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Sun Chief Calls Out IBM, Demands Compatibility

Posted by Hemos on from the don't-cry-for-me-argentina dept.

downbad writes "Sun's President, Jonathan Schwartz, yesterday published an Open Letter to the CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano, in which he alluded to "behavior reminiscent of an IBM history many CIOs would like to forget" - a reference to Sun's frustration that IBM isn't supporting Solaris 10 with WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, Rational and MQSeries products. In his "Dear Sam" letter - circulated via his blog - Schwartz refers first to the "long history of partnering" between Sun and IBM, and claims Sun customers have made repeated calls to IBM about having the choice to run IBM products on Solaris 10." *cough* Kettle, meet Pot.

292 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Stating the obvious... by the_skywise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So... if you make Solaris compatible with Linux won't this solve the problem somewhat?

    1. Re:Stating the obvious... by Hosting+Geek · · Score: 1

      Why would you want to do this there is already linux.

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    2. Re:Stating the obvious... by EmperorKagato · · Score: 1

      If you're referring to the machines they are already compatible with Linux and Unix.

      As for Solaris being compatible with Linux.
      I would like to see one operating system become integrated with another.

      --
      ----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
    3. Re:Stating the obvious... by sroddy · · Score: 1

      Solaris already will run Linux binaries.

    4. Re:Stating the obvious... by spookymonster · · Score: 2, Informative

      I would like to see one operating system become integrated with another.

      What, like IBM's OS/2 did with Windows 3.1? Or how IBM's z/OS (a mainframe OS) integrated AIX into its Unix System Services environment? In both cases, we're talking about system-level interaction, not merely emulation.

      --
      - Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
    5. Re:Stating the obvious... by cg0def · · Score: 1

      If Sun DID make Solaris 10 compatible with linux and say posix standarts there would be no problems. However, that is Sun and then that is IBM and they are compeating for the same bussines. Guess how much responce Open Solaris is going to get? I guess Linus was right when he said that it'll most likelly be a flop.

    6. Re:Stating the obvious... by Octorian · · Score: 1

      And how exactly would that help on SPARC, the primary architecture for Solaris? (where I seriously doubt IBM has Linux versions of anything)

    7. Re:Stating the obvious... by kiatoa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Perhaps like how AIX 5.1 is more compatible with linux? Supposedly there has been an effort to make it easier to compile stuff on AIX. Someone more knowledgeable can comment on the details if they care. What I'd like to see, being as lazy as I am, would be that the Solaris command line tools be transitioned to be Linux compatible. WhyTF doesn't df have the same switches and output format on Sun as it does on Linux/AIX? I hate using the Sun machines cuz I can't reuse my everyday Linux/AIX knowledge on them. As an aside I couldn't get ruby to compile on either the Sun nor the AIX machines I use. I'm sure it is due to admin issues on the machines but for what its worth my stuff runs faster on Linux so why bother with the other two. So there. Grumble.

      --
      90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
    8. Re:Stating the obvious... by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 2
      Well, the problem is that on Sun, you are using SysV style arguments, not BSD style. To solve this, you ususally have to include "/usr/ucb" and such in order to solve this (it's not perfect). The other option is to install the GNU versions of all of those utilities.

      I agree with you, I find some of the incompatibilities scary, like "reboot" and "halt", either had, or still have very different behavior on Solaris then they do on Linux. On solaris, they are immediate panic type commands, on Linux it's an orderly shutdown. A friend of mine, always uses the init 0 or init 6 to get that behavior on both.

      However, there are probably just as many Solaris heads out there going, "I hate Linux why can't I just re-use my everyday Solaris knowledge". AIX is so different to administer, I'm shocked you include it as "Linux-like". (Note, I've never used AIX, but from what I've been told, everything runs thru some admin tool that edits binary files for configuration instead of the standard human readable text files used under Linux).

      Kirby

    9. Re:Stating the obvious... by SunFan · · Score: 3, Insightful


      There really are a lot of people excited about OpenSolaris, but, like Linux and other OSS, most people won't take advantage of access to the source code. They just want the free OS that's better than Windows.

      The OpenSolaris community doesn't have to be as big or bigger than Linux' to be considered a success. The BSDs thrive quite well on a smaller base of developers, for example. Also, don't forget that the BSDs, Linux, and OpenSolaris still will share the much larger body of OSS applications, like GNOME, OpenOffice.org, Gimp, etc.

      People should be less concerned with the competition between Linux and OpenSolaris than they are about the general competition with Microsoft. Sun is not the enemy, here, not by a long shot.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    10. Re:Stating the obvious... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 1
      Some of IBMs most important software offerings are available on Linux:

      DB 2
      Tivoli
      Lotus
      WebSphere

      Read all about it, and dispell your doubts.

      --
      Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    11. Re:Stating the obvious... by Donny+Smith · · Score: 2, Informative

      > So... if you make Solaris compatible with Linux won't this solve the problem somewhat?

      If you RTFA you'll see it already IS binary compatible. The problem is that IBM does not want to LIST it as compatible in their software support matrices so people don't sell it on Solaris and customers don't buy it on Solaris.

      As virtually no effort is needed for AMD64/x86-Solaris certification of IBM's AMD64/x86/Linux apps, it is obvious that IBM does not want customers to consider Solaris on AMD64 (or x86).

      IBM positions PowerPC as competitor to AMD64 , Sparc and Itanium, and Solaris on AMD64, as much as I don't like it, is going to make IBM's days pretty miserable. Therefore, making Sun incompatible is a short-sighted delay strategy and only confirms what Schwartz has been saying all this time - IBM actually uses Linux to lock up customers. If they cared they'd certified Solaris.
      Well, one day they'll have to certify it and start competing on level field.

    12. Re:Stating the obvious... by codemachine · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but are they available on Linux/SPARC? I highly doubt that IBM has SPARC binaries of these programs.

      They can and will probably run just fine on Solaris 10 for x86, but Sun is going to be far more concerned about Solaris 10 for SPARC. And they are concerned about there being official support for Solaris, instead of the binaries merely running.

    13. Re:Stating the obvious... by jdray · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think you're talking about SMIT, which, from what little I've used it, is a handy tool. I have no idea what its data files are like on the back end. I always assumed they were standard config files.

      --
      The Spoon
      Updated 6/28/2011
    14. Re:Stating the obvious... by mrhartwig · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've never used AIX, but from what I've been told, everything runs thru some admin tool that edits binary files for configuration instead of the standard human readable text files used under Linux.

      You've been given the wrong information. The admin tool in question is SMIT (Systems Management Interface Tool? I don't remember for sure, but that's probably close) which presents a menu heirarchy & (eventually) just calls the appropriate CLI command to do the work. The vast majority of the config files are text, just like any "normal" Unix. Anything that isn't text probably wasn't in "normal" Unix anyway (although I'm sure someone will have a conter-example to prove me wrong -- go ahead).

      AIX does have the Object Data Manager (ODM) where a lot of config info is also stored. Many of the commands update both the text & ODM data; a lot of what the ODM contains is device & driver information, which is part of what allows so much in AIX to be updated dynamically.

      Back in the day (*early* versions of AIX) some things came from the ODM instead of the text files; this caused Bad Things to happen when someone familiar with another Unix changed /etc & not the ODM. AFAIK, those effects have been gone for years; I stopped encountering them sometime in the mid- to late- 90s.

      AIX does have a number of commands that update config information, but their use is not always required. There are also some annoying differences, like /etc/filesystems instead of /etc/fstab (and it's in a different format) but other versions of Unix also have differences. Thank you, BSD vs SysV....

      One of the nice things about SMIT is that you can see the actual command line incantation do do whatever it was you asked SMIT to do via the menus & filling out fields. This allows one to actually learn the command line, and save time later.

      Please note that I haven't been working with AIX for a couple of years now (all Linux) so some of my info may be old. If IBM has changed AIX 5.3 back to some of the old behavior I don't know -- I stopped with 5.2. But the history should be right.

      AIX is so different to administer, I'm shocked you include it as "Linux-like". (Note, I've never used AIX....

      This isn't meant to be a flame, but I've gotta ask: if you've never used AIX, how would you know? The "Linux compatibility" that IBM's been putting into AIX since late 4.3 & early 5.x versions has been inclusion of GNU toolsets (so you can -- for example -- use the "Linux" version of make if you wish, or the AIX version) and addition of library routines that make it easier to compile common OS SW on AIX.

      I always find it amusing that some of the things IBM originally put into AIX to "industrialize" it were things that folks complained Aren't The Unix Way, but they've ended up in other Unices as the years go on. LVM, enhanced security, dynamic kernel, a systems management interface, etc. Yet, 15+ years later, I still hear complaints about how different & not-nomral-Unix AIX is. Whatever.

    15. Re:Stating the obvious... by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      FWIW Digital UNIX also has binary databases that are meant to be updated only with their tools. I wrote some perl scripts to manipulate these databases slightly more directly, because they will let you extract and insert colon-separated strings so you can do it yourself.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    16. Re:Stating the obvious... by vsync64 · · Score: 1

      killall was the one that got me. Once.

      --
      TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
    17. Re:Stating the obvious... by tonyr60 · · Score: 1

      Ah, no yet. Promised in an update to Solaris 10. And Solaris 10 is still not released.

    18. Re:Stating the obvious... by pchan- · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I find some of the incompatibilities scary, like "reboot" and "halt", either had, or still have very different behavior on Solaris then they do on Linux.

      Seriously, on Solaris, do NOT try to use the 'killall' command like you would in Linux. Especially if you're root. In fact, don't ever use it at all. I don't even know why it's there. I learned this the hard way, hopefully someone else will learn from my mistake.

      Though I find the expectation that the Solaris tools be like Linux a little strange, given that SunOS/Solaris has existed before Linux.

    19. Re:Stating the obvious... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      Whatever Sun did well the past 3 years, IBM did better. The only reason why Sun received so much praise was the non-corporate young Stanford University Network culture. That is gone now! Sun is like any other political corporate culture today.

      1.) AIX has a far better patching system in Maintainance level patch counts than Solaris nasty clusterpatch process.

      2.) AIX has smit which allow people to not ever need command lines.

      3.) AIX had better linux compatibility all along. Solaris 10 is literally Sun's starting point with linux compatibility.

      4.) AIX jfs and jfs2 from all the way back in AIX 5.1 has been superior compared to Sun's ufs.

      5.) AIX LVM was ready back in the days of AIX 5.1. Last year's solaris 9 was the first version bundled with a good-enough volume manager (solstice disksuite).

      I can go on forever...

    20. Re:Stating the obvious... by batzo · · Score: 1
      > WhyTF doesn't df have the same switches and output format on Sun as it does on Linux/AIX? I hate using the Sun machines cuz I can't reuse my everyday Linux/AIX knowledge on them.

      ...Get the GNU fileutils for solaris/AIX (both available as freeware)... problem solved.

    21. Re:Stating the obvious... by cayenne8 · · Score: 1
      "Seriously, on Solaris, do NOT try to use the 'killall' command like you would in Linux. Especially if you're root. In fact, don't ever use it at all. I don't even know why it's there. I learned this the hard way, hopefully someone else will learn from my mistake."

      Ok....please tell what it did and messed up? So I can learn without having to try it myself??

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    22. Re:Stating the obvious... by pchan- · · Score: 2, Funny

      well, the funny think about the solaris killall command is it doesn't take any arguments. it just kills all processes that you own. in the best case scenario you just killed your login shell (and, y'know, oracle, and anything else you're running at the moment). but if you're root, well, you're going to have to go press the power button on the machine after the init process is killed.

    23. Re:Stating the obvious... by ComputerSlicer23 · · Score: 1
      This isn't a court of law. Hearsay is a perfectly legitimate form of information (I've been told by people who have direct experince as live long SA's with a dozen years experience on a half dozen platforms). Just like, I can advise you that it's really stupid to build a wall without mortor. I've never laid a brick in my life. My Dad told me that. So while it's hearsay for me to tell you that a wall without mortor is a really bad idea, that doesn't make it any less accurate as a statement. It's not uncommon to have people re-tell information they have been told from people who had direct evidence. "Mr. Witness, did Mr. MurderSuspect tell you he committed the murders?", is a perfectly legitimate form of evidence against a murder suspect. My boss makes IT decisions based on hearsay all the time. I take review information from authoratitive sources, collect and collate that information. He takes information from someone who has no direct experience and bases decisions on it.

      I do have plenty of experience with Solaris directly. I've used QNX, Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD as my primary development platform for various projects where I setup and configured the machines. I've run both x86 and SPARC Solaris. I've even made several bug fixes to code on AIX machines (never admin'ed them directly, but I did compile code on them).

      The most memorable fix, is that on Solaris and AIX, how they handle casees in a "select" call is different. One of them sets the bit in the exceptfdset if you call mark a fd for reading that has already reached and read EOF. The other one doesn't. I believe it was AIX that set the exceptfdset bits, and Solaris that didn't.

      Information from third parties is plenty valuable. I've personally read the various bug reports about the horrors of AIX w/ Oracle. I've been at the techincal when they tell you "Do X on all of your machines to make Oracle Run faster. Don't do X on a 4.2 or 4.3 version of AIX as it will corrupt your database." (In most instances, that would be Async I/O).

      I've never used AIX, as I've been told by numerous independent sources, that Solaris and Linux are far "saner" in terms of Admin and being an SA for. I don't have any direct personal experince, because everyone tells me it's a bad experince. I've read information about AIX when it comes to systems administration (specifically the instructions to installing various pieces of software that have specialized sections, or O'Reilly books that mention specific differences between AIX and Linux).

      I never had a drop of Alchol in my life, but I can still tell you the health consequences it has on a person. Not everything has to be experienced first hand to be valuable as information.

      Never smoked a cigeratte in my life either. I know lots of badness about what happens to people who do that.

      In both cases, my Dad did those. They sure looked like a bad experience. So I've avoided them. In a similar set of experiences, everyone I know has advised me that while AIX can be made to work, you need a really good reason before they would pick it over Solaris, Linux or FreeBSD (generally the only reason, is integrate with other IBM hardware or software, or you inherited an existing AIX machine that is configured and running). In those cases, it made sense to go with AIX.

      So while you can say it's "hearsay", a lot of wisdom and experience is contained in "hearsay". You need to be careful about who you trust, but the people who imparted this wisdom on me I do trust.

      Kirby

    24. Re:Stating the obvious... by burns210 · · Score: 1

      "One of the nice things about SMIT is that you can see the actual command line incantation do do whatever it was you asked SMIT to do via the menus & filling out fields. This allows one to actually learn the command line, and save time later."

      Is there an equivalent for FreeBSD, Linux or Mac OS X(darwin)? Apple's A/UX had a 'commando' or something program that did a similar job by makeing each command have a gui alternative that built the cli arguments with the proper options, I haven't seen anything since.

    25. Re:Stating the obvious... by snorklewacker · · Score: 1

      It kills all your processes. If you're root, it kills all processes, period.

      Solaris's equivalent to linux's killall is pkill

      --
      I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
    26. Re:Stating the obvious... by BitchKapoor · · Score: 1
      "But AIX was never billed as being UNIX. It's a UNIXlike OS."


      Actually, I have this free mouse pad from IBM that says "AIX: UNIX at its best." I always used to ask people if that was true, but I couldn't find anyone who'd ever really used AIX except for web browsing and e-mail on an old PowerPC 601-based workstation.

    27. Re:Stating the obvious... by mrhartwig · · Score: 1

      I think a lot of the problem is what you're used to. Since I learned AIX first, it all seems normal to me. Solaris, OTOH -- trying to figure out an NFS export was a PITA. Device naming, and setting up slices -- a bigger PITA. And that whole /export/home business.... :-)

      Hating smit -- I always thought smit sucked, but smitty rocks. X11 (lack of) speed vs. a nice tty interface. Not to mention the stupid little running man. But the tool itself was a great way to learn to admin the OS, while learning the real commands in order to *not* have to use the menus. But even then, having the menus around to do something that you do once a year, and can't remember the parms for -- that's a great help.

      DBAs hating AIX -- interesting; I've worked with DBAs who couldn't stand Solaris, and loved AIX. I've also talked to DBAs who felt like yours. Again, I suspect it's mostly what you learned first, or have worked with the most. With Oracle, I suspect that a lot of that was that Solaris used to be their primary development platform, and AIX was a ported afterthought. Now that Linux is Oracle's primary, I wonder how long it'll be before Solaris has issues?

      I thought they said that the files in /etc, got output for compatibility, but that there was a binary backend that was authoratitive....
      Like I said, it was that (BAD) way in very early AIX, but the ODM priority over the text files has been gone for around 10 years. AIX 3.2.5 had almost all of that problem fixed, that was 1993 or so, if I can recall my career correctly.

      I've found that shipping two sets of commands is a recipe for disaster....
      Wasn't your post the one that mentioned including /usr/ucb? Same thing in the "Linux compatibility" in AIX -- don't put the directory in your path, you only have one set of commands. Anyway, if you always put the full path to commands in scripts, you know they'll work despite someone else's weird PATH preferences. So I don't see the problem.

      Most of them [long list of Unices referenced], I can't even recall, but I remember the AIX goop quite clearly, as it never sounded very UNIX'y to me.

      Pshaw. What the heck is "UNIX'y"? POSIX compliance? AIX and probably most of your list have it. Open Group UNIX certification? AIX, HP-UX, and IRIX from your list (maybe others?) have it. Or is it just some fuzzy "what I'm used to dealing with" feeling?

    28. Re:Stating the obvious... by multipartmixed · · Score: 1

      > so you can -- for example -- use the "Linux"
      > version of make if you wish, or the AIX version

      I'm not trying to be a Stallmanesque GNU/Ass, but you definately mean the "GNU Version of Make". There IS no Linux version of Make.

      Personally, I have been using GNU Make for a LONG time on a variety of platforms -- BSDI, AIX (going back to version 2.something!), Solaris 2.*, SunOS 4, Win32... the list goes on and on.

      I have also declared it the *standard* Make at work; it is the only Make I'm aware of (including nmake) which is widely cross-platform AND sophisticated enough to do what I need to (without propretiary extensions).

      --

      Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
    29. Re:Stating the obvious... by Wwolmack · · Score: 1

      ... it was easier to just run screaming from AIX then to deal with it.

      Its damn easy to run away screaming instead of doing something.

