Sun dropping Netscape Application Server Linux Port
Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the gone-with-the-wind dept.
Matt Fotter was one of the first to write with the news that Sun has decided to re-nege on their original
promise to port Netscape Application Server to Linux, and will be re-leasing the new version next month, sans a Linux port.
Most GNU programs have "embraced and extended" standard UNIX tools by adding nonstandard things. Half the damn things I try to compile depend on GNU specific extensions that they didn't have to use.
Give me some examples... I have built a ton of stuff on Linux, Solaris and SunOS, and in most cases these days it is just a matter of running config and then doing a make.
Most of the Debian distribution won't work if you try to use a regular old POSIX/bin/sh.
Well, I don't use Debian, but I've used shells other than bash on Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera and Slackware (for example tcsh).
I don't see how what MS does is worse than this.
Maybe because MS doesn't give us the source code? And if they did, have you ever tried to port source written for Windows to any other platform? I have, and it isn't fun. All of their APIs are proprietarized (look at the Winsock API and how it has changed), all of them are highly Windows specific. All of them seem to change because of short sighted planning on Microsoft's part (Win16 vs. Win32s vs Win32 (and all the variants between 95, 98 and NT), and the upcoming Win64). There is no way you can compare difficulty in porting between Windows and anything else and between one *nix and another. I am still using code I wrote under 4.2BSD UNIX on VAXes in the mid 80's today. It compiles and runs with little trouble on several different *nixes.
If you can't see how Microsoft is worse, then you need a white cane, dark glasses and a guide dog. No offense to blind people, because you may not be blind, but you sure can't see.
Clone it? let's not. I've used NAS and it absolutely sucks. This kind of expensive junkware should be left to die. If you really want to run a website on java on linux (not a good idea with the current state of VMs on linux) you should look at Enhydra, Locomotive, or GSP. All of these are more useful than NAS.
What is an Application Server?
by
CodeShark
·
· Score: 4
Simply put, an application server is a translator between HTML requests and (a back end business application (usually a database). My guess is that this definition doesn't really answer your question, so, let me offer a progression which may help you understand where the "web server" ends, and the "application server" begins.
No frills Web Server: can serve static HTML pages, images and links.
Web Server + basic CGI: adds basic forms processing
Web Server + Advanced CGI, or Extensions and database on the same machine (such as Apache's mod-perl to mySql): complex applications including database access, etc.) In this example, mod-perl is actually functioning as an "application server" with Apache being the web server.
Web Server with extensions such as mod perl (or the NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.) with the database on a separate machine: complex applications, etc. This would be a true "application server", like NAS.
Finally, there are extremely high end systems such as Bluestone's SapphireWeb or IBM's Web Sphere where multiple numbers of machines are linked together; there can be multiple HTTP servers, multiple application servers, and even multiple RDBMS layers.
Hope this helps.
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Re:What is an Application Server?
by
anthony_baxter
·
· Score: 2
Don't forget Zope from your list of application servers.
It has a couple of advantages over the others listed:
It's Open Source
It's not a bloated-pig-from-hell
It's not just a really dodgy windows port (or has CF been properly ported to Unix now?)
The first sentence should have read: Simply put, an application server is a translator between HTML requests and a back end business application (usually a database).
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Legacy app tech != Java, CORBA, EJBs, etc.
by
CodeShark
·
· Score: 3
People who need to leverage existing legacy applications using tech such as Java, CORBA, EJBs, etc are the people who need such 'bloated app server'
Hate to rain on your parade, but Java, Corba, EJB's, etc. have nothing to do with the bloat in app servers. And they are not tools for accessing legacy applications, they are tools for more easily creating effective middle layers between the back end databases and the users.
Consider this: I could have a Java Application, a C++ application, a VB application, and even Perl/CGI applications running over the 'net all communicating with an ORB (Object Request Broker) at the same time, and have the ORB process the requests as an application server - transparently to all of the users.
Don't knock what you don't understand.
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Open source software's track record is great!
by
CodeShark
·
· Score: 2
Damn straight.
Best written post I've seen in a long while, as it goes straight to the core of the "M$ wants to take over the world" vs. the struggle for "code freedom" led by Linux and others.
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Re:Microsoft wants commoditization
by
Gleef
·
· Score: 2
Stu Charlton writes:
They WANT business servers to become commidities. They want message queues, tp monitors, ORB's, web servers, app servers and file/print sharing to be all rolled into ONE commodity product: Windows NT.
