Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies

Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?

Re:Wait... by sjames · 2013-07-15 10:44 · Score: 5, Funny

Something about synergistically embiggening Larry's masculinity compensation plumage for great justice.
Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 16:24 · Score: 1

Wonder if Symantec or CA could sue them for infringing on their business method patents?
Re:Wait... by Jane+Q.+Public · 2013-07-15 18:11 · Score: 2

"Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?"
What? NO! This is part of their "turn everything to shit" campaign. Wait... I see. You mean OP is implying there is something beyond our known reality. Let's call it... the Twilight Zone.
Re:Wait... by Penguinisto · 2013-07-16 02:14 · Score: 2

Oracle had a business strategy beyond "turn everything we touch into shit"?
They do: "Turn everything we touch into shit and charge a friggin' ransom for it"

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Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Re:Wait... by evilRhino · 2013-07-16 02:20 · Score: 1

There is the more relevant buy out and shut down our competitors business strategy.

That's a shame by cold+fjord · 2013-07-15 10:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

The Sun Rays are pretty handing technology. I was surprised at how well they work.

--
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell

Re:That's a shame by CatsupBoy · 2013-07-16 02:48 · Score: 1

It turns out working well had nothing to do with making Oracle money =/
Re:That's a shame by Tharkkun · 2013-07-16 03:23 · Score: 1

The Sun Rays are pretty handing technology. I was surprised at how well they work.
Except no one wants them. They would rather have a fully functional PC or tablet instead.

Fuck you Oracle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

You will not expand your market, you will shrivel, only your bribes to executives will keep you afloat. You destroyed a company that contributed more to the furtherance of computing and society as a whole than you will ever be able to achieve with your selfish business strategies and practices.

Re:Fuck you Oracle by webmistressrachel · 2013-07-15 10:43 · Score: 2

1 Person Liked this. Be the first of your friends!
(ps Karma Bonus forfeited ;-) )

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Re:Fuck you Oracle by rainer_d · 2013-07-15 11:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have to agree. While everyone kind of liked SUN and cherished their accomplishments - few ever bought anything of them.
It might have worked, if everybody actually using Solaris had also bought SUN x86 servers instead of installing it on generic hardware and bought more software from their stack. Additionally, for too long their business strategy seemed to be "Let's invent some mind-blowingly cool stuff and then have sales try to sell it to our customers".
And this not for one product, but basically for almost all of the products they came up with in the last years.
Oracle has no choice but to milk their current customers literally till the sun goes down.

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Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Re:Fuck you Oracle by BitZtream · 2013-07-15 13:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

For reference, what your post tells others is that you started this Internet thing late and missed the era where Sun was one of the big boys in the server and workstation arenas.
Just because you were only around for their decline doesn't mean thats the way it always ways :)

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Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 13:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

I have to agree. While everyone kind of liked SUN and cherished their accomplishments - few ever bought anything of them.
It might have worked, if everybody actually using Solaris had also bought SUN x86 servers instead of installing it on generic hardware and bought more software from their stack. Additionally, for too long their business strategy seemed to be "Let's invent some mind-blowingly cool stuff and then have sales try to sell it to our customers".
And this not for one product, but basically for almost all of the products they came up with in the last years.
Oracle has no choice but to milk their current customers literally till the sun goes down.
No kidding. Sun's x86 hardware kicked ass. Unlike Dell and even HP, Sun actually engineered their x86 servers. They didn't just slap cheap-ass commodity components around the CPU.
A recent customer went through a lot of trouble replace "old" Sun x86 hardware that had been around four or five years with new HP hardware - to "save money", because HP's servers were cheaper than Oracle's servers (that Sun designed...).
Note I said "cheaper", not "less expensive". Yeah, the HP's were cheaper than the Sun servers. And slower. The four or five-year-old Sun x86 boxes were a shitload FASTER than the brand-spanking-new HP servers. Talk about a bunch of howling developers. I was laughing my ass off.
And even with the Oracle markup, after my customer had to go out and buy licences for software to manage HP servers - OOOOOPS! (iLO software, etc), the HP boxes turned out to be more expensive than the equivalent Oracle (nee Sun) servers. At least Oracle doesn't charge extra for things like that.
HP's servers also came with cheap off-brand FC HBAs that wouldn't play nice on the customer's SAN. Good God, crappy FC hardware that can't interoperate with other vendor's equipment was solved by QLogic et al a fucking decade ago.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by jbolden · 2013-07-15 14:08 · Score: 1

How many people using Solaris during the days when Sun existed installed it on generic x86 or x86 all? By the time Solaris ran on x86 Sun often had reasonably priced rack servers say Dell + 30% for the same quality. I don't think I've ever used Solaris or SunOS on non Sun equipment and I've used a lot of Solaris and SunOS.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by jbolden · 2013-07-15 14:09 · Score: 2

He's got a six digit number. I'm assuming he was around when Sun was one of the small boys making Unix workstations before any of them were big boys.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by msk · 2013-07-15 14:55 · Score: 4, Funny

Here's a nickel. Go buy yourself a real computer.
(The first Sun equipment I used was a Sun 3 workstation.)
Re:Fuck you Oracle by ArhcAngel · 2013-07-15 15:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Actually the problem was that they WERE great. SUN's products were pretty bulletproof and once you had one configured for what it needed to do it did it. That combined with the bubble of 2000 where SUN was overextended on several fronts is what tore the company apart.