  2. Blog, anyone? by Dagny+Taggert · · Score: 1, Funny

    circulated via his blog

    gotta love that

    --
    Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
    1. Re:Blog, anyone? by British · · Score: 4, Funny

      Then: teenage girls arguing with each other via blogs
      Now: CEOS of multi-million dollar corporations arguing with each other via blogs /Emma Bunton

    2. Re:Blog, anyone? by Quinn · · Score: 1

      I'll buy Jonny an iPod if he cams his man-teats.

      --
      #19845
    3. Re:Blog, anyone? by Bluetick · · Score: 1

      Now: Vice presidents of countries in the "Axis of Ebil" writing poetry and jokes about using Blackberries in his blog.

      And yes, I know he's since resigned as VP in protest, but he did start the blog while VP.

    4. Re:Blog, anyone? by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

      Then: teenage girls arguing with each other via blogs
      Now: CEOS of multi-million dollar corporations arguing with each other via blogs

      omg u would not believe what I heard at the conference last night!!!! the pres of oracle (she was wearing like this skirt that was like so cute omg!!) said that she's like totally adopting a 10b51 plan and selling like so much stock!!! and i was all like you gotta be careful cuz mr. donaldson over at the sec is like totally a dork and will be all up in her face about whether she had like inside information!! god he's such a tool lol!!

  3. Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by 21chrisp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is quite hypocritical of Sun to be saying this when so little of their software runs on anything but Solaris.

    1. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Dagny+Taggert · · Score: 1

      *cough* Kettle, meet Pot

      Amen. If IBM "marginalizes" Solaris, you have to wonder what will become of it.

      --
      Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
    2. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by grahamsz · · Score: 3, Informative

      DTrace is a Solaris Kernel tool. It debugs problems in the Solaris Kernel, and strangely enough the Solaris Kernel only works on Solaris - what would be the point of putting it into linux?

      According to the ZFS Q&A on http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_docs/icee_0703/t ranscript-SEE-091504.pdf they are already investigating porting zfs to linux.

      Other sun stuff like Java, Star/Openoffice, Netbeans/SunOne Studio, iPlanet etc... are available for a multitude of other OS's.

    3. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Zocalo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Interesting that you should mention DTrace, because according to The Register it's getting open sourced under Sun's CDDL license. OSI approved the CDDL license a couple of weeks ago and it's basically a revamped version of the Mozilla Public License. If DTrace (or a reasonable facsimilie) can be made to work with Linux or other FOSS opererating systems then it's just a matter of time...

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    4. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Chanc_Gorkon · · Score: 1

      That's true of their OS, but not of their other software. We're running a Sun web server on a AIX machine. We also have Sun's JRE installed on AIX and working. I happen to agree with Sun a little bit, but personally, them's the breaks. So what if Websphere does not run on Sun. You seriously going to run it on Sun when you can run it on a IBM pSeries and then only have to call one company when something does not work instead of having to fight with Sun and IBM on whose thing does not work right?? I mean I am in that boat now, but at least I can usually find the problem between Sun, IBM and our other software vendor. IBM likely would not support a Sun version as well as the AIX/pSeries version.

      --

      Gorkman

    5. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      so we could have debian gnu/solaris

    6. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Elwood+P+Dowd · · Score: 1

      DTrace & ZFS are features, not products. They are a part of the Solaris operating system. OTOH, the "Sun Java Enterprise System" runs on SOlaris or Linux.

      I think their position is silly, but your examples don't make any sense.

      --

      There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
    7. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Decaff · · Score: 1

      It is quite hypocritical of Sun to be saying this when so little of their software runs on anything but Solaris.

      Java Runtime/SDK
      Java Enterprise System, including Application Server
      Java Desktop
      NetBeans/Sun Studio
      Star/Open Office
      NFS

    8. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by demachina · · Score: 1

      Not wanting to delve in to the hypocrisy of SUN, but I think it is entirely a company's prerogative to decide what platforms they support with their software. It costs money to do ports, but worse it costs a lot of money to test and support a platform, every release, and its pretty much impossible to support every little niche platform under the Sun, heh, so every software developer makes their choices on what platforms are worth it them.

      If your platform's market share is dwindling and isn't perceived as having a future, and is viewed as a competitor by the software developer, I don't think ranting about it in public, is exactly what a grown up would do. If you don't like it the one and only option you have in a free market is to develop your own software that does the same thing.

      I liked some of the stuff Jonathan said when he first became SUN's new mouth, but lately most of what he says tends to indicate that he has no clue about the realities of running a large corporation in a competitive environment, hint the dynamics are not the same as those for an open source fan in a share and share a like world.

      One of IBM's long running goals is, no doubt, to put SUN out of business, not to help them succeed, maybe someone should brief Jonathan.

      --
      @de_machina
    9. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by SunFan · · Score: 3, Insightful


      Trolls like you are very frustrating. You conveniently ignore all the software like OpenOffice.org that Sun _gave_ to you, while still finding things to complain about.

      Here's some food for thought: DTrace and ZFS are INTEGRATED INTO THE SOLARIS KERNEL. You have as much chance of getting Dtrace into the Linux kernel as you have of getting Linux' threading subsystem into Solaris, for example. This stuff is not a matter of ./configure;make;make install. It just isn't that simple.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    10. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by northcat · · Score: 1

      multitude of other OS's. (emphasis mine)

      Slashdot Episode 2: Attack of the Patent Attorneys.

    11. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by fwr · · Score: 1

      Wasn't everything you mention other than Java aquired through the purchase of another company? Star/OpenOffice certainly, Netbeans? iPlanet? Would Sun have ported these to other systems if they developed them internally? Somehow I doubt it.

    12. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Shag · · Score: 2, Informative
      You conveniently ignore all the software like OpenOffice.org that Sun gave to you
      Wow... how's the ol' short-term memory doing these days?

      StarOffice's original creators, StarDivision (whom Sun bought in 1999) had been giving us StarOffice prior to Sun's purchase. And it had been on Linux since at least 1996.

      I must say, though, that I applaud Sun for maintaining the status quo by continuing to offer a free version of the program. It takes an innovative industry-leading company to keep things the way they are.

      (Not to say that Sun hasn't given us great things... I'm eternally indebted to Bill Joy for vi for example. But StarOffice/OpenOffice may not be the best example.

      --
      Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
    13. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Alsee · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's more than just hypocrisy, it's a brass-balls dirty attack.

      SUN CEO Scott McNealy on the Microsoft-Sun deal:
      unprecedented work is being done to make all of Microsoft and Sun's software compatible. "Unfortunately, (our stuff) won't interoperate with IBM very well," he joked.

      Yep, Sun CEO delcares a conspiracy with Microsoft to lock out IBM and then Sun turns around and accuses IBM of playing dirty on compatibility.

      I tried submitting that link to Slashdot at the time. Oh well. I suggest reading the whole thing. I love how it practically says Microsoft wants Sun around as a pet competitor due to monopoly issues.

      You'd think the people at Sun would have the brains to notice that being Microsoft's pet lapdog is an historically more dangerous and fatal position than being targeted for extermination as a Microsoft competitor.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    14. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by guacamole · · Score: 1

      Ugh, actually many of their popular stand-alone software packages have been ported to other OSes. Java, iPlanet suite, etc. As for DTreace, I don't think it's just a matter of taking it and recompiling it on Linux with some minor porting. This is a very low level tool that probably depends on very low-level API in the Solaris kernel. If Linux ever supported with same API, then maybe it could be ported.

    15. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by James+Youngman · · Score: 1

      I think DTrace is available on Linux. It's called DProbes, and was invented by IBM. I have only read the Sun DTrace technical manual the once, but I think there are strong similarities. IBM's DProbes have been around for ages, too - since 2000, according to the ChangeLog, but I didn't hear about it until Richard Moore did a presentation at the UKUUG conference in Manchester in 2001.

    16. Re:Well then let's see DTrace, ZFS, etc. on Linux by Decaff · · Score: 1

      Wasn't everything you mention other than Java aquired through the purchase of another company? Star/OpenOffice certainly, Netbeans? iPlanet? Would Sun have ported these to other systems if they developed them internally? Somehow I doubt it.

      Why do you doubt this? Do you have any evidence to back this point of view? Sun specifically designed Java to be portable. Why should they be any less keen on application portability for other products? You realise that Sun has been releasing portable software and specifcations for decades? Still, why let the facts get in the way of anti-Sun bias?

  4. kettle, pot? by CrankyFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Was that necessary?

    Sun doesn't make all that many software products that aren't OS-type products. Off the top of my head, I can think of one big product they've made -- Java -- and they seemed to try to make it available on all platforms, though based on their rules (which hey, is true for any GPL-based software also. It's all about letting the people who created the software determine how it's released).

    It is, however, a little offensive to publicly decry a company not releasing their product on your platform, especially when that platform hasn't yet actually shipped its first non-beta version. Seems a little petulant.

    1. Re:kettle, pot? by jarich · · Score: 1, Flamebait
      How many of IBM's platforms does Java run on? None.

      IBM has their own port for AIX, mainframes, etc. Why isn't Sun supporting them?

      As to Java on all platforms, ask the FreeBSD people how they feel.

      --
      Agile Artisans
    2. Re:kettle, pot? by willCode4Beer.com · · Score: 2, Interesting
      From Sun's web site: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/download.html
      This release of the J2EE 1.4 SDK and the Sun Java System Application Server is available for the following platforms: * Solaris 9 (SPARC and x86) * Sun Java Desktop System * Windows 2000 Advanced Server * Windows XP * Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0
      So, where is AIX, HPUX, QNX, *BSD, IRIX, SCO (*sic), Xenix, Mac*, and countless others. I think the poster was right on the mark.
      --
      ----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
    3. Re:kettle, pot? by afabbro · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Was that necessary?

      Yes. Johnathon's "open letter" is one of the silliest, snarkiest, stupidest things I've seen in some time.

      Oh, Johnathon, you're so clever with your "open letter" on your blog. Gimme a break. Your company is not doing well and hasn't been since the easy pickings of the dot-com years when everyone did well. You've been one of the sick men of the IT world for years. You finally managed to eke out a tiny profit, but your revenue continues to slide. Analysts are not impressed and while you were busy getting in your competitors' faces and thumping your chest, your stock dropped some more...I mean, I'm reading his blog and looking at SUNW's chart and thinking "are we reading the same Q4 release?" Maybe if you spent some time running it instead of talking shit to your competitors you'd have some ground to stand on.

      Why hasn't IBM ported its products to Solaris 10? Perhaps because it isn't released yet. Perhaps because there's no demand. We run IBM tools (Tivoli, MQ, etc.) on Sun boxes and there is every reason to believe that they'll port their tools once they perceive a market. Hey, Johnathon, does N1 support anything other than Sun's blades yet? You lock-in dogs!

      Johnathon Schwartz is acting like an overpaid NBA player whose game isn't all that good. If Wilt Chamberlain talks trash, it's one thing, but if it's some second-rate bencher who has no game, it just looks sad. Tell you what, Johnathon - how about not dissing IBM or HP until Sun's back on top?

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
    4. Re:kettle, pot? by 0racle · · Score: 1

      IBM licenced Java and took it upon themselves to have a JRE for their software, Apple did the same thing. *BSD has various patches to build a native java binary if you agree to the SCSL, or can use Java under Linux emulation. SGI and HP seem to have done the same thing as they also release Java binaries for their OS's. QNX seems to have partnered with IBM for them to provide a Java environment.

      What exactly was your problem again?

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    5. Re:kettle, pot? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      How many of IBM's platforms does Java run on? None.

      IBM has their own port for AIX, mainframes, etc.

      So... you first say that Java does not run on IBM's platforms, then list the platforms on which Java has been ported to... using Sun's source code. See the contradiction?

    6. Re:kettle, pot? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      IBM has to produce their own version of Java for AIX, z/OS, etc. In fact they also produce a Windows version (which performs better than the Sun version I might add), but they aren't allowed to distribute it (except bundled with an IBM product) because Sun wants to make sure they remain associated with Java.

      IBM provide Java for Linux, which is freely downloadable.

    7. Re:kettle, pot? by SunFan · · Score: 1


      There is a post above somewhere with someone claiming to run Sun Java on AIX. Go ask that person if he/she is telling the truth.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    8. Re:kettle, pot? by 0racle · · Score: 1

      I'm sure that as soon as IBM provides the needed information, or licences Sun to provide Solaris native versions of Websphere, DB2 and whatnot, Sun will choose that route. The point was that Sun as not locked IBM out of Java just because they do not directly provide a binary themselves. IBM neither licences websphere out the same way Sun does Java, nor do they povide binaries.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    9. Re:kettle, pot? by Syberghost · · Score: 1

      Sun hoards the Evolution plugin for SunOne Calendar connectivity, despite the fact that this practically forces some shops to abandon their calendar product, and the fact that they don't make a dime off it so they don't lose a dime off it either.

    10. Re:kettle, pot? by freemacmini · · Score: 1

      Why does java run so much slower on linux and freebsd? Why can't the license for the jvm be tweaked to allow free distribution?. Why doesn't sun allow for free testing for open source projects to test compatibility with sun standards?

      Yes, pot calling the kettle black.

      --
      Get a free Mac Mini
    11. Re:kettle, pot? by tod_miller · · Score: 1

      I say parent needs troll/flamebait mod.

      While I am not happy with Johnny-boy-schwartz, the whole point of this exercise is to to maintain thier position in solaris.

      If you don't know, solaris is actually (10 anyway) a great OS for many things, such as running large data apps.

      I also agree with grandparent, that the pot/kettle remark was absurd, and not even grounded in the comment. If you are going to write something, at least make sure it is clear why you said it!

      Look at another issue. Solaris is aimed at different markets - I am not an expert in thier software, but it is fine having certain built in systems, this is not akin to the miccysoft bundling (and how that bundling came about).

      All the message is saying is, IBM should give a commitment on this support. IBM has put money into, and made plenty of money from Java.

      IBM and Sun are symbiotic companies, they need their mutual support and slight overlaps, each do thier own thing really.

      Anyway, if you agree, mod up grandparent, mod down parent :-)

      oh and I dont think he was talking shit, I do despise the use of a blog in this instance. IBM has done many rather public nudges at sun (over their JVM etc)

      My worst failing with sun is paying those FSSSSSSSCKS at kodak over than not legit lawsuit. Could they counter sue now for slander? After all, placing a legal cloud over a product without warrant shouldn't be allowed?

      --
      #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    12. Re:kettle, pot? by jarich · · Score: 1, Troll
      http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/jikesrvm /

      The initial Jikes RVM infrastructure was independently developed as part of the Jalapeño research project at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

      --
      Agile Artisans
    13. Re:kettle, pot? by Jerrry · · Score: 1
      As for FreeBSD, they're OS is only just getting up to snuff

      Tell that to Yahoo!, among others, who have been using FreeBSD in large production environments for years.

    14. Re:kettle, pot? by tod_miller · · Score: 1

      I agree with parent, it is a little much to ask sun to fund the development and support for java on many OS's, IBM themselves have recouped much much more than thier outlay on Java.

      Thier products have easy Java based API's, Java has been kind to IBM!

      mod up parent

      --
      #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    15. Re:kettle, pot? by molog · · Score: 1
      IBM and Sun are symbiotic companies, they need their mutual support and slight overlaps, each do thier own thing really.


      I would say it is a parasitic relationship. Sun needs IBM, but IBM doesn't need Sun.

      Molog

      --
      So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
      The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
    16. Re:kettle, pot? by vsync64 · · Score: 2, Informative
      Then the "Community Effort" couldn't get the job done on Linux, so Sun released Java For Linux.
      I call BS. Sun's Java for Linux is just the Blackdown port rebranded. And it took an outcry to get them to even give proper credit.
      --
      TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
    17. Re:kettle, pot? by tod_miller · · Score: 1

      I am not sure about that. They add weight to each others arguments. Sun certainly is like an unstylish Apple.

      The Apple of large corps. I say Sun will start clawing back, foxes and rabbits.

      I think Sun should diversify and be market leader in its API technologies, it has spend long enough giving start other vendors footholds (deliberately generating a competative market for J2EE containers and vedor addons).

      Oracle as well has a huge support for Java... which pits them against the IBM DB products I guess.

      Sun is a middle player in many areas, don't discount them to unleash Apple like products in a few years, that make the most of their own innovations (I hope! I designed a sun smart phone about 4 years ago... nothing has come out, although sun has backing the zaurus in development and the Java platform is great... lets hope sun goes this direction)

      --
      #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    18. Re:kettle, pot? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      The initial Jikes RVM infrastructure was independently developed as part of the Jalapeño research project at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

      This has no relevance. Jikes is a research project, and is not the VM that IBM use for production work - it can't even run Eclipse.

      The Java VMs that IBM use for their production work, and that they distribute for general use are based on Sun's source code.

    19. Re:kettle, pot? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      I call BS. Sun's Java for Linux is just the Blackdown port rebranded. And it took an outcry to get them to even give proper credit.

      This is far too simple a statement. It was a combined effort, not a rebranding. The port was based on Sun's code. There was a problem with giving credit, but Sun did publically apologise over the confusion.

    20. Re:kettle, pot? by mukund · · Score: 1

      I actually ran Eclipse using JikesRVM a few months ago. You're wrong on that point.

      --
      Banu
    21. Re:kettle, pot? by Decaff · · Score: 1

      I actually ran Eclipse using JikesRVM a few months ago. You're wrong on that point.

      That is interesting! This will teach me to look further than the link supplied in the post I am replying to!

    22. Re:kettle, pot? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Sun has trademarked(?) Java, so you can't call what you write Java without their permission. Which is fair, but if they charge for the permission, then it's not too surprising that there isn't a huge rush of people makeing knock-offs.

      The Blackdown people were treated rather harshly by Sun, and I haven't thought very favorably about their "write once run anywhere" ad campaign since then.

      Sun typically had done as much good as harm to FOSS, but recently they seem to be attempting to do more harm. Of course, this may just be the PR branch of the company, but I wouldn't trust them a nickle's worth.

      They do have an OSI approved license, but Sun has been playing so many games that I'm going to wait awhile before I decide to trust anything they put under it. I don't know what hidden traps there might be there that just haven't yet been noticed. (Of course this is partially because they played so many games with Java that I no longer use it, so I can afford to be skeptical.)

      And I do consider Sun's unilaterally cancelling the license for FreeBSD to distribute Java and example of extreme bad faith, and evidence that they can't be trusted at all.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    23. Re:kettle, pot? by kaffiene · · Score: 1

      Shows you how deep the /. anti-Sun bias runs.

      Pathetc.

