Post-Oracle Purchase, How Is Sun's Software Doing?

GMGruman writes "Oracle has steadily provoked the open source community since its acquisition of Sun, raising the question of whether the move will simply destroy Sun. But as Paul Krill observes, Oracle has been steadfast in upgrading Sun-derived technologies — and making them profitable, which should mean they will stick around a long time."

Comments

It's been Rocky

[Virtucon]

Overall it's been good for Oracle, not so much for Sun's existing customers. The HP/Oracle feud has also affected product directions like the Oracle Database Machine which was released on HP gear, and now is on Sun Opeterons. Products like OpenSSO have been left in a confusing mess and Oracle going after Java partners (Google) isn't a good thing.

Re:It's been Rocky

[Freaky Spook]

I'm working with a client still trying to get their Sun Software Support agreement recognised by Oracle. The Product support contract was not recognised in Oracle's support system when we migrated off Sunsolve and after waiting on hold for over 4 hours the other day we are still no closer to fixing it.

Actually getting a hold of someone at Oracle is difficult, compared to Sun where they would work really hard to maintain relationships.

Re:It's been Rocky

[Anonymous Coward]

We bought Solaris support for a bunch of Sun systems _after_ Oracle bought Sun. I'm about 2 months into the process of trying to get our support contracts available in My Oracle Support and they're still not there. However, at one point I could control the support status of govenrment systems in virginia to which I had no connection at all!

At one point I called the Oracle support number for Sun systems. A quote from the woman who answered the call "all they do is give us some computers and software and don't give us any training on how to use it". At the end of the call she suggested I call an 800 number which was supposed to be the one to help solve support problems - it was the 800 number that I'd called to get to her in the first place!

I'm sure the plan is to keep the very high end customers happy and milk the rest. However, they seem to be doing a bad enough job that they're upsetting everyone. It'll take a while to hit their bottom line - blackmail can work well in the short term - but it will hit them hard in the end.

Re:It's been Rocky

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracles Clarity message about OpenSSO is clear - form Oracles point of view its *dead* however OpenSSO lives on under the new name OpenAM, and is evolving! Check out http://www.forgerock.com/openam.html. ForgeRock is also the company that is consuming a lot of ex-sun people who was heavily involved in these projects.

Re:It's been Rocky

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSSO is alive and well - as OpenAM, under the custody of ForgeRock:
http://www.forgerock.com/openam.html

Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

I think minecraft will be the contributing factor to the success of Java!

Re:Minecraft

[butalearner]

Minecraft confirms it, Java is not dead.

Re:Minecraft

[codepunk]

Minecraft is cool, but it could have been fantastic had it been written on a real game engine.

Re:Minecraft

[i_ate_god]

you mean like, Garry's Mod?

Re:Minecraft

[0100010001010011]

Especially since it's more or less unplayable after an hour on my 2.4 gHz Dual Core MacBook Pro w/8GB of RAM.

In C, Obj-C, C++ or anything I couldn't imagine it being this slow.

Re:Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft actually harms the reputation of Java. People look at how flawed it is, and wish it was programmed in another language. People assume that most of Minecraft's issues are the result of using Java... without considering the programmer's failings.

Of course, there ARE actual problems with Java. It should never be seen on the desktop, ever ever ever. But that doesn't mean it's completely to blame for everything wrong with a program.

Re:Minecraft

[AndrewNeo]

Unfortunately since the Source Engine is BSP based, all the blocks in the world would have to be entities instead of world elements themselves, and that's kind of limited (in most 3D engines, really) compared to Minecraft's expanse. At best it'd have to be modified all the way down in engine code to work the way it does now.

Re:Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

In C it's usually hard to make something slow (except for algorithms), but you'd also see the same incompetent programmer either never release the project, or release it in a state of absolute instability.

C++ programmed by the same fool is just about as slow as Java (unless C++ to him means C-with-classes, in which case it has the same problems as C).

So basically, be careful what you wish for. Only people skilled in C and C++ will manage to write stable, fast code. Amazingly, the same is generally true of Java.

Re:Minecraft

[GooberToo]

People assume that most of Minecraft's issues are the result of using Java... without considering the programmer's failings.

Unfortunately, that's what is said every time someone sees a slow Java application. Which is yet even more unfortunate as that seems to be the norm for Java applications.

When Java jockeys go out of there way to make noise about how speedy java is (faster than C), people have an expectation of it being as speedy as constantly boasted. And then when it consistently fails to meet expectations set by those who should know, people complain loudly.

Frankly, Java is frequently "fast enough". And there is nothing wrong with that. It is, after all, pretty fast for a fair number of use cases. I've used several Java applications which were fast enough and provided a good experience. Just the same, I've never run a real world, long-running application, which was actually faster than C or C++. Never. Not once. Which leads me to believe, either I've been lied to by Java programmers or every Java programmer is a bad programmer. Either way, its not a good thing.

The Java world needs to simply accept that Java is frequently "fast enough" and move on. Stop with the lying. Stop with the hype. Most people truly don't care so long as its "fast enough". That is, up until people go out of their way to make a big point about how Java is the fastest language ever created. Its at this point, everyone gets upset and disillusioned and then posts like this get written.

The truth is, Java, in real applications, is rarely, if ever, faster than C or C++. Period. In fact, its frequently much, much slower. The facts are, when people need performance there are really, really, really good reasons why people still use C, C++, and asm. Likewise, there are really good reasons why Java is almost never considered for these applications. And when Java is used in stead of C, C++, or asm, its usually because of corporate culture, idealogical, religious, or plain old ignorance.

Re:Minecraft

[$RANDOMLUSER]

When I glanced at that, I saw "I think Microsoft will be the contributing factor to the success of Java"; and had quite a good giggle.

Re:Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Minecraft's failings have almost nothing to do with Notch and almost all have to do with JOGL (Java OpenGL) directly and JNI indirectly: essentially, Java's way of doing 3D graphics and the way it accesses real code (as opposed to virtual code).

Minecraft routinely crashes when I run it, but it's always due to JOGL. It's actually kind of funny how many hs_err_pid.log files I have. (Those are generated when the Java VM itself crashes - it's nothing Notch did.)

The one thing that it is safe to say is that no one should ever program a game in Java, and no one in their right mind ever deals with JOGL. Almost all the complaints about Minecraft's graphics engine is due to limitations in JOGL.

The only thing Notch can be blamed for is drinking the Java crossplatform coolaid when writing his game.

Re:Minecraft

[Surt]

Perhaps more importantly, java is frequently used in scenarios where developer time is more valuable than user time. Java can often get the job done in half the developer time, at a cost of less performance for the end user. Java has been able to significantly close that end-user performance gap, but it is still there. Still, with the lower development time, that's a big cost saver if the performance remains 'good enough' not to piss off your customer base.

Re:Minecraft

[HAKdragon]

I've never had an issue with it on my machine and it's not exactly top of the line: 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, GeForce 7300, Ubuntu 10.10

Re:Minecraft

[SanityInAnarchy]

Just the same, I've never run a real world, long-running application, which was actually faster than C or C++. Never. Not once.

Have you ever once had the ability to properly compare these things?

It seems to me that the differences between applications are far greater than the differences between platforms. Show people a fast Java app, and the response is "It would've been faster in C!" Show them a slow C/C++ app, and of course it's the programmer who gets blamed. It's really not feasible to implement exactly the same app twice, once in C++ and once in Java -- for one, the implementation would have to diverge to take advantage of the features of each language -- and even if it was feasible, it seems like it'd be a truly massive waste of resources.

And if they do diverge significantly... Suppose Java is half the speed of C, which is what I hear lately. That means "all" I need to do is find an optimization which gives me more than a 200% speedup -- but for many applications, there are all sorts of places where you can do that. Add a little caching here, pick a different algorithm there, maybe this entire data structure is poorly designed. That kind of thing is much easier to do in Java.

The question really is just whether Java is fast enough for your application, and if not, which pieces are really suffering. I actually take this to the other extreme -- start in Ruby, and when I find something that really needs speed, rewrite just that part in C. Then I get the best of both worlds -- faster development, a much smaller, more reliable, more maintainable program, and the raw speed when I absolutely need it.

The Java world needs to simply accept that Java is frequently "fast enough" and move on. Stop with the lying. Stop with the hype.

It isn't lying or hype that Java is sometimes, under certain edge cases, faster than C. Whether it is over the scope of an entire program is a different question.

...there are really, really, really good reasons why people still use C, C++, and asm.

I think this again falls into the realm of edge cases. In fact, I don't really see a good use for C++. The pieces of your program which really need that speed should be in C or asm, because you're going to be optimizing tons of shit by hand that the JVM (or your VM of choice) would otherwise try to do for you. The pieces which don't are now a liability -- there's really no reason I should ever segfault in the GUI portion of my code.

Re:Minecraft

[RobbieThe1st]

Everyone forget about Runescape?
Sure, it doesn't have the latest graphics, and can be childish at times... But it's still a good example of a 3D MMORPG written in Java(Except for the OpenGL & DirectX rendering modules).
And heck, it runs on pretty much anything(Though perhaps not well).

Re:Minecraft

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

"I think this again falls into the realm of edge cases. In fact, I don't really see a good use for C++. The pieces of your program which really need that speed should be in C or asm, because you're going to be optimizing tons of shit by hand that the JVM (or your VM of choice) would otherwise try to do for you. The pieces which don't are now a liability -- there's really no reason I should ever segfault in the GUI portion of my code."

I'm suprised at how much I agree with this - some years ago I would have certainly disagreed. I like optimizing stuff in C or asm, quite frankly, it's probably what I enjoy most in coding for some awkward reason. But, these days I find I do most of the high-level stuff in either C# or Java (though the latter only under protest). However I think this is also a flaw in C++ itself. Why that is is a lengthy opinion piece, but let's just say there are other natively compiled languages with full support for all that C(++) has to offer, just not as terrible to use nor as inviting to create memory and pointer related issues for yourself. In fact, in these languages I have rarely even encountered this issues, just because of how the languages are built up. C++ is really a terrible example of native code.

Re:Minecraft

[petermgreen]

for one, the implementation would have to diverge to take advantage of the features of each language

One of the things I find really noticeable about Java is it pushes you heavily towards certain types of structure. Want a simple array of identical records? sorry you can't have it! you either have to run multiple parallel arrays (which is bad for locality of reference and also bad for code readability) or have an array of objects (which means every array element has all the overhead of an object). Want to pass parameters by reference? sorry the language simply won't let you so you have to work-around it (which is likely to mean creating yet more objects).

The pieces of your program which really need that speed should be in C or asm

C++ is pretty much (excepting a few corner cases) a superset of C and like C compilers many C++ compailer allow inline assembler. Pretty much everything you can do in C you can do in C++ and there is no reason it shouldn't run just as fast yet you can also use higher level constructs where appropriate.

Mixing languages adds complexity to the code, the build process and the debugging process and this needs to be balanced against the benefits of doing it. Java seems a particularly painful language to mix with others and this makes it a bad option for many apps.

Re:Minecraft

[GooberToo]

Have you ever once had the ability to properly compare these things?

Yes! And almost without fail, it typically boils down to an apples and oranges comparison except the Java coders doesn't understand what's going on under the covers so they don't understand its actually an apples (a) to oranges (o) comparison. Furthermore, when I've then changed the code to make it an a to o comparison, traditionally C++ then takes a massive lead, sometimes by as much as an order of magnitude.