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"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Re:Fuck you Oracle by BitZtream · 2013-07-15 19:48 · Score: 1

Sun was in decline before slashdot existed. UID is irrelevant. Thanks for show that you too came to the party late.

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Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Psion · 2013-07-15 21:08 · Score: 4, Funny

Six digits, you say? Wow.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by jbolden · 2013-07-15 21:44 · Score: 1

Huh? "We put the dot in dot-com" for example was years after slashdot. Slashdot's owners, VA-Linux, was pitching using Linux to get something like a Sun workstation for $2k instead of the $7k to buy the real thing.
Workstations might have been in decline but the server market was exploding.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Isaac-Lew · 2013-07-15 23:30 · Score: 5, Funny

Yes, I'm impressed.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Antique+Geekmeister · 2013-07-15 23:42 · Score: 2

Sun's hardware was, indeed, bulletproof. But at the end of 6 years, the extra money you spent on that single set of bullet proof hardware would have been better spent on 2 cheap sets of x86 hardware, with the second set 3 years newer and thus vastly more powerful, yielding an enormous improvement in available resources, with spare older hardware available for testing rigs or non-critical use. And their ongoing choices to develop their own processor technologies, combined with their decision to switch to AT&T style UNIX from BSD style UNIX, made cross-compatiblity and porting of open source software more and more difficult.
Sun and their developers created or helped foster some very useful technologies. But critical, "business school" type decisions actively hampered the use of their hardwe, ranging from the their old mishandling of the "OpenWindows" as a forked and proprietized and thus incompatible version of X11, to their propietary serial port connectors on hardware servers, to their misnaming of JDK RPM packages as a filename that does not even resemble the actual installed package name, etc.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-16 00:26 · Score: 1

I have to agree. While everyone kind of liked SUN and cherished their accomplishments - few ever bought anything of them.
It might have worked, if everybody actually using Solaris had also bought SUN x86 servers instead of installing it on generic hardware and bought more software from their stack. Additionally, for too long their business strategy seemed to be "Let's invent some mind-blowingly cool stuff and then have sales try to sell it to our customers".
And this not for one product, but basically for almost all of the products they came up with in the last years.
Oracle has no choice but to milk their current customers literally till the sun goes down.
No kidding. Sun's x86 hardware kicked ass. Unlike Dell and even HP, Sun actually engineered their x86 servers. They didn't just slap cheap-ass commodity components around the CPU.
A recent customer went through a lot of trouble replace "old" Sun x86 hardware that had been around four or five years with new HP hardware - to "save money", because HP's servers were cheaper than Oracle's servers (that Sun designed...).
Note I said "cheaper", not "less expensive". Yeah, the HP's were cheaper than the Sun servers. And slower. The four or five-year-old Sun x86 boxes were a shitload FASTER than the brand-spanking-new HP servers. Talk about a bunch of howling developers. I was laughing my ass off.
And even with the Oracle markup, after my customer had to go out and buy licences for software to manage HP servers - OOOOOPS! (iLO software, etc), the HP boxes turned out to be more expensive than the equivalent Oracle (nee Sun) servers. At least Oracle doesn't charge extra for things like that.
HP's servers also came with cheap off-brand FC HBAs that wouldn't play nice on the customer's SAN. Good God, crappy FC hardware that can't interoperate with other vendor's equipment was solved by QLogic et al a fucking decade ago.
So the reality is all HP HBA's are rebrands of either qlogic or emulax cards... 81q and 82q are 8gb Qlogic Cards and 81e and 82e are Emulex cards...same firmware everything...
My guess is that the performance issue was probably caused by improperly planning the upgrade, hint...if you weren't memory or cpu bound before an upgrade won't make it better... And if you replace 6x 36gb drives with 2x 900gb drives your local disk performance will drop, those are the things you need to be aware of before and after doing and upgrade. Of course very few people seem to understand what true solution design takes these days.
Also there is a ton of engineering that goes into the Proliants...Trust me I have seen where they do the build and design. It's just as much engineering if not more than SUN does today....
Re:Fuck you Oracle by M1FCJ · 2013-07-16 00:34 · Score: 1

