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

"Vaporwear"?

[stealth.c]

Is it clothing?

Re:"Vaporwear"?

[mattmentecky]

I think you just planted the seed for a marketing joint venture for fashion designers and porn producers abound.

Re:"Vaporwear"?

[Daniel Ellard]

Thank you, slashdot editors.

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:Stuff that matters

[Spectra72]

Why on earth would you think there is a lot of Veritas code in Solaris? Nevermind that Sun has (and has had for a long, long time) products that compete directly with Veritas. Solaris Volume Manager is a replacement for Vertias Volume Manager and why use VxFS when UFS is just as good? Why pay for the Veritas licenses as well?

UFS is a Non-journaled fileysytem?? Ever hear of mounting UFS with "-o logging"? It's only been around since, oh I don't know..SOLARIS 7, which was released in 1998.

Sun and Oracle are close too, is there a lot of Oracle code in Solaris?

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.)

In other news..

[asterix_2k1]

twelve thousand monkeys furiously coding for 3DRealms posted that Duke Nukem Forever should be out anytime soon...

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.)

Anonymous comments

[bigtallmofo]

"There is no OpenSolaris," read an anonymous post on operating systems news Web site OSNews.com. "Show us the code or quit mentioning it."

Who gets infuriated by anonymous comments with no substance at all?

You shouldn't spend too much brain power responding. The proper response is to respond anonymously with some stock comebacks:

"Says you!"
"Your mom!"

That'll learn'em.

both do and do not work for Sun

[Threni]

> There are a lot of us out there who both do and do not work for Sun

Wow! Quantum programmers!

vaporware actually means something

[justins]

"Vaporware" refers to software which the publisher never intended to release, news of which was intended to have an effect on the market.

Slipping on your release date would make just about every software product "vaporware", you retards.

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.

If you're a regular reader of OSNews ...

[nemaispuke]

then you would know that that the guy who posted is a known troll and despite the efforts of Alan and other Sun employees who monitor OSNews this guy was still "foaming at the mouth". In fact one of the trolls posted his "parting shot" was to call Solaris users "nazis"! I think all of the posts in question have been pulled, because I could not find them.

The problem with OSNews is that it seems to attract the "bottom feeder" users who have little real experience and tend to bitch and whine like children rather than to respond with well thought out arguments and present facts. I have caught people using FUD and outright lies to support their "positions" that Linux is better than Solaris. Well see ...

Re:it's useful to know open solaris is in the work

[Zemplar]

Look at Blastwave's article http://www.blastwave.org/articles/BLS-0026/index.h tml for a good glimpse of OpenSolaris.

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.

Re:What about a sample?

[blastwave]

It will get released when everything is ready.

I don't work for Sun but I have been in the OpenSolaris pilot from Day One and I can tell you that I have been working like mad with it as have others. Myself and James Dickens worked night and day over the past weekend to build the OS on an E4000 as well as a LX50 machine for both enterprise class implementations and server room work. You can see the results of the workstation build at Blastwave.org and you need to watch James Dickens blog as well as mine to see progress that happens OUTSIDE of Sun. Not to mention the PowerPC port project at BlastWare which will also make progress when some other bits are in place. There are partnerships in place to work on the PowerPC port and GENESI is behind this as well as others.

Power is a big deal folks. Think of OpenSolaris on your IBM big iron also.

So go make a coffee and relax. Its coming real soon now.

Dennis Clarke
Director Blastwave.org
http://www.blastwave.org/

Re:I know it exists. I'm in the pilot.

[turgid]

Yes, well, I know it exists because I worked for Sun until I was RIF'd in February. This place is full of anti-Sun bigotry, hatred and lies. It's kind of ironic, because despite Jonathan Schwartz's mouth, Sun is very Open Source and Free Software freindly. It's just been getting a bit pointy-haired recently.

Anyway, it's not my problem any more, thank goodness.

Re:I know it exists. I'm in the pilot.

[turgid]

McNealy's a fool to himself - rather than embracing the open source community as an ally instead of an enemy five years ago, Solaris might well have been taken seriously as an OS on non-Sun hardware.

He never said that, well, not five years ago. It's RedHat he views as an enemy. Schwartz is the real fool. The engineers at Sun are far more clued-up and many of them are contributors to high-profile projects on a personal level, besides official projects like GNOME and OpenOffice.org.

I'm afraid the Pointy-Hairs don't see the value of community. To them it's all Wall Street, Java and "Kill RedHat." They very nearly missed Opteron.

Opteron could save Sun.

Let's face it, would Sun even consider making Solaris open source if Linux didn't exist?

I doubt it. But then the competition would only be Windows, not RedHat.

People forget that "Solaris 1.x" was BSD Unix. Sun was behind all the major innovations and standards.

Like I said, I couldn't care less any more, my only concern is for the great friends and colleagues still at Sun forced to toil under the pointy-haired regieme that still doesn't quite get it.

OpenSolaris will come out in stages

[bout]

Please note that OpenSolaris code will come out in stages.
For details: Click here
And here

--Eric Boutilier