And frankly, that's part of the problem. Most Java coders I've met don't have deep system knowledge and even less C++ knowledge. Likewise, finding strong C++ coders can be trying (which is one of Java's strength). As a result, you wind up with a lot of completely unqualified people creating benchmarks, who don't understand what's going on, and then proclaim to the world their result means X when in reality it means something entirely different; and typically that difference is of the apples and oranges variety.

It isn't lying or hype that Java is sometimes, under certain edge cases, faster than C.

And that's entirely the point and entirely why its a huge lie - and purposely so. Edge cases are so rarely representative of real world applications, its hardly noteworthy. But to then take a foot note and present it as a metric for the entire spectrum absolutely is dishonest with every intent to mislead. Again, that's the point. Even you see the bullshit, but you're being more polite and dancing around what it. We all know its a lie. Stop dancing, acknowledge it, and move it. And frankly, I already take your statement to be an acknowledgment.

Java's greatest strength is that programmers are plentiful and performance is generally good enough. The lies and hype are certainly not needed. And frankly, I'm tired of hearing a decade of lies and hype.

Re:Minecraft

[GooberToo]

I don't disagree with anything you said. Java's strength is that programmers are plentiful, coders are typically more productive with Java than C++, and performance is frequently good enough. What's not to like.

But at the end of the day, when all you hear is that Java is the faster language available and in the real world is never is close, you start to wonder if those cheap programmers are even worth their discounted salaries. Meaning, they are doing a disservice to themselves and the language. Java has strong enough legs to walk on its own - its doesn't need the lies and hype - which otherwise only serves to cut its legs out from under it.

Re:Minecraft

[SanityInAnarchy]

Which languages would these be?

And really, I enjoy both extremes. It's the middle I despise -- in fact, I find Java much too low-level for the high-level stuff, and there are some things C++ is much better at (like operator overloading and generic types), whereas Java

Give me JavaScript, Perl, Python, Ruby, even weird stuff like Lisp, Erlang, or Scheme, to write my high-level code. The low-level stuff, I'll write in C, and I do try to avoid situations where assembly is really needed, partly so I can develop on whatever platform is most convenient for me, not necessarily the same platform I'll be deploying to.

Re:Minecraft

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, let's see...

Want a simple array of identical records? sorry you can't have it! you either have to run multiple parallel arrays (which is bad for locality of reference and also bad for code readability) or have an array of objects (which means every array element has all the overhead of an object).

Most likely, you go with the array of objects, because when you say "all the overhead", we're talking 16 bytes. Not usually an issue.

If it's really an issue, it's certainly possible to use similar tricks to what you'd do in C to deal with a blob of data -- just stuff it all into bytes and do some arithmetic to pull it out. Since you're not likely to have many structures where this kind of optimization is easy, wrap it in an object to hold your big array -- now that object overhead you're worried about is being applied once, for an overhead of O(1).

Want to pass parameters by reference? sorry the language simply won't let you

Let me pass _what_ by reference? I honestly can't think of a time I'd want to pass anything but an object by reference, and that's pretty much all you do with objects.

But this is exactly what I'm talking about. There may be cases where it makes perfect sense to do this in C++, so if you're trying to compare programs, you're either going to do this entirely the wrong way in Java, or if you're coming from Java to C++, you won't quite make full use of the power C++ gives you. It's kind of like when people go from C++ or Java to JavaScript and immediately try to build something like classes, thus missing the point of prototypal inheritance.

Mixing languages adds complexity to the code, the build process and the debugging process and this needs to be balanced against the benefits of doing it.

I think of it this way: How can I possibly know ahead of time what the performance characteristics of my code will be, until I actually profile it? I'd much rather write it in something that lets me get it working, and working well -- I'd go one level higher and use Ruby.

If you start that way, once you identify something slow enough that you actually care, the benefit is now that you get to keep your "prototype" code as production code, and that you get to use a language in which you're probably 50-90% more productive.

It's also not alway that bad. Ruby, even JRuby, can have inline C code. And regarding your comment about Java being painful to mix with others, it can certainly be painful to write raw JNI code, but chances are, the work's been done for you -- and it's often remarkably easy to connect JVM languages together. If you've got a Java codebase to play with, I'd strongly suggest playing with it in a JRuby irb session -- you can pretty much just pretend your Java objects are Ruby objects.

I find it hard to believe I'm defending Java. I really despise the language, but I also find it hard to call it slow.

So did the dinosaurs

[Anonymous Coward]

They have stuck around in one form or another for quite a while. They are even still quite useful to mankind.

VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

VirtualBox wasn't mentioned in the article, but when the acquisition was announced, I was really worried about that project. However, the release of VirtualBox 4.0 seems to show that they're still hard at work - not just fixing bugs, but developing new ideas.

I can only hope other Sun projects are doing as well as VirtualBox.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

MySQL, Dead.
Open Solaris, Dead.
OpenOffice, Dead.
Hudson, Dead.

It seems to me that Oracle bought Java, and maybe VirtualBox. The rest of it they threw away.
Note: I do not know, or care what they are doing with the hardware business.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

Glassfish is alive, but at the same comatose pace of development that Sun was maintaining so it's not immediately obvious until you look at the project over a 3-5 year time period.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[John.Banister]

I notice that they killed xVM Server and that they bought & killed Virtual Iron. They seem to be making an effort to avoid competition in hardware assisted virtualization products that install to bare metal.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Wormer, he's a dead man!
Marmalard, dead!
Niedermeyer... DEAD!!

Or, my personal favorite:

"I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!"

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[aodash]

SGE (now Oracle Grid Engine), Dead (closed and no longer free).

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is not dead. Oracle dumped a lot of money, time and talent into the 5.5 GA release and it was the cleanest of any upgrades that I have done since 3.23 came out.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

Hudson, Dead.

Game over, man!

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL never fit their product line.
OpenOffice never fit their product line.
OpenSolaris was never an actual product (it was just public snapshots of the development progress between S10 and S11), with the release of Solaris 11, OSol completed its lifecycle.

This was all expected.

Oracle bought primary Java, Solaris, Sparc and the virtualizatioon stuff (not only VBox, but containers/zones/crossbow), all of which are getting Oracle love.
Glassfish and SailFin are still getting love, OpenDS not so much.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[BuckaBooBob]

Personally When I fire up any Sun app and see oracle on it... It feels like I am looking at Grafiti.. Only time will tell if Oracle will be open source friendly like SUN was.. Only time will tell.. but somehow I doubt they will be as friendly as SUN was.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[aliquis]

I doubt much of anything else he said where true either. Though I don't know and I don't care.

For instance I doubt OpenOffice "is dead", forked yes, dead? Probably not ..

And if it's dying, is it because of Oracle or the people who forked it? And was that because Oracle did anything wrong or they where scared that Oracle would do something wrong?

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[dnormant]

And then they quadrupled the price of the maintenance contract. It'll be a slow death.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[markdavis]

OpenOffice is not dead. It might not be moving very quickly, but it is certainly not dead.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[HiThere]

It's not clear to me on what basis the claim is made that MySQL either is or is not dead. Certainly there have been many forks, and also Oracle seems to be officially continuing it. (I believe that most current development reflects work that was done under Sun, so I'm not considering that as evidence. For that I'll take development done in the forthcoming year.)

Still, I can see lots of reasons that a form of MySQL would continue to be developed. This isn't proof that Oracle will see things the same way, and it certainly isn't proof that they do so currently.

I remain unsure about Java. Sufficiently so that I decided on Python for my current project despite the fact that Java would be faster, and leads itself more easily to parallel processing. (Running different [threads or processes] on different processors.) (Well, I also like the language better, but it was the uncertainties about the future of Java that decided me.) I had just about decided on Java when Oracle sued Google. I still have no idea what patents they are talking about, but I'd prefer to just avoid the problem.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

VirtualBox isn't going anywhere. It is the major platform for all of our temporarily assigned development boxes and our IT department. That's enough of a reason right there to keep it going.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[exomondo]

MySQL, Dead.

Nope.

OpenOffice, Dead.

Nope.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Most of the developers left to form the Document Foundation and release LibreOffice.
Close enough to dead for me.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Most of the developers left both of those projects due to Oracle's ham fisted approach to dealing with them, and I honestly do not expect any further releases.
Close enough to dead for me.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[afabbro]

MySQL, Dead.

Version 5.5 was released in December 2010. You're completely wrong.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL, Dead.

Don't worry, there's MariaDB, the exact sister of MySQL. Use that. (Or didn't Monty give you any of the billion?)

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[theCoder]

Really? That's too bad, though not unexpected. Good thing I grabbed the source code before they closed it off. Just hope I got it all.

Do you know if there is an Open Grid Engine (or similar) project starting to rise from the ashes?

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[markdavis]

I don't think that is accurate either. SOME of the developers left for the horribly-named LibreOffice project. It is unfortunate that this is probably what it will take for OO to move forward again. The pace at which problems have been solved over the last several years has been glacial.

Re:VirtualBox seems alive & well

[TheRaven64]

Do you actually have numbers for this? Last time I looked, 80% of the development work was done by Sun, with Novell the second-largest contributor at about 10%. If all of the non-Oracle developers left to work on LibreOffice then this would mean that OpenOffice had four times the manpower of LibreOffice. Have a lot of Sun developers left to work on LibreOffice? If so, how many and who?

I would say sun is done

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, we have a brand new fileserver with 2 hour or so support that is not in production yet. We've needed support on the order of like getting a part and the new Oracle/Sun could not provide the part in a timely fashion. Took like a week. We are now looking at delegating this box to non-critical storage and buying something supported from a reliable vendor. We have also had a number of issues with solaris/zfs file servers hanging. Personally, I'm going to suggest to management that we not buy any more sun equipment. Its simply less reliable and more costly than the same product from Dell or HP running linux.

I don't believe any of the lead developers are still at Oracle/Sun. The java head left, the XML guy left, the lustre people were told to leave and most have. When you are in a service economy, you have to provide service. Hardware is a dime a dozen today. Software is mostly free. And nobody will pay for support when there is no support to be had.

Re:I would say sun is done

[wsanders]

I concur, it took us over two months to get parts for some 6440 and 6240 blades that are only about two years old, but now EOLed. A 6240 died in production a few weeks ago, it took them several days to get a replacement.

And the online store is down this week, and no one knows when it will be back up. They are changing all the part numbers, as far as I can tell. FFS!!

Software seems to be in a little bit better shape, if you know the right people to call. But I expect they will shed the hardware business at some point.

Re:I would say sun is done

[otis wildflower]

Agree, plus the abortion that replaced SunSolve is clunky, buggy and quite horrible. There's a few decades of sunsolve and docs links that are now borked, which makes life a bit less pleasant.

Thanks, Larry...

Re:I would say sun is done

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java head left? I fear you have an outdated idea of who is the head of Java.

Re:I would say sun is done

[Chris Mattern]

I don't like it, but SunSolve was clunkier, buggier and worse. Having your links borked, especially your documentation links, is most definitely not fun, though.

Re:I would say sun is done

[Anonymous Coward]

In reality, most of the highly publicized people leaving (like Tim Bray) were mostly dead weight. Heck, Gosling spent most of his time at JPL than he did actually working on Java before he finally left.

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

From what I can tell, neither Dell nor HP boxes have usable serial consoles. Your hardware is all at a staffed location where you can have someone 24x7 plug in a keyboard and monitor?