Don't worry, even Sun's larger kit were slow, expensive rubbish. The M series could not compete with anything and the T series is still a joke. The only thing that works with a Sun badge was their intel boxes and they screwed those with Slowaris.
Sun used to be great in early 90s, and their reputation is just a hangover from those days. Even then it was too expensive for what it did. Black box Intel boxes with Pentiums and Linux used to outperform them but you couldn't get Oracle on them until 8i.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by Penguinisto · 2013-07-16 02:20 · Score: 2

1) Please, stop that.
2) Until someone can make a replacement for RAC that doesn't suck, isn't Microsoft**, won't cost a fortune, and doesn't require a degree in Cryptology to run? They'll (unfortunately) be around for a long, long time.
*sigh*... I wish Postgres was better...
** SQL Server is cute and all, but tends to buckle under very heavy loads, and the clustering tech leaves way too much to be desired.

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Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Re:Fuck you Oracle by evilviper · 2013-07-16 02:45 · Score: 2

SUN's products were pretty bulletproof and once you had one configured for what it needed to do it did it. That combined with the bubble of 2000 where SUN was overextended on several fronts is what tore the company apart.
AMD's x86-64 and Linux are what killed Sun. Their hardware and OS was the core of their business, and that got undermined at exactly the same time as all the other proprietary Unix vendors. When the Itanium and AMD's x86-64 came out, proprietary hardware crashed big time, and only those with other massively profitable businesses were able to survive the crash. Namely, IBM and HP, though HP has been discontinuing proprietary platforms and OSes left and right ever since then.
SGI, like Sun, had all their eggs in that one basket, and nothing valuable enough in their portfolio to convince a large company to buy them out.

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Re:Fuck you Oracle by PixetaledPikachu · 2013-07-16 02:56 · Score: 1

HP's servers also came with cheap off-brand FC HBAs that wouldn't play nice on the customer's SAN. Good God, crappy FC hardware that can't interoperate with other vendor's equipment was solved by QLogic et al a fucking decade ago.
All of our Proliant and Integrity servers came with either Qlogic or Emulex HBAs. Of course, our last HP purchases was back in 2008
Re:Fuck you Oracle by bonehead · 2013-07-16 04:42 · Score: 1

Well played, sir....
Re:Fuck you Oracle by evilviper · 2013-07-16 04:50 · Score: 1

That's not a single "when".
Sun, SGI, and the rest, didn't go from massive profits to massive losses in less than 2 years, either. It's a ridiculous complaint.

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Fuck you Oracle by rainer_d · 2013-07-16 05:14 · Score: 1

Single-Thread performance was never the strong point of the SPARC architecture.
But I believe, memory-bus and I/O performance was superior - until AMD HT and then Intel QPI surfaced....
At least, they didn't waste as much money and focus on a "Windows NT" strategy as SGI did.

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Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Re:Fuck you Oracle by cthulhu11 · 2013-07-16 05:36 · Score: 1

No kidding. Sun's x86 hardware kicked ass. Unlike Dell and even HP, Sun actually engineered their x86 servers. They didn't just slap cheap-ass commodity components around the CPU.
The x4NNN systems for sure, we bought scores of them. The earlier models less so. And since you wrote x86 not x64, go way back to the Roadrunners in the late 1980's. x4NNN the serial console works out of the box and can be used to bootstrap the system. HP does that now too, but none of the other big names AFAICT.

And even with the Oracle markup, after my customer had to go out and buy licences for software to manage HP servers - OOOOOPS! (iLO software, etc), the HP boxes turned out to be more expensive than the equivalent Oracle (nee Sun) servers. At least Oracle doesn't charge extra for things like that.
Yep, charging extra for iLO Advanced crippleware is the same nickle & dime crap that's been HP practice for decades. FWIW ISTR that Sun/LSI like HP also charge extra for certain features on their RAID HBA's. Sun was always something of a hassle to deal with, especially the contract people, but when Oracle took over it degraded substantially. I needed to buy an x4270m2 and it took me something like two months to find someone who was *allowed* to quote it for me, and even then I had to write up a description of why I wanted to buy it so that it could be submitted to Oracle for *permission* to quote. Not long after that certain happenings forced us to take used HP G6 systems instead of buying anything new - iLO 2 is kind of a dog on them, etc. With the current G8 systems, though, HP has a variety of things right. HBA's have FBWC instead of short-lived batteries, the serial console works out of the box, iLO 4 lets one do virtual media via HTTP ... Volume discounts and other strategies help with the extra cost of iLO Advanced and SAAP2.
HP's servers also came with cheap off-brand FC HBAs that wouldn't play nice on the customer's SAN. Good God, crappy FC hardware that can't interoperate with other vendor's equipment was solved by QLogic et al a fucking decade ago.
I'll have to defer to you on FC since we've mostly been able to avoid it. I do know though that HP's switches demand HP-branded transceivers. Luckily I don't have any of those to contend with, and HP's NIC's seem to work fine with third-party modules -- $329 for a 10GE SFP+ vs the $2200+ HP wants. Lately I've been looking at SuperMicro-based gear as a potential HP alternative, and it's like stepping back in time. 1U systems only have 8 disk bays, no 10 bay option. Only 3Gb/s SAS onboard, need a mezzanine card for 6Gb/s. Only one PCI slot, two if you use the mezzanine slot for a riser. Only two onboard GE NICs. Serial console doesn't work out of the box. No HTTP media redirection on the generic service processor. Firmware updates mostly as bootable .ISO images (see above under "no HTTP media redirection". Feh.
Re:Fuck you Oracle by afidel · 2013-07-16 06:08 · Score: 2