    24. Re:kettle, pot? by kaffiene · · Score: 1

      So, Sun release the source code for their JVM, but if they don't port it to every plaform in existence, that's *their* fault?

      Yeah right.

    25. Re:kettle, pot? by jarich · · Score: 1
      So, Sun release the source code for their JVM, but if they don't port it to every plaform in existence, that's *their* fault?

      Do you work at Sun or just own stock??

      I don't care if they don't port to "every platform in existence" but when Sun's CEO stands up and accuses IBM of not porting their products to Sun's OS, Sun should make very sure their products were ported first.

      Basically, if you live in a glass house, don't throw stones from the living room.

      --
      Agile Artisans
    26. Re:kettle, pot? by Kiryat+Malachi · · Score: 1

      The difference is that IBM does not release source code to their products. Sun said "Here's sample source, and we would love it if you ported it to your platform so long as you meet these standards!"

      IBM says "No."

      --

      ---
      Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
      (I read with sigs off.)
    27. Re:kettle, pot? by kaffiene · · Score: 1

      Sun make the source free so anyone can port, IBM don't.

      Is that simple enough for you? Can you spot the relevant difference? Should I type slower for you?

  5. Typical lies... by Free+Bird · · Score: 5, Funny
    Dear Sam,

    IBM and Sun have a long history of partnering. We've worked on Java together, more recently you joined us in the Liberty Alliance, helping to drive standards around network identity. We, and our customers, appreciate constructive partnership.

    As you're no doubt aware, Sun is set to ship the newest release of our Solaris operating system, Solaris 10. It's the most secure OS the world has ever seen

    This is where I stopped reading.
    1. Re:Typical lies... by Dagny+Taggert · · Score: 1

      so are you saying that you don't believe every word written on some corporate honcho's blog? For shame!

      --
      Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
    2. Re:Typical lies... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 2, Funny

      No... He stopped reading, because he went right out to buy a Sun machine with the most secure OS the world has ever seen (although, I'm quite certain there are more than a few AS/400 enthusiasts who would be quick to disagree, their opinions don't count anyway).

      --
      Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    3. Re:Typical lies... by Metzli · · Score: 1

      I'd bet that the VMS/OpenVMS boys would also disagree....

      --
      "It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
    4. Re:Typical lies... by SunFan · · Score: 1


      Actually, they are saying that Solaris 10 and what will be Trusted Solaris 10 will share the same code base. They will be the same operating system except the trusted version gets additional features for the military/government who need them. Basically, if you run Solaris 10, you are pretty much getting the same system run by Top Secret spooky types.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    5. Re:Typical lies... by freemacmini · · Score: 1

      If somebody is a habitual liar then you should stop listening to them.

      --
      Get a free Mac Mini
    6. Re:Typical lies... by Prothonotar · · Score: 1

      You mean the kind of Top Secret spooky types that use their Sidekicks to store and send sensitive information and allow hackers to gain access to Secret Service files?

      --
      "Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
    7. Re:Typical lies... by sconeu · · Score: 1

      I forget. Was it VMS 4.2 or 5.0 that had the A-1 Orange Book rating?

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    8. Re:Typical lies... by burns210 · · Score: 1

      Solaris 10 has the feature set from Trusted Solaris integrated into it. Trusted Solaris is on par with the world's most secure systems on the planet, there is no reason to question that.

    9. Re:Typical lies... by vegetasaiyajin · · Score: 1

      AFAIK, Solaris 10 does not have Mandatory Access Control. Does it?
      That is what makes Trusted Solaris "Trusted".

      --

      My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
    10. Re:Typical lies... by burns210 · · Score: 1
      Read point #2 on that site. The technology that makes 'Trusted Solaris' Trusted, is being incorporated into Solaris 10's standard version for a single codebase. "Trusted Solaris 10" will be certified(NSA's Trusted OS cert), and have Sun's support contracts, etc.

      All the major OSs, Mac OS 10,4 Tiger is getting ACLs, with SELinux, Linux will get ACLs, Sun's free version will have ACLs.

      What about Windows?

    11. Re:Typical lies... by vegetasaiyajin · · Score: 2, Informative

      NT based versions of Windows have had ACLs since the beginning.
      ACLs have nothing to do with Mandatory Access Contro (MAC).
      ACLs let you implement DAC (Discretionary Access Control) and are necessary for a C2 security level.
      MAC is necessary for B1 or better security levels, which is higher that C1 or C2 and is required for many military applications.
      With SELinux, Linux gets MAC.
      TrustedSolaris has MAC.
      OpenBSD has MAC (IIRC not by default, I think you have to recompile the kernel).
      The article you point to says Solaris (or OpenSolaris 10) will have some security features (not necessarily all) of Trusted Solaris. It doesn mention MAC, which was specifically my question.
      Will Trusted Solaris 10, complete with MAC, be open source too?

      --

      My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
    12. Re:Typical lies... by Free+Bird · · Score: 1

      Normally I'd defend myself against such an ad hominem attack, but you're so obviously a clueless Sun fanboy that's not necessary - your ignorance speaks for itself. You're the one that's an idiot, not me.

  6. If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Until Solaris 9 (and now, 10), Sun themselves didn't take Solaris on x86 seriously. Now that Sun want's to try to take Solaris on x86 seriously, they expect IBM to suddenly jump in on it?

    If I want Solaris professionally, I'll buy a SPARC to run it on. If I want to play around with Solaris, I'll download it for x86.

    Allen Zadr is the Director of IT for a small software company

    --
    Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    1. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Ubergrendle · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up. Sun is ~heavily~ leaning on Solaris on x86 with Solaris 10, which is a 180 degree turn from less than a year ago. At one point, Sun wouldn't even publically commit to releasing future versions of Solaris on Intel.

      Why is Sun taking this position? My view is that its a desperate act to attempt to thwart Linux in the low end market from gradually eating up their higher Solaris offerings.

      IBM has embraced Linux. IBM will happily offer you a flavour of unix -- AIX or Linux -- on all of their RISC-architected platforms. Sun however, offers 'open source Solaris' without defining what open source means, and supposedly supports Linux but I've ~never~ heard a Sun rep volunteer a Linux offering, even when asked.

      Sun's position to demand that IBM support their OS -- which hasn't even been released yet! -- is egomanical.

      --
      John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
    2. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by afabbro · · Score: 1
      Why is Sun taking this position? My view is that its a desperate act to attempt to thwart Linux in the low end market from gradually eating up their higher Solaris offerings.

      Or replacing them. Time was when you might need something as big as a Sun E10K to run your Oracle databases. Now even Oracle doesn't run its own databases on Sun. Computing power has grown tremendously...the average company's transactional volume has not grown as fast. Lots of companies are happy with a smaller clusters of boxes and don't need $un's high-end kit. And right now, Intel outperforms Sun's slow Sparc chips.

      So...smaller commodity boxes can be linked together to provide enough horsepower that large big boxes don't look attractive. That's where Sun's at now...which is why it's pushing Opteron. Too bad everyone else is and there isn't much margin in it...

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
    3. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Falsch+Freiheit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm pretty sure that Sun's trying to get everybody to take Solaris x86 seriously so that they'll buy an Opteron server (Sun v40z or Sun v20z) from Sun, not so that anybody will really use Solaris x86 on, say, a Dell.

      Solaris x86 will always support anything you can buy from Sun in one of their Opteron boxes, and probably have lousy hardware support for running on anything else. (drivers for common non-Sun NICs and storage controllers will be missing, etc...)

      And I think they're going the Opteron route because Opterons have gotten to the point where they're a better CPU than UltraSPARC, but with a similar NUMA architecture, enabling for excellent throughput. When our Sun sales team (sales rep, an engineer, etc.) came out for the biyearly onsite slideshow, they were really bragging on about how the HyperTransport bus was all part of some technology-sharing plan with AMD, implying that it's basically the same thing as the bus arrangement in some of their current UltraSPARC offerings. (In other words, Solaris x86 on an Opteron might be cheaper and faster than Solaris on an UltraSPARC...)

      I think we're even gonna buy some Opteron servers from Sun this fiscal year. To run Linux on, though. A couple v40z servers should make a great database cluster.

    4. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 1
      "Opteron servers from Sun this fiscal year. To run Linux on, though."

      I'm still partial to Dell's PowerEdge line 800MHz FSB - commodity everything, and Linux driver support. Same things Sun claims, at less cost.

      You are I are both busy people though, so if you know how a Sun v40z is better, prey tell!

      --
      Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    5. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Gaewyn+L+Knight · · Score: 1

      I'll buy their v40z and v20z line... and run linux on it.

      Sun just needs to realize that their OS is not what people want to deal with. We love their hardware and their Java (well some do :} ) and no matter what they say we are not going to love their OS as it is.

      Why someone would subject themselves to the administration nightmare that is Solaris I have no idea and Debian seems to work just great on those swanky Opterons.

      Come on Sun... you are already bragging about executable compatibility with Linux... why not just make the OS linux and get those OS programmers helping out the team!

      --
      Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
    6. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by SunFan · · Score: 1

      and probably have lousy hardware support for running on anything else. (drivers for common non-Sun NICs and storage controllers will be missing, etc...)

      Speculative drivel. Sun publishes which systems are fully tested and supported in their HCL. There also a note that the Solaris 9 HCL will be rolled into that for Solaris 10 (so please, no HCL trolls).

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    7. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by NatteringNabob · · Score: 1

      Jonathan ought to just shut up and concentrate on his knitting. Given global warming, the glaciers move faster than Sun does these days. Having made a strategic decision to move to Opteron, 64 bt Solaris should have been available one quarter later. It still isn't here. It should ahve taken about 2 quaters to do a respin of the USIIIi such that was pin compatible with Opteron. It still hasn't happened. It should have taken a couple of quarters to crank out an Opteron version of the uniboard. It still hasn't happened. It should have taken a quarter or so to ditch lxrun and make Solaris 100% Linux compatible. It still hasn't happened.

    8. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by illumin8 · · Score: 1

      You wrote: Until Solaris 9 (and now, 10), Sun themselves didn't take Solaris on x86 seriously. Now that Sun want's to try to take Solaris on x86 seriously, they expect IBM to suddenly jump in on it?

      From TFA: We've made sure your engineers know that moving from Solaris 8 or 9 to Solaris 10 takes no work, given that we offer true binary compatibility. If you're on SPARC, and you'd like to take advantage of a world of x86 systems, it's a simple recompile. There's no recoding at all. Same applies to scaling up from Intel or Opteron to SPARC. No recoding.

      Well, that sounds all nice on paper, but it shows a remarkable naivete about the development process. There is always work involved in making an application work with a new version of Solaris. Sure, it's binary compatible, but even if there is no need to recompile, you still have to pay someone to QA the thing and make sure it doesn't break on the new OS. He acts as if development time is free.

      I got an idea for you Jonathan: If you want IBM to port their apps to Solaris 10, first get a good percentage of their customers to use the platform, and you'll find that the apps will migrate on their own. IBM will port all of their major apps there if they see a market. Right now the marketshare of Solaris 10 is exactly 0%, because it isn't even out yet! (Despite what the banner ads rotating at the top of Slashdot would have you believe)

      --
      "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
    9. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Falsch+Freiheit · · Score: 1

      You are I are both busy people though, so if you know how a Sun v40z is better, prey tell!

      Go look at page 7 and 9 of this PDF about the v40z and v20z architecture. The diagram is basically the same as for HP's Opteron servers, or any Opteron server worth talking about. Compare to page 25 and 26 of this Intel board layout. Note that Intel's 800MHz FSB moves about 6.4GB/sec. (And remember that a 400Mhz 128-bit path moves as much data as a 64-bit 800Mhz path, hence the need to compare in terms of GB/sec, not Mhz) Ignore the "Service Processor" and all the lines from it on the Sun diagrams.

      Intel's Front Side Bus architecture has a single 800MHz (6.4GB/sec) point where all access to I/O and RAM goes through that single 800MHz point. This effectively serializes your CPUs (they can only all be doing something simultaneously when one of them is working out of cache; otherwise they have to wait for the 800Mhz FSB to be available) That FSB ties to a controller that has some I/O hanging off of it (PCI/E), RAM and an I/O controller. Then, the slowest I/O is off of an I/O controller off of that one.

      Then compare to the architecture of a v20z. Each CPU has its own bank of RAM with a 5.3GB/sec bus to it. Then there's a 6.4GB/sec connection between the two CPUs. So, typically, your CPUs can work on totally independent tasks without needing to share the FSB just to get to their RAM. When one CPU needs access to RAM on the other, it does tie up the RAM access for both CPUs, but with a proper process scheduler and most tasks that's avoidable, besides, all that's done is reduce you to the temporary equivalent of a 5.3GB/sec FSB. Then, on the V20z, I/O is on a 6.4GB/sec path to an I/O controller, and from there it all looks pretty similar to the Intel I/O arrangement, with slower I/O off of that, etc.

      Add a couple of CPUs and things look even worse for Intel and better for Opteron. Intel just sticks all the CPUs on the same FSB. Opterons each get their own bank of RAM, and I/O access is now split between two of the CPUs (the other two have direct access to each other and one of the CPUs with I/O on it.) Absolute worst case for a 4-way opteron (when your process scheduler fails or your particular task makes life hard on the process schedule) is that the I/O for 3 CPUs is tied up when something is accessed. This is still better than on an Intel board where the best case is I/O for all CPUs being tied up any time one CPU accesses I/O or RAM.

      (In other words, give me NUMA over a FSB any day of the week)

      Besides, Opteron systems are getting pretty commodity (at least, compared to Xeons). Shouldn't be any driver support issues; they're actually using some pretty similar chipsets for everything (LSI RAID, Broadcom or Intel NIC, etc.) as what Dell has. Price quotes we've been getting back from Sun are reasonably comptetive with Dell Xeon quotes for similarly configured servers (though, given the NUMA architecture and strong 64-bit CPUs, it'd be fairer to compare to IBM PowerPC based servers) Last I checked, IBM's Opteron offerings were a little lacking in the "enterprise" features we wanted (redundant power, specifically), but HP had very similar offerings to Sun's (same basic mobo layout, different specific offerings.) and there's a lot of "Whitebox" vendors with similar offerings, as well. To be fair, though, I work for an educational institution and Sun's got some pretty aggressive discounts available for us, especially on certain packages.

      Do be careful when looking into Opteron servers from the smaller vendors. Once you get into 2 or more CPUs, some motherboard manufacturers cut corners by sticking all the RAM onto one bank tied to one CPU, which eliminates all the cool NUMA advantages. Dell doesn't offer any AMD CPUs primarily because they have a deal with Intel that gets them bett

    10. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Falsch+Freiheit · · Score: 1

      Yes, Sun publishes an HCL. So does RedHat. RedHat's list is longer.

      I went in to compare RedHat EL3 to Solaris 9 x86. But at first I was distracted by all the "somebody reported that this worked once" stuff.

      Bottom line:

      1) RHEL3(x86) is certified on over 200 servers. Over 20 Dell servers. Basically, across Dell's entire current PowerEdge server line, and probably similarly for all the other major manufacturers, as well as a bunch of smaller manufacturers.

      2) Solaris 9(x86) is certified on 7 servers, 5 of which are the ones they make. One Dell, the PE2650 is in that list.

      Now, admittedly, if a PE2650 works, it's very likely that the 1650 and maybe even the 1750 works, too. Who knows about the 2850 and 1850, though... And is "somebody made a similar server work once" good enough for an enterprise buying a server to run that OS? If you go beyond certifications all the way down into the "somebody says this ran for them once" category, you get a bunch more Dell Servers (17), but not the latest (2850 and 1850) at all, and not some of the less popular models (ie, 650) at all, either.

      Even if you compare Sun's Solaris x86 Servers and Workstations that are certified, tested or somebody once made it run on one list, the list is shorter (149) than RHEL3's Server only list. Over 250 if you count RHEL3's Workstation list and Server list.

      I don't know how to easily do a fairer comparison, which should really involve splitting Solaris x86 support into separate workstation and server lists and taking the union of RedHat's RHEL3 and RHEL2.1 lists. (can't just blindly add the RHEL3 and RHEL2.1 numbers together, since there's a lot of overlap).

    11. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by SunFan · · Score: 1


      Sun and Red Hat have different methods of certification, so comparing numbers of systems leads nowhere. Both HCLs are large. This is why the HCL trolls are wasting their time.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    12. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by jgardner100 · · Score: 1

      Err, you fault Sun for not backing Solaris x86 (not enough device drivers, no partner support etc) then draw the conclusion that that means they are not allowed to fix the problem. Sun isn't expecting IBM to just jump on the bandwagon, they know IBM needs to be convinced.

      Sun is finally supporting Solaris x86 properly and pushing to ensure that the software is there for it too.

    13. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by SunFan · · Score: 1


      Zealotrous is the wrong word. I try to give credit to all the UNIX/Linux/OSS systems while shamelessly bashing Microsoft. There are too many AC's trying to blow my fan-dom out of proportion.

      As far as this thread goes, the original point about Sun trying to make non-Sun platforms perform worse, somehow, is just flat-out wrong. That's why I focused on that particular point.

      Again, this is another Slashdot conversation rendered pointless by AC's.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    14. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 1

      And me as a cost conciencious IT manager... Sorry, I'm not willing to buy it. Literally, not willing to buy it. I'd buy an entry-level SPARC server before an x86 (or even an O64) for running Solaris - why? The APP support is already there. Not just IBM, but plenty of other vendors (including the one I work for) will support SPARC-SUN-SOLARIS but not x86-SOLARIS.

      --
      Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
    15. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by macsuibhne · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up. The elephant in the room is the RDBMS. Relational databases are the most critical systems going, if your business is transaction-oriented. Which is pretty much anything to do with money (literally -- storing currency and trade records). These are the principal reason mainframes still exist. And mainframes exist for three principal reasons in turn: massive I/O farms; massive main memory; five nines reliability.

      Enterprise UNIX systems have been nibbling away at the mainframe market for years, but mainframes still exist. Now commodity x86 hardware is starting to nibble the toes of enterprise UNIX in turn, as the 2-4G memory limit is breached with the Opteron, and SAN/NAS storage is starting to make inroads on the disk farm.

      What Sun seems to counting on is the reliability part. Linux just isn't there yet, and won't be for a while -- it's fine where you can line up massively redundant shared-nothing processor nodes, such as Google or straight computational loads, but for a DBMS, disk and main memory consistency/recovery are crucial, which means clustering[*], valiant shared-nothing DBMS implementations such as Informix XPS notwithstanding -- 2-phase commit doesn't always cut it.