That's not a commodity. That's an integrated product intended to build a business server monopoly. They are mutually exclusive. If you have a monopoly on an class of items, it is not a commodity, no matter how many times you call it one.
Microsoft has always been about selling in volume to drown competitors in a sea of dirt-cheap prices. Getting to that level requires a commoditization of the market.
Volume and low price does not make something a commodity. A large volume of magazines are printed every month, yet they are not a commodity. Why? Because you cannot replace one Cosmopolitan, or even Forbes, with, say Money magazine, they serve different purposes, they have different information. Newspapers, on the other hand, are perpetually on the verge of being a commodity, since a great deal of the paper is spent serving roughly the same AP and UPI articles to the readers.
A commodity market is typified by minor product differentiation. Microsoft always tries for drastic product differentiation.
----
--
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Hmmm. Zope sounds good...
by
CodeShark
·
· Score: 3
I've got a bookmark to their page and am very interested, but haven't had much extra time in the way of doing an evaluation.
So I'm posting this question (and may even do an "Ask Slashdot") here: does anybody have performance figures, independent evaluations, experience that they would like to share?
-- ...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Almost certainly not. Oranges are a commodity, farmers are not. More on topic, there are many fields based on commodity information, most of the sciences, law and medicine come to mind. As software becomes commoditized, programmers will become a more professionalized field. A good thing if you ask me.
Microsoft is fighting against the commoditization of software, through ads like the one you mentioned and other means. They don't want commodity software, because their business model depends on inter-software tie-ins (eg. SQL Server requires NT and really encourages IE too). This is not commodity software.
A commodity is an type of item where everything is pretty much the same, like an orange, or wheat. There are differences (navel oranges, seedless oranges), but they all work as an orange, and they all do orangey things.
Commodity software is similar. You have a job to do, and you aren't tied into any particular piece of software to do it. For example, NCSA httpd, Apache, Roxen, IIS and Netscape Server will all serve the same web pages, so basic web servers are a commodity market. Microsoft fights the commodity trend by trying to encourage superfluous proprietary extensions like ASP and VBScript, so people will say "It's not a commodity, look, httpd won't run my ASP pages". They encourage this with ads like the one you complained about.
The Free Software community goes a step further, from commodity software to commodity information. Not only do you have choice in software packages, you have choice in source code. If you don't like the selection, fix one of the choices or use the commodity information to write a new choice. Run Apache and OpenSSL together into one binary, nobody will stop you.
This is what I mean by the commoditization of the software industry. This will lead to much pain in the shrinkwrap software industry, but many good things for the real software industry.
What you just said mirrors what MS said in those halloween documents to a T. You'd be doing exactly what MS does, find a product that works, make a blatant copy of it, and then sell it for a lower price. But because it is now "open-source" that's supposed to make it all better for the company who made the initial investment to get product to market in the first place.
In a few instances, I've been impressed, but overall it seems that the open source doesn't really contribute anything back to the world, aside from source code. Where's the innovation? At least MS was first on the block with a unified-browser interface (though it sucks!!!)... Then KDE appears and lo and behold, it's got an integrated browser! Where's the originality?
Feh. It's the kind of thing that scares the suits into supporting Linux. Try to imagine, for instance, this scenario:
Company: Hey we just released this nifty server software for Linux! Hoorah! Sysadmin: Um, we've alreay invested in this GNU solution. You were a bit slow on the draw, there, guys. Sorry. Company: Doh!
Linux users owe nothing to Sun. They've made it clear they owe nothing to us, so why do 'em any favors?
Btw NAS costs $35,000 PER CPU! They cite "lack of demand" as a reason for not doing the Linux port (yet). Btw they only sold 75 copies in the last 3 months. (and that was their best yet). Given the cost, it's not surprising Linux demand is low - it's an app for really high end stuff.
Here's a press release about the next version, to ship next month.
What's Princess Leia's role in all this?
by
jd
·
· Score: 2
The Alliance has sold out to the Dark Side of the Force, clearly. This is probably why George Lucas didn't want to make the last 3 parts. It's too gruesome, with Sun/Netscape/AOL coming under the power of Darth Maul and the loss of billions of innocent bytes of code/data, by the destruction of their heavily-populated file. The new Death*.* is the most destructive weapon ever built.