Re:I would say sun is done

[Phroggy]

From what I can tell, neither Dell nor HP boxes have usable serial consoles. Your hardware is all at a staffed location where you can have someone 24x7 plug in a keyboard and monitor?

Dell iDRAC, Raritan KVM-over-IP.

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

Right. Does iDRAC present a useful interface over a serial console right out of the box? By useful, I mean does it allow one to enter IP configuration for a network service processor interface while still allowing one to interrogate hardware, power the box on/off, and connect to the system/OS console? My understanding is that like HP's (extra charge) iLO this is not the case. Sole reliance on a functional ethernet connection for the service processor doesn't cut it, and neither does relying on the availability of a DHCP server. The Raritan devices look slick, but again, they appear to require a functioning network connection (catch 22!) and are kind of expensive to deploy at sites with one or two systems. They're added rack space, more complexity to try to relate to remote hands who may or may not speak English, and in some locations require an extra switch or media converter (more complexity, cost, and things to break) to cope with fiber-only sites. Plus, tunneling VGA, keyboard, and mouse over the network is a massive kludge, and transoceanic latency makes this approach rather frustrating to use.

Re:I would say sun is done

[ryanov]

I recently worked with a server that has one, though I couldn't tell you what model. OpenManage is the software that installs on the OS to configure the LOM.

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

There's another catch-22. I can't install the OS without a working console.

Re:I would say sun is done

[Billly Gates]

You could try IBM.

They have their own java VMs' but of course they are tied to DB2. They can have parts ready and a well trained but expensive staff to help I.T. run them. Websphere is cool if you are a java shop too.

I do not trust Dell or HP with having the suppor

Re:I would say sun is done

[monsted]

Neither solution presents anything as serial, but very few people actually want that. They all have an ethernet connection, separate from the regular ethernet jack, that you can string to a dedicated iLO/RAC switch. If your production network then dies, you can reach the console through your backup network. This backup network is quite possibly where you'd have placed your serial console servers anyway.

I don't know about prices for Dell, but HP comes with basic iLO for free, allowing text console, power on/off and a few other features. The upgrade to Advanced iLO costs very little and gives you graphical console, remote media (virtual floppy and DVD) and a few more.

Raritan is miles behind iLO in terms of usability. The only reason to use that is if you have a bunch of old junk that doesn't have iLO.

Re:I would say sun is done

[Anonymous Coward]

I find I can no longer use Firefox on Fedora x64 to get to the downloads. It requires flash and my version doesn't work. I have to go to a windows system to get sun info, if I can find it. If I do find it, I get redirected to an old sun area that is no longer available or the Oracle "Welcome to our new site" page that is content free.

I've loved Sun hardware in the past. Solid and it lasts. Solaris 10 provided good reasons to prefer it to Linux. I can't wait for BTRFS to become as solid as ZFS. I want Containers, Live Upgrade, Flars and Dtrace on Linux. And I can't wait until I can ditch Directory Server - why couldn't Sun make it as easy to use as AD???

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

You're missing the point. Apple's Bonjour may be "configurationless", but the greater internet isn't. Have all the dedicated switches you like, but the ethernet interface still needs an IP address, a netmask, and a gateway to be configured. Does HP have a telepathic interface for that that they didn't tell me about? The basic iLO is so featureless as to be not useful. If the Raritan products are actually *behind* iLO, which is worthless, then they're beyond worthless.

Re:I would say sun is done

[monsted]

DHCP works nicely, and even allows for redundancy if you want. HP SIM takes care of tracking which IP is which, but you could easily set up a script to poll the web server on each iLO card for the serial number to keep an inventory of them.

Raritan is way behind iLO Advanced in every way, but even basic iLO beats it if all you need is the console of a text-only box which covers the majority of my Unix systems. If you do need the extra features, iLO Advanced costs a lot less than a raritan switch and dongle.

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

DHCP requires a server -- so should I require another RU of space and a couple thousand bucks just for that? Plus, it's just begging the question -- how would I set up the DHCP server without a console?

Re:I would say sun is done

[monsted]

I use the router for the network to do it (which is actually one of the switches, with routing support). These are hand-me-down Cisco 3550 that are no longer up to running the production network, mostly because they're not gigglebit switches. Redundancy is less important, since this is the backup for the production network, so no reason to spend a fortune on gear. Obviously someone needs to set up the very first device that goes in by hand, but that can be done from the comfort of the office before sending the box to the datacenter. We use console servers on a third network, set up to let the network people access the network gear's console if everything else is dead. Backup for the backup of the backup :)

Even if you went the way of serial consoles for your servers, you'd need equipment to do it. Our Avocent Cyclades boxes are a lot more expensive than the old Cisco gear we would've at most have gotten $50 for when traded in for new gear. Even then, you'd need network gear for your console servers. How do you set up the console servers without a console?

Re:I would say sun is done

[Phroggy]

I'm confused by what you're asking for. Are you implying that no configuration is required for a serial interface, and therefore the need to configure iDRAC/iLO/Raritan makes this type of solution unsuitable? Are you suggesting that you can connect remotely to a serial interface without having a functioning network? Are you saying that a serial solution doesn't take up any rack space?

I have no idea what the pricing is, but I would expect a serial solution to be cheaper, and to work better over high-latency connections. Those are valid reasons to prefer serial over the alternatives I suggested.

Re:I would say sun is done

[petermgreen]

Plus, it's just begging the question -- how would I set up the DHCP server without a console?

Equally how would you set up a serial console server box without a console?

Whether using serial or kvm over IP or whatever you are going to have to setup the initial bits of gear using either a laptop or a locally connected keyboard, monitor and possibly mouse.

Re:I would say sun is done

[cthulhu11]

The serial console boxes are already long in place by the network types for their Juniper and Cisco gear. No laptop needed, for me at least. The serial console servers are network accessible and rigorously maintained.

Re:I would say sun is done

[ryanov]

I think that you can access the console before you have the software installed too. I haven't read up too closely.

Re:I would say sun is done

[spitzcor]

the lustre people were told to leave and most have

What can you tell use about the departures? Was the request by Oracle causation for the mass exodus or only in response? That is, once they lost critical mass, did they simply cut their losses?

p.s. I could have sworn that I replied to this comment earlier... I suppose I won't see a response at this late date :(

Solaris

[codepunk]

I have been making a killing doing Solaris to Linux migrations since the Sun purchase. My wallet cannot thank Oracle enough.

Re:Solaris

[durdur]

Yeah, and Solaris (+Java) are the success stories of Sun software. What about all the other stuff (mostly acquired) they have been trying to market over the years? Anyone remember SeeBeyond (enterprise integration vendor)? Sun historically could not market any of this - it just sank because they were never a top vendor and didn't even get onto evaluation lists, much less close deals. Now, Oracle does know how to sell software. So maybe they can make a go of some of these products. But Oracle mostly had something equivalent already, so in some cases I suspect they will let the Sun software die (or more accurately, continue to die, because it was already headed there).

Re:Solaris

[FictionPimp]

After spending 3 months just trying to get a software support contract for our servers so I could do what their support told me to do, we said screw it and started the process as well.

We are moving 12 servers to HP and linux. If only we could get rid of the Oracle database it's self I'd be in heaven.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

We moved off Oracle to PostgreSQL 6 years ago, at the same time moving off Solaris onto Linux. Couldn't be happier.

Re:Solaris

[afabbro]

Everyone's been making a killing doing that, well before the Oracle purchase. I can't think anyone has bought Sun gear as their go-forward standard for many years.

Re:Solaris

[codepunk]

I have run postgresql servers for years but could never suggest it for high transaction volume usage. Yes it will do nearly anything oracle does until you have to hit some scale.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you're not working in one of those companies that thinks Enterprise Server = Sun sparc / IBM pcc
There's a lot of those here.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle databases are troublesome legacy products. it's time people stop believing the marketing machine that oracle is the only database choice in the enterprise.

I am sorry your moving to HP, I am not a fan of HP gear.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, then after all the linux boxes start dropping like flies because linux is so bug-ridden and unstable, my wallet gets even fatter when I put those sites back on Solaris and Sun/Oracle hardware. I love watching the stupid linux weenies foam at the mouth crying "just let me upgrade to the next rev and then it will be stable"

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you there is at least one very large company banking on Sun^H^H^HOracle Solaris in a very large way. I can only assume there are others.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

At least 'the stupid linux weenies' can upgrade when something goes wrong, rather than paying up the asshole for a support contract when there's critical security updates for Solaris.

Re:Solaris

[FictionPimp]

Our problem is we have some core applications that require oracle databases. Until they support anything else we are stuck paying out the nose just because our processors changed from sparc to intel.

Re:Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea we used to be a Solaris shop but we're working hard to go back to Linux. Its odd that the article states Oracle is doing fine but if you look at the posts it seems most people are leaving Oracle/Sun. I really liked Sun.

Re:Solaris

[marcosdumay]

You'll have to pay for it (add-on), but Postgres scales way further than Oracle.

Re:Solaris

[randyleepublic]

How do I get in touch with you?

Documentation died with Sun

[BestNicksRTaken]

I noticed today that there's a shedload of bad links left in google's cache.

try searching for just about anything to do with solaris and you get links to sun pages that now just redirect you to oracle's completely useless "Oracle Documentation" page which seems to be almost entirely about the database.

virtualbox seems to be able the only software now owned by oracle that it doesn't seem intent on killing off.

Re:Documentation died with Sun

[FranTaylor]

oracle's completely useless "Oracle Documentation" page which seems to be almost entirely about the database.

That's funny I see these links along the right edge of the page:

Berkeley DB
Enterprise Manager
Database EE and XE
Enterprise Pack for Eclipse
Fusion Middleware
Java EE & GlassFish
Java SE
JDeveloper and ADF
MySQL
NetBeans IDE
Pre-built Developer VMs
Solaris 10 & 11 Express
SQL Developer
VM VirtualBox
Zend Server for PHP

I can still find and download the manuals for ALL of my old Sun gear (well except for my old 3/60)

Re:Documentation died with Sun

[wsanders]

They have changed every link on the site. You will need to authenticate, but most of the pages that were not total cruft are still there. Don't expect to find any 4.1.3 documentation. nd I am not sure Googlewill be able to spider the new site.

Re:Documentation died with Sun

[Kinky Bass Junk]

Most of the documentation is available within the Oracle Support interface, available to paying customers.

Re:Documentation died with Sun

[newdsfornerds]

That is a fact. It's a real challenge to find what you need.

BigAdmin XXXXXXX

[Anonymous Coward]

Google nearly any Sun product and see where the links take you. Try to figure out the new patching site....

The merger has been a nightmare for Sun customers...and now Oracle is stopping 3rd party vendors from selling hardware to put in Sun servers until clients sign an Oracle Agreement? WTF?

Re:BigAdmin XXXXXXX

[FranTaylor]

"Google nearly any Sun product"

Why not try their Oracle's search on their page? They have moved a lot of stuff around lately and google hasn't found it yet. This is a google issue, not an Oracle issue. Everything I have looked for is still there but I will admit that I did have to look around a bit.

Re:BigAdmin XXXXXXX

[mswhippingboy]

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this could be "Google's revenge". Return any searches for Sun or Oracle with broken links.