You know absolutely nothing but you say much. HP offers HBA's from the three major players in the FC world, QLogic, Emulex, and Brocade. As far as cost, the 5 year cost of an HP box with 6 hour call to repair support is a fraction of what a Sun box will cost with platinum plus (or whatever they're calling it today, it's been since shortly after the Oracle takeover since I've bothered to get quotes)

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Re:Fuck you Oracle by rainer_d · 2013-07-16 12:23 · Score: 1

Huh? "We put the dot in dot-com" for example was years after slashdot.
Hah - I've still got a couple of t-shirts with that slogan.
Still wearing them - they are quite sturdy ;-)

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Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Re:Fuck you Oracle by jbolden · 2013-07-16 13:33 · Score: 1

We put the dot in dot com = 2000 /. launched = 1997

Soon they kill Solaris by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

This coming on the heals of XenServer going open source.
As soon as they realize the futile effort of supporting Sun hardware (Niagara, Sparc) and Solaris which are not selling well, they will also cease supporting them as well.
Frankly, I think IBM would have been a better company to have owned Sun and its assets.

Re:Soon they kill Solaris by Lunix+Nutcase · 2013-07-15 11:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

You mean the same IBM that has sold/is selling off most of its assets?
Re:Soon they kill Solaris by Score+Whore · 2013-07-15 11:55 · Score: 3, Informative

This has nothing to do with that kind of virtualization. A much better headline would be:

Oracle to Stop Developing Thin Clients
Re:Soon they kill Solaris by gravious · 2013-07-15 14:55 · Score: 1

No, not that IBM; the other IBM that still has a metric (not imperial) shitload[1] of assets.
[1] http://www.ibm.com/products

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Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by dcavens · 2013-07-15 10:30 · Score: 5, Informative

As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.

Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by nurb432 · 2013-07-15 10:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

For now.

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---- Booth was a patriot ----
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:41 · Score: 2, Funny

The submitter undoubtedly knew that VirtualBox would be continued, but he also knew that the story wouldn't be accepted if it mentioned that fact, because it's all we're going to talk about in this thread.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Em+Adespoton · 2013-07-15 10:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

As I had to RTFA to figure this out, thought I'd pass on that VirtualBox is still going to be actively developed.
Virtualbox development, however, is now going to "tightly align ... with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy."
Something tells me we may have a fork, and possibly a shift in Qemu development energy in the future.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by ShanghaiBill · 2013-07-15 10:48 · Score: 4, Informative

For now.
Virtualbox is GPLed free software. Oracle owns the domain and trademark, so they could force everyone to change the name, and they could use FUD to scare people off. But they cannot kill it. It would be like their efforts to kill MySQL and OpenOffice. Those projects were set back some, and renamed, but they live on.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 11:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

A lot of the open source vbox stuff doesn't work well for me - USB and sharing under linux.
Hence I am using the oracle version, which is unfortunate.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Savage-Rabbit · 2013-07-15 12:07 · Score: 1

For now.
Virtualbox is GPLed free software. Oracle owns the domain and trademark, so they could force everyone to change the name, and they could use FUD to scare people off. But they cannot kill it. It would be like their efforts to kill MySQL and OpenOffice. Those projects were set back some, and renamed, but they live on.
I sure as hell hope so I have over a dozen VirtualBox VMs that I use for development and I am in no mood to migrate.

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Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by kwerle · 2013-07-15 13:32 · Score: 1

Thanks for summarizing the summary - that's the only bit I care about.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by philip.paradis · 2013-07-15 18:14 · Score: 1

A dozen, seriously? I know folks who have migrated hundreds of VirtualBox VMs to KVM. It's not that difficult.
I use VirtualBox on my MacBook to run Debian on a handful of VMs, but anything persistent, for both dev and production, is on hosts running KVM.

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Write failed: Broken pipe
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by Anarchduke · 2013-07-15 21:02 · Score: 1

laziness has no minimum requirement.