-- It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, I would say: no biggie, tons of other top app servers out there will/already do support Linux (which is certainly true), but every mention of app servers just reminds me how cool JSP and EJB are. And how slow Blackdown is. Linux needs a top-notch JVM before its server-side Java can take off. Check out WebTechniques benchmarks of GNUJSP on apache on Linux. The poor author adores the OS and webserver, but, even with tweaking, it still took SECONDS to server a simple JSP. No joke. What we need from Sun is not their app server, but their support for a real Java2 on Linux. Maybe IBM can do it. . . --JZ
Re:Sun + Netscape + AOL = Worse than M$
by
Trepidity
·
· Score: 2
You mean Sun + Netscape + AOL + CompuServe + Winamp + ICQ
This isn't anything new ... or unexpected
by
ogren
·
· Score: 2
First of all, since I'm an Alliance employee, I want to explicitly include the standard disclaimer. This is my opinion, not that of my employer. Nor is this information "official" communication of any sort.
But, frankly, the ZDNet article doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Sure, Netscape announced that it was going start including Linux as a strategic platform. And Netscape has released Linux versions of its Directory and Messaging servers to prove this point. And ASFAIK, they will continue to release Alliance servers on Linux.
But neither the Alliance nor Netscape has suggested that they would release their application servers on Linux. It doesn't even make sense that they would.
First of all, the Java support on Linux just isn't there yet. Both NetDynamics and Netscape Application Server need extremely fast and stable JVMs in order to do their jobs. Blackdown just doesn't cut it.
Secondly, there is absolutely no demand for it. When customers are spending six and seven figures for application server software, and similar amounts for hardware, few clients are willing to use Linux. Whether this is right or wrong, it's true. I've never had a client ask me about Linux support for NAS.
Re:high-end? I don't think so...
by
infinii
·
· Score: 2
Web Server != Application Server
People who need to leverage existing legacy applications using tech such as Java, CORBA, EJBs, etc are the people who need such 'bloated app server'
netscape products are all EOL'd
by
stange
·
· Score: 2
The Netscape product line is all dead anyway. The version 4.0 of the server is the last in the NAS product line. I imagine that it would be pointless to introduce the product to a new platform when it will so be end-of-lifed.
The new company is called iPlanet, and will be introducing new products combining the NAS and the application server that is currently sold by Sun (purchased from NetDynamics).
This has little to do with various dark conspiracies that Sun doesn't like linux. It has more to do with basic common sense marketing of a product that is being replaced by newer technology.
begin{opinion} It's a shame that some of the responses are of the form that "Sun sucks; this is FUD from Sun; oohhh, conspiracy; linux rool3z". Grow up people. Just because a company makes a choice doesn't mean that they oppose linux. This is simply a case of a company trying to combine two competing product lines. Anyway, I could go on this point, but I need to be productive on something else.... /end{opinion}
-- slashdot.com
All the news that isn't.
(Igno)Ranting Posters
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
I am a software developer from Netscape/AOL working in iPlanet. We have a significant investment in Linux, both in terms of the amount of money invested and the amount of internal developer mindshare. Linux is a Tier 1 platform for us, on the same level as NT and Solaris. The Sun folks we work with fully accept and understand this. As for the NAS team, I'm pretty sure it was mostly a market share issue for them. There is not nearly as big a market for their product in the Linux world as there is for other iPlanet server products.
I'm glad to hear that, at least from the 'trenches' perspective, Linux/iPlanet ports are still present for the other server products (Mail, Web, directory, specifically). NAS really is a LARGE SCALE appliation (come on, 35K on a Free OS? What's wrong with that picture?), and it doesn't fit well on a LINUX box (at least not yet).
I just hope this isn't a hint of things to come...
-- -- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
This isn't that big a deal. NAS is a very expensive product, and I doubt many places would spend that kind of money on the product and not run it on a Sun system, with a big ol' company behind it that you can sue when it doesn't work.
I'd be a lot more watchful about Sun's involvement in Jakarta, and what support they've had for the Java ports for Linux, than this. The issue is, was this a true demand based decision, or a political decision masked with a demand-based excuse? If its the latter, projects like the Java port for Linux, and Jakarta are probably on pretty tenuous ground.
Wouldn't suprise me in that case if we stop seeing "official" status for Communicator ports for Linux. Thank god Mozilla's coming along quickly -- they can't do squat about that.
Sun is a company that loves Linux because it helps them kick Microsoft around, but may be wising up to the fact that it'll probably turn around and kick them around too. They need to ensure that Linux dominates the low end server area that Microsoft represents a threat to them in, without becoming so capable that it takes over the high-end server area.
