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?"

Comments

who cares?

[f00zy]

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.

Ye Olden Days

[catwh0re]

MS trying to turn the industry into the olden days, where linux wasn't around.

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?

Re:Actual Competetion

[dcowart]

I actually agree with you, but Solaris vs. Redhat isn't the problem. Companies compete and someone must lose. The problem is that they are attacking Linux/Redhat for no good reason. Yes Linux is taking away their low-end market share. But why aren't they trying to sell linux on Sun hardware? They are now, but why not before now? Linux on sparc64 has been available for a while, they could have beaten AMD to the 64bit punch several years ago. Sun is attacking linux on the low end where Sun is losing to linux, but Sun could have been sucessful there years ago with linux. Sun did have several jumps but then would stop projects b/c it wasn't solaris. (Can you say Cobalt.) People were excited when Sun would start to get into linux b/c here was a company that had great hardware to run "unix" on, but after so many fits and starts it's not interesting anymore. The dream (for consumers) was a Sun supported linux running on Sun hardware, but Sun kept continually killing it's own linux efforts.

As a company Sun seems to have multiple personalities when it comes to linux. Even now they are selling linux (SuSE/JDS, also Windows on their AMD's) It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a consumer. Also, they are offering discounts on their Opteron servers if you have an MCSE, but not if your Solaris Certified. Definate conflicting 'personalities'.

I was a supporter of Sun until they started doing this. I like the platform and the hardware, I can't say I'm excited about Solaris, but that's b/c most of what I need it for can be done w/ linux. I do believe that Solaris is a better solution for some situations, but that has changed and linux can do most of those things now, and I'm leaning toward linux more than ever. These things have made me reconsider my support of Sun in general.