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who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by LoRdTAW · 2013-07-16 00:03 · Score: 1

OSE is always behind the commercial version. I stopped using OSE for precisely the same reason you did.
If oracle ever decides to drop virtualbox then I hope they release the commercial code so it can be merged into OSE.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by tlhIngan · 2013-07-16 03:21 · Score: 1

OSE is always behind the commercial version. I stopped using OSE for precisely the same reason you did.
If oracle ever decides to drop virtualbox then I hope they release the commercial code so it can be merged into OSE.
OSE and Commercial are one and the same these days - actually. (I think it changed in Vbox4). So the version you get with Linux is the same Oracle distributes, unless they decided to compile it themselves. But as long as they didn't change the interfaces, it's still good.
What Oracle had in the commercial version they put out in an "expansion pack" which is the bits they commercially licensed. You can install it on the OSE version of Vbox these days.
Of course, you sort of wonder why no one has developed a GPL equivalent for the extension features (e.g., rdp server, usb2...).
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by pak9rabid · 2013-07-16 03:21 · Score: 1

I concur. KVM will run VM's created in vbox, as well as vmware with pretty much no nasty side-effects.
Re:Clairification- VirtualBox is being continued by BestNicksRTaken · 2013-07-16 06:50 · Score: 1

you got any hints how to do this? i tried migrating a debian wheezy image across (sid host) today and never managed to get bridged networking working, also it was slow as mollasses.
i assume you don't have to make stupid scripts up to add a tap interface for each vm like its still 1990 do you? i converted my eth0 to br0 and all i could do was ping the host from the guest and vice versa, no LAN/WAN access. that was using the virtio driver and the vhost_net module.

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#include <sig.h>

Successor is...? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:31 · Score: 1

Where do I click to download a copy of "overall core business strategy"? I don't speak PR.

VirtualBox: Don't panic! by DigitAl56K · 2013-07-15 10:31 · Score: 4, Informative

If, like me, the summary freaked you out, you'll be happy to hear that VirtualBox is not getting the axe.

Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:46 · Score: 5, Funny

since [Ellison] was hired
He kind of founded the company.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by CAIMLAS · 2013-07-15 10:47 · Score: 1

It would matter. The big thing that makes vbox useful is the extpacks: without them, Virtualbox has very limited desktop virtualization; with them, it's an awesome deployment staging and home/smb office option due to its ability to run on anything and everything (hardware) and a fair number of useful features (pxe boot, rdp server, utility through phpvirtualbox, etc.)

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~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Em+Adespoton · 2013-07-15 10:50 · Score: 2

As if it matters, the source is out there so if it was axed people would pick up where Oracle left off. Probably do a better job, too, seeing as how Ellison and the gang haven't managed to go through a single quarter without fucking something up since he was hired.
Oracle is only relevant because a host of businesses made the mistake of investing in their technology. Unless every IT department on the face of the earth is entirely staffed by Alzheimer's patients, I'm guessing that strategy is only going to work for them so long. Exactly as long as it takes an open source alternative to replace them.
Oracle VirtualBox to be replaced by LibreBox?
I would definitely miss Oracle's proprietary extensions, but forking VirtualBox could be a good thing for VB/Qemu integration. Among other things, I'd expect to see more support for the Virtualbox FUSE plugins, and tighter integration of the virtualization framework with the Qemu core. End result might even be a single front end that can spin up a virtualized OR an emulated environment -- something to give MESS a run for its money as well as Parallels and VMWare.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 11:42 · Score: 1

As if it matters, the source is out there so if it was axed people would pick up where Oracle left off. Probably do a better job, too
If it's such a beloved project, and so trivial to do a better job... why hasn't it already been done? Seriously, this sort of "well fuck you, we'll just do it all ourselves" belies the huge number of failed open source projects that never manage to do a better job because they're too busy engaging in pissing contests over their logo and whether or not to endorse ViM or Emacs as the one true editor.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by lister+king+of+smeg · 2013-07-15 11:56 · Score: 1

it won't be forked until the moment oracle give the community a giant F*** you, untill them people will be content with it. look at libre office peopple stuck with it until it was unbarable and the forked it. oracle seems to like virtualbox and continues to develop it (unlike openoffice.org) and maintains a open-source licensed compatible version..

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---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Guy+Harris · 2013-07-15 12:03 · Score: 1

Nope. Read up more, he was fired repeatedly.
OK, what should we read that indicates that Larry Ellison was fired repeatedly from Oracle?
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Lunix+Nutcase · 2013-07-15 12:15 · Score: 1

"Larry Ellison fired from Oracle" provides exactly zero links that says what you claim.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by Lunix+Nutcase · 2013-07-15 12:16 · Score: 1

Probably do a better job, too, seeing as how Ellison and the gang haven't managed to go through a single quarter without fucking something up since he was hired.
Ellison co-founded Oracle and has been its CEO for its entire history. "since he was hired". LOL.
Re:VirtualBox: Don't panic! by nurb432 · 2013-07-15 14:25 · Score: 1

Ya, and also while we may not like them, they aren't exactly falling on hard times either.