Need I say, much kudos to SGI for being much cooler about their Linux support?
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I think it's about time for a reality check here folks. First let's keep in mind what Sun's business is. It isn't selling software or hardware, it's making there shareholders money. Shareholders probably don't care where the money comes from, as long as it's a steady stream of nice positive numbers. If that offends you I urge you to sell any stock you hold in Sun, IBM, Microsoft, or the majority of other publically traded companies. I'm not saying that I agree with it, I'm just saying that this is the way it works. Now, Sun decided not to ship NAS on Linux. If you don't agree with it I would suggest that you either sell your stock in Sun or you sign a petition that you would be willing to purchase a copy of NAS if it is available for Linux. If you get enough people to do either of these situations then you could impact Sun's ability to make money so they would probably listen. IBM did with VisualAge for Java, I'll be willing to bet that Sun will too. For those who think that Sun's the next evil empire and anyone using Java, you are may be correct, but what you don't appear to realize is that almost every company wants to be in Microsoft's position. Think about it, if Bill G. even mentions a new product (regardlessn if it ever sees the light of day), Microsoft and its shareholders make money. IBM was once in this position and it was once an extremely hated company. Microsoft is now. Sun wants it's turn. Yes, Sun will probably use Java for this (if it is ever strong enough). Right now I continue to beleive that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Sun ever makes Java a viable application platform (instead of it's middle tier position now), then perhaps it can make ISVs port their applications to Java. If it runs in Java it runs on Linux. If it runs on Linux it helps Linux gain popularity. We can deal with Sun when/if Sun becomes the next evil empire. I've also read a whole lot of commenting about the Sun-AOL purchase of Netscape. We all really have nobody but ourselves to blame for this, and we should all be ashamed. When Netscape opened it's source it was the first real honest attempt to show that there was a better way of developing software and it was possible to make money. What happened, unfortunately, is few people took the time to contribute. As a result Netscape 5.0 was behind and they never retgained much market share from IE. If we had all contributed maybe Netscape 5.0 would have been out last year and it would have blown the socks of Internet Explorer. What's worse than Netscape going under is now other companies will say "Why open up the source? Look at how it helped Netscape."
Slashdot Mirror
In the words of Nelson on the hit TV show The Simpsons:
"Ha Ha..."
That will be all.
Here's the link to the full article, not just the headline alert.
Most GNU programs have "embraced and extended" standard UNIX tools by adding nonstandard things. Half the damn things I try to compile depend on GNU specific extensions that they didn't have to use.
/bin/sh.
Give me some examples... I have built a ton of stuff on Linux, Solaris and SunOS, and in most cases these days it is just a matter of running config and then doing a make.
Most of the Debian distribution won't work if you try to use a regular old POSIX
Well, I don't use Debian, but I've used shells other than bash on Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera and Slackware (for example tcsh).
I don't see how what MS does is worse than this.
Maybe because MS doesn't give us the source code? And if they did, have you ever tried to port source written for Windows to any other platform? I have, and it isn't fun. All of their APIs are proprietarized (look at the Winsock API and how it has changed), all of them are highly Windows specific. All of them seem to change because of short sighted planning on Microsoft's part (Win16 vs. Win32s vs Win32 (and all the variants between 95, 98 and NT), and the upcoming Win64). There is no way you can compare difficulty in porting between Windows and anything else and between one *nix and another. I am still using code I wrote under 4.2BSD UNIX on VAXes in the mid 80's today. It compiles and runs with little trouble on several different *nixes.
If you can't see how Microsoft is worse, then you need a white cane, dark glasses and a guide dog. No offense to blind people, because you may not be blind, but you sure can't see.
Clone it? let's not. I've used NAS and it absolutely sucks. This kind of expensive junkware should be left to die. If you really want to run a website on java on linux (not a good idea with the current state of VMs on linux) you should look at Enhydra, Locomotive, or GSP. All of these are more useful than NAS.
- No frills Web Server: can serve static HTML pages, images and links.
- Web Server + basic CGI: adds basic forms processing
- Web Server + Advanced CGI, or Extensions and database on the same machine (such as Apache's mod-perl to mySql): complex applications including database access, etc.) In this example, mod-perl is actually functioning as an "application server" with Apache being the web server.
- Web Server with extensions such as mod perl (or the NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.) with the database on a separate machine: complex applications, etc. This would be a true "application server", like NAS.