They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS guys

[Arch_Android]

I speak only for myself, but considering they've killed OpenSolaris, done next to nothing with OpenOffice.org, and are suing Google for Java in Android, I hope they die a terrible, prolonged death!! But, that's just me.

Around with no customers...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I work at a university which has historically been a huge Solaris shop as far as infrastructure goes. Hundreds of web servers, mail systems, LDAP servers, etc. have all been based on Solaris for many years. But Oracle has started trying to nickle & dime us to death, so with a new push to virtualize as much of our infrastructure as we can we're also migrating as much as we can off of Solaris and onto linux. We feel like Oracle is giving us very little alternative given how much more expensive they're making things. They may keep Sun/Solaris around for a long time but from here it looks like they may not have many customers actually using it...

Re:Around with no customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. Also work at a major university that is abandoning a substantial installed Sun/Solaris environment en-masse in favor of Redhat/centos linux.

Re:Around with no customers...

[Bigbutt]

We're the same. Oracle prices for the replacements for the Sun T2000's were too high so we stuck with the T2000's well after they were due for an upgrade. With the new nickle and diming we've been virtualizing app servers and new hardware is coming in as Dell R710's vs Sun systems. Sucks for me as I've been a Sun admin for 14 years with linux (while longer at 18 years) in second and moving up fast and hp-ux coming up from behind. Company's even paying for an out of state training class for Red Hat cluster services!

[John]

Re:Around with no customers...

[Bigbutt]

The only problem is that they have the same thoughts about all their smaller contracts forgetting that the better, more well rounded Solaris admins come from smaller shops where they have to fix it all. So they're cutting out the new generation of admins. Eventually there'll just be the older folks (like me) who worked with Solaris for a long time being paid big bucks to support the antiquated Sun boxes during the next crisis.

[John]

Re:Around with no customers...

[pseudonomous]

Not to mention that many CS and IT students, who will encounter Unix/Linux for the first time at their university, might be exposed to Solaris and be convinced that it's the best Unix, simply because it's the one that they are most familiar with. (I'll bet this sort-of reasoning plays a bigger role in people's OS preferences than most would care to admit).

Re:Around with no customers...

[HiThere]

Yeah. I still fondly remember IBM IBSYS on the 7094 ... not.

Even JCL (Disk Operating System version) was better. Though I wouldn't say the same of Tape Operating System.)

Re:Around with no customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I work for one of Sun's major customers, a big financial institution. We have thousands of Sun servers, and the long term plan announced by our managers is to migrate all Solaris servers to AIX and/or Linux. And given that lots of our Sun hardware is reaching EOSL this year, it will hurt Oracle a lot.

Re:Around with no customers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same boat here, they're not just alienating their smaller customer base, they're pissing off their big dollar enterprise shops too. Issues around support contract costs, component costs, future direction on the hardware, supply chain problems getting replacement parts, there's a lot of things that are making us nervous.

We're starting to look at replacements on a lot of the M-series servers, and the T3 processor based stuff is not even really on our radar. More analysis of Red Hat on intel boxen (probably DL980g7's or x3850x5's, does IBM even have an 8 socket intel chassis?) or expanding our AIX footprint. HP keeps trying to poke their heads in with stuff like "You'd really like hpux now, next year we'll even have a fully dynamic kernel!"

Re:Around with no customers...

[Mariognarly]

+1 for same here. We're aggressively moving off of any & every Oracle platform, mostly because of the cost they've come back to us with to continue using their software & hardware, but also how inflexible they are with the whole process. Mind you, we've been a long time Sun customer, and had as such had a very favorable relationship with them, so the cost is more of a shock to us than someone with a more heterogeneous environment.

It's unfortunate for a lot of the people & products with extensive experience and development interest in Sun/Solaris. In my eyes, Solaris is a true enterprise grade OS. I think the OS industry as a whole is very lucky to have Red Hat made the progress it has over the past few years. They're slowly moving from a linux on commodity hardware strategy to enterprise level products and resulting development. Before a few years ago, I'd be reluctant to run linux for something really high-end, however they're now powering the infrastructure for the NYSE. That's a pretty reputable feat. Rumors of ZFS porting to RHEL are out there, and they've improved greatly on their clustering and virtualization offerings too. Red is the new purple.

Re:Around with no customers...

[Iphtashu Fitz]

does IBM even have an 8 socket intel chassis?

It looks like thier ex5 series of servers can support up to 8 sockets.

Re:Around with no customers...

[TheRaven64]

Not to mention the fact that big companies start as small companies. A vendor that put a bit of effort into giving good deals on hardware to little startups like Google and Facebook is probably laughing all of the way to the bank. 99% of the small companies won't grow much, and half of them will probably go bust, but most of them can give you a small profit and the ones that become successful can give you a massive return on investment.

FLOSS guys weren't contributing to OpenSolaris

[judeancodersfront]

It was basically an in-house project with the (failed) goal of attracting Linux developers. Did you ever visit the OpenSolaris forums? The place was dead.

They may be hated at places like Slashdot but they have contributed far more to the kernel than Canonical.

Re:FLOSS guys weren't contributing to OpenSolaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Contributing to OpenSolaris required assigning your copyright to Sun. No thanks.

Re:FLOSS guys weren't contributing to OpenSolaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. It's been dormant only recently. I have been part of OpenSolaris groups in India that were and still are really active.

Re:FLOSS guys weren't contributing to OpenSolaris

[marcosdumay]

They could have made a killing if they distributed Open Solaris under GPLv3, hell, some people were even talking about Open Solaris killing Linux by the time. Instead, Sun published things in an "we own everything you do" license, and required copyrights assignments. It is one more place where Sun just didn't get it enough to be sucessfull, but didn't also get it so wrong to fail.

Now, Oracle's contributions to the Linux kernel were mainly focused on making their database run faster. Ok, it is good that they did it, but don't expect a lot of praise.

Not portable.

[bobs666]

Java been dead, Its not portable. Its fractured to many people have to many incompatible versions.

Here is a quote from the down load Linux / other part of the page on Mindcraft.

" Download Minecraft.jar, an executable jar file. It might work as-is."

Its just not reassuring. I tried some tutorials From Sun on a RedHat box and the first baby ones worked. But when I loaded the Sun libs for the graphics tutorials nothing worked.

Client Side Java is doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Client side Java seems to be doomed. I dont think its directly attributed to Oracle, as Sun had ignored client side Java as well for too long. Oracle just seem to ignore it even more.

Re:Client Side Java is doomed

[mswhippingboy]

Client side Java seems to be doomed

No, it's just called Android now.

Re:Client Side Java is doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

Client side Java seems to be doomed. I dont think its directly attributed to Oracle, as Sun had ignored client side Java as well for too long. Oracle just seem to ignore it even more.

They haven't ignored it at all. They had to make a big change in direction from the bad situation Sun was in. And in this case, that meant a big rewrite that has taken about a year. The new stack is in Early Access now, and beta in a few months.

Essentially, Sun had already put Swing/AWT out to pasture. (They couldn't kill it partly because some billion dollar investment banks rely on it and would get angry and stop buying Sun hardware, and partly because the Java Community Process just doesn't have a mechanism for removing anything from the Java spec!) But Sun had also made a big blunder with JavaFX 1.x that it required you to learn a new language, JavaFX Script, because that's what it was written in (and it was a dog for writing a platform in). And it turned out that nobody wanted to learn JavaFX Script, especially as it was wretchedly buggy until version 1.3 last April.

So, Oracle had to toss the JavaFX 1.x code and start over. The new stack's rendering engine ("Prism") accelerates almost everything on the graphics card (cue demos of thousands of videos playing simultaneously on physics-enabled bouncing bricks...). The new GUI libraries (called "JavaFX 2.0" but pretty much a re-write) now support every JVM language there is -- Java, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, JRuby, Jython...

They are desperately playing catch-up, and being Oracle they are downright rubbish at PR or making any decent announcements, but from what I've seen their development team is trying to make a decent fist of it.

(No I don't work for Oracle or any of their partners!)

Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[judeancodersfront]

What else on the desktop uses Java? And please do not say Eclipse or a bit-torrent client that came out years ago.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[S.O.B.]

Forget about the desktop. Android apps are written in Java.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

Not always. Any JVM language can produce bytecode that converts to Dalvik representation.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[mswhippingboy]

Just about every vendor's enterprise desktop applications I've seen over the last 5 years or so. Of course, I realize that enterprise applications are not cool on /. so I can see how this goes unnoticed.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Richard Steiner]

They aren't cool in a lot of corporations, either. :-)

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[sortius_nod]

Maximo uses Java. I only know this as my fiance is an admin for a company that uses Maximo.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[mswhippingboy]

Can you name one large corporation that doesn't have Java just about everywhere? If it's not the primary development language, it's certain ONE of the top (and by "large corporation" I'm talking F1000, not your parent's garage). I've working in many large enterprise development shops over the years and I haven't found a single one.

Even if they don't do their own development using Java, their infrastructure (ESBs, BPMs, SOAs, etc) is wall to wall java code. Why? Sorry to piss off the java-haters here in /., but it's that way because it just works that damn well. End of story.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SanityInAnarchy]

Why shouldn't I say Eclipse? I mean, yes, there are other torrent clients which do what Azureus did, and better, but I don't really see much of a competitor to Eclipse besides, say, Netbeans, if you want a portable IDE.

If you don't care about portability, or if you don't care about IDEs, then sure, use vim, Visual Studio, emacs, or Xcode. But I do care about these things, so what else should I be looking at? (I use Kate for most of my day-to-day stuff, for what that's worth.)

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[exomondo]

Not always. Any JVM language can produce bytecode that converts to Dalvik representation.

The standard Android APIs are in Java though so unless you're not using any standard Android APIs you're going to have to write *some* Java.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[exomondo]

Can you name one large corporation that doesn't have Java just about everywhere?

Microsoft :D

Just in case someone takes that seriously - there's always a few that sarcasm is wasted on - I'll state it's the exception, not the rule.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[exomondo]

Maximo uses Java. I only know this as my fiance is an admin for a company that uses Maximo.

Good to see some chicks on /.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

Strata Live 3D is written in Java http://strata.com/

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[TheRaven64]

Eclipse doesn't run on the desktop. A machine capable of starting Eclipse in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee is classed as a workstation.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[TheRaven64]

Azureus is the first program I ever saw with a CPU leak. I've seen programs leak memory before - the memory usage gradually climbs as the program runs, but Azureus managed have its CPU usage gradually climb to 100%, even if you just started it and didn't do anything. That requires some impressively incompetent coding, although I'm not sure whether it was the Azureus, JVM, or SWT developers that were to blame.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[temcat]

Some bank client software
At least two popular CAT programs, one open-source and one proprietary
The excellent TuxGuitar (IIRC, it's compiled)
The JSampler sampler frontend

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[putaro]

Microsoft has it everywhere too. They just call it C# :-)

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[judeancodersfront]

Yes we all know it is used for in-house stuff but there is a glaring lack of consumer applications when compared to .NET.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[judeancodersfront]

Because it has been the same damn program that people have been citing as proof of Java not being dead on the desktop FOR YEARS.
It's the damn list from 5 years ago. Eclipse, Netbeans, Azureus(Vuze). Shouldn't there be some new programs by now? Why are so many programs still written in C++?

