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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."
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.
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
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.
I have been making a killing doing Solaris to Linux migrations since the Sun purchase. My wallet cannot thank Oracle enough.
Got Code?
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.
#include <sig.h>
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.
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...
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.
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.
www.clarke.ca
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.
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.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.