- Finally, there are extremely high end systems such as Bluestone's SapphireWeb or IBM's Web Sphere where multiple numbers of machines are linked together; there can be multiple HTTP servers, multiple application servers, and even multiple RDBMS layers.
Hope this helps....Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
The first sentence should have read: Simply put, an application server is a translator between HTML requests and a back end business application (usually a database).
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Hate to rain on your parade, but Java, Corba, EJB's, etc. have nothing to do with the bloat in app servers. And they are not tools for accessing legacy applications, they are tools for more easily creating effective middle layers between the back end databases and the users.
Consider this: I could have a Java Application, a C++ application, a VB application, and even Perl/CGI applications running over the 'net all communicating with an ORB (Object Request Broker) at the same time, and have the ORB process the requests as an application server - transparently to all of the users.
Don't knock what you don't understand.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Damn straight.
Best written post I've seen in a long while, as it goes straight to the core of the "M$ wants to take over the world" vs. the struggle for "code freedom" led by Linux and others.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Stu Charlton writes:
They WANT business servers to become commidities. They want message queues, tp monitors, ORB's, web servers, app servers and file/print sharing to be all rolled into ONE commodity product: Windows NT.
That's not a commodity. That's an integrated product intended to build a business server monopoly. They are mutually exclusive. If you have a monopoly on an class of items, it is not a commodity, no matter how many times you call it one.
Microsoft has always been about selling in volume to drown competitors in a sea of dirt-cheap prices. Getting to that level requires a commoditization of the market.
Volume and low price does not make something a commodity. A large volume of magazines are printed every month, yet they are not a commodity. Why? Because you cannot replace one Cosmopolitan, or even Forbes, with, say Money magazine, they serve different purposes, they have different information. Newspapers, on the other hand, are perpetually on the verge of being a commodity, since a great deal of the paper is spent serving roughly the same AP and UPI articles to the readers.
A commodity market is typified by minor product differentiation. Microsoft always tries for drastic product differentiation.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
So I'm posting this question (and may even do an "Ask Slashdot") here: does anybody have performance figures, independent evaluations, experience that they would like to share?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
If they won't do a port, let's just clone it and release a free, open sourced version.
Btw NAS costs $35,000 PER CPU! They cite "lack of demand" as a reason for not doing the Linux port (yet). Btw they only sold 75 copies in the last 3 months. (and that was their best yet). Given the cost, it's not surprising Linux demand is low - it's an app for really high end stuff.
Here's a press release about the next version, to ship next month.
The Alliance has sold out to the Dark Side of the Force, clearly. This is probably why George Lucas didn't want to make the last 3 parts. It's too gruesome, with Sun/Netscape/AOL coming under the power of Darth Maul and the loss of billions of innocent bytes of code/data, by the destruction of their heavily-populated file. The new Death*.* is the most destructive weapon ever built.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, I would say: no biggie, tons of other top app servers out there will/already do support Linux (which is certainly true), but every mention of app servers just reminds me how cool JSP and EJB are. And how slow Blackdown is. Linux needs a top-notch JVM before its server-side Java can take off. Check out WebTechniques benchmarks of GNUJSP on apache on Linux. The poor author adores the OS and webserver, but, even with tweaking, it still took SECONDS to server a simple JSP. No joke. What we need from Sun is not their app server, but their support for a real Java2 on Linux. Maybe IBM can do it. . .
--JZ
You mean Sun + Netscape + AOL + CompuServe + Winamp + ICQ
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
First of all, since I'm an Alliance employee, I want to explicitly include the standard disclaimer. This is my opinion, not that of my employer. Nor is this information "official" communication of any sort.
But, frankly, the ZDNet article doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Sure, Netscape announced that it was going start including Linux as a strategic platform. And Netscape has released Linux versions of its Directory and Messaging servers to prove this point. And ASFAIK, they will continue to release Alliance servers on Linux.
But neither the Alliance nor Netscape has suggested that they would release their application servers on Linux. It doesn't even make sense that they would.
First of all, the Java support on Linux just isn't there yet. Both NetDynamics and Netscape Application Server need extremely fast and stable JVMs in order to do their jobs. Blackdown just doesn't cut it.
Secondly, there is absolutely no demand for it. When customers are spending six and seven figures for application server software, and similar amounts for hardware, few clients are willing to use Linux. Whether this is right or wrong, it's true. I've never had a client ask me about Linux support for NAS.