      IBM understands this -- read "In Search of Clusters" by Greg Pfister -- Sun understands this too, and are trying to raise their vulnerable low water mark by running the same ultra-reliable Solaris 10 on their smaller systems as on those that have provided the only significant challenge to the mainframe for critical database work. You won't get Five Nines running Linux on commodity hardware.

      [*] Allowing that big SMP is a form of clustering.

      --
      -- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
    16. Re:If Sun didn't take it seriously... by Gaewyn+L+Knight · · Score: 1

      We have used solaris since well before it was called SunOS... our moves to linux have been slow but have quickened as we have learned how much easier it is to keep a group of machines up to date and functionally exact matches.

      Keeping large groups of Solaris machines up to date and in a state where users don't notice a difference from machine to machine besides the host name is VERY hard. Whereas with Debian we can do stuff as simple as:
      (ssh setupmachine dpkg --get-selections) | dpkg --set-selections && apt-get dist-upgrade

      As an educational institution we have even had the Solaris source code for many... many...many years. (late 80s) Was that a cool move on Sun's part? yes! Am I staying with Solaris? Nope... sorry!

      We already have many ways of administrating Solaris boxes that have taken care of a lot of the issues. But Linux... out of the box... without us having to keep our "cloning" tools up to date does a WAY better job that Solaris even with our tools.

      --
      Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
  7. Microsoft Replys with... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Kettle, meet Pot. Except in NEBRASKA!!

    1. Re:Microsoft Replys with... by mangu · · Score: 1
      I thought they only did that ...in Japan?


      No, no, it's in NEBRASKA|

  8. The most secure OS? by strider44 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's the most secure OS the world has ever seen

    Huh? Since when? I think someone's tooting his own horn. But anyway, this blog is mostly just an indignant "pretty please help us", offering silly remarks whilst asking what's pretty simply a favour. I don't see why this should even make slashdot.

    1. Re:The most secure OS? by bano · · Score: 3, Informative

      He's refering to TrustedSolaris being merged into the main Solaris distribution. So go ahead and readup on Trusted Solaris. then try commenting.

    2. Re:The most secure OS? by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      Were the next two words "from Sun"? I'm pretty sure IBM holds the most secure OS in the world (MVS/TSO or something like that.) I'm also willing to bet that DG/UX-B2 and VMS were both inherently more secure than anything that'll ever come out of Sun.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    3. Re:The most secure OS? by cmdrbuzz · · Score: 1

      Hey, you might want to meet HP VMS or IBM zOS before drinking the koolaid.

    4. Re:The most secure OS? by 808140 · · Score: 1

      All things considered, alphas and sparcs are not all that different in price. I used to run OpenVMS on my Alpha (which granted was an old model, but still).

      Trusted Solaris is a good stab at UNIX security -- I'm not sure it's truly much more secure than OpenBSD or SELinux, that remains to be seen -- but so far, no UNIX-like OS has come close to VMS's security.

      VMS is seriously hardcore.

      Of course, a sucky admin can screw anything up.

  9. Sun trying to divide and conquor open source? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Seems the main agenda of Sun since the Microsoft deal is to try to fragement the community with deliberately incompatable licenses - and really poor Java support on important open source platforms (Java for BSD, Java3D for linux, etc). And now they're blaming IBM for what? For not supporting their proprietary (uh, half-open) Solaris!

    No, Jonathan, IBM won't switch from Linux to Solaris just because you got the OSI to look at your license. Perhaps make it GPL compatable and try the FSF and see if it'll pass there - then I at least might listen.

    I hope IBM's response is "make Solaris GPL compatable and we'll support it too, once we merge it with Linux"

    1. Re:Sun trying to divide and conquor open source? by idart · · Score: 1

      Oh great... I bet you're one those who created like ten of SourceForge projects that never got of the ground and stuck a GPL license on them because it was the only one you had heard about. Go and read some of them.

      Besides, why should Sun, or anyone else, care if an Anonymous Coward want to listen to them or not?

    2. Re:Sun trying to divide and conquor open source? by Lussarn · · Score: 1

      If solaris was closed source softawre nobody would give a rats as what the licence/EULA was as long as they where alowed to run the binaries. Not so with OSS. The GPL has traditionally been a good licence for corporations wanting to open source their stuff AND still retain copyright on the source.

      The GPL is also very well understood by the users/distributers of GPL software, from what I understand Suns new licence is some kind of copyleft licence but of course incompatible with GPL. This pretty much forms a Solaris camp in the OSS world with source that can not enter any other open source software at all. How many open source programmers will program under Suns licence and howmany will stick to th GPL and or other well understood (BSD etc.) licences remains to be seen. I don't really think Solaris stand a chance to gain over developers without going at least GPL.

    3. Re:Sun trying to divide and conquor open source? by idart · · Score: 1

      > The GPL has traditionally been a good licence for corporations
      > wanting to open source their stuff AND still retain copyright on the source.

      I beg to differ. It might be a good choice if you're not planning on selling and/or maintaining the product any more. But that's not the case here. Sun probably wants something like Darwin/OS X.

      > This pretty much forms a Solaris camp in the OSS world with
      > source that can not enter any other open source software at all.


      Let's say for a moment that this turns out to be true, that the source can't "go" anywhere (and it might very well be); So? What did you expect? This is still Sun's baby, and they might not want the good parts copied and pasted into Linux, or any other OS, without getting anything in return.

      > How many open source programmers will program under Suns
      > licence and howmany will stick to th GPL and or other well
      > understood (BSD etc.) licences remains to be seen.

      Two things. First, "well understood" is why I told the guy to go read some licenses in the first place. It looked like he had only glanced at the GPL, but had heard it was the holy grail of open source and went with the flow. Second, take a look at OSI's license list. It's getting pretty long now, and do you know what? There are projects out there using those licenses, even if they are not "well understood" by your definition.

      What's more is that this isn't the first license to be incompatible with the GPL, if it indeed is. And in fact, being incompatible with the GPL seldom creates any major disturbance or outcry, with a few notable exceptions.

      I know there are people who have been advocating for Solaris' return to the x86 platform and blaming Sun for pulling the support in the first place. Now, if they really want to, they can bring it back themselves. Isn't that alone good enough reason to simply keep an open mind about this and let people do their hacking under whatever licence their conscience permits?

      To add some context to my remarks, it was a Slashdot thread not unlike this one that made me go and actually read some licenses about five years ago. I was running Linux at the time, and might have resembled our Anonymous Coward here a bit, albeit a little more level headed (at least I hope so). In so doing, I found that the only license at the time that I, personally, felt was really, truly free was the BSD license. Hence, for the past five years this household has been running FreeBSD as its free OS of choice.

      Some of the arguments seen here also resembles those used when OpenMotif arrived. Some people just couldn't leave it be, complaining about a strange license and how it was too late for Motif anyhow. I feel, as I did then, that those people fail to see the significance of open sourcing traditional bastions of proprietary software, as I consider both Motif and Solaris to be. Whether the license is perfect or not ("perfect" meaning "to your personal liking" it seems), these are all steps in the right direction.

    4. Re:Sun trying to divide and conquor open source? by Lussarn · · Score: 1

      Let's say for a moment that this turns out to be true, that the source can't "go" anywhere (and it might very well be); So? What did you expect?

      I do expect Sun to take their OSS initative seriosly and not just another checkbox in a advertisement somewhere. As it is now I really don't know why they are OSSing solaris. Let's not forget they have tried before to release source for solaris (at that time a non OSS licence though), Why did they do that? And what are their intentions this time around?

      Whether the license is perfect or not ("perfect" meaning "to your personal liking" it seems)

      They can use whatever licence they want. I just have a hard time beliving Open solaris will be a major force in the OSS world if they don't release GPL compatible (bigest possible audience, and a well understood licence). But maybe they don't want to be a major force. So what are their intentions then?

      I'm fully aware Sun already are a major player in the OSS world and release alot of GPL compatible code. And their work on NFS and NIS is golden to all users of *nix software.

  10. dangers of proprietary software by brlewis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If people would use PostgreSQL instead of DB2 and Jetty/JBoss (or other free alternatives) instead of Websphere they could run their apps on just about any OS. Or if they used a free OS, particularly one supported by IBM, they could run their proprietary IBM software. Or run free software on a free OS and be ready for anything.

    1. Re:dangers of proprietary software by pyros · · Score: 1

      The last time I used JBoss I wanted to pulverize the server with a 20 pound sledgehammer. Granted, I think it may have been more the fault of the application we were running in JBoss. Upon starting, the app would bind several random ports, and when a client connected, the app would give the client the local IP address and those random ports. The problem with this is I had the server behind a NAT and couldn't manually tell it the public IP to broadcast. So the only way to use the app was to run it on a publically routable IP address.

    2. Re:dangers of proprietary software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If people would use PostgreSQL instead of DB2 a

      This statement sounds rather altruistic, but it hardly reflects reality.

      If people would use PostgresSQL, most companies' OLTP systems would be thrown, performance-wise, back into the stone ages. No matter how you cut it, DB2 (and some of the other commercial RDBMSs) are simply light years ahead of open source software.

      It's not that people don't want to switch -- they don't even have the choice, because there are literally no free offerings that provide the same level of performance and stability as commercial software, in the DB segment, for many corporations *huge* DBs and *complex* queries.

    3. Re:dangers of proprietary software by diamondsw · · Score: 1

      I am completely talking out of my ass here, but I'm just going to hazard a guess and say that scalability, support, and robustness have something to do with those choices. Not to say PostgreSQL and others aren't great, but they are NOT enterprise-grade.

      --
      I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
    4. Re:dangers of proprietary software by kpharmer · · Score: 4, Informative

      > If people would use PostgresSQL, most companies' OLTP systems would be thrown, performance-wise, back
      > into the stone ages. No matter how you cut it, DB2 (and some of the other commercial RDBMSs) are simply
      > light years ahead of open source software.

      Yeah, there are still many reasons to choose a commercial dbms. Like:

      1. db2 just set the world record for transaction speed - at about 50,000 transactions a second. Last I heard mysql was trumpeting 800 transactions a second with innodb. Not sure about postgresql.

      2. with partitioning, parallelism, and clustering, you can get subsecond response time from db2 *adhoc* queries against tables containing over a terrabyte of data. Postgresql, Mysql, and Firebird aren't even in the ballpark here. Note: mysql "speed" will end up requiring you to index every single column, which will kill your insert speed, double the size of the data, and their optimizer won't use the indexes anyway whenever you want to access more than 5% of the data.

      3. Mature, proven high-availability solutions.

      4. Mature, proven replication solutions.

      5. Cost. Really - cost is a reason (sometimes) to use commercial software. Here's how this works: lets say you've got a critical business problem in which 1 minute of downtime = a loss of $10,000 dollars in revenue. Add to this a development team of 20 people ($1,000,000/year). Add hardware costs ($500,000). Now, that commercial database license may run you $50,000 (vs $500+ mysql, free for postgresql). But $50k is nothing compared to the costs at risk:
      - online changes to db2 vs recycling mysql & postgresql
      - robust ha on db2 vs replication for mysql
      - standard sql functionality & productivity on db2 vs mysql
      - less hardware for db2 than msyql/postgresql to get same performance
      - etc, etc, etc
      So, on a big project where the database is critical - you will actually *save* money going with a commercial database. Well, on large & critical applications anyway.

      6. Consistency: since most organizations will require a commercial database for their most demanding applications - and they can benefit from a complexity reduction by using the same database on all applications. This way they've got just one set of skills to get all dbas on, they can get by with a smaller dba team (read: less labor = less cost), when a new version, patches, etc - they can get up to speed with it much faster, etc.

      Not to say that the open source solutions aren't great: they are, and can pick up much of the database work these days. But there's still a huge case to be made for commercial products - and will be for a while, since the functionality missing in mysql & postgresql needed to compete at the top-end will be very difficult to implement.

    5. Re:dangers of proprietary software by iwadasn · · Score: 1


      I actually always wondered why people don't partition their problem space a little more.

      It seems like it wouldn't be killer to have two DB setups. Have an Oracle or similar setup for the "It has to work, huge volumes of data, must not go down, very difficult queries, etc...." database, and then use Postgres for everything else. Might save a bit of money on some databases, let oracle do what it's really good at (what you're paying for), and let something free and decent clean up the scraps.

    6. Re:dangers of proprietary software by nextdoornerd · · Score: 1
      All of what you said is true, but that's only the "workhorse" aspect of using DB2.

      On the other hand, one should not forget that all members (ok, all known by me) of the whole IBM software offering jungle are ready to be used with DB2 as relational DBMS backing (if such thing is needed). Taking Tivoli, for example: it's DB2 ready out of the box (if you want Oracle... Well, how about some config script decyphering in a temp directory instead of the nice n' shiny config GUI?).

      Well, the same company, so it's not so astonishing :); the point is, if you build your whole software infrastructure from IBM products, integration effort (= cost) will be minimal. And they do have the software palette to make you happy :) And in the case when not, they have vendor-specific integration solutions for the big players. Surely you need a big organization for the IBM-only way to pay off, but hey, the Big Blue nowadays does not care about your next door nerd. Money is in the corporational full-coverage service sector (heh... no, I'm not an IBM sales rep, just a wannabe :)), let the chinese manufacture those cheapo PC-s.

  11. Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's see - will Sun be making the API for their new file system's extra-special features available so that other *nix OSs can support it with their own native file systems?

    No?

    Well, will Sun make their new file system available for other *nix OSs?

    No?

    Well, will Sun have ANY compatibility between Solaris with their new, all-signing-all-dancing file system and any other OS?

    No?

    Then to Sun I say - "SHUT THE FBOMB UP ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S COMPATIBILITY UNTIL YOU ARE COMPATABLE YOURSELF!"

    --
    www.eFax.com are spammers
    1. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by wowbagger · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      No, sir, I do not.

      The idea of the new Solaris ZFS is to export functions to programs - to allow programs to better search the file system.

      That capability will only be available on Solaris - thus rendering any program that uses those features Solaris only.

      A program that is Solaris only is not compatible.

      Sun, by not making at least the API available to other OSs, is encouraging incompatibility.

      Therefore, Sun is not following their own advice to IBM.

      Therefore, they are hypocrites.

      And since you are unable to follow such a chain of reasoning without having it explained to you, and yet you chastize me, you sir, are a moron.

      --
      www.eFax.com are spammers
    2. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by SunFan · · Score: 3, Informative


      ZFS is a core feature of the Solaris 10 kernel. This isn't ./configure;make;make install stuff, people. Please, just stop posting such ignorance.

      And since when has UFS been common across UNIX, BSD, and Linux...never! So why are you complaining, now?!?

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    3. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      XFS used to be a feature of the IRIX kernel, and now it is in Linux. Sun is not [at least at this time] doing the same thig with ZFS. QED.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by wowbagger · · Score: 1
      OK, I'll type slowly so you can understand:

      For normal file systems, the only APIs I need are the standard open/close/read/write supported on all *nix operating systems.

      However, ZFS's big claim to fame is that it will allow extra capabilities - database-like searches and the like.

      These will require APIs above and beyond the standard APIs - APIs that will be Solaris only.

      Now, if you go back and re-read my post, you will see I said:
      Let's see - will Sun be making the API for their new file system's extra-special features available so that other *nix OSs can support it with their own native file systems?


      In other words, will Sun make the new APIs that will be specific to ZFS available to other operating systems, so that if their underlying file system can perform similar operations they can export the same API to userspace, so that, in time, the new APIs Sun is pushing will be as common, and COMPATIBLE, as open/close/read/write?

      Now, I know it is hard for a troll to understand abstract concepts like this, so think really hard - push through the pain, enlightenment is on the other side.

      You see, complaining that IBM is not being compatible, while at the same time trying to lock future programs into being Solaris only by providing non-standard APIs is an example of what is called "hypocrisy" - look it up.

      And moderators - try reading ALL the comments in a thread before moderating. I realise that moderation on /. has been sliding down toward the event horizon for several years, but it is not yet too late to pull back.
      --
      www.eFax.com are spammers
    5. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by Decaff · · Score: 1

      Let's see - will Sun be making the API for their new file system's extra-special features available so that other *nix OSs can support it with their own native file systems?

      No?

      Why should they? Why should developers of other OSs be allowed to sit back lazily and simply pick up the benefits of this product?

      Well, will Sun make their new file system available for other *nix OSs?

      No?

      Why should they?

      Well, will Sun have ANY compatibility between Solaris with their new, all-signing-all-dancing file system and any other OS?

      No?

      This is a bizarre statement. Solaris supports all the standard Unix services, including NFS. It is highly compatible with other Unixes, and has always been. How is a new filesystem supposed to stop that? You can NFS share it for example. With project Janus, you will be able to run Linux binaries on it.

      Then to Sun I say - "SHUT THE FBOMB UP ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S COMPATIBILITY UNTIL YOU ARE COMPATABLE YOURSELF!"

      Don't let facts get in the way of a good rant. Sun has been pushing open systems and compatibility since the 1980s, when they released NFS as an open spec for the Unix community.

    6. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

      I've read a lot about ZFS and I haven't seen anything about new APIs. It sounds more like a better implementation of the standard Unix filesystem APIs to me.

      But since the Solaris 10 man pages are on the Web, feel free to correct me.

    7. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by Decaff · · Score: 1

      In other words, will Sun make the new APIs that will be specific to ZFS available to other operating systems, so that if their underlying file system can perform similar operations they can export the same API to userspace, so that, in time, the new APIs Sun is pushing will be as common, and COMPATIBLE, as open/close/read/write?

      ZFS is part of Solaris 10. Solaris 10 is going to be released as open source, under an OSI-approved licence. The only parts of Solaris that are not going to open sourced is some third party device drivers.

    8. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by Tpenta · · Score: 1

      ZFS (once integrated) will be a part of the code that is being open sourced.

      Would that be sufficiently published?

      Tp.

    9. Re:Dear Sun: Follow your own damn advice! by idlake · · Score: 1

      ZFS is a core feature of the Solaris 10 kernel. This isn't ./configure;make;make install stuff, people. Please, just stop posting such ignorance.

      IBM and SGI managed to make their high-end file systems available in Linux.

      And since when has UFS been common across UNIX, BSD, and Linux...never!

      Not that it matters, but AFAIK, Linux, BSD, and many UNIX vendors do support UFS.

  12. Dear competitor, by stupidfoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Help us make money and give your customers an alternative to your products.