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---- Booth was a patriot ----

Re:Crap by sageres · 2013-07-15 10:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Has anyone ever thought that the Oracle might be evil?

Re:Crap by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:39 · Score: 1, Funny

Has anyone ever only thought that Oracle might be evil?

Oracle support login required by ScottCooperDotNet · 2013-07-15 10:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yet another reason to avoid helping Larry buy another yacht.

Re:Oracle support login required by thomasw_lrd · 2013-07-15 12:05 · Score: 1

Don't you mean island?

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21st Century Renaissance Man
Re:Oracle support login required by amiga3D · 2013-07-15 12:09 · Score: 1

One of my favorite jokes, old as it is, goes: What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't believe he's Larry Ellison.

What does Oracle even do anymore? by Darkness404 · 2013-07-15 10:50 · Score: 1

What does Oracle even do anymore? All they've been doing lately is killing off products/projects. Same with HP.

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Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.

Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 10:56 · Score: 1

Killing Sun Products/Projects, fucking customers over and sueing Google.
Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by EvilSS · 2013-07-15 11:14 · Score: 5, Informative

I doubt they would be killing them off if they were profitable. I do a lot of work in the virtualization and VDI space (not all of it by choice, mind you) and I have never run into anyone even asking about Oracle in those regards. AFAIK the only thing that could be considered really successful is Virtual Box and it's sticking around, thank [omnipotent bearded deity #4].

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Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by An+dochasac · 2013-07-15 12:33 · Score: 1

What does Oracle even do anymore? All they've been doing lately is killing off products/projects. Same with HP.
Yes, and IBM and Apple and Google... US tax, SEC and patent law as well as Fed/Obama helicopter drops assures that Goliath companies grow by absorbing smaller companies, not by innovation. And the overhead of a Goliath company assures that anything that doesn't add half a billion or more to the balance sheet will be killed. The good news is that this leaves huge holes in the market which can be filled by smaller companies. Sun Ray has been around for more than a decade and if you've seen it in action, you might wonder whether like so many other computer technologies, it was ahead of its time. For a decade it has been ready to save millions of dollars in energy and IT support costs and it would be a perfect fit healthcare, education, government and many corporate uses. Lets hope that bad corporate decisions and bad government policy are not enough to bury a good idea forever.
Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by Rob_Bryerton · 2013-07-15 12:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Oracle has a huge, HUGE product portfolio. ERP, middle-ware, you name it.

My opinion is that they bought Sun to gain ownership and control of Java, period. Full stop. Tons of their software relies heavily on it.

I also think they will eventually discard or sell off every last bit of the former Sun properties/technologies (other than Java) not only because very little of it is relevant or profitable anymore, but also to discard the employees who develop and support these items.

Oracle: Where Technology Goes to Die.
Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by RabidReindeer · 2013-07-15 13:30 · Score: 1

I doubt they would be killing them off if they were profitable. I do a lot of work in the virtualization and VDI space (not all of it by choice, mind you) and I have never run into anyone even asking about Oracle in those regards. AFAIK the only thing that could be considered really successful is Virtual Box and it's sticking around, thank [omnipotent bearded deity #4].
The problem here is that profitable is NOT always the same as important, useful, or any number of other virtues essential to technological progress.
Sun provided a lot of important products - Java being one of their most prominent examples. But profitable, it wasn't.
A lot of things that make you profitable actually make you less useful. Stuff like arbitrary tricks to ensure vendor lock-in, expensive products that winnow out potential contributors because they cannot afford the buy-in, developing a protective and antagonistic attitude that mean that only those with a compelling need or external pressure will even want to attempt to become part of the process.
Look at the various platform developer packages over the years for an example. The free-to-cheap stuff tends to coincide with successful platforms. Only rarely do expensive development systems result in a large and thriving development community.
Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by jbolden · 2013-07-15 14:15 · Score: 2

They sell a well know database used for relational and data warehousing
They own a 1/2 dozen other important databases: MySQL, Berkley, Times Ten...
The Java ecosystem
JD Edwards ERP
Peoplesoft (#1 HR)
Oracle Financials
Oracle CRM
Oracle Fusion Middleware
Oracle Business Analytics
etc...
They are huge and they do a ton.
Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by EvilSS · 2013-07-15 23:38 · Score: 1

A product can be profitable without being a direct revenue source if it drives profits in other areas of the business. Sun made money from java because it helped drive their business by promoting their platform and driving sales of their commercial products/services/licensing revolving around that platform.