Web Server != Application Server
People who need to leverage existing legacy applications using tech such as Java, CORBA, EJBs, etc are the people who need such 'bloated app server'
The Netscape product line is all dead anyway. The version 4.0 of the server is the last in the NAS product line. I imagine that it would be pointless to introduce the product to a new platform when it will so be end-of-lifed.
The new company is called iPlanet, and will be introducing new products combining the NAS and the application server that is currently sold by Sun (purchased from NetDynamics).
This has little to do with various dark conspiracies that Sun doesn't like linux. It has more to do with basic common sense marketing of a product that is being replaced by newer technology.
begin{opinion}
It's a shame that some of the responses are of the form that "Sun sucks; this is FUD from Sun; oohhh, conspiracy; linux rool3z". Grow up people. Just because a company makes a choice doesn't mean that they oppose linux. This is simply a case of a company trying to combine two competing product lines. Anyway, I could go on this point, but I need to be productive on something else....
/end{opinion}
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.
I am a software developer from Netscape/AOL working in iPlanet. We have a significant investment in Linux, both in terms of the amount of money invested and the amount of internal developer mindshare. Linux is a Tier 1 platform for us, on the same level as NT and Solaris. The Sun folks we work with fully accept and understand this. As for the NAS team, I'm pretty sure it was mostly a market share issue for them. There is not nearly as big a market for their product in the Linux world as there is for other iPlanet server products.
This isn't that big a deal. NAS is a very expensive product, and I doubt many places would spend that kind of money on the product and not run it on a Sun system, with a big ol' company behind it that you can sue when it doesn't work.
I'd be a lot more watchful about Sun's involvement in Jakarta, and what support they've had for the Java ports for Linux, than this. The issue is, was this a true demand based decision, or a political decision masked with a demand-based excuse? If its the latter, projects like the Java port for Linux, and Jakarta are probably on pretty tenuous ground.
Wouldn't suprise me in that case if we stop seeing "official" status for Communicator ports for Linux. Thank god Mozilla's coming along quickly -- they can't do squat about that.
Sun is a company that loves Linux because it helps them kick Microsoft around, but may be wising up to the fact that it'll probably turn around and kick them around too. They need to ensure that Linux dominates the low end server area that Microsoft represents a threat to them in, without becoming so capable that it takes over the high-end server area.
Need I say, much kudos to SGI for being much cooler about their Linux support?
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I think it's about time for a reality check here folks. First let's keep in mind what Sun's business is. It isn't selling software or hardware, it's making there shareholders money. Shareholders probably don't care where the money comes from, as long as it's a steady stream of nice positive numbers. If that offends you I urge you to sell any stock you hold in Sun, IBM, Microsoft, or the majority of other publically traded companies. I'm not saying that I agree with it, I'm just saying that this is the way it works. Now, Sun decided not to ship NAS on Linux. If you don't agree with it I would suggest that you either sell your stock in Sun or you sign a petition that you would be willing to purchase a copy of NAS if it is available for Linux. If you get enough people to do either of these situations then you could impact Sun's ability to make money so they would probably listen. IBM did with VisualAge for Java, I'll be willing to bet that Sun will too. For those who think that Sun's the next evil empire and anyone using Java, you are may be correct, but what you don't appear to realize is that almost every company wants to be in Microsoft's position. Think about it, if Bill G. even mentions a new product (regardlessn if it ever sees the light of day), Microsoft and its shareholders make money. IBM was once in this position and it was once an extremely hated company. Microsoft is now. Sun wants it's turn. Yes, Sun will probably use Java for this (if it is ever strong enough). Right now I continue to beleive that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If Sun ever makes Java a viable application platform (instead of it's middle tier position now), then perhaps it can make ISVs port their applications to Java. If it runs in Java it runs on Linux. If it runs on Linux it helps Linux gain popularity. We can deal with Sun when/if Sun becomes the next evil empire. I've also read a whole lot of commenting about the Sun-AOL purchase of Netscape. We all really have nobody but ourselves to blame for this, and we should all be ashamed. When Netscape opened it's source it was the first real honest attempt to show that there was a better way of developing software and it was possible to make money. What happened, unfortunately, is few people took the time to contribute. As a result Netscape 5.0 was behind and they never retgained much market share from IE. If we had all contributed maybe Netscape 5.0 would have been out last year and it would have blown the socks of Internet Explorer. What's worse than Netscape going under is now other companies will say "Why open up the source? Look at how it helped Netscape."