    Thanks,

    Sun

  13. Isn't that a bit... by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .. like griping that M$ does not produce a versions of it's Games, Office suite, Visio toos etc. for Linux? With IBM backing Linux why should they support Solaris? Corporate Wolf bites Corporate Coyote...

    --
    Only to idiots, are orders laws.
    -- Henning von Tresckow
  14. Re:One difference... by Allen+Zadr · · Score: 1
    No, he's a crack pot...

    duh.

    --
    Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
  15. Slightly Off Topic by blackmonday · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At this point, it makes more sense for IBM to port their applications to OS X. Now that they supply the CPU for Apple's server hardware, there's a strong case to be made for this.

    If WSAD were ever ported to OS X, my boss would be placing a nice order for xServes and powermacs on the Apple website.

    1. Re:Slightly Off Topic by greed · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In 1993, IBM provided the compilers for Apple's new hardware. For a while, Apple Workgroup Servers were merely RS/6000s running AIX with an Apple logo on the front panel.

      Rumor has it, at one point IBM was going to port their XL C++ (C Set ++ by then) compiler to Mac OS. (That was, of course, way before OS X, so it would be a massive user interface and library effort--the actual code gen for PowerPC 604 was already complete, for the RS/6000s.)

      So, yeah, IBM and Apple have been surprisingly close for a while now. With BSD and X11, I don't know why they don't do a quick build of a lot of their apps--instantly add a new target market. Sure, Cocoa is nicer, but X11 is there and it works and you'll be done.

      Of course, I do know from experience that IBM is very reluctant to do a "90%" solution--one that works for 90% of the target customers. They'll kill themselves trying to get that last 10% of function, and spend so much time at it that the 90% has gone to some other vendor, the market has changed, and now no-one cares.

    2. Re:Slightly Off Topic by willCode4Beer.com · · Score: 1

      Not to troll but....
      This site:
      http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_ stats.a sp
      *suggests* that Linux has a higher share of desktops than Apple.
      You can take stats however you want.
      Of course, they may also look at the stereotype that suggests Linux users are more likely to be developers than Mac users. So, even if the stats don't hold up, it does look like the way to target more developers.
      OTH, since WSAD is basically Eclipse, and Eclipse is avail for the Mac I can't think of a good reason not to do the extra leg work and add a Mac version.
      Of course, to inadvertantly support Sun's position. Eclipse is already supported for Solaris........

      --
      ----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
    3. Re:Slightly Off Topic by nocutename · · Score: 1

      IBM announced a MacOS X version of their XL C/C++ v6.0 compiler (with supposedly more/better G5 optimization than gcc v3.3) about a year ago. The announcement letter is here.

  16. IBM is a "service" company, right? by Speare · · Score: 3, Interesting
    IBM is trying to be a "service" company. That means that, if you pay them enough, they'll support CheeseWiz(tm) on Solaris 10. Not too likely that Sun will pay IBM enough to get industry-wide support, but many little companies might strike up a contract if they saw it as worthwhile.

    Of course, IBM still has strong roots as a "hardware" company. What's IBM's incentive to rewrite their software (little profit) on Sun's hardware (no profit)? Not a whole lot of incentive there.

    --
    [ .sig file not found ]
    1. Re:IBM is a "service" company, right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What's IBM's incentive to rewrite their software (little profit) on Sun's hardware (no profit)? Not a whole lot of incentive there.

      Not exactly. IBM is making a lot of money selling DB2 and WebSphere.

      Moreover, that's not about "rewrite" but rather porting to Solaris OS. I'm sure IBM folks know how to port without a rewrite.

      On the other hand, I'm even more sure that IBM folks considered these ports and decided (so far) not to go there.

    2. Re:IBM is a "service" company, right? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Tivoli is expensive software. Some installations cost the company more than US$10M. Many of those multi-million-dollar contracts would not have happened at all without Solaris support. Selling out to IBM was good for Tivoli's officers but lousy for its customers.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  17. Remind me... by filesiteguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...how many Sun OS products I can run on my z-series mainframe...?

    --
    The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
  18. Re:Sun's President and CEO, Jonathan Schwartz by wikinerd · · Score: 1

    here you can see who is who in Sun.

  19. Dear Sun (From IBM) by ausoleil · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Dear Mr. Schwartz,
    Apparently you have not read your own literature. I refer you to the web page at

    http://www.sun.com/2004-0803/feature/

    In which you state:

    "3.Aug.04--Customers who want the stability and security of the Solaris Operating System and the flexibility to also use Linux applications won't have to wait much longer. The forthcoming Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) will include a remarkable new feature that allows customers to run Linux applications unchanged on the Solaris OS. By enabling this functionality, code-named Project Janus, administrators can create an environment for running a range of Linux applications at near-native speeds. Sun is offering Project Janus as an optional kernel service of the Solaris OS, enabling administrators to run Linux applications in a new and unique way on x86 platforms. In keeping with Sun's long-standing support of industry standards, Project Janus is designed for compliance with the Linux Standard Base specification.

    Ergo, if your version of *Nix was as compatible as you claim, there is no issue at all.

    Thanks for taking the time to write, and while I have your attention, how are efforts to open Java for improvements by the open source community coming?

    Signed,
    IBM

    1. Re:Dear Sun (From IBM) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It is quite likely that some components of those products are written in assembler rather than any high level language. It is also likely that they assume Solaris->Big Endian in places where it matters.

      Even if this is not true, they would need to recompile and then fully test the products on the new architecture before they would agree to support it formally.

      It might be that Sun's vaunted Linux compatability isn't a steaming pile and in fact the Linux/intel versions of all these products will work out of the box, but I doubt it.

      Standards generally have holes, and those holes are filled with different filler on different architectures. Even on Debian there are programs which are more than just a recompile away from working on architectures other than those they work on now.

    2. Re:Dear Sun (From IBM) by Cyno · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and he also called IBM a pickle a while back. Why would they want to deal with someone who acts as childish as Jonathan Schwartz? He'd probably throw a tantrum if things didn't go his way.

    3. Re:Dear Sun (From IBM) by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Who would certify a software product on a beta of an OS that they couldn't control the changes in?

      It's bad enough to certify it on a final version that will certainly be patch (Note that patches frequently break programs.), but to certify it on a beta version would be incomprehensibly stupid. You can be practically guaranteed that it WILL be changed.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  20. not yesterday!!! by netdur · · Score: 1

    Posted ... January 24, "yesterday published an Open Letter" and at OSnews http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=9478/
    Posted ... on 2005-01-22

    --
    "Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
  21. Linux binaries by grahamsz · · Score: 1

    Should run on Solaris but i'm not sure if this is just on Solaris 10 x86 or whether it applies to sparc too.

    However even if you can run IBMs linux binaries on Solaris that doesn't mean they are "supported" it only means that they work.

  22. Sure Sign of Desperation? by big-giant-head · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I mean Sun Created Java and they don't have a credible Java app server (I know iPlanet with it's whopping 2% market share) the big boys are Wepshere, BEA, Oracle and Jboss......

    If Sun wants all this then they need open up java, and try to make Solaris more compaible with 3rd party products (JBoss anyone). It's more than hypocritical, it shows there is some desperation on Suns part. The Ultra-Sparc line is Ultra Slow and Ultra priced. If IBM were to start turning out PowerPC based Risc Boxes running Linux, would Sun even be relevant? I know about all of Solaris's great OS features, but how long will it take Linux to catch up? Especially with the other big boys pushing linux.

    Now add to that these new Cell CPU's IBM & Sony are making. A Linux Server with a big cluster of Cell processors, Sun Who??

    --

    So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
    1. Re:Sure Sign of Desperation? by mydrh · · Score: 1
      If IBM were to start turning out PowerPC based Risc Boxes running Linux, would Sun even be relevant?
      Ask, and you shall have.
      IBM goes after Intel, AMD with Linux-only server
    2. Re:Sure Sign of Desperation? by SunFan · · Score: 1

      A Linux Server with a big cluster of Cell processors, Sun Who??

      Sun is coming out with their own stuff: Niagara and Rock.

      This Cell, Niagara, (whatever Intel comes up with) hype is largely just the next generation of massively-multi-core CPUs. Their marketing materials will make you think each company is the first the best and the most awesomest for people to latch onto.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
  23. "Calls Out"? by GoofyBoy · · Score: 1


    Is there going to be some sort of dance rumble for street cred?

    --
    The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
  24. just say please :) by urbieta · · Score: 1

    just say please :)

    or else junst mention IBM's application alternatives like apache, mysql and so forth...

    maybe even java? heh

    1. Re:just say please :) by dipipanone · · Score: 1

      Perhaps they should get their partners in crime over at the SCO group to help out?

      They're a UNIX software house, aren't they? Surely they should be able to produce all of the apps that SUN needs?

      <pregnant pause>

      Bwahahahahahahahah!

  25. no recoding by micromuncher · · Score: 1

    Ok... it its binary compat as the letter states, why is a simple recompile required?

    --
    /\/\icro/\/\uncher
    1. Re:no recoding by tu_holmes · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you re-read the post, the SPARC has binary compatibility.

      You have to recompile the source for x86. Once it's compiled, as long as you're running "x86", then you should never need to recompile your code.

      The binary compatibility is the sparc advantage. I can take a piece of software written for Solaris 2.6 and run it today on Solaris 9 or 10 (I do this actually). That sparc compatiblity is why some people really do still buy Sun SPARC servers.

      As far as other items people have mentioned.

      Yes, Sparc is slower that x86 in a lot of things, but it still scales upward to 128 CPUs which is a "little" more than x86 does.

      SPARC is very good, but it's not for everything, and it's expensive.

      If you need LOTS of horsepower on one box, and you need lots of multiple threads, then SPARC beats the pants off of most other architectures (maybe not Power5), but definitely x86 in that arena.

      x86 scales "out" with multiple servers in an HPC. While SPARC scales "up" with multiple CPUs in a server... That's the biggest difference.

  26. Re:why is this front-page by Thundersnatch · · Score: 1

    Okay, I deserverd that nearly instantaneous Troll mod. It's Monday morning, and I apologize for being a bit cranky.

  27. Sunset by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Schwartz has to throw his weight around while he can, as he drives his company into the Sunset. Maybe if letterware like this produces enough derision in the industry, he'll get the axe faster than you can say "Gilbert Amelio". And Sun might have a chance to churn Solaris tech into the kind of superstable Linux that IBM produces by hybridization with AIX.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Sunset by Decaff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Schwartz has to throw his weight around while he can, as he drives his company into the Sunset...And Sun might have a chance to churn Solaris tech into the kind of superstable Linux that IBM produces by hybridization with AIX.

      So, a personal attack on someone followed by nonsense about Solaris being unstable compared with Linux is modded 'insightful'? Must be some strange new definition of the word I have never encountered.

    2. Re:Sunset by Decaff · · Score: 1

      The word you need to learn is "churn". Here's some help: I'm talking about stabilizing Linux by adding Solaris tech, which is superstable.

      In your post you did not say that Solaris was stable. You said used the phrase 'superstable Linux'. There is an implication there, even if you did not intend it. Of course Sun is already working on providing Linux support. Project Janus will allow linux binaries to run natively on Solaris.

      IBM has a good reason to use Linux, and it is nothing to do with open source support or stability - its that IBM needs a common Unix-type platform for all its hardware. Linux is used in that role. Sun has virtually always had a single
      OS on whatever hardware it has supported.

      Oh, and "personal attack" means criticizing a person's actions which are irrelevant to their argument, unlike my criticizing Schwartz for throwing his weight around at competitors, rather than leading his own company in technology or marketing.

      I would not call using the phrase 'throwing weight around' and mentioning 'derision' criticising a person's actions. You don't mention any actions.

      Schwartz has been one of the main people driving Sun's support for AMD hardware and the open-sourcing of Solaris.

  28. Abandoned of x86 Sun systems to blame.. by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 1

    I think they are getting hurt again from the time Sun tried to sell x86 Solaris machines and then abandoned ship without so much as a good bye we're sorry.

    This has seriously pissed off Intel which has since been making trying to beat Sun into hamburger. Maybe some companies have a long memory. Strange as that may seem.

    sri

    1. Re:Abandoned of x86 Sun systems to blame.. by javaxman · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I think they are getting hurt again from the time Sun tried to sell x86 Solaris machines and then abandoned ship without so much as a good bye we're sorry.

      This has seriously pissed off Intel which has since been making trying to beat Sun into hamburger. Maybe some companies have a long memory. Strange as that may seem.

      More than the companies having memories, I'll have to chime in that it's the people who haven't forgotten Sun's failure to support x86. I mean, I'd have given Solaris x86 a moment or two of consideration in 1997, when Linux was less mature and OS X was nowhere to be seen... but now ? Why bother ? What's the advantage, and can Sun be trusted not to drop support again if it thinks it's not making money, especially when it really needs to make money ?

      Solaris x86 needs a real, good, strong selling point. What is it?

      As far as Intel wanting to beat Sun, no, I think they haven't worried about Sun for years, they hardly compete in the same market, really, they have bigger fish to fry, and that fish is called AMD...

      It's IBM that's gunning for Sun's market, and _that_ is a really good reason for Sun to be scared.

    2. Re:Abandoned of x86 Sun systems to blame.. by Decaff · · Score: 1

      Sun be trusted not to drop support again if it thinks it's not making money, especially when it really needs to make money ?

      Sun still provides patches for Solaris 2.5!

      Sun is back in profit, and has a huge cash reserve (it could have continued making a loss for a decade and remained viable).

      Solaris x86 needs a real, good, strong selling point. What is it?

      It is rock-solid, and very mature. It is of sufficient quality to be used for the most critical applications. It has very high-quality tools for management and support.

    3. Re:Abandoned of x86 Sun systems to blame.. by javaxman · · Score: 1
      Sun still provides patches for Solaris 2.5!

      That's not the kind of support I'm talking about, and I think you know it. It's hard to find a story about it now, but there was a time, right when Sun should have been pushing Solaris x86 as hard as possible, when Sun stopped active development of Solaris x86.

      I'm not arguing that Solaris x86 isn't robust, or high quality. Hell, I was a big fan of Solaris x86 ( and worked at Sun ) back in the day.

      I'm saying that now, unlike several years ago, there are other inexpensive operating systems with good tools and support which one might decide to turn to. Namely Linux ( or x86 or PPC use ) or OS X ( if you want turnkey hardware and commercial desktop GUI apps ). Several companies are strongly committed to the first, and Apple seems very committed to the second.

      Sun has a history of not caring so much about Solaris x86. It will be very difficult for them to overcome that, sadly.

      Sun is back in profit, and has a huge cash reserve (it could have continued making a loss for a decade and remained viable).

      Sun does appear to be doing a bit better, but not _that_ much better. They still need to be making money, and I understand people who might be nervous that Sun could decide Solaris x86 isn't making money, and halt it's active development again...

    4. Re:Abandoned of x86 Sun systems to blame.. by Decaff · · Score: 1

      That's not the kind of support I'm talking about, and I think you know it.

      I do find it annoying when posters assume to know what I am thinking.

      The kind of support I assumed you were talking about was the kind of support that companies like Microsoft doesn't provide, but Unix companies generally do: Very long term support for security and patches. The kind of companies who are after high-end Unix boxes aren't necessarily after an improvement in feature set on a month-by-month basis. They are after a system that will stay up and running, and will remain patched and secure for years, or even potentially decades.

      Active development is not the issue - its long-term active support. That is why I would choose and recommend Solaris in some situations.

  29. Linux on a POWER chip; check. by mekkab · · Score: 1

    If IBM were to start turning out PowerPC based Risc Boxes running Linux,

    Where have you been?! IBM has been touting LINUX along with AIX5L (thats what the "L" stands for!) for over two years.

    P.S.- we played around with Sun's app server... it blows. Chunks.

    --
    In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
    1. Re:Linux on a POWER chip; check. by big-giant-head · · Score: 1

      I should've made my point better. iplanet has blown chunks since it's inception in 1999. 5 - 6 years and Sun can't make an appserver better than JBoss??

      I knew about AIX -L , but i had never heard an confirmation officially that L stood for linux. If so that's very cool.

      --

      So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
    2. Re:Linux on a POWER chip; check. by TheToon · · Score: 1

      The L in AIX 5L means Linux Affinity. It just means that libraries, compilers etc are available so you can ./configure&&make&&make install your linux source.

      --
      //TheToon
    3. Re:Linux on a POWER chip; check. by mekkab · · Score: 1

      The AIX 5 cds come with a "Tools for Linux."

      I was at the USER BLUE Share conference a year and a half ago (in Washington, DC) with lots of IBM reps who could only say "LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX!" (actually, thats not true. They said "SUSE" as well...)

      Also- THEY don't sell you the LINUX, they get you in touch with SUSE who sells you the linux (blah blah blah liability). But the net effect is you running LINUX on a 615. Not bad.

      --
      In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
    4. Re:Linux on a POWER chip; check. by avanha · · Score: 1

      The sun app server has always blown. I can't beleive they actually used to charge 80K for it.

      I haven't used it since they renamed it to Sun ONE. Did they re-write it then or is still the same repackaged piece of shit that it was when it was called iPlanet or Netscape Application Server?

      That product was good for its time back when it was called the Kiva server, when it supported both Java and C++, before J2EE came on the scene. But that was a long time ago.

  30. Re:IBM.... by KiltedKnight · · Score: 3, Informative
    That's because, once upon a time, when it came to business computing, IBM was top dog. In the 1970's, when you needed a system, you went to IBM... not because they were the best, but because they provided a service contract. If your machine died, one phone call had at least one, if not several, IBM folks at your site, digging through your hardware, trying to diagnose the problem. Or it had several IBM folk sitting back at their offices, searching the OS or other application code for the problem, based on the diagnostic information you sent them. A friend of mine worked for IBM during the 1960's and 1970's, then was a consultant on IBM systems after that for many years. He's told me this several times: What got IBM top marks was their service reputation. In the corporate environment, stability and uptime/system availability are two of the biggest issues.

    You are correct, however, that they made several bad business decisions... like considering the PC a "passing fad."

    --
    OCO is Loco
  31. Translation: by Garg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "My OS is becoming irrelevant! Lots more stuff runs on Linux! Save me, IBM!!!"

    Seriously, IBM will port their software if they can make more money selling the Solaris versions than it cost to port and support. That's it.

    IBM may show largesse toward open source, but that's because they view it as strategic. Solaris isn't strategic for them, no matter how much Schwartz may wish it so.