On the flip side a product can be important, useful, etc and still be a money hole for a company. If that's the case, more than likely the company will eventually ditch it.

I'd argue that in this case most of the products being discussed fall into neither category. Outside of virtual box (which, again, is not being dropped), none of these products were ground breaking, important, or popular.

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Re:What does Oracle even do anymore? by Antique+Geekmeister · 2013-07-15 23:50 · Score: 1

They also wanted the MySQL customer lists, to migrate them over to Oracle tools.

Diverse company... by CCarrot · 2013-07-15 10:58 · Score: 2

"Oracle To Stop Developing Sun Virtualization Technologies"

Huh. I didn't even know they were in the tanning bed business...better grab one while they're 'hot'! :p

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Fork you Oracle! by DrJimbo · 2013-07-15 10:59 · Score: 4, Funny

FTFW

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Re:Crap by EvilSS · 2013-07-15 11:10 · Score: 4, Funny

Oracle just wants to destroy everything that was good about the Sun.

Oh, so they are staying in the storage business then.

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VirtualBox should be forked NOW by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 11:24 · Score: 1, Interesting

I very much doubt that anyone on the planet still lives in that happy place where Oracle continues open source development of VirtualBox indefinitely with no strings attached.

After the Java debacle against Google's Dalvik, it's abundantly clear that Oracle harbors no love for open source at all, and just sees it as a way of getting a lot of people dependent on its code ready for the harvesting.

Because of this, I recommend forking VirtualBox sooner rather than later. The fork doesn't have to be anything more than an exact mirror for as long as Ellison doesn't release his legal dogs. But he will, that much is certain.

Another take on this... by erp_consultant · 2013-07-15 11:38 · Score: 1

The anti Oracle bias is quite clear on this thread but just consider...Sun was a horribly run company. Jonathan Schwartz had this bizarre notion that if they gave everything away for free they could somehow make money off it. We all saw how that turned out. Sure, Sparc stations were pretty cool...back in the 90's. But then they got leapfrogged by commodity servers and never caught up. Sun failed to innovate so it got swallowed up by the bigger fish.

Look - I'm the first to admit that Ellison is a first class prick. But Oracle is in business to make money. They keep what works and get rid of what doesn't.

Re:Another take on this... by Guy+Harris · 2013-07-15 12:05 · Score: 1

Sure, Sparc stations were pretty cool...back in the 90's. But then they got leapfrogged by commodity servers and never caught up.
Did you mean "commodity desktops" there? Sun's still selling SPARC servers, but the SPARCstation line's dead at the hands of PC's running {Windows,Linux,whatever}.
Re:Another take on this... by fred_jb · 2013-07-15 12:06 · Score: 1

Yes, and Scott McNealy was not much better than Ellison. Attempts to monopolise the use of Unix just alienated the rest of the industry, meaning that Sun had few friends when the going got tough. I predicted their demise many years ago, and said at the time that they should have merged with someone like Dell while they had the chance - but of course that would only have happened over Scott McNealy's dead body.
Re:Another take on this... by amiga3D · 2013-07-15 12:11 · Score: 1

I disagree with you. Larry Ellison is a third class prick.
Re:Another take on this... by dbIII · 2013-07-15 12:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

My theory is that thousands of dot bombs were buying Sun stuff in the boom and the success at that point didn't even depend on management turning up, so they got lazy and could not adapt to conditions after the crash. After that they couldn't even sell excellent stuff to people that really wanted it, not unless the customers had a hidden black-ops budget and orders to kill any approaching accountants on sight (the same problem IBM has with power stuff now). Increasing scarcity meant that a lot of commercial software no longer had the newer versions ported to Sparc and there wasn't really a way to justify buying Sun x86 gear. So Sun ended up trying to push a lot of good stuff at three times the price of stuff that was half as good, which meant people would just go out and buy two of the things that were half as good instead.
Re:Another take on this... by oxdas · 2013-07-15 12:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't think most people would hate Oracle if all they did was "keep what works and get rid of what doesn't." After all, Google dumps far more unprofitable products each year and they have a much better reputation on these boards. Oracle has earned its reputation by repeatedly attacking the very foundations of the tech industry in the (short-sighted) pursuit of higher profit margins from more vendor lock-in. This is the root of the anti-Oracle bias, not scrapping a few products.
Re:Another take on this... by TechyImmigrant · 2013-07-15 13:42 · Score: 1

A sun 3/60 was a most excellent workstation in the late 80s.
I did my first grep on a 3/60.