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Android APIs are in language-neutral JAR bytecode format. A Java compiler is not needed. JVM and .NET would both be useless if libraries couldn't target all supported platform languages.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[mswhippingboy]

I wasn't referring to in-house apps. I was referring to vendor supplied enterprise apps (infrastructure tools like ESB, BPM, EAI, etc). All sorts of intranet "head end" apps, departmental apps, vertical systems, etc. They all use java. Since these are backend systems for the most part, they have the advantage of being able to run the same binaries on Unix, Linux, Windows, OSX (rarely) or even on the mainframes.

Consumer apps tend to be desktop apps and as has been noted repeatedly, client-side java has never taken hold, so this is no real surprise.

Java FX 2.0 may help the desktop situation, but my guess is it's too little too late. The world is moving on and my feeling is the future of the consumer market is in iOS and Android. With the phone and tablet markets ruled by these platforms, I see nothing to prevent them from ruling the desktop GUI space as well. It's more a matter of "when" rather than "if".

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

JDownloader is one of my favourite programs, you could only take it from my cold, dead hands

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

> A machine capable of starting Eclipse in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee is classed as a workstation.

Actually, a SSD goes a *long* way towards making Eclipse (and Netbeans, for that matter) snappy. Or tweaking your antivirus settings so it doesn't insist on deep-scanning every jarfile every time the classloader touches one.

Network admins... for the love of God and everything holy(tm), have the kindness and decency to let your developers skip the endless jarfile scanning. You guys have *no idea* how many thousand hours of expensive developer time your paranoid antivirus settings destroy every single year for the sake of keeping receptionists and call center operators from getting infected by a trojan screen saver that's not even written in Java. In the entire history of malware, I don't think there's *ever* been a successful trojan introduced onto a corporate network by Eclipse, a plug-in, or anything from apache.org. Really. Prove it to yourself... try to find evidence of one mentioned anywhere by Google. No, not "theoretical" malware -- real, honest to god malware.

Time to load Eclipse or Netbeans with jarfile-scanning off: 12-18 seconds (2+GHz dual+ core, 4+ gigs, 7200+rpm). Time to load Eclipse or Netbeans on the same PC with jarfile-scanning enabled for McAffee or NAV: 1-2 minutes. Plus multiply build times by a factor of 4-8.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[petermgreen]

Why are so many programs still written in C++?

A few reasons I think

1: C++ makes it easy to mix different levels of code, you can write your app mostly in OOP using the STL (or even your own templates if you feel really adventurous) but you can also do pointer arithmetic and other low level stuff when it's the best fit for your problem.
2: C++ is probablly second only to C in platform penetration, while your UI may need to be rewritten your core logic can be the same across a huge number of platforms.
3: C++ lets you (or a library author) create your own types that are efficient and pleasant to work with (e.g. for complex numbers, vectors etc). for any mathematical code this is a huge advantage.
4: C++ performs well (java can be made to perform well but afaict doing so often requires fighting the language due to lack of simple things like arrays of structs)
5: C++ makes it really easy to access the platform's standard libraries (compared to a language like Java that lives in it's own world and makes it very painful to leave that world)

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

And aren't we all glad about that. Granted, it's not all Java's fault, and a large part is due to how Android's UI framework works, but I don't think I've ever talked to an Android developer who:

(a) didn't work for Google, or
(b) doesn't have proper experience with at least 3 other languages and/or frameworks

and didn't really hate Java. And I assure you, I know a LOT of "mobile developers".

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Epesh]

ThinkingRock (http://www.trgtd.com.au/) and Freeplane (http://freeplane.sourceforge.net) come to mind instantly, as applications I use all the time. Neither of them generate code or have any distinct connection to development.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Darfeld]

Why? Sorry to piss off the java-haters here in /., but it's that way because it just works that damn well. End of story.

While Java sure work well... Sorry but it's not the best langage on any scale. Not the simplest, not the fastest either to write or execute...

Its APIs are of the best documented, maybe, and it have some nice IDE (Eclipse is quite popular, and is rather good, even if I have some few issue with it).

The real reason Java is so popular is that it's really really hard not to learn Java at some point in your programmer life. Hell, it replaced C++ as the default learning language in my school. I think I had lecture of Java in 90% of the possible platforms.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[tehcyder]

Wow, their web site gets the prize for most annoying and unreadable design of the year. At least you can read the time cube guy's insane ramblings. Strata Live 3D might be the best thing since sliced bread, but I can't read tiny grey characters on a slighter-darker-grey background, sorry.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SenseiLeNoir]

and just because the person mentions "fiance", you assume its a female, and you wonder why some nerds are forever stuck int he basement

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[mswhippingboy]

it's not the best langage on any scale. Not the simplest, not the fastest either to write or execute...

Exactly the point. Java tends to be the best mix of simplicity and speed.

The simplest would probably be something like LOGO. Care to write a really complex application in it?

C (or Fortran) would probably qualify as the fastest (execution), as long as you have plenty of time to test and profile to ensure you've caught all the memory leaks and broken pointers.

Fastest to write? I dunno. It all depends on the app you're writing, the IDE your using, etc. Personally I find I can code in Java faster than in other languages (except maybe Perl for some applications), but YMMV. This is a very individual thing.

The real reason Java is so popular is that it's really really hard not to learn Java at some point in your programmer life. Hell, it replaced C++ as the default learning language in my school. I think I had lecture of Java in 90% of the possible platforms.

I think you have it backwards. The reason you got so much exposure to it in school is because it is far and away the most popular language out there with only C anywhere close to it.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.... jar doesn't have anything to do with the bytecode, its simply how all the individual class files are bundled together into one file. Consider it like the tar command (tape archive) from unix, or zip. You put the jar files in your classpath, and then the JVM unpacks the files and loads them into memory.

And sure, you can use another language to create the bytecode, but Java is the predominant language, and javac the compiler and likely used for 90-99% of Android development. Sure, you can use JRuby, Jython, ErlanJ, Scala, or some other language that is supported on the JVM, but those are on the fringe. Just because you *can* do it doesn't mean many people are. The JVM was designed for Java, the supporting tools and compiler are proven, and developed over many years, only other JVM languages, and that's a large part of the reason why Google chose Java.

• For all intensive purposes Android development==Java development.

Funnily enough, Google doesn't advertise this too much.

Myself, I follow DHH when hearing about Java - used to be interested, now, it's "meh".

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SanityInAnarchy]

Given that it's the first program you ever saw with a CPU leak, I'd have to assume it's the Azureus developers' fault, unless Azureus was the first JVM or SWT program you ever saw.

I'm not in any way defending Azureus in that respect. It had a few cool features, but pretty much all of them have now been implemented in ktorrent, utorrent, etc.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SanityInAnarchy]

Because it has been the same damn program that people have been citing as proof of Java not being dead on the desktop FOR YEARS.

So what?

Shouldn't there be some new programs by now?

Minecraft, for one.

Why are so many programs still written in C++?

Partly because of FUD like this. Partly because C++ actually is a better language in some respects -- it has operator overloading, for one.

Mostly because of inertia. Put another way, why are so many server programs still written in Java? Why are so few written in C++? I have to imagine most of these are for historical reasons -- at some point, a critical mass of server people bought the Java hype, whereas at some point, Java on the desktop had a real opportunity to steal marketshare, but wasn't (yet) fast enough or well-tooled enough, and Microsoft's JVM convinced people it wasn't really portable after all.

Personally, I don't think I'd ever write a program of any significant size in either Java or C++ if I could possibly avoid it.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SanityInAnarchy]

While your points do compare favorably with Java, I don't know how well they compare to other languages:

C++ makes it easy to mix different levels of code, you can write your app mostly in OOP using the STL (or even your own templates if you feel really adventurous) but you can also do pointer arithmetic and other low level stuff when it's the best fit for your problem.

Java allows this also, in that you can write C/C++ code which hooks into Java (via JNI), but it's far from easy. There are also fixed-length arrays, and I would think those get very efficient when you stuff them with primitives -- so Java and C++ are similar in that respect. Compare C++'s Vector class to Java's ArrayList, for example.

C++ is probablly second only to C in platform penetration, while your UI may need to be rewritten your core logic can be the same across a huge number of platforms.

While Java doesn't have quite the same penetration, it is pretty damned good. Windows/Mac/Linux, Android/Symbian/Blackberry, any Blu-Ray player, etc. I realize some of these platforms may take a significant amount of work to port to, but so would your C++ app -- as far as I know, the C spec doesn't require that you have any types which can hold more than a single byte, so you may come across a platform where sizeof(short)==sizeof(long) -- all it guarantees is that the "larger" size is at least as big as the "smaller" size.

There are also a large number of languages which have runtimes which are written in extremely portable C. I know Perl has historically had a goal of working everywhere C does, so long as it can physically fit there. I'm not sure how portable Java is, but with the JVM open now, it should be much easier to port it to new platforms.

C++ lets you (or a library author) create your own types that are efficient and pleasant to work with (e.g. for complex numbers, vectors etc). for any mathematical code this is a huge advantage.

The same is true of many languages, and with Java, this is mostly a syntactical problem.

C++ makes it really easy to access the platform's standard libraries (compared to a language like Java that lives in it's own world and makes it very painful to leave that world)

Again, there is JNI -- but I agree that it's painful to leave.

Let me contrast this with how I'd approach this problem: Ruby or JRuby, with C extensions where I need them, probably via RubyInline or something similar. Using this approach, I'd make my app at least as portable as Ruby and JRuby. The easy things are easy, the hard things are easier, and for the rare occasions performance makes things difficult, there's C -- at that point, C++ wouldn't buy me much anyway.

It gives me the same "mixing different levels of code" (even from JRuby), only much moreso. It is nice that C is part of C++, but then I can't do better than C++ -- then I'm still stuck with weird patterns like visitors and for loops with iterators to deal with the language's lack of closures, not to mention the fact that slicing happens and virtual being not the default is just dangerous. Don't talk to me about type safety when you have multiple kinds of typecasting, some of which might change the address of a pointer, thus a perfectly innocent-looking method call might hit a completely different virtual table than I expect, and call a completely unrelated method.

I mean, no, C++ does not get to claim to be high-level when I still have to think about issues like memory allocation, slicing, who's responsible for cleanup (caller or callee?), references vs pointers, whether to use an int or a long, and after all that bullshit, I still need some fucking preprocessor macros to reduce the sheer amount of redundancy in the code I write.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[exomondo]

and just because the person mentions "fiance", you assume its a female, and you wonder why some nerds are forever stuck int he basement

no, i didn't assume, see fiance vs fiancee.

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[SenseiLeNoir]

i copied what the parent said, but i am sure it can be established the original author meant fiancee, and therefore my comment still stands

Re:Java and Minecraft might as well merge

[exomondo]

or was a female and meant what she wrote.

Or Minecraft shows the flaws of Java

[judeancodersfront]

I don't see why the programmer should be blamed when he is one of the few people that has actually created a popular Java program. Perhaps you have to be very talented to just build a mediocre program with Java.

Re:Or Minecraft shows the flaws of Java

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, right? I bet you also don't know of a popular Ruby program, or a Python program... but that doesn't mean there aren't any. You just don't stay current of the relevant domains for its use.

I personally don't know any Java programmers who code for the desktop. I don't know any who would want to, either. It's tantamount to using C for a website.

Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[aclarke]

It still makes me sad that Apple didn't buy Sun instead of Oracle. It would have taken less than 20% of Apple's cash reserves, so in one sense wouldn't have even been a particularly big purchase.

Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise. Apple could have merged its own chip fabrication division with Sun's, and picked up significant engineering talent along with it. Apple would control Java, which would have put it in just as strong of a position against Google as Oracle now has, which would have made sense strategically, as far as I can see.

Sure, there would have been some Java vs. Objective C questions, as well as Mac OS X Server vs. Solaris, but I think overall it would have been a healthier relationship for everyone than Oracle's purchase. Oh well, what do I know. I'm not a billionaire CEO.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Dunbal]

Apple is not about enterprise. It's about selling expensive trinkets to teenagers, nouveau riche, and "me too"ers. Apple buying Sun makes about as much sense as McDonald's opening a luxury car dealership.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Apple and Oracle would tie as terrible owners of Sun. Apple just deprecated Java and won't be including it with OSX anymore. I can only imagine how Steve Jobs would lock things down...

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[aclarke]

Apple is not about enterprise.

That was my point.

It's about selling expensive trinkets to teenagers, nouveau riche, and "me too"ers.

That's a pretty stupid comment.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[ArmchairGeneral]

But Apple doesn't seem to have any interest in the enterprise. Most of their products are end-user oriented and in one way you could say they would like the client-facing side of the enterprise, if they want any part of it. AFAIK they've never put in anything serious for enterprise servers, and I don't think they want that. Of course I wonder why Google didn't pick up Sun when it had the chance. They shared a lot of common philosophies, especially those in regards to the open source community. Not to mention avoid the upcoming Oracle vs. Android lawsuit as they would have had Java in their back pocket. Of course Ellison might have found another reason to sue them anyway.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[MachineShedFred]

For the umpteenth time, Apple did not depreciate Java, they depreciated their own packaging and distribution of Java. Now, they recommend you run Sun (Oracle) Java, just like every other platform known to mankind.

Stop spreading FUD please.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Surt]

Apple is not about enterprise.

That was my point.

It's about selling expensive trinkets to teenagers, nouveau riche, and "me too"ers.

That's a pretty stupid comment.

In what way ... I'd say gp had it right on the nose.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You basically suggested that Chrysler merge with Bridgestone, because Chrysler makes cars, cars have tires, and that is what Bridgestone makes.

The extremes of your knowledge of details about these companies, such as the liquid assets of Apple, and your lack of comprehension what actually constitutes a company, what the various business divisions are and how they work together, is perplexing.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[zlogic]

Why the hell does Apple need Java? I the past 4 years they're been developing a closed platform that's does a limited set of tasks extremely well. Apple's business model is based on reducing hardware/software to a limited number of configurations. Knowing in advance where the software will run allows them to create a great user experience (or throw away the features if they don't work well, like video recording on pre-3GS phones).

Java, on the other hand, makes you write software for a completely unknown platform, with any OS, screen size and CPU. Now why would Apple want that? Their greatest strength is optimizing their software for a specific hardware/OS combination. Look at Microsoft, they wanted Windows everywhere and ended up with Windows Mobile and the touchscreen-enabled Windows 7, both of which are selling poorly.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Adambomb]

they depreciated their own

Deprecation, Not to be confused with
Depreciation.

It's like the Lose versus Loose of Slashdot these days

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

ROTFL, what a silly assesment of Apple. Tell me about yourself, I am curious.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

How was parent modded flamebait? He has a valid point and a working car analogy...

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[exomondo]

Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise.

Apple excel at enduser-friendliness, fashion and platform control (be it the whole ecosystem or software+hardware tying). And those don't really apply to the enterprise market.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Dunbal]

That's a pretty stupid comment.

No, stupid is paying $300 for an MP3 player, $300 for a phone, $700 for a crippled tablet/reader, and $2000 for a laptop. But they are sleek and shiny and come with stickers, so I guess that makes them irresistible for those so called right brain types. Fool, money, soon parted. Funny though that all the Mac owners I've met haven't been creative at all. They've just been snobby little assholes very interested in telling people how to go about their business while their own lives were complete disasters. Or people who just dismiss others as stupid offhand. But I guess that's just sample error.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Chris Mattern]

Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise.

And that's why they didn't buy Sun. Apple has no significant enterprise division because Apple doesn't *want* a significant enterprise division. They had, and have, about as much interest in owning Sun as they do in owning the Bolshoi Ballet (after all, they have no significant ballet division, either).

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Better analogy would be BMW buying Catterpillar.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes me even more sad that IBM didn't buy Sun.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's job is not to throw lifelines to companies nor products. In its current incarnation, Apple is quick to kill under-performing products such as the XServe and WebObjects, even if many users may have found them cool. Apple buying Sun would have been a carnage given the latter's unclear strategy and amalgam of product lines and markets.

Apple's non-business focus has been criticized for long enough to allow it to become full-circle to a world in which you can be the most valuable tech company without being the key supplier to the Fortune 500.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

You're sad? You should talk to the 10,000+ former "Unix, live free or die!" Sun employees that had Mac laptops when the end came... All of which have been told "no more Mac purchases", and are now looking at a slow obsolescence, followed by "standardized" replacement with Windows...

Yea... That's what's happening... :(

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[fatp]

Then what good things had Apple done with F/OSS?

They initiated the OpenDarwin project, and killed it after the kernel is mature enough.

The only contribution that I known of is WebKit. It was taken from khtml of the KDE project, and therefore are obliged to return the changes. They did not (or could not) return the code to KDE. Instead, they released it as a separate project, incompatible with the original khtml engine.

Go to http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1066/, I don't see anything that voluntury contribution to F/OSS besides device drivers (which are useless without Apple hardware).

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Most of us have Macs we bought (and continue to buy) ourselves. Neither Sun's nor Oracle's support was much more than making a VPN client available. The community did (and continues to do) its own support.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Or IBM. They'd still have redundancies (Solaris vs AIX, POWER vs Sparc), but they've been playing nicely with openOffice and Java (and they even helped port solaris to POWER at some point), and ... generally seem like they'd have handled things nicer.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Your description of Apple customers is ridiculous. If you had ever stepped foot on a Sun campus, you'd have seen that Apple was the system of choice (at least for laptops) across the board. More people in engineering whether developers or support engineers owned apple laptops than not. Apple is for people who want more flexibility and control than Windows (a command line, a bash shell, etc) but don't want to lose a week of productivity trying to figure out why various audio systems aren't generating audio on their computer or why various ModeLine configurations are simply not working.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: culture disaster.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[MachineShedFred]

And grammar pedantry doesn't change the fact that the GP post is complete FUD.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but think that would have been a disaster.

Apple would have wanted to /change/ Sun, whereas Oracle has simply taken the viewpoint that they'll co-opt anything that Sun was doing well in, and pretty much drop everything else. The bonus is that most of what wasn't making Sun any money was open-sourced quite a while ago, so it doesn't need Oracle to survive, and we don't have to deal with a situation where the FOSS community would have to face off against Apple in the style vs. pragmatism war.

Ultimately, I think Apple would have done more harm than Oracle, because Larry Ellison, dick though he may be, doesn't have the kind of cultural agenda that the present-day Apple seems to be at the forefront of.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[lightversusdark]

Where can you download Sun (Oracle) Java for Mac OS X ?

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about turnaround. At one time, Sun was going to buy Apple!

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Apple would have all the legal leverage against Android it needs. Great fucking idea.

Re:Wish Sun had been bought by Apple

[MachineShedFred]

You can't yet due to the current release of Apple's Java being up to date. However, this announcement from November says that Java SE 7 for Mac OS X will come from Oracle, building largely on Apple's codebase from the existing implementation.

Google is hard.

Poorly, if you ask me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Things that I care about, like Open Office, Hudson, Netbeans and Java have all been negatively impacted by Oracle purchase. Open Office is irrelevant now and Libre Office takes its place. Hudson is forked to Jenkins, Netbeans just dropped official support for Ruby, and Apache has left JCP, Google is cooling off its support for Java, and Apple have announced their drop for Java support and threw the ball into Oracle/OpenJDK hands (they did presumably donate some of their implementation code to the Open JDK code).

So, overall pretty bleak picture. The shock waves of this purchase are still felt around the industry and the biggest one is going to be the slow, silent, painful death of Java (it's already happened among the cool kids anyway, the corporate drones are going to notice it 5 years later when the supply of cheap programmers dries up).

Re:Poorly, if you ask me.

[mswhippingboy]

I get where you are coming from and Oracle has definitely hurt some feelings in the FOSS community.

However, I don't share your vision of Java's future. I think Oracle will kick Java into high-gear again (it was stagnating under the slow pace of the JCP). Regardless of what you or I think of Larry Ellison personally, the guy does seem to kick ass with everybody that's ever tangled with him. If I'm reading the tea-leaves correctly, this might just push Java to the next level, sending all the java haters scrambling for new reasons to hate it.

Re:Poorly, if you ask me.

[HiThere]

There might be development, but I'm not at all sure I'll be interested. It basically depends on license, access, an capabilities. Capabilities is in the third place. It's already a complete language. The most important thing to do is to remove type erasure during compilation. But by the time they get around to that I'm pretty sure that, say, Vala will be ready to be used. Or possibly Go. Or D. All of which have decent licenses and access policies. (Java swamps them in terms of documentation, but Vala and D are already a lot faster. Not sure about Go.)

Then there's Python and Ruby. Python is currently in a feature freeze, but it sounds like they're fixing the global lock problem, so it will start being parallel capable. Ruby I'm less sure about, but it's also just come out with a new version with lots of nice capabilities. Both, of course, have their own collections of libraries. Which are native code, and thus a lot faster than Java. (At least potentially, if not always in practice.) Nobody seems to talk about handling memory paging, and I can't figure out whether this is because they don't need to or because they can't. What if I need a hashtable that won't fit into RAM? Do I get a memory overflow or does it page out the parts that haven't been used recently? I tend to suspect that there's automatic paging, but I sure with somebody would be explicit about it. (They talk about reading in entire files at one gulp as if it's nothing to worry about, and this only makes sense if there's automatic paging. But they never mention this explicitly. Yarrgh!) (I expect that it's automatic paging handled by the operating system, but it would sure be nice to be told this rather than just guessing.)

JavaOne and Oracle Open World

[jemtallon]

I think the JavaOne experience sums up the current state of Sun and Oracle nicely.

This year's JavaOne was pretty disappointing compared to previous years and many of us Java enthusiasts felt a little unwanted. Most of the focus was on hardware, which we didn't care about at all. Little of the content was geared towards a technical audience. The tech demos of past years were hushed into side rooms, replaced by celebrity meet-and-greets with Lance Armstrong, Apolo Ohno, the Black Eyed Peas, and a yacht racing team.

Someone must've been aware this would have a poor reception from the Sun crowd because they quarantined us away from the Oracle Open World groups much of the time and fed us uncanny amounts of free beer and vodka. The open bar seemed to be specially coordinated to just before and during Ellison's speeches about how lock-in is awesome.

When it came to the actual sessions, the speakers were great but there were moments where you could tell they were intentionally leaving things out. I believe it was a session with eBay's Randy Shoup where someone asked what App Server they ran on and he alluded to not being able to answer that since it "looked a lot like Tomcat." Of course the absence of Google was noticeable as well.

There's a little war going on inside Oracle right now between trying to mesh traditional Oracle marketing and lock-in to the Sun people who dreamed of openness and interchangeability. Obviously the two are ideologically at odds and all the liquor in San Francisco didn't help that. They're certainly trying to make it work and that's commendable but so far the result has just been many of the Sun people walking away. Sun's assets were as much the people and their mission as their patents and products. Oracle has so far ignored that half of Sun and it is rapidly hemorrhaging.