    Garg

    --
    Garg
    Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
    1. Re:Translation: by Non+Est+Tanti · · Score: 1

      I think your second point about being strategic is more important than and overrides your first. Maybe IBM could make some profit by porting but if it's not part of its strategic vision, then it probably won't happen.

    2. Re:Translation: by Garg · · Score: 1

      I don't see the second point as overriding the first. IBM considers open-source strategic in that, in the long run, they will make money from it (mostly by their service arm assembling 'solutions' for clients). Solaris fits neither the short-term (sell software at a profit) nor long-term (sell solutions based on it).

      Garg

      --
      Garg
      Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
    3. Re:Translation: by SunFan · · Score: 1

      "My OS is becoming irrelevant! Lots more stuff runs on Linux! Save me, IBM!!!"

      Hardly. Sun sells more UNIX than anyone else on the planet--even a lot more than IBM. They are about as irrelevant in the server space as Microsoft is in the desktop space.

      --
      -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
    4. Re:Translation: by Mojo+Trolljo · · Score: 3, Insightful
      You are exactly right. Just to add..

      Sun makes it sound like a simple recompile is all that is needed. Of course this is NOT the case if your software is sufficiently advanced like DB2. Secondly, a port requires a new set of tools which means a new set of unknown problems just waiting to be discovered (from the OS, to the compiler, to libc which if it were really worth much in terms of performance would have been hand-coded in assembly anyway and prone to bugs when going from sparc to x86!)

      That's just porting... nevermind testing, packaging, documenting, supporting, maintaining. This costs $$ in terms of hardware and employees.

      If Sun were serious about their "anti-competitive" allegations towards IBM, pony up the hardware and $$$ IBM needs to do the ports so that IBM can at least re-coup its development costs. What's it going to cost $5M, $10M? If Sun were serious, and lack of IBM software were truly an inhibitor to their sales, they should consider this an investment.

      --
      This post was made by I, Mojo Trolljo, for you to read that was written by I who is Mojo Trolljo!
    5. Re:Translation: by Prothonotar · · Score: 1

      Except that Microsoft actually makes money.

      SUNW's profit margin (trailing twelve months): -0.94%; MSFT's: 21.38%.

      --
      "Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
    6. Re:Translation: by burns210 · · Score: 1

      Actually it is more accurately like:

      "My OS is binary compatible with Linux, and can run your Linux software without a porblem. My OS also happens to be highly scalable, secure, Trusted and reliable. Why the FUCK are you deliberatly not recognizing My OS as being able to run your software?"

      Solaris 10 is BINARY compatible with Linux, it doesn't need a massive port to run, minor, if any, modifications. The real problem hear is the IBM just doesn't want "Solaris 10" as being a supported platform, even if it works fine on there.

  32. Apples != Oranges by HP-UX'er · · Score: 1

    Jonathan is complaining about IBM not _supporting_ those products in Solaris 10, not whether the run on Solaris 10 or not, I'm pretty sure they do. If I were IBM, I would not publicly support a competitor's beta product either.

  33. Next step - LiveJournal by khasim · · Score: 5, Funny
    Then: teenage girls arguing with each other via blogs
    Now: CEOS of multi-million dollar corporations arguing with each other via blogs /Emma Bunton
    Tomorrow - CIEIO's with LiveJournal accounts.

    "iBM iz such loosers. i not let them on my Freinds list. ha ha! i tell them to port DB2 and i might think about it. Loosers. Sam will not tell me my poetry sux N E more now. i write what i feel. i want to ask the Q T girl out but i am shy. Maybe i will send her some of my poetry. iBM better port WebSphere 2 or i still keep them off my Freinds list. ha ha! Take that you loosers!"
  34. Easy come-back by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Funny

    IBM should simply say, "We don't feel it in our best interest to begin supporting a dying product.", and leave it at that.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  35. forgot the ps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the fact that we funded 50% of sco's attack on you, please disregard that. We decided to buy a $25 million dollar license for the first time last year. The fact that we never bought a license prior to their confidential inquiries and confidential plans to sue you that they showed us as a basis for us to take the license...disregard that also.

    We had nothing to do with the lawsuit (other than funding them just enough to last several years in court), it was a license for their code. Really.

    Thanks again,

    Sun.

    1. Re:forgot the ps by Shag · · Score: 1

      Sun bought device drivers from SCO? Wow. I admin an SCO OpenSewer box (don't worry, it's only a couple months away from retirement) and find the idea that SCO would have device drivers worth buying, or indeed that SCO would even know the difference between "device driver" and "deposition," amusing.

      --
      Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  36. As far as I recall... by WillerZ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...IBM has never issued letters of support for a non-IBM platform which does not yet exist. Why should that be different for Solaris 10?

    --
    I guess today is a passable day to die.
  37. Having Worked At IBM by FireIron · · Score: 1

    ...the Product Managers of the named products would probably very much like to support Solaris, but can't get approval from their superiors to purchase any Sun h/w or s/w licenses to compile and test on.

  38. 100% secure by drxray · · Score: 1

    Of course an unreleased OS is the most secure ever - it's never been exploited! Even OpenBSD can't say that...

    --
    Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
  39. Most secure OS the world has ever seen??? by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 1

    Wow. So Sun is releasing a port of OpenBSD :)

    --
    This guy is way out there
    1. Re:Most secure OS the world has ever seen??? by WillerZ · · Score: 1

      Or they've licensed MVS.

      --
      I guess today is a passable day to die.
  40. A bad joke by Baldrson · · Score: 1, Insightful
    So let's see, first we have in 1998 82% of the public opposing expansion of H-1b vias while we have Sun making huge campaign contributions and getting a big expansion of the H-1b visa program anyway.

    Then we have Sun CEO Scott McNealy complaining before congress in 2000 that, "We already half way through the fiscal year, capped out on the number of really bright Israelis and Indians.". He gets more and more H-1b visas allocated.

    Then we have Sun's stock going from above $60/share to below $3/share.

    And now Sun is complaining about something else and we're supposed to consider this "news that matters"?

    --
    Seastead this.
  41. Not Supported Doesn' Mean Won't Run by FJ · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've dealt with IBM Software in the past. They typically lag behind in their "official" supported platforms because they need to go through a lot of tests to validate their software works as designed. When I've run into issues like this they simply say "it may work, but we haven't tested it enough yet".

    That is why they pick a flavor (or two) of Linux as supported instead of saying "we support Linux". Other distros will probably work, but they only have so much time to validate & test. For a long time WebSphere (at least on z/Series hardware) was only supported on a 2.2 kernel. It ran fine on 2.4, but it wasn't officially supported.

    That being said, if you do have a problem and you have a support contract IBM will work with you to solve the issue, but they don't like to make gurantees about unsupported hardware / software interacting with their stuff.

  42. Ah yes.... by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    Their Java support for linux has been stellar. Likewise, their backing of Linux on Sparc has also been wonderful. I can call them up, and get full backing on their systems.
    What do you mean no?

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  43. Corporate Bussiness Culture? by Maljin+Jolt · · Score: 1

    Schwartz refers first to the "long history of partnering" between Sun and IBM, and claims Sun customers have made repeated calls to IBM about having the choice to run IBM products on Solaris 10.

    There are several possible logic interpretations of that foggy statement:

    possibility #1: Some Sun customers found Solaris lacking features and wanted to run those same superior IBM solutions as do their competitors.

    possibility #2: Some IBM customers wishing to defect to Solaris on cheapo hardware, but are not sufficiently brave to say that to IBM eyes to eyes. So they used Mr. Schwartz as herold.

    possibility #3: Mr. Schwartz tries to save dying Solaris desperately by generating some media PR/FUD at all costs. Slashdot comes handy for such task, as usually.

    possibility #4: Sun is negotiating secretly with IBM about monetary compensation for future opening of Java. Mr. Schwartz suggests they would accept some customers instead of cash. On really big markets, customers are commodity, you know...

    possibility #5: Mr. Schwartz used to write on his blog after a very long long drinking party.

    possibility #6: All of the above.

    --
    There you are, staring at me again.
    1. Re:Corporate Bussiness Culture? by brunogirin · · Score: 1

      Possibility #7: Some customers actually WANT to run IBM software on Solaris boxes because it is the simplest setup for their needs. We have quite a lot of Sun/Solaris hardware in house, basically most of our servers, because they are extremely reliable and our IT staff know Solaris inside out. However, we need to run WebSphere on those boxes because some of our customers want to deploy the J2EE applications we sell on WebSphere so we have to test on WebSphere.

  44. Re: Linux binaries - only x86 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I stand corrected:
    http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lx run/

  45. Re:I had issues.. by Macrat · · Score: 1

    No, you'll be marked as a troll because you can import any STANDARD format into iTunes which will then upload to the iPod.

  46. The real deal by codepunk · · Score: 4, Funny

    IBM to SUN: We want you to Open Source Java
    Sun to IBM: Get Bent we are keeping it to ourselves

    Few months goes by ...

    SUN to IBM: Please oh Please make your stuff run
    on slowarus.
    IBM to SUN: Get Bent we are keeping it to ourselves.

    See how simple things are!

    --


    Got Code?
    1. Re:The real deal by oxygene2k2 · · Score: 1

      java is open source for years now, and java5 got a pretty neat license, too.

      http://java.sun.com/j2se/jrl_download.html

    2. Re:The real deal by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      no, not years, this license is a new thing.

    3. Re:The real deal by oxygene2k2 · · Score: 1

      the CPL is a Free (caps-F, libre, GNU, FSF, "hippie", "commie", you name it) license, too (according to the FSF), and still not GPL compatible.
      being "GPL incompatible" is not a problem in itself (it might even be a strength)

    4. Re:The real deal by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      java5? how did we get from 2 to 5 without 3 or 4?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:The real deal by oxygene2k2 · · Score: 1

      similar to the way they got to 2:
      java1.2=java2
      java1.5=java5

      marketing stuff (and yes, 1.5 would actually warrant a new major number, for the generics are quite some change)

    6. Re:The real deal by javatips · · Score: 1

      The same way that :
      - Windows 3.11 got to 95
      - dBase got to II without ever going to I
      - Netscape 4.8 got to Netscape 6.0
      - ...

    7. Re:The real deal by k98sven · · Score: 2, Informative

      Java is not open source any more than Microsoft's "shared source" is open source.

      Neither java's new license or their old license qualify as Open Source under the OSI definition.

      The license Sun is now using for Solaris does qualify under the OSI definition, and this has also been verified by the OSI.

      Despite previous ramblings from Mr Schwartz claiming that Java is open source, it's pretty obvious from their different licenses that Sun knows what 'open source' really means.

      So why don't you?

  47. oh and... by mydigitalself · · Score: 1

    PS. And please put a frikking Windows key on your ThinkPads.

    1. Re:oh and... by mz001b · · Score: 1
      PS. And please put a frikking Windows key on your ThinkPads.

      Please DON'T -- I'll pay more for a Thinkpad without that stupid key.

    2. Re:oh and... by Flashpot · · Score: 1
      Get over it. The Windows key is a microsoft extension of the standard keyboard.

      IBM is clearly moving away from the Wintel duopoly. It is not in IBM's best interest to promote Windows by supporting microsoft-specific extensions to the keyboard.

      /rant

      --
      That which does not kill her only prolongs my agony.
    3. Re:oh and... by narcc · · Score: 1

      Just hit Ctrl+Esc -- if you just can't stand pointing devices...

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
    4. Re:oh and... by avanha · · Score: 1

      What about WindowsKey+E or M? Since microsoft buried the explorer, it's a convenient way to avoid having to put a link in the quick launch bar.

      Hell, the windows key is even useful in Linux.

      Besides their Thinkpads are designed for Windows. Do they even officialy support an alternative OS? They have no excuse.

  48. Solaris now a niche OS by amightywind · · Score: 1

    Solaris is now an obscure niche platform. IBM doesn't support VAX VMS either, but no one complains. If it made financial sense for IBM to support Solaris they would. This rant is only a futher sign of the waning of Sun in the marketplace.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
  49. Both Solaris Customers... by Onimaru · · Score: 1

    ...desperately want to run as little Sun software as possible! Help us, IBM!

    Seriously, does anyone take Sun seriously anymore? Bad prices, complete sellout, ancient repackaged ugly technology, and second-rate hardware? Sign me up!

    --
    adam b.
  50. IBM's response to SUN by frkiii · · Score: 1

    Fuck off and die!

  51. Wow. by Raven42rac · · Score: 1

    Sun is getting pretty desperate. Are they gonna pull a SCO next?

    --
    I hate sigs.
  52. Yes, but Sun will not survive. by reporter · · Score: 1
    If Sun made Solaris compatible with Linux, then application development will quickly migrate from Solaris to Linux. Linux has significant momentum over Solaris. Software developers would develop exclusively on the Linux platform and compile their applications on Solaris only as an afterthought.

    Schwartz' letter smacks of someone who is desparate and who thinks that Sun's hardware business will shrivel and die. In Schwartz' mind, in order to survive, Sun must grow its software business by using the Microsoft model. Namely, Sun locks people into Solaris, then with a captive audience, Sun charges monopoly profits for Solaris upgrades and exclusive Sun applications like StarOffice.

    The big clue is the disappointing financial report from last quarter for Sun. Revenue actually fell. Sun hardware is simply not competitive with IBM hardware or, even, HP hardware. Since Sun still largely depends on hardware revenue, Sun must quickly ramp up its sotware business and service business. Otherwise, Sun as a company will die along with its hardware division.

    Note that Sun is expected to lose money in the remaining 2 quarters of its fiscal year.

    For whom does the bell toll? It tolls for Sun.

    1. Re:Yes, but Sun will not survive. by zorro6 · · Score: 1

      Come on. No one is locked into Solaris. Everything available on Solaris is available on other platforms. StarOffice is the same as OpenOffice. Some of us use Solaris because it is better than Linux. It is simply a better OS for large multi-threaded, multi-process applications. Things like process robust mutexes, real lightwieght threads, etc. make Solaris better (for now at least). Yes Sun is probably dying and the hardware is not really competitive. But it would be a shame to see a very high quality, highly tuned and efficient OS like Solaris die so we can all move to another lowest common denominator OS like Linux or Windows.

    2. Re:Yes, but Sun will not survive. by EDSdrone · · Score: 1

      The cost of Sun/Solaris is insignificant in relation to the cost of overall service delivery. Having used Windows, Linux and Sun servers over the years in a large scale production environment the choice is simple, and Solaris/SUN win for what I'm involved with, that means webserver, Application server, and Database functionality. I'd rather be supporting these systems, because when put together correctly they simply do not go wrong. Getting a Solaris Admin *usually* means you get someone who knows what they're doing, whilst a Linux SysAdmin could be any tinkerer, with windows techs, from where I sit, you're looking at so many monkeys.

  53. mod him funny!! by flibberdi · · Score: 1

    He gotta be kidding... the last trick (well actually not the last...) sun did was to support SCO in their attack on IBM, I say, mod him funny or is he just trolling?? I'm sure someone here already wrote this, but I am to lazy to read through the posts.

  54. Re:The only thing open about Sun... by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

    *attempts to start fanfare*

    (no, that wasn't meant to be facecious)
    (no, i cant spell long words)

  55. Sun is an enemy by SQLz · · Score: 1

    Although sun has many products that run on Linux, overall I view them as an enemy to the Linux community. Thats just my opinion. They have this 'Now we love Linux, now we don't' attitude that bothers me and they are also butt buddies with Microsoft and SCO now so, to me, they can't be trusted.

    I appeciate Java and OO but those apps running on Linux help Sun just as much as they help Linux,if not more. It just seems to me that everything they do has some alterior motive.

  56. IBM makes a fortune selling software by nzkoz · · Score: 1

    IBM isn't a service company, they're a sales company. They'll sell anything if there's a buck in it.As for their software business, it's incredibly profitable. Websphere goes for millions of dollars and suckers line up to buy it.

    Don't buy IBM's propaganda, they're a big evil closed-source software company just like the others.

    --
    Cheers Koz
  57. Hypocrites by rastin · · Score: 1

    Yeah, come on IBM why don't you support Solaris like Java supports Free BSD?

  58. My Open Letter to Jonathan Schwartz by PickyH3D · · Score: 1
    Lose the ponytail.

    The end.

    Regards, Picky

  59. Linux already has dynamic trace -- from IBM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Richard Moore of IBM's Linux Technology Center has already provided a dynamic probe and trace capability that was developed by IBM. Several papers and presentations are here

    1. Re:Linux already has dynamic trace -- from IBM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      ..but is it as powerful as DTrace? Sun employees|advocates|zealots claim no remotely similar feature in Linux is as powerful as DTrace.

  60. WHAT? by tofu2go · · Score: 1

    when did Schwartz become CEO of Sun? did McNealy get ousted without me knowing?

  61. Has anyone ever wondered ..... by NDPTAL85 · · Score: 1

    ... that if Sun's executives stopped writting such long and such a prolific amount of mindless and pointless blog entries and more time spent RUNNING THE DAMN COMPANY that Sun might be doing better than it is?

    --
    Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
  62. Re:One difference... by null+etc. · · Score: 1
    I personally know Kevin Bacon, so I'm sure somewhere down the line, one of my friend's friends personally knows Sam Palmisano.

    I have no idea who Sam Paisano is, on the other hand.

  63. What he really meant to say: by chuckfee · · Score: 1

    Dear IBM:

    Please buy us so I can have job in 12 months.

  64. He's COO, not CEO by ulrikp · · Score: 1

    The text mistakenly says Schwartz is CEO of Sun, he's "only" COO.

    --
    Database engine for analyzed or annotated text
  65. How real is the demand ? by Builder · · Score: 1

    Sun says that customers are demanding it, but I wonder how real that demand is...

    I know for a fact that Sun have sent letters to some customers asking them to ask ISVs about support for solaris 10. From what I can tell, this is to try and create the illusion of a grassroots movement where none exists.

    So in light of this, how much of this 'demand' is actually real, and how much of it is Sun customers doing what Sun tell them in the hopes of a more favourable relationship when their support contract comes up for renewal ?

  66. Poor IBM. by chroot_james · · Score: 1

    They ruined Linux (SCO proved it, remember? ;) and now they've ruined Solaris. WHAT NEXT?! WINDOWS?!?!

    --
    Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
  67. Very Long Memories... by OS24Ever · · Score: 1

    ...Some corps are like a credit rating, they never forget. I mean try and sell an xSeires server from IBM to someone and you inevitably hear 'Microchannel', 'IBM Proprietary' and an 'OS/2' for good measure.

    --

    As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.