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Re:Another take on this... by erp_consultant · 2013-07-15 14:15 · Score: 1

Hahaha...touche my friend, touche :-)
Re:Another take on this... by jbolden · 2013-07-15 14:19 · Score: 2

When did Sun attempt to monopolize Unix? During most of the Sun years: SGI, SCO, Dec, Compaq, AIX (IBM)... were all players. And then of course the Linux and the BSDs came along and were major players.
Re:Another take on this... by erp_consultant · 2013-07-15 14:22 · Score: 1

Yeah that's a fair point and I'm not disputing it. I just think that in this case Sun would have gone down either way, given their bad management. Would IBM be a better partner? Sure...but IBM isn't exactly a model corporate citizen either. Just ask any of the thousands of US based employees that have been laid off in the face of record profits.
I know that I'm in the minority here - and I don't have a horse in the race either way - I'm just trying to stir up some spirited debate on it.
Cheers.
Re:Another take on this... by Tharkkun · 2013-07-16 03:28 · Score: 1

Yeah that's a fair point and I'm not disputing it. I just think that in this case Sun would have gone down either way, given their bad management. Would IBM be a better partner? Sure...but IBM isn't exactly a model corporate citizen either. Just ask any of the thousands of US based employees that have been laid off in the face of record profits.
I know that I'm in the minority here - and I don't have a horse in the race either way - I'm just trying to stir up some spirited debate on it.
Cheers.
Sun was dead. They wouldn't even buy their employees new equipment to perform their jobs near the end. You had to buy your own laptops if you wanted a computer.
Re:Another take on this... by fred_jb · 2013-07-16 04:42 · Score: 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars Basically Sun got together with AT&T in 1987 to create, and it was feared, control, a merged version of BSD and System V.
Re:Another take on this... by jbolden · 2013-07-16 07:39 · Score: 1

You think people were holding a grudge from the birth of SVR4 days? I'm not sure if I would even consider it a monopoly attempt that's sort of a least charitable view of the whole thing.

Re:Crap by thomasw_lrd · 2013-07-15 12:03 · Score: 1

I imagine Oracle's Mission statement is the exact opposite of Googles.

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Coporate speak by manu0601 · 2013-07-15 13:10 · Score: 1

When they say

tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy

It means

The thing makes money, but not enough for our greedy shareholders, therefore let us drop it.

How to ruin a good company. by peterwargo · 2013-07-15 13:11 · Score: 2

Sad, truly sad. I used to work for Sun, there were wonderful, bright, and talented people working there. Not to mention some really great products, like the SunRay, as well as lots of good stuff in the pipeline. Oracle could've revitalized Sun. Instead, they completely screwed up. Besides ruining a perfectly good product line, they gutted one of the best support organizations in the industry and alienated long- time customers. I'm proud that I had a chance to work for Sun, and saddened to see it end up this way.

Re:Crap by Anonymous Coward · 2013-07-15 13:18 · Score: 1

I imagine Oracle's Mission statement is the exact opposite of Googles.

I imagine it's identical: rule the world by making a shitload of money.

Bullshit bingo by L.+J.+Beauregard · 2013-07-15 17:04 · Score: 2

"tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy"

WTF does that mean?

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Re:Bullshit bingo by Sockatume · 2013-07-15 20:28 · Score: 1

It means they're going to take the resources they put into virtualisation, and whatever technology they developed for it, and put it into whatever else the company is doing. They've managed to state the bleeding obvious in thousand-dollar words, as usual.

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Re:Bullshit bingo by evilviper · 2013-07-16 02:34 · Score: 1

It means they're screwing their customers, but expect to be *thanked* for doing so.

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Oracle makes it official by hypnosec · 2013-07-15 19:22 · Score: 2

For those who don't have an Oracle support login here is the official announcement through a blog post.

Re:Crap by BestNicksRTaken · 2013-07-15 19:44 · Score: 2

Maybe Larry is a vampire, as he seems to want to block out the Sun....

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Interesting strategy ... by YoungManKlaus · 2013-07-15 20:30 · Score: 1

buy a company, then one by one shut down or at least severely reduce development on everything they did (OpenOffice, Java, MySQL, VirtualBox, etc etc etc)

Re:StorageTek by EvilSS · 2013-07-15 23:49 · Score: 1

I still have nightmares from dealing with their NAS product at one customer. Multiple failures, firmware issues out the ass. The customer was a few hours from literally haul it to the curb and telling Sun either they or the equipment shredder could come get it when Sun came in and replaced everything. Then it failed again. Awesome products.

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Speaking as a ThinLinc marketer... by Heddahenrik · 2013-07-16 09:39 · Score: 1

I just got hired and I only had the chance to work with marketing ThinLinc for 16 days before Oracle threw in the towel, obviously because they are scared of me... Now the Oracle customers themselves are taking my job and are flooding the Oracle mailing lists discussing alternatives to Sun Ray, for example ThinLinc, and we're already getting tons of request from Oracle customers who want to migrate to ThinLinc.

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