Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporware Claims

daria42 writes "It looks like an anonymous post on OSNews.com claiming OpenSolaris is vaporware was the last straw for two frustrated Sun Microsystems developers. They have responded furiously on their official Sun blogs, saying that they are currently working 'feverishly' on the project, and that it was taking so long because of the need to get rid of legal encumbrances to releasing the code. 'OpenSolaris certainly exists,' Sun kernel developer Alan Hargreaves says on his Sun blog. 'You only have to speak to anyone involved in getting it out there. There are a lot of us out there who both do and do not work for Sun.'"

Comments

Stuff that matters

[fembots]

Seriously who would need to refute claims like that? The sooner they get this thing out, the sooner the rumors will vaporize automatically. The rest is just a waste of time.

Tell me which one would you believe more - Microsoft claiming that they're working on patches to fix some exploits "as we speak", or they're asking users to download the patches now?

Re:Stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

bugged for code that was promised over a year ago

You are obviously not familiar with corporate marketing. Or, for that matter, with marketing in general. Do you get mad at George Lucas because he promised Episode III almost five years ago (when he started Episode I)? Do you get mad because they started marketing it a year ago? Do you get mad because they started to release teaser trailers a couple of months ago? Do you get mad because they started running real trailers a few weeks ago? Shouldn't they just keep quiet about the whole thing and just release the trailers when the movie is done and out?

Of course not, they have to create buzz to let people know what is coming and to build an audience.

Sun didn't promise to release the code a year ago, they announced they would be releasing it. They've been pretty consistent in saying that it would be end of Q2. There's not been any reason to doubt that it will happen when they say.

Re:"Vaporwear"?

[Daniel Ellard]

Thank you, slashdot editors.

Advice to developers

[gowen]

The more time you spend "responding furiously" to "anonymous posts on OSNews.com", the less time you're spending actually being productive.

You'd be better of ignoring the cynics, the nay-sayers, and the anonymous blowhards, and continuing doing something productive.

Arguing on the internet is like ... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Re:Advice to developers

[MrMickS]

Move along, nothing to see above. The parent rather than being informative is merely making a cheap shot.

There are many examples wherein an oft repeated untruth is more widely accepted than the reality. What is so bad about people putting their comments into their blogs? Oh, I get it.. if they were real open sores developers then they would only have time for the project. The rest of life would be as nothing to the all encompassing goal of making it work.

For Now, It's Still Vaporware

[zeromemory]

While I'm inclined to believe that Sun is really try to open up the source to Solaris, the fact that they've only been able to put up a website (which notably has more links to press releases and news articles than source code) and the source for DTrace in the months since they've stated their Great Plan to open-source Solaris, it's no wonder that members of the community are calling an open-source Solaris vaporware.

Re:For Now, It's Still Vaporware

[owlstead]

Knowing Sun, they are not going for a "it barely works" first release. These guys are quite serious about maintaining correct code. This is one of the things that OSS does *not* excel in particularly.

People are always screaming at Sun to open source things (e.g. Java) but I wonder if the software quality would remain at the same high level as it is now. The good thing of Open Solaris is that drivers will be hacked, and Sun could take advantage of that. Let's hope it won't screw up their version management.

From what I've seen, solaris is a very high quality, stable operating system. The only crash I ever saw from Solaris machines at the university was related to the floppy drive cable, which messed up communications inside the sparcstation.

Re:For Now, It's Still Vaporware

[HiThere]

You say this as if Java were of exceptionally high quality, but having used Java, Python and Ruby I would rate Python and Ruby fairly high, and Java somewhat below.

I'm noy claiming that Java doesn't have it's advantages. It has a several year head start, so if it didn't have ANY advantages, that would speak quite poorly of it. But haveing used all three my preferences are Ruby, Python, Java in that order.

OTOH, Ruby needs to work on diagnostic error messages, and needs more work on it's libraries, so for some projects I'd prefer Python (or Python + Pyrex). I've never done anything for which I would find Java a better choice, though I'm sure such projects exist. (And I'm also sure that some would place Perl up in this selection, but I've never used it, and so can't speak to its virtues and vices.)

There are people who scream for Sun to "Open Source" Java, but having seen the licenses that they chose, I'm just as happy for them to leave it closed, so that others can develope various different Java compilers. (And that also says how anxious I am for OpenSolaris. Yes, I consider it vaproware, but this doesn't bother me at all. It fits the definition of vaporware. Sometime, after its release, then it won't fit that definition any more, but for now it does.)

what month is it?

[Daniel Ellard]

OpenSolaris is supposed to appear in July. Did I oversleep today, or isn't it still May?

It's a bit unfair to start calling something vaporware two months before the scheduled release.

(I don't work on Solaris/OpenSolaris, so I have no special knowledge about the project, except that I know people are working are working on it.)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Correct English

[Morosoph]

Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporwear Claims

'Refute' here should really read 'Deny': the proof is yet to come.

Re:Correct English

[eviltypeguy]

No, part of the proof is already here in DTrace, since it is is an almost inseperable part of Solaris.

Additionally, part of the proof is already here in that over 30 some pilot teams already have OpenSolaris such as blastwave.org, and so on.

Finally, their announcement said it was to be released in Q2 of this year. Q2 isn't over yet...

Really, the trolls are getting tiring.

But it is vaporware

[DrXym]

Being that vaporware is a term for long announced but unseen software projects. I wouldn't be too put out by someone making such a statement. As soon as the thing is released, such remarks will no longer be required.

Of course the cynic in me might suggest that Sun preannounced the effort far too early, hoping it would sabotage enterprise adoption of Linux. And encourage more people to try out Solaris 10, even if Solaris 10 & Open Solaris are not the same things.