  68. What Top Secret Spooky Types Run by Shag · · Score: 2, Informative
    Basically, if you run Solaris 10, you are pretty much getting the same system run by Top Secret spooky types.
    But... but... I thought the Top Secret spooky types were running their own Linux distro? And... haven't their "additional features" largely been made available to all of us?

    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  69. Jonathan and his Blog by chris_mahan · · Score: 1

    First, whatever happen to black font, Mr Schwartz?

    I read his blog fairly often, and he's got insights, sometimes, but way too much marketese and "We're the greatest" lines in there.

    I quote: "As you're no doubt aware, Sun is set to ship the newest release of our Solaris operating system, Solaris 10. It's the most secure OS the world has ever seen - bringing mainframe features, like logical partitioning, to every platform on which it runs."

    * WTF? set to ship? it's not shipping yet?
    * The most secure OS the world has ever seen? Not looking very hard are we? Besides, the customer will decide.
    * Logical partitioning. didn't linux already bring that a while back?

    More quotes: "They love that we can run linux apps unmodified"
    * Yeah, but why not run them on linux?

    I quote again:
    "A strategy to trap them into IBM's proprietary Power5 platform only."
    * IBM is a FOR PROFIT company. They are better at the Profit part that Sun is too. Don't blame them for knowing how to make money. Sun should learn from IBM.
    * Trap them? As ESR so eloquently put it, GPL Java.

    Another point on "They love that we can run linux apps unmodified."
    Ah, so what about all those Solaris Apps everyone is dying to run... Oh, that's right, they're Java apps, and they should run everywhere, because that was the promise, except not on my debian boxes, because it's proprietary binary with a cloudy future.

    You want java on ALL linux install out there? GPL it. The ball's in your court, Sun, Jonathan, and as long as you want to hold on to Java, you'll not make inroads except through high power meeting with PHBs in 3,000USD suits.

    We don't care about Solaris and Java, because Sun is trying to seduce us with "ease of use and transition" while hiding the patents and copyrights that will doom us into an ever-downward spiral of proprietariness, Hereinafter refered to as "The Trap".

    I think IBM, by supporting linux, and opening patents for Free Software use, is a much better long-term dance partner for the linux crowd.

    So, Jonathan, GPL Solaris and GPL java and J2EE, and then we'll talk. Until then, go change your stylesheet: p {color: #000000;}

    --

    "Piter, too, is dead."

  70. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  71. Not necessarily a bad thing. by Chas · · Score: 1

    Hey, if this could somehow turn women into hottie rabbit/cat-babes, all the anime fiends would be forever grateful.

    Besides, ask any feminazi, men have already been pigs for centuries.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  72. Re:Don't use them by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

    If you don't like how the iPod and iTunes work, DON'T USE THEM.

    That's good advice. I don't use them, I think they're shit. A shiny silver case and a scroll wheel on your player do not makeup for DRM and a pricing structure that mirrors RIAA price gouging without even so much as giving you a CD with liner notes.

    iPods/iTunes are cool because the music industry are getting their ton of flesh, and are prepared to say that they're cool. If that's good enough for you, go to town.

    When I see ogg vorbis on hardware with legacy mp3 support, free as in beer music online with integrated support for buying tickets and t-shirts then maybe you'll get my money. Until then, I'll stick with mp3/DC++/Winamp/CDR.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  73. Schwartz isn't Sun's CEO by AllTheGoodNamesWereT · · Score: 1

    Jonathan Schwartz is Sun's president and chief operating officer. Scott McNealy is chairman and CEO.

  74. RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    There are a few reasons to use proprietary RDBMS's but I don't think they are as you say. My company offers consulting on open source database solutions and I consider myself to be reasonably knowledgable on the topic.

    1. db2 just set the world record for transaction speed - at about 50,000 transactions a second. Last I heard mysql was trumpeting 800 transactions a second with innodb. Not sure about postgresql.

    Take a look at the hardware and the cost per transaction per second. I am not saying this could not be done on PostgreSQL (it could) but it would expensive as well. As for MySQL, their performance in situations with large numbers of concurrent updates has never been good, and has actually been decreasing in recent years as they add features. PostgreSQL's performance has been improving, OTOH.

    In general, your performance bottlenecks with PostgreSQL are either CPU (add more if you want), Disk IO (add a better RAID 1/0 array with battery-backed caching), or issues with PostgreSQL not being tuned reasonably for the system it is running on (not enough shared buffers, etc).

    Finally, these records are not necessarily representative of real-world loads, and in many cases, you can get equal performance by using reasonably decent solutions (PGPool with Slony-I, for example).

    2. with partitioning, parallelism, and clustering, you can get subsecond response time from db2 *adhoc* queries against tables containing over a terrabyte of data. Postgresql, Mysql, and Firebird aren't even in the ballpark here. Note: mysql "speed" will end up requiring you to index every single column, which will kill your insert speed, double the size of the data, and their optimizer won't use the indexes anyway whenever you want to access more than 5% of the data.

    No complaint about your analysis of MySQL. However, unless you have all the information in memory or unless the the data is spread across a large number of disk arrays, I don;t see how you can even get the information to process it in less than a second. With PostgreSQL 8.0, you can partition the table across a large number of block devices and then read quickly. So yes, it is possible, but in all cases it is not easy. I don't think that Firebird has these capabilities, but I am not sure. MySQL certainly doesn't.

    Most of your other reasons are similarly out of date. However, here are a few which I would add:

    1) No open source database management product has any sort of mature, *multimaster* replication solution which will work well over slow or unreliable links.

    2) PostgreSQL and MySQL (along with Firebird, IIRC) lack supported Two-Phase-Commit structures required for distributed transactions. PostgreSQL is expected to have something on this area in the next version.

    3) If you are already using a commercial database management system, it is almost always less expensive to continue using what you are than going to a new system where you have costs of getting up to speed, porting applications as necessary, etc. Open source, OTOH, is less expensive in green-field situations where you don't have existing applications to work with.

    I would suspect that within the next couple of years, only this last reason will be the primary reason for sticking with a proprietart RDBMS.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  75. Bite me Hemos by elmegil · · Score: 1
    Kettle, meet Pot.

    Care to back up such inferences, Mr. Editor, or are you just another troll making claims without any support? What precisely is there in Sun's portfolio of app software that only runs on Solaris? Not Java. Not iPlanet/SunOne/N1/whatever you want to call it this month. Care to back it up with facts instead of random allegations?

    --
    7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
  76. VAX VMS is no more by crovira · · Score: 1

    Nothing DEC made survived the purchase by Compaq.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
  77. Congratulations by sdcharle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure you read a lot further than Sam did.

  78. OpenPower ONLY runs Linux! by leoxx · · Score: 1

    Check out the OpenPower stuff they recently announced. It's all Linux all the time. You an even choose to configure it without an operating system!

  79. This is just too funny... by sirwired · · Score: 1

    I suppose IBM could reply with:

    "We'll port all of our software to your OS when you port your OS to POWER hardware, which, by the way, leaves your SPARC boxes completely in the dust. Don't your customers want their OS to run fast?

    SirWired

  80. Uh BAD idea. SCO is Linux too. In fact YOUR's. :-) by crovira · · Score: 1

    That would be like asking Toni Soprano for a loan. That would result in a regular St Valenti's massacre.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
  81. Why? by systems · · Score: 1

    Why doesn't SUN offer to pay IBM to port those applications to solaris!
    Pay just like a customer for IBM

  82. Re:Hello? Earth calling by Decaff · · Score: 1

    " How many of IBM's platforms does Java run on? None."

    All of them. Name a platform of IBM's that you can't run Java on.... MVS, TPF, AIX, OS/2, AS400....hell.... they all run Java.

    Maybe you meant something else? Or you had a typo?

    I think the original poster mean that Sun's Java would not run on those platforms. I think it was based on some kind of strange belief that Java isn't really ported to an OS unless Sun provides the VM.

  83. Slightly less obvious... revive the Power port. by emil · · Score: 1

    IBM is bringing out new Power systems targeted at Linux.

    Might additional industry accolades be gained if this platform could also offer Solaris for the Power architecture?

    This sort of tit-for-tat negotiation is better conducted behind closed doors. I imagine that Solaris on Power, plus more participation and control in Java, would make IBM very open to supporting Solaris wherever Sun wanted.

    Screaming in a blog isn't going to do much good.

    1. Re:Slightly less obvious... revive the Power port. by Amiga+Trombone · · Score: 1

      IBM is bringing out new Power systems targeted at Linux.

      Might additional industry accolades be gained if this platform could also offer Solaris for the Power architecture?

      This sort of tit-for-tat negotiation is better conducted behind closed doors. I imagine that Solaris on Power, plus more participation and control in Java, would make IBM very open to supporting Solaris wherever Sun wanted.

      And it would be better still if Sun started building systems based on Power themselves. I'm sure that would make IBM very friendly indeed.

    2. Re:Slightly less obvious... revive the Power port. by jackspenn · · Score: 1

      I think SUN is back-asswards on this on. Rather then screaming in a blog that IBM needs to support Solaris, why doesn't SUN migrate their core tools and apps from Solaris (which is a dying OS) to Linux? If DB2 and WebSphere already run on Linux, and SUN ran linux, then all would be good in the world. I think it is wrong to blame IBM for things they have done in the past, when they are presently one of the biggest contributors to Linux, in terms of code, money, testing, applications, legal funds, development platforms, etc. etc. etc. Seriously, IBM has done so much for open source and Linux, what has SUN done? How many OSes can IBM support? Is it fair to larger linux community if SUN drags resources away from form Linux to a dying Solaris? Solaris is so 1990s, Linux is the future.

      --
      Respect the Constitution
  84. Re: Linux binaries - only x86 by OrangeSpyderMan · · Score: 1

    Don't know which Anonymous coward is standing corrected :-) (parent or gp), but it's quite clear the lxrun is a x86 tool. lxrun works only on x86. Snippit:
    Lxrun is a freely downloadable utility that executes Linux applications on the Solaris Operating Environment, Intel platform edition. Lxrun is a software layer that sits between Solaris and the Linux Intel binary executable and remaps system calls "on the fly" allowing them to run unmodified on Solaris.

    --
    Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
  85. That is what happens when you give your Guns... by protovirus · · Score: 1

    ...Uhh...code away.

  86. Erratum: A bad joke by Baldrson · · Score: 1

    Here's the correct link.

    --
    Seastead this.
  87. Virtually no effort?! by tjwhaynes · · Score: 2, Informative

    As virtually no effort is needed for AMD64/x86-Solaris certification of IBM's AMD64/x86/Linux apps, it is obvious that IBM does not want customers to consider Solaris on AMD64 (or x86).

    Virtually no effort?! Even Java products require significant testing effort when shipping them for a "new" platform and simply assuming that everything that works on Linux x86_64 will work seemlessly on Solaris x86_64 is a recipe for unhappy customers. As I work day-to-day on the DB2 UDB internals and I am just down the corridor from the DB2 linux support team, I can say with some authority that it would take a lot more than just adding a tick to the Solaris supported column on the marketing sheets to see DB2 on x86_64/Solaris.

    I do not know of any plans to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 but I also am not aware of any plans NOT to release DB2 on Solaris/x86_64. Ultimately, it will come down the normal equation of testing and support effort required to get the release out and running against the customer demand. IBM is in the IT market to make money. If customers want DB2 on Solaris/x86_64 in sufficient numbers to make it financially viable, you can bet that there will be a release. There is no business proposition in sitting on your hands to spite Sun if there is financial reward to be had. This isn't a charity, nor is a playground spat.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
    1. Re:Virtually no effort?! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Porting from Linux to Solaris x86 would be non-trivial (although not very hard), however this is not the issue. The apps in question are already supported on Solaris SPARC which is 100% source compatible with Solaris x86. The only possible problem they would have would be if they had included SPARC assembly (unlikely, since they run on Linux x86) or endian assumptions (unlikely, since they run on SPARC, x86 and POWER family machines already). The amount of effort required to support these apps on Solaris x86 should be as little as typing make on a command line.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Virtually no effort?! by tjwhaynes · · Score: 1
      We already support linux x86, linux Itantium, linux x86_64, linux PPC and linux z/OS, Solaris/Sparc, HPUX and AIX (and others). Each platform needs a certain amount of testing before the product leaves the development floor. Service personnel need to be trained on the platform. Java implementations have to be tested for conformance. Stress tests have to be run. Functional tests have to be run. Even if not one line of code requires fixing to run DB2 on Solaris/x86, that doesn't mean we simply flick a button and wahey, DB2 on Solaris/x86.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

      --
      Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  88. kettle, meet pot by trifster · · Score: 1

    ROTFLMAO!!!

  89. While he's at it ... by Kaemaril · · Score: 1

    Why doesn't he get Bill Gates on the line and ask him why Microsoft's being a big meanie and not porting SQL*Server to Solaris? :)

  90. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by kpharmer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > Take a look at the hardware and the cost per transaction per second. I am not saying this could
    > not be done on PostgreSQL (it could) but it would expensive as well.

    Good point - a database performing 50,000 transactions a second isn't running on your grandmother's pc. But it wouldn't be correct to assume that all databases scale equally. This is where the greater tuning opportunities of db2 or oracle come into play:
    - instead of just a single 8k page size, db2 has 4k,8k,16k, and 32k page sizes.
    - db2 has much more flexible statistics gathering than either mysql or postgresql
    - db2 has a far more robust & intelligent optimizer than any open source database
    - db2/oracle/etc have query parallelism
    - db2 in particular is very good at performing most database operations asynchronously: data writes are sent to a buffer pool by one agent, to a log buffer by another, from the log buffer to the log file by another, from the log buffer to actual storage by another, etc, etc.
    - both mysql & postgresql have very primitive memory tuning capabilities: mysql can't share io buffers between innodb & mysql. Postgresql just doesn't have many options to manage sort memory, separation of memory buffers by tablespace, etc, etc.

    But keep in mind - many of these weaknesses are also strengths: since the missing configurability is translated to simpler management for smaller & less-demanding databases.

    > However, unless you have all the information in memory or unless the the data is spread across a
    > large number of disk arrays, I don;t see how you can even get the information to process it in less
    > than a second.

    Ok, here's an exeample architecture using db2. Would work identically on informix, and probably Terradata. Oracle has similar capabilities, though a little different since they're shared-disk rather than shared-nothing for db2/informix/terradata.

    Step 1: spread data across 10 2-way 64-bit AMD blades. Each blade has 8 gbytes of memory and a fibre connection to storage. You can expand this up to *hundreds* of blades (nodes) - and get almost linear performance improvement the entire time. You've now got a 20 CPU system for about 10% the price you'd pay for a Sun E10000 or HP Superdome. Since the data is spread across all nodes by hashkey - every query will get 20 CPUs processing it together - each on 1/10 (100 gbytes) of the original data.

    Step 2: partition the data on each node by range or value via MDC. Say, by 'day' & 'department' - so that you've got (for example) 1000 days & 1000 departments. Now, each query will only tablescan the data within the blocks it needs: whether it needs to scan 5% or 75% it gets a linear performance improvement corresponding to the reduction of data.

    Step 3: implement parallelism on each node. Now, this sample config only has 2 CPUs - so the opportunities aren't as great as they are on an 8-way. But a two-way will still usually cut your query time in half.

    So, now a few examples:
    1. query for 10 days of data for 1 department:
    a. clustering cuts 100 gbytes on each node down to about 1 mbyte to scan on each node.
    b. query parallelism cuts down scan on each node to about 500 kbytes

    2. query for 100 days of data for 100 departments:
    a. clustering cuts 100 gbytes on each node down to about 1 gbyte to scan on each node.
    b. query parallelism cuts down scan on each node to about 500 mbytes

    3. query for 365 days of data for all departments:
    a. clustering cuts 100 gbytes on each node down to about 40 gbytes to scan on each node.
    b. query parallelism cuts down scan on each node to about 20 gbytes

    All three queries - whether very selective or not, all use the same facility for a linear performance improvement (unlike indexes). The last query is unlikely to complete in 1 second - but I'll bet it'll be fast nevertheless - especially since it'll probably end up with over 2

  91. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by Jouser · · Score: 1

    db2 doesn't have anything on Access!

  92. Argh! by turgid · · Score: 1
    If Sun DID make Solaris 10 compatible with linux and say posix standarts there would be no problems.

    POSIX standards? POSIX standards? Young man, Solaris IS POSIX standards, and nearly every other UNIX standard going. Where did you think the standards came from in the first place?

    Linux is the Johnny-come-lately as far as POSIX is concerned.

    --
    Stick Men
    1. Re:Argh! by turgid · · Score: 1
      Yes, well, the standard is based on the Solaris kernel. Quite a lot of the modern standards are based on Solaris.

      And ESR coined the term Open Source.

      --
      Stick Men
  93. Sun is not "black" by iamacat · · Score: 1

    Kettle, meet Pot.

    For a while now, Sun has been pushing Java platform that would allow all applications written by Sun to run on IBM hardware and under WebSphere if the customer so chooses. It's quite reasonable for them to ask IBM to compete on advantages of each product rather than trying to pull a Microsoft and lock-in users into unwanted components.

    Besides, there must be lots of existing Rational customers running, say, clearcase servers on Solaris. It's not really fair for IBM to force them to buy new hardware.

  94. Enemy? by mnmn · · Score: 1

    Who says any company has to be the enemy to get bashed? Heck we bash Redhat at times like it was situated in Redmond.

    We bash companies till they're all about opensourced and GPLed software. Companies with high-stakes software like Sun with Java being the extremely high-stake, will be bashed excessively till they give in. Sure we love Sun for not being Microsoft, and Sun will be praised in Microsoft-related articles, but the larger IT companies, Sun, IBM, nVidia and ATI, Adobe, Dell etc all know they will be armtwisted into opensourcing software and selling nothing but Debian Linux.

    Sun is not the enemy but its not a 100% GPL software house, and who cares if they need to make paychecks.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  95. Re:Please, enough with the Java crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm sure no one will read this, but I very recently took some class files that run under Windows XP, loaded them to a node in an AIX cluster, and they worked exactly the same, just at a different speed since the machines are so different. I took them home, ran the exact same files on my Sun Blade . . . and it behaved exactly the same way. It wasn't anything intensive, but there were absolutely no problems, either.