Re:JavaOne and Oracle Open World

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious. Most of the Open Office or Java stuff I've seen lately has looked like Sun^WOracle Open Office or Sun^WOracle Java. So I'm wondering, did the speakers actually say "Sun control double you Oracle" during their presentations?

Still happy with Solaris and Oracle gear BUT...

[assantisz]

we did move our hardware support to a third party company. Oracle's pricing is ridiculous compared to what we were used to with Sun. In addition Oracle was just unable to get us renewal quotes for equipment we have installed overseas in time. We still have to keep some support contract with Oracle, though, in order to have software support for Solaris. If you do the math we probably still pay about the same for annual support but at least we don't have to deal with Oracle anymore to get a drive replaced.

Re:Still happy with Solaris and Oracle gear BUT...

[jerk]

What company did you go with and how do you like them? My employer is looking for a good 3rd party service provider.

Re:Still happy with Solaris and Oracle gear BUT...

[assantisz]

Akibia. I didn't have the pleasure, yet, to open a service request with them but colleagues from a different company also using Akibia have only good words for them.

Re:Not portable.

[FranTaylor]

The enterprises that use java and pay for it do not suffer from such problems.

You say "java is dead" but it runs many many web sites. Your personal experience is meaningless.

Re:They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS g

[hedwards]

I'd be fine with them killing off OO.org, I think most people are migrating over to LibreOffice, anyways.

Curiosity Question

[tgetzoya]

With everyone saying that they're moving from Solaris to Linux/whatever, who are the companies keeping (or even thinking about moving to) Oracle/Sun?

Re:Curiosity Question

[Anonymous Coward]

With everyone saying that they're moving from Solaris to Linux/whatever, who are the companies keeping (or even thinking about moving to) Oracle/Sun?

The companies who aren't in their mom's basement?

Re:Not portable.

[mswhippingboy]

Java on the desktop has NEVER been there, but Java on the server is seeing more usage than ever (up over 1% since 2010), far more than any other language by a considerable distance. Only "C" is even close (not C++ or Obj-C)

Sorry to spoil the "bash Java" party.

JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[Anonymous Coward]

Java, the choice of those who, in their personal life Dymo Label each door and drawer in their house, now officially blows.
Java is now officially the New COBOL. LOL

No Solaris patches without a service contract

[erice]

Not even security patches. That means that Solaris is essentially dead for a non-commercial use. There isn't even OpenSolaris to keep those admins in the fold. There won't be any supporters to bring Solaris into new environments. I've been running Solaris machines at home for 15 years. I have been happy having a slightly non-mainstream server even if it was a little less convenient than a Linux box. Now I have no choice. I have to replace the Solaris machine with something I keep secure.

Re:No Solaris patches without a service contract

[daveoj]

Same here... replaced all my home Solaris gear with NetBSD on the same hardware. Runs like a champ!

Re:No Solaris patches without a service contract

[afabbro]

Not even security patches. That means that Solaris is essentially dead for a non-commercial use. There isn't even OpenSolaris to keep those admins in the fold.

Yes, gosh, Solaris is just like HP-UX and AIX now.

There won't be any supporters to bring Solaris into new environments. I've been running Solaris machines at home for 15 years. I have been happy having a slightly non-mainstream server even if it was a little less convenient than a Linux box. Now I have no choice. I have to replace the Solaris machine with something I keep secure.

And honestly Oracle doesn't care. They don't make any money providing free patches so some guy can run old Sparc gear he bought on eBay at home.

Turns out Sun couldn't make any money providing free Solaris patches either. Which is why...

Oracle is just behaving like the other major commercial Unix vendors.

Re:No Solaris patches without a service contract

[Anonymous Coward]

And honestly Oracle doesn't care. They don't make any money providing free patches so some guy can run old Sparc gear he bought on eBay at home.

Not true - they make money off adoption. The more people that know Solaris, the cheaper Solaris admins are, and the better option Solaris is for a price-conscious company. They're already spending $ developing a patch for their paying customers, it doesn't cost any more to distribute it to random hobbyists that are basically advertising their product for free.

Re:No Solaris patches without a service contract

[t2t10]

Why do you think Sun made it in the market in the first place? It was because a generation of graduate students grew up on cheap Sun hardware.

And "behaving just like the other major commercial Unix vendors" is going to consign them to the same fate: irrelevancy. The world these days runs on Linux and Windows. Anything else is lost in the noise.

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[mswhippingboy]

Wow, do you live in fantasy land. You are now officially the village idiot. Join your brothers who've been declaring java dead for years while it continues to soar in popularity, completely out of the reach of EVERY other language except for "C".

I'm not real happy with the way Oracle has treated the FOSS community or with how it's dealing with Google on the Java/Android issue.

However, Oracle does have a track record of kicking ass and taking names and they do appear to want to push Java to the next level quickly rather than wait around for the JCP and all their committees to make up their minds on the direction the language should take. Stagnation has been a big problem for Java over the last couple of years, but I get the sense that the words "stagnation" and "java" won't been used together as much under Oracle's reign.

Re:Not portable.

[farble1670]

Java been dead, Its not portable. Its fractured to many people have to many incompatible versions.

ever heard of android? pretty big boost for java i'd say.

Re:They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS g

[Richard_at_work]

I don't recall OpenOffice.org development being exactly speedy prior to the acquisition, and Gosling mentioned that the Google/Android issue was already well in the minds of executives before the acquisition, so I wouldn't exactly be quick to blame Oracle for ticking off the FLOSS guys.

Orion App Server

[stacybro]

Ever heard of Orion app server? Didn't think so (8 years after oracle "took over" the open source project). 8 years from now we will probably be saying "Sun? BEA?" never heard of them.

Re:Orion App Server

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an interesting story, but unfortunately not really true. See http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Application_Server

Simple answer: They're killing Sun utterly!

[swordgeek]

We're officially a fairly big customer - somewhere north of 800 Sun servers, if I were to guess. Add another hundred workstations or so, and we're pushing about a thousand machines running Solaris, many of them running Sun apps of one sort or another.

Oracle changed the terms of our software support to the tune of a 500% increase. That's right, they want us to pay SIX TIMES as much for support! We lost all of our training credits overnight (About $100k in training dollars). Our hardware support costs have gone up substantially as well, so we're getting rid of our full-time onsite tech. (with the money we're saving by getting rid of the onsite Sun guy, we're going to hire two hardware techs of our own who are qualified/allowed to work on ALL of our gear, and still have cash left over.)
We are planning to migrate away from all Sun/Oracle applications by the end of the current support contract. Even the groups that were using Oracle Database before this are being strongly encouraged to look elsewhere for solutions.

Ours isn't an isolated case. The general feeling in the Sun customer community is that they're standing on a sinking ship, flailing at the floorboards with an axe to make it go down even faster. Every Sun software product is now in the 'legacy' section of Oracle's (disastrous!!!) website. Contracts have gone from three pages to 500, due to the lack of blanket terms. Oracle is TRYING to piss off their "Sun" customers as much as possible, and are succeeding. Oracle Solaris is going to lose more than 70% of its purchase-time market share by the end of 2013. Separate products (iPlanet, Directory Server, StarOffice, etc.) will all be shot through the head.

Re:Simple answer: They're killing Sun utterly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is TRYING to piss off their "Sun" customers as much as possible

Why would they not when they have "Oracle Linux"?

Re:Not portable.

[nicholas22]

Meh, you're just like Miguel from the Mono project. What you and him fail to see is that if you let .NET/Mono grow enough, it will simply inherit all the problems that you mention that Java supposedly has. I have only seen more and more adoption on the server side and with fat clients.

Re:Not portable.

[nicholas22]

And let's not forget the RIA aspect, Java FX 2.0 is out and some early Java FX 2.0 adopters say that it looks very good from where they're standing.

Re:They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS g

[jschmitz]

I agree they are pure evil

Finished with Both Sun & Oracle...

[Anonymous Coward]

We migrated to Postgres Enterprisedb Advanced Server running on Redhat Linux and haven't looked back. We threw out 2 Sun E10ks and replaced those with Dell Servers at 1/10th the size and 1/100th the cost. Why anyone uses Sun or Oracle anymore is beyond me. I guess they are mostly just stuck in vendor lock in mode and can't get out.

Oracle has not been kind to it's customers

[sliderr]

The image that comes to mind is the Calvin sticker you often see on trucks where he's pissing on the competition, but in this case it's their customers that are getting pissed on.

It hasn't just been the former Sun customers, but their DB customers as well. I've heard many a plan to migrate away from Oracle completely. From what I've seen they aren't salvaging much of what was really good from Sun either. So long to the free sunsolve and the system handbook as we knew ye...

Re:Oracle has not been kind to it's customers

[afabbro]

Your statement confuses me. I work at a Fortune 500 company that has a lot of Oracle DB software. Oracle is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago from a relationship standpoint.

I understand lots of ex-Sun people are pissed. I don't personally know about that so I can't comment. But as far as the Oracle DB side of things, nothing has really changed.

Re:Not portable.

[El_Oscuro]

Seems to be portable, even on the desktop. I have always thought Java Desktop apps looked crappy until I came across this game. I had no idea it was running Java until I started looking at the files in order to make a Debian package for my website.

Here is the startup script for Linux:

#!/bin/sh
cd "${0%/*}/data"
if [ -n "$JAVA_HOME" ]; then
$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -Djava.library.path=lib -jar
./launcher.jar ./game.sh
else
java -Djava.library.path=lib -jar ./launcher.jar ./game.sh
fi cd "$OLDPWD"

It's worse than that Jim..

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of my consulting customers are leaving Solaris in droves for either other named UNIXes (mostly HP-UX, some AIX) or Linux. The old Orion Web stack has pretty much been abandoned or subsumed by Oracle products. Only VirtualBox seems to have improved under Larry. Open Solaris was a gem - dead now. The old Sun helpful attitudes, you know - the ones where they tried to save you from yourself if you were doing "stupid stuff" is all gone. Oracle couldn't care less as long as they can bill you.

Sun HW is much less desirable now that the Larry Wallet tax has been demanded. Customers are complaining that Oracle's trying to force Exadata's down their throats and will ship loaners to them with little notice then show up to install with a "don't worry, you can pay for it later.." sales line. Nobody takes the Sun x86 line seriously anymore and SPARC is only for those with no choice.'' The few old Sun folks I know at Oracle are keeping their heads down and their spirit is a far cry from the Sun days.

It's worse than that Jim, it's dead.

But it is profitable.

[Anonymous Coward]

For obvious reasons I need to be AC, but while there are lots of comments above from people saying that they're turning away from Sun hardware and Solaris for any one of a number of reasons, the section of the company that is responsible for the hardware and Solaris is now profitable. It's actually doing better for Oracle than it was for Sun.. So whilst there may be scores of people here saying they're changing to Linux, etc, the obvious conclusion is that the people who are shunning Oracle were never actually profitable customers for Sun to have had. Oracle's customer base is significantly more than twice the size of Sun's and it would be a foolish person to bet that there won't be some amount of drag-along for sales from Oracle.

So, no, Oracle isn't trying to piss off Sun customers, they're trying to make sure that in the business agreements that they have, that they make money out of them.

Oracle is a company that makes money. It doesn't give much, if anything away for free. Sun was a company that did give away stuff for free and ultimately it failed. Larry Ellison is a smart business man, I'm pretty sure that their number crunching would have factored in customers dropping off.

Re:But it is profitable.

[t2t10]

Sun was a company that did give away stuff for free and ultimately it failed.

Sun didn't give away Java; they made it available under viral conditions (redistributable but heavily patented) in hopes of infecting the entire industry with it, and they succeeded. Without that, they'd have gone belly up even earlier and wouldn't have gotten bought by Oracle.

Sun's failure wasn't due to supposedly giving things away free, it was due to technical and business incompetence: their software sucked, and so did their marketing and customer service.

Re:But it is profitable.

[marcosdumay]

Oracle could throw service clients away, but hardware and software are very scale sensitive markets. On scale sensitive markets the solution to "not profitable clients" is to get more "not profitable clients" so your unitary costs go down, and those clients become profitable. If you simply throw them away, your profitable clients will become unprofitable next, and you'll need to throw all your client base away.

Service contracts are outrageous

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a large company who is an OEM of Oracle/Sun servers/Solaris for use in telecom. They want us to pay 8% of the original cost of the server per year for hardware support and, if we want Solaris support on that hardware, they want an additional 4% a year. Just want to buy Solaris support? No can do. We have to pay the 8% just to get the privilege to pay the 4%.

To add insult to injury,their newer models which were released post Oracle acquisition are more expensive than the models they replaced in the product line. Want to run Solaris x86 on non-Oracle hardware? Get ready to pay $1000/year/socket for a right to use. Get tired of paying that $1000/year, then you better delete Solaris from the machine because it was a right to use agreement, not just paying for support.

Sun as a company was scary because you always were wondering if they were going to go belly up. I think Oracle was correct in recognizing that they could charge more than what Sun was for Solaris as there are some cool features in Solaris which aren't in Linux (ZFS, Solaris containers, SMF) but they carried this to a ridiculous extreme.

In the short term they are going to look awesome, because Oracle is going to extract a rather large amount of money from enterprise customers (including my employer) over the next year or so as. Then their income is going to drop off a cliff once everyone is done moving to RHEL, SUSE or what have you.

Solaris will end up being an awesome O.S. for running Oracle databases on which is a shame because it could be much more...

They are killing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun used to make great stuff. Now, I wouldn't go near their stuff with a ten foot pole. That was even before Oracle bought them, and that's only gone downhill.

See, their stuff used to be better quality, better service, better design, and beefier than their competitors, so they could afford to charge a killing. Now they just make terrible PC hardware with firmware that is not as well designed or tested as commodity hardware, and that rejects (for example) any disks that don't have Sun firmware. Why the hell would anyone choose that? PC hardware with restrictive firmware that you have to pay extra every year to keep using? Premium prices for replacement parts? Premium server prices for what is at best consumer grade parts inside? (nVidia motherboard chipsets) Generic Supermicro servers or whatever are way, way, way more reliable.

Vertical computer hardware business models are for idiots. You can buy several generic machines for the same cost as one Sun branded box, and that's before you fork out for their service agreements or OS. Only, you're locked in by that point.

Who's going to evangelize their gear to new deployments? Sure as hell not the enthusiasts anymore, and sure as hell not anyone stuck with their horrible behavior at present. Screw the engineers, and the guys who design systems will blacklist you. And that means no new customers plus a mass exodus of the current ones. If I can't get free access to basic support, I sure as hell am not going to test drive your older hardware to see if I might want your new hardware. You just can't trust that kind of company.

You can only afford to be pricks to your customer base when your product is well worth it. Sun ain't worth it anymore, and seeing what Oracle is doing with Sun, I wouldn't trust those bastards not to screw you over down the road with their other products (e.g. their database). It's great that they are so openly horrible with their policies... makes you wonder what they've done under the covers that you haven't heard about.

Vote them off the island....

Re:They are killing it.

[marcosdumay]

"I wouldn't trust those bastards not to screw you over down the road with their other products (e.g. their database)"

Just try to port any software for their database and you'll see that they already screwed it as much as they can. No need to distrust them.

Anywhay, they never did anything under the covers. It is that the people who buy Oracle aren't the ones that must live with Oracle (that means, they sell only to big corporations), so their botton line doesn't feel their users revolt. Also, once you are using Oracle, you are locked in.

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[t2t10]

However, Oracle does have a track record of kicking ass and taking names and they do appear to want to push Java to the next level quickly rather than wait around for the JCP and all their committees to make up their minds on the direction the language should take. Stagnation has been a big problem for Java over the last couple of years, but I get the sense that the words "stagnation" and "java" won't been used together as much under Oracle's reign.

And what do you think Oracle is going to do? Java's problem is that the language and the libraries are full of badly designed, ill-conceived, overly complex features. How is Oracle going to fix that? Adding more features to the language isn't going to do it, and removing features is a political impossibility. You can't undo a decade of inept academic language tinkering by adding more stuff.

Apply your own signature to the situation... it fits.

But why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is obvious that this is happening, no question about that. But what is the point?

They are throwing away paying customers wholesale, their actions against former Sun customers and the OSS world will turn people away from their main product (The database). If your were Sun customer and getting this treatment, odds are you would probably look for other data solutions than Oracle next time you look at that market, or even go to change your data solution along with your server support contracts et al.

I can't seem to find the slightest sense in what they are doing! As a company, do they really think it is a good idea to go and piss off tech people around the world? Do they think that other companies look so singlemindedly at they tech stuff that they will gladly sign/keep a contract with a company for data storage, with a company that treated them badly on their server and software contracts? Do they think that any of the OSS people who had been luke warm towards Oracle (Not directly talking against them) will not speak up now? And do they believe that these people are not influential?

Re:But why?

[swordgeek]

That's what we can't figure out either. It doesn't make any sense. If you buy a company with the intention of killing them, it's generally because they're your competitor. Oracle bought Sun which launched them into an entirely new space, and then proceeded to burn every bridge possible--to the point of harming their own core business as well. It's stupid! The only real explanation is arrogance, which actually makes sense if you factor in Larry Ellison.

My company only kept Java

[Anonymous Coward]

My company isn't big but we were heavy Linux and Sun supporters. For regular services (file servers and such) we relied on Linux (Ubuntu LTS most commonly). But the moment where we needed extra reliability we went straight for Solaris and other Sun products.

Solaris 10, the Java webserver 7 and Glassfish application server were commonly used environments for our clients. And all our Solaris servers had support contracts so that we could easily upgrade, even across versions. I don't mind paying a bit for services; as long as I get the quality I expected.

It became quickly evident that if we wanted to continue using Solaris we'd be paying a whole lot more for even less service. That's not working out for us; so we took the loss (spending hours on migration costs money too!) and moved every environment away from Sun.

Java webserver 7 turned to Apache, Glassfish turned to Tomcat and Solaris has been replaced by either Free or Net -BSD. We have 1 Solaris server left; the ZFS filesystem takes some time to migrate; but we're looking into moving that to FreeBSD later this year.

I think the whole whoracle takeover was a very sad development indeed. I'm happy with the new environments, but whenever I'm busy writing "keep alive" scripts for some services I can't help thinking back to the "good old days" of SMF (the Service Management Facility).

Solaris had it all :-(

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[mswhippingboy]

Java's problem is that the language and the libraries are full of badly designed, ill-conceived, overly complex features

Bullshit. That may be your opinion, but I've always found the libraries very well designed. Just about every time I've ever ventured into using parts of the API that I hadn't used before, it's been just the way I had intuited it would be and I rarely needed to resort to javadocs to understand the structure. Of all the API's I've used over the years (which covers just about every major platform out there including OSX's API, .Net (which should have been better given they had a reference implementation to copy from), MFC, etc), I find it the most consistent and well organized by a long shot. Is it perfect? No, but neither are any alternative platforms.

There are valid criticisms of the Java platform, but I've never once heard the "badly designed" criticism leveled against it's APIs except by those who don't know what they are doing. There is valid criticism of some of the frameworks for Java EE, but that is a framework issue, not a language issue (i.e. not part of J2SE). If you don't like the Java EE stuff, there are plenty of other frameworks to choose from, but the truth is, once you understand EJBs and the whole ecosystem it make perfectly good sense and is actually quite valuable when constructing extremely complex and large enterprise applications. So, the answer to your question is that Oracle will probably do just as Sun did before them and deprecate features that are considered obsolete (leaving them in for legacy support) and move on. The entire J2SE JDK platform is less than 100MB (JRE is only 14MB), about half the size of the .Net platform so I don't really see this as a problem. Additionally, JDK7 will be adding modularization which will dramatically improve this issue as well.

You can't undo a decade of inept academic language tinkering by adding more stuff.

WTF? Academic tinkering? Name me one language that has grown up more "in the field" than Java (at least one that has not become a complete "hack" - yea Perl people, I'm looking at you - I love Perl, but wow, it's like it was intentionally designed to weed out the non-geek types). The changes that have been made to Java over the years have been driven by those using it for real-world work, not by academic institutions, which is can hardly been said of many of the other language choices out there.

Just so we're clear. I think Java is a great language and platform, I think it's the right tool for many things, but I'm not religious about it. When I'm writing on OSX, I use Obj-C (when in Rome...). Obj-C definitely has it's warts, but the OSX ecosystem has evolved around it so it's the best tool for development on that platform if that is the targeted platform. If I'm writing windows desktop apps, I use VS/C# (sometimes Powerbuilder) because that's the best tool for writing that type of application. C# is a very nice language and the .Net APIs are very usable as well. If I'm writing batch (command line) apps for Unix/Linux I use a combination of Perl, shell scripts and C or C++ (sometimes Java) to get the job done because that's what works best in that environment. However, when I'm writing back-end systems I tend to use Java because it offers the best solution to some really complex problems.

Re:They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS g

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be fine with them killing off OO.org, I think most people are migrating over to LibreOffice, anyways.

Yup!

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[t2t10]

You typify the ignorant Java hack who simply doesn't know any better. It's pretty telling that the only alternatives you know are OSX and .NET. You're a poster boy for why the industry produces such shitty software.

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[mswhippingboy]

Did I say there were the only alternatives I know? No I just mentioned a few of the platforms I'm currently engaged (as in "being paid to develop") in.

I have no idea of your age and/or experience in the industry so, unlike you, I won't jump to any judgments about your abilities (or lake thereof).

However, I'm fairly confident though from your post though that you are an ass. I've been writing code since the mid '70s and have spent pretty close to 12 hours a day everyday since, designing and coding and I've worked in just about every platform and language environment out there. My judgments come from many years of hands on experience. I'm not about repeating what I read somewhere and passing it off as my own thought, which is what your comments appear to be.

Talk to me again when you've done a little more homework.

I think we're done.

Re:JAvA Sucked, Now It Blows

[t2t10]

No jumping to conclusions here: for starters, you confuse language, platform and APIs and you don't know who designed the new language features or where they come from. And what are those mythical "well designed" libraries and frameworks? Swing? Collections? Java 3D? Applets? Java Imaging? J2EE?

Yeah, I believe you that you have been programming close to 12h/day since the 1970's; you really should have spent some of that time actually learning something instead of hacking around. You're like someone who has been cleaning toilets for 12h/day for forty years and fancies himself a hydraulic engineer.