RH has nothing to worry about.
Keep in mind that the first and central mission of the "FOSS community" is to destroy proprietary UNIX, which in this day an age effectively means Solaris.
Bollocks. I use FOSS because it is usually the fastest, cheapest, and most effective way to get a job done. I also don't become a vendor's bitch in the process. I could care less about Sun unless their mission is to find a way to make doing my job more expensive. If the destruction of Sun and MS happens it will strictly be a side effect. Now faced with direct attacks you can be indifferent or fight back but "destroying" anything was never the mission.
The demise of Sun Microsystems would be a big loss to the IT field. Sun does make good stuff, that has a lot of features on the large scale systems, some of their high end stuff IBM doesn't come close in terms of scalability. Solaris as well is a Solid Proven OS with a lot of nice features. From 2001 or so Sun Stock has dropped and so has their business not because of lack of quality in hardware and software or even its "high" prices. It is because a few years earlier during the .COM boom they decided to screw over most of their resellers and take the deals away from them to gain more profit. What this did was piss of the resellers and caused them to drop reselling Sun because after all their work getting a clint they don't want the deal to slip away to their partner without even a finders fee. So all the resellers did dropped out and now all the consultants except for pushing Sun gear started pushing Linux solutions, because they wont get ripped of like with Sun. Most of these companies buying from the resellers didn't care about the gear or the OS as much but more in terms of the quality of service they offered. So when Sun bypassed their resellers to get more profit they also decided to stop a cheap method of marketing their products which was word of mouth from the resellers. The company I work for was once a Sun Reseller we would push the gear left and right. Now we push Linux solutions a lot more (Sometimes we still choose sun because it is the right tool for the right job) because we no longer have the Sun Reseller advantage because we dropped it because for every big deal we start Sun steals it from us. Sun is starting to realize the error in its way but and it is improving their status. And I hope Sun becomes strong again with a more Reseller program with more integeraty. Because it will be a waist to loose the right tool for the right job
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I still don't understand why the common culture at Slashdot is to bash Sun at all costs
Maybe this will help:
1) Donated a very large sum of money to a company that committed the legal equivalent of a suicide bombing against linux.
2) Sold their soul to the devil (Microsoft) in return for temporary bankrucpy prevention.
Sun is a company, and they have the right to behave as they want, but I don't have to like the fact that just about every action they have taken recently has been intended to destroy my ability to use gnu/linux, my operating system of choice.
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!
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 would help if you checked changelogs on kernel.org who is contributing patches:
torben.mathiasen@hp.com
v enkatesh.pallipadi@intel.come l.com
HP
bjorn.helgaas@hp.com
davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com
eranian@hpl.hp.com
Dell
Matt_Domsch@dell.com
Intel
tony.luck@intel.com
kenneth.w.chen@intel.com
suresh.b.siddha@int
yanmin.zhang@intel.com
junx.yao@intel.com
arun.sharma@intel.com
gordon.jin@intel.com
AMD
khawar.chaudhry:amd.com
That was with just a quick check of two. These contributors may not be specifically sponsored by their employers. I don't know. But they certainly contribute and do work there.
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. "
Actually, I fing this very surprising . . . Mostly because I didn't believe Sun to be that incredibly stupid.
Never underestimate the stupidity of management.
I work at Sun. Posting anon to well, be anon. I probably won't be working here much longer, but that's my own decision - I'm not liking the direction the company is heading. Everything, and I mean *everything*, is pointed towards making money. That's fine, I mean we have to do that in order to survive, right? But when it comes down to a higher-up emailing the *entire company* that we need to put our vacation time that we might have used but didn't report on our timecards - all in the name of quarter-end profit, well... That's a little extreme.
I've always thought of Sun as being a company dedicated to Quality. Boxes that Just Don't Break(tm). I've watched as those boxes were outsourced. And now most of the building blocks for the high-end stuff is looking like it'll be outsourced, too. All in the name of profit.
Linux is sold by Sun because the boxes that it runs on gains Sun marketshare. That's it. There's a price point that Sun didn't have product for, and now there is one. I shit you not.
I think that Sun has some good product, good ideas, and some good technology. But management is letting ALL of that slide just so that they can make the quick buck and look good to the Board of Directors come quarter-end.
I hate working here as a technician. I used to love it. But it's just no fun anymore when everyone above you is purely dedicated to getting product out the door instead of fixing problems.
You may be a genius at what you do and be able to put together a customized system and earn a life time income supporting the few that you could do and maintain ... but Sun has been doing it for years and that's where the Industry expertise came from and in that game, linux is playing catchup.
The fact that IBM is giving that stuff away to linux is IBM's business (and for now SCO, but we think SCO is full of shit)
Redhat is becoming like Sun, like it or not, they have to. How many IT manager techno-jocks you think have the balls to go to their fortune 1000 executives with the idea of cobbling together some servers from Dell, some high priced consultatns from XYZ, some integrators from ABC, and supporters from QRS, and then pay yearly IP insurance/legal retainers just in case?
Linux is great, and I'm all for it -- but it's business model is tending towards SUN while SUN's is tending towards Linux -- and the'll both meet in the middle somewhere and be able to share the market.
Redhat, to survive will have to be able to provide one stop shopping for support and integration, and they do, for tiny to small range platforms. IBM is looking to capture it for the large end -- and will, and when they do, you'll end up with a variation of linux that really can only be satisfactorily serviced and installed by IBM on these high end platforms and its model will be just like Sun's and the little linux consultatancies will have just as much chance at that business as they do with Suns -- meaning Zero.
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?
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