  96. Re:What's the ideal FOSS database choice for by kpharmer · · Score: 1

    > something like Craig's list, if you had to pick between MySQL and Postgres only, not based on claims
    > by the distributors, but based on the capabilities you elaborate in your post and what you know
    > personally. Starting from scratch.

    ok, just shooting from the hip here, ymmv, etc, etc, here's my $0.02 on that:

    Assuming that you partitioned the application like Craigslist - by city, that drastically simplifies the scaling issue: since each city can be its own server, with possibly another server to support cross-city summaries. Your application would have to know which city translates to which server - but that can be handled easily many ways.

    I'd go with postgresql given the choice, since:
    1. partitioning by city drops the top read performance requirement. mysql has better read performance using myisam, but you could probably meet the requirement at the city level just using postgresql.
    2. postgresql's write performance is *way* better than mysql's using myisam, and also better than mysql's using innodb according to anecdotes.
    3. postgresql is just simply a far more mature database right now. Mysql has a few attractive features to it, but its gotchas (http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html) are bizarre in a data management product. And not everything you do will be simply serving up content - you'll have transactions supporting calendars, the creation of classified ads, discussion forums, etc, etc.
    4. postgresql is free, mysql is not. If you're trying to save money, and might want to have a bunch of low-end servers, you don't want to be shelling out $500 each. Then extra for online backup software.

    A few other notes:
    1. mysql has two things going for it for something like this: myisam query speed, and its query-cache. This is one of the few places the mysql query cache is actually useful. And it would probably have a huge impact here. In fact, if your read:write ratio is sufficiently in favor of the reads, and your data volumes are sufficiently high - then I'd have to give mysql a second look. But as long as postgresql can meet your performance needs (and I suspect it can), then its other strengths (quality & exception handling, online backup, standard sql features, etc) put it way ahead of mysql.
    2. I'd definitely treat each subject area within the site as a separate set of tables - and try to completely encapsulate them in the application. These subjects are discussion forum, housing, community, personals, etc, etc. By doing this you'll be able to scale them independently, move them around on different servers, even use a different product for just one component if you wanted.
    3. I'd also define some performance targets - and early in the development cycle test out your performance to see if you can hit those targets.
    4. Assuming a typical growth scenario, I'd start with multiple databases on one server, then gradually move them to separate servers as the hits & revenue increased (hopefully at the same time).
    5. As far as the boxes are concerned, to keep costs low I suppose I'd go with lots of memory (4gbytes), battery-backed hardware raid with 128 mbytes or so of cache using 15,000 rpm drives if possible. raid-5 probably won't hurt you on postgresql or mysql with innodb as much as it would mysql with myisam.
    6. Commercial databases are probably also worth considering - since they would allow you some of the scalability benefits via partitioning - and could help you avoid having to run 20 servers, most of which are idle most of the time. Labor's money too, and commercial database products start around $500-$1500.

    well, i guess it's time to get back to work. oh, and good luck.

  97. Re:What's the ideal FOSS database choice for by einhverfr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    something like Craig's list, if you had to pick between MySQL and Postgres only, not based on claims by the distributors, but based on the capabilities you elaborate in your post and what you know personally. Starting from scratch.

    I am assuming you mean www.craigslist.org.

    Ok. Seems like you have a few issues:

    1) Such a directory will have a lot of reads and only a few writes. The writes seem to mostly be inserts, with few updates.

    2) I don't see anywhere on the web site where financial data is likely to be an issue.

    The major benefits of MySQL include:

    1) Easy to find developers who know it.
    2) Would run adequately, given enough hardware.

    The major benefits of PostgreSQL would include:
    1) Better data analysis capabilities.
    2) Very robust database manager with extensive capabilities and a strong emphasis on data integrity.
    3) The ability to confidently integrate ecommerce and financial data into the same database architecture without worrying about rounding errors.

    MySQL will work well enough. PostgreSQL will give you more. Under high load, PostgreSQL may outperform MySQL due to the fact that it has better caching. So if you get really busy PostgreSQL will scale better (traffic-wise).

    PostgreSQL will also scale well data-wise. Each row can hold up to 2GB data, and each table can hold 64TB without partitioning. Affilias, who runs the .org and .info domains using PostgreSQL has sponsored the development of an advanced replication system for PostgreSQL called Slony-I.

    Affilias is currently bidding to take over the .net domain.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  98. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    One of the issues here is that we are talking about different types of "Enterprise" products.

    PostgreSQL cannot compete with Terradata in this space. Backplane might eventually, but it is certainly not even worth considering as a mature solution at the moment.

    PostgreSQL works very well on databases ranging from 1 GB to a bit over 1TB in size. I don't know anyone running larger databases, but it could be happening, and give it a few years..... I certainly consider many of the larger PostgreSQL deployments to be "enterprise-grade."

    But you are talking about databases which are much, much larger than that. PostgreSQL will never likely provide the parallelism you speak of simply because it is process-based rather than thread-based so usually one query can only hit one processor. It might be possible to create a similar solution using existing tools on PostgreSQL but ti would not be elegant.

    Also one question-- suppose you have your storage go bad on a blade-- what happens to your relational integrity if the records are spread across various servers?

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  99. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by kpharmer · · Score: 1

    > PostgreSQL cannot compete with Terradata in this space.

    right, but this is a huge space: and given the rate of data explosion, 3TB databases have become extremely common. And that's a good thing for all database products & customers: it means that db2, oracle, etc can keep adding more exotic features to support multi-TB databases while postgresql, etc can quietly pick up more of the smaller ones.

    > Also one question-- suppose you have your storage go bad on a blade-- what happens to your
    > relational integrity if the records are spread across various servers?

    Depends on which dbms you're talking about: on oracle it's no big deal, since they use shared-disk, and one node can quickly take over for another on 10g (was OPS). Of course, that's a complex, high-priced product, and doesn't scale as well as the shared-nothing options like db2 & terradata. I can't answer for terradata, but if you're on db2 then you've got a few options:
    1. implement a HA solution between pairs of nodes, so that one node can take over for another. This can be via HACMP or Veritas (both complex) to take over the storage from the crashed node, or even HADR (client reroute - not complex) to support a second duplicate node.
    2. implement a failover database. This keeps the architecture very simple, and is a more complete solution (read: disaster recovery) - since it can protect you against datacenter floods, etc: by locating the failover in an entirely different data center.

    Since we're generally talking read-only data here, you've got more options than on a large transactional database. I'd typically prefer #2, followed by #1/hadr. HACMP and Veritas are a pain in the butt, IMHO.

  100. Re:Please, enough with the Java crap by Decaff · · Score: 1

    I'm sure no one will read this, but I very recently took some class files that run under Windows XP, loaded them to a node in an AIX cluster, and they worked exactly the same, just at a different speed since the machines are so different. I took them home, ran the exact same files on my Sun Blade . . . and it behaved exactly the same way. It wasn't anything intensive, but there were absolutely no problems, either.

    I read it, and it matches my experience too. However, anti-Sun and anti-Java rants are pretty popular here. I have given up trying to understand why.

  101. Sun's Opteron gear is phenomenal by csoto · · Score: 1

    We're very impressed with the Opteron workstation we're testing. The specifications on their 1U/2P server (V220?) is far ahead of any Dell out there (never mind that they're Intel only). 16GB of RAM on a 1U/2P is pretty damn impressive, and you get the Opteron 850 in that. Tasty.

    I would run Solarix X86 on Opteron, if I needed a Unix platform for a Solaris-based application in a heartbeat. I am even hoping to entertain using one for VMWare, if VMWare gets around to supporting it (they claim to be very interested in Opteron, which will no doubt make their ESX even better - and it's pretty damn good on Intel).

    --
    There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
  102. Sun is grandstanding... by rdean400 · · Score: 1

    First the open letter is about Solaris on x86. IBM will no doubt support Solaris on Sparc because most of their Websphere revenue comes on that platform.

    Second, Sun trying to say that Solaris is the most secure OS on the planet to the company that sells z/OS and i5/OS hardware is counterproductive.

  103. that's BS by idlake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    AFAIK, those effects have been gone for years; I stopped encountering them sometime in the mid- to late- 90s.

    In the late 90's, your AIX system was still hosed if you ran out of disk space during a SMIT operation: not only was the system critically dependent on ODM, SMIT and the ODM library were also so poorly written that they couldn't cope with this common system state. So, no, whatever dependencies there were on ODM weren't fixed at that time.

    some of the things IBM originally put into AIX to "industrialize" it were things that folks complained Aren't The Unix Way, but they've ended up in other Unices as the years go on. LVM, enhanced security, dynamic kernel, a systems management interface, etc. Yet, 15+ years later, I still hear complaints about how different & not-nomral-Unix AIX is. Whatever.

    That, too, is just BS. LVM is rarely used even on Linux--convenient as it may seem to users, it is just one of the technically most stupid ways of managing disk space imaginable. And IBM can hardly take credit for GUI-based management (which they got woefully wrong with SMIT, both technically and in terms of user interface) or dynamically loadable kernel modules.

    AIX has always been incompatible in ways that range from merely annoying to seriously bad. Many of their decisions were indeed driven by the desires of their mainframe customers, but that still doesn't make those features good ideas.

    And although I thankfully don't have to deal with AIX anymore, I doubt it's much different today. Trying to portray the p.o.s. that AIX was/is as some kind of progenitor of modern UNIX or Linux systems is ridiculous.

    1. Re:that's BS by mrhartwig · · Score: 1

      So, no, whatever dependencies there were on ODM weren't fixed at that time.

      Nice misdirection. I never said the system didn't depend on ODM; I said ODM's overriding of the text config files in /etc went away. As for filling up disk, what happened to Solaris (or HP-UX or AIX or ....) in 1998 when / or /var filled up? Sorry, but I don't consider mismanagement of a system to allow OS-dependent file systems to fill up to be a "common state". Did/does it happen? Yep. But it shouldn't have been and shouldn't be common.

      That, too, is just BS. LVM is rarely used even on Linux....

      LVM as in volume management, not IBM's LVM contribution to Linux. You know, dynamically being able to increase disk allocations, and having the underlying file system expandable? Like what Veritas has made Sagans of dollars selling since Solaris before 2.whatever had some capability included? I'm curious -- what's the technically superior way to manage disk space on your enterprise servers, since an LVM is stupid?

      I'm sorry I wasn't clear -- I wasn't trying to give credit to IBM for the invention of GUI management or dynamic kernels or anything else; I said such features were in AIX & has since been added to other Unices. I wasn't even trying to imply that Sun or HP or SuSE or anyone else developed such things *because* of IBM. All I said was they were in AIX, and such differences were some of the "non-Unix" complaints back in the day, and they since have proliferated.

      AIX has always been incompatible in ways that range from merely annoying to seriously bad.

      Yep. And HP-UX has incompatibilities, as does Solaris, and .... Again, what's your point? One of the problems with the Unix wars. Things like AIX's system call incompatibilities made it a PITA to port some SW; I know IBM has been cleaning up some of that recently, but I'm sure there are still problems. I don't care.

      Way the heck back in 1993-95 I was part of a team that wrote graphics code that ran on 2 different embedded systems (one without an OS other than what we wrote, the other with an embedded version of DOS) and AIX. 3 CPU architectures, common code base, different compile options. I later ported a bunch of that to Linux, and it wasn't easy. Based on the logic that I keep seeing, I should bitch about how hard it is to write code for Linux, right? The fact that 10+ years has changed things should make no difference, right? [/sarcasm]

      Many of their decisions were indeed driven by the desires of their mainframe customers, but that still doesn't make those features good ideas.

      True. But that doesn't make them bad ideas, either.

      Trying to portray the p.o.s. that AIX was/is as some kind of progenitor of modern UNIX or Linux systems is ridiculous.

      Why? In 1999, when I supported AIX, my co-workers were still using a freaking compiler to change some HP-UX kernel parameters; we either changed a config file or used some command like 'chsys'. My Solaris buddies were taking full file systems off line, allocating a new file system, & copying data from the full one; we used 'extendlv' and moved on. Don't even get me started about what I had to do to manage Linux of that vintage.

      This stuff hardly proves (and I'm not even *trying* to imply) that AIX *caused* such features to be included in other Unices. Heck, this stuff probably existed in other OSs at the time -- that's not the point. All I said was that AIX had particular features, some people complained at the time that they "weren't really Unix" features, and those same features are now in other Unices. And I find that humorous.

      Do I think AIX was or is the perfect OS? Not even close. There was plenty about AIX that I didn't like, too. OTOH, now that I'm supporting Linux, there are several times a month part of my brain goes "well, if this was AIX, you could easily fix that by....".

      From what I know about modern Solaris, I probably would be having similar thoughts if I'd been a Solaris guy moving to Linux.

  104. naive justification by idlake · · Score: 1

    1. db2 just set the world record for transaction speed - at about 50,000 transactions a second. Last I heard mysql was trumpeting 800 transactions a second with innodb. Not sure about postgresql.

    I seriously doubt that those benchmarks were on the same hardware, so the comparison makes no sense.

    2. with partitioning, parallelism, and clustering, you can get subsecond response time from db2 *adhoc* queries against tables containing over a terrabyte of data. Postgresql, Mysql, and Firebird aren't even in the ballpark here.

    First of all, at least learn the correct metric prefixes before you start spouting benchmark data.

    Now, yes, with clustering and keeping stuff in memory, you can get good response times. That's not some deep, fundamental property of the database, it's a simple add-on that sits on top of the database. I believe there are already solutions like that for PostgreSQL and MySQL, although they are not quite as flexible as those for DB2 yet. But very few people need that sort of thing.

    So, on a big project where the database is critical - you will actually *save* money going with a commercial database.

    Or maybe not. With a commercial database, you may have much more downtime because the commercial vendor is taking months to fix a critical software problem that you yourself could fix instantly if you only had the source. And with a commercial database you are in a real bind if the vendor makes incompatible changes or discontinues the product altogether.

    You see, the cost savings from open source software aren't a result of the software not costing anything, they are a result of reduced risk. Let me stat that again: open source software has substantially lower risk than commercial software and that is where your cost savings come from with open source software.

    6. Consistency: since most organizations will require a commercial database for their most demanding applications - and they can benefit from a complexity reduction by using the same database on all applications.

    You're kidding yourself if you think that any large organization can consistently deploy a single platform for everything. And if you choose a commercial database like DB2 consistently for every database deployment in your organization, licensing costs are going to be a major issue.

    Not to say that the open source solutions aren't great: they are, and can pick up much of the database work these days. But there's still a huge case to be made for commercial products

    DB2 is actually a decent database with some advanced functionality. People may want to use it for specific applications. But your arguments for why and when people should use it are pretty naive. People who need DB2 will know it; for almost everybody else, one of the FOSS databases is fine. And if you stick to SQL standards, it's actually pretty easy to move between them (imagine that).

    1. Re:naive justification by kpharmer · · Score: 1

      > Now, yes, with clustering and keeping stuff in memory, you can get good response times. That's not
      > some deep, fundamental property of the database, it's a simple add-on that sits on top of the
      > database. I believe there are already solutions like that for PostgreSQL and MySQL, although they
      > are not quite as flexible as those for DB2 yet.

      Um, no. We're not talking about just setting up veritas on a couple of sun 6500s with 24 gbytes of memory, assuming that every product in the dbms category from MS Access to Terradata has the same scalability, crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

      We're talking about multiple forms of data partitioning, parallel query, and query rewrite (to redirect against summary tables). All built into the database - so that the optimizer can take full effect, and so it's (relatively) easy to build & manage, and will run portable sql.

      Add to this dozens of fine-tuning knobs to dial in the specifics of your environment, very clever optimization, very functional sql, etc - and comparing an open source database to oracle/db2/teradata at this scale is rediculous.

      It's like some kid infatuated with his brand-new honda bragging about how it can pull stumps as well as a farm tractor.

    2. Re:naive justification by idlake · · Score: 1

      It's like some kid infatuated with his brand-new honda bragging about how it can pull stumps as well as a farm tractor.

      Thanks for making the point so clearly: most people and businesses need Hondas a lot more than they need a farm tractor. The Honda is simply the more efficient and cost-effective vehicle for the day-to-day tasks most people have. And when it comes to databases, things are analogous.

  105. No Rational Purify for Solaris? by ufnoise · · Score: 1

    It would suck if Purify wasn't available for Solaris. For some reason it never quite worked right on linux x86.

  106. Solaris 10 isn't the only one by bmacy · · Score: 1

    Last I checked IBM's own pSeries boxes shipped with Linux couldn't run WebSphere MQ. DB2 Server was released for it just within the last year.

  107. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    Can I use your money to build my system?

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
  108. IRC conversation discovered!!! by HogynCymraeg · · Score: 1

    ******* 5un has join #chat ***********
    5un: Yo!
    1BM: Er.... what do you want?
    5un: We're mates right?
    ** 1BM looks at 5un
    5un: Sure we are! We've been mates for ages!
    5un: Hey, how's the Solaris 10 ports going?
    ** 1BM looks at 5un
    5un: Geez, can't wait to see them!
    ** 5un kicked by 1BM (l053r)

  109. short Sun by ewe2 · · Score: 1

    If this is any indication of a company's direction immediately after releasing a new product, I'd be selling. Now. After the deal they just made with Microsoft, and the current crop of lame "why don't they think is cool?" comments, you're looking at the most defensive OS rollout I've ever seen. It is the difference between "what can we make" and "what can we save". I haven't seen anything this undignified since the slow collapse of DEC.

    --
    insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
  110. Sorry, Sun's missing the point... by d1taylor · · Score: 1
    FWIW, I have a long diatribe on this subject on my own weblog if people are motivated to click:

    Clueless Sun complains IBM isn't porting apps to Solaris 10

    Quick summary: Sun should pay IBM to port the apps or adopt Linux wholeheartedly rather than further splinter the Unix marketplace.

  111. Re:RDBMS's: Proprietary vs. Commercial by einhverfr · · Score: 1

    I think you could, but here are the limitations you will run into:

    1) Disk IO
    2) Memory limitations
    3) CPU limitations

    Now, you didn't tell me what sort of concurrency we are talking about or the database size. If I have enough memory to cache the whole database in memory and then some, and if I have one CPU per concurrent process, and if I can stripe this across a number of disk arrays to maximize disk I/O, I think it could be done. It is primarily a question of how much one wants to spend on it.

    And, of course, the WAL would have to be striped across a pretty good RAID 1/0 array to keep up.

    I suspect that DB2 would be less expensive than PostgreSQL in this configuration.

    Also, you could run into an issue if this is heavy wrt updates. You would probably need to concurrently run vacuum on another CPU repeatedly in order to keep the dead tuples down.

    PostgreSQL doesn't cluster very well at the moment, so we are looking at some sort of huge, expensive machine.

    --

    LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP