Is Sun Truly A Friend of Linux?

Yes..but... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:41 · Score: 1

The home market is actually very small. Compare the number of system sold to home users compared with the number of systems sold to corporations (for their employees to use) and the direction that Sun is proposing is obvious.

That said, the danger is in the article is also obvious...Sun could have no real desire to continue with StarOffice/StarPortal.

Personally, I think this also makes Sun stupid. If they don't plan on using StarOffice, they could always release GPL'ed (or whatever) and gain tons of name recognition among home users. (But then I've never really seen Sun be that intelligent with regard to home users).

Re:Yes..but... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:43 · Score: 0

they could always release GPL'ed (or whatever) and gain tons of name recognition among home users.

Why will releasing Star Office under the GPL get it any name recognition among home users? If Sun wants name recognition, history shows us that what works is giving away a closed-source product at no cost.

That was not flamebait, it was THE TRUTH by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:41 · Score: 1

Why was that marked as flamebait? It's perfectly true!!!

the Linux crowd will moan and whinge and slag off any company who does not support Linux, BUT they also slag off any company which DOES support Linux because they support other platforms or they don't give away their entire source code for free.

Re:That was not flamebait, it was THE TRUTH by heller · 1999-09-20 20:51 · Score: 1

Not at all!

The linux community is simply wary of others motivations!

Re: game consoles are the future by richnut · 1999-09-20 20:42 · Score: 1

Wow. This sounds like all the reasons I bought an N64 yesterday :-)

Sun wants everyone to use cheap disposable machines, just so long as they connect to solaris servers. For anyone who's not interested in thin, and still wants a computer, Sun would be thrilled to have them all using Linux, it's a great first step to Solaris.

-Rich

Re:they are the only ones interested in their visi by Geekholder · 1999-09-21 08:45 · Score: 1

Actually, Citrix has made a lot of money selling ICA, where a central NT server runs all of the apps and remote displays them on PC desktops. M$ introduced the Windows Terminal Server to try to get some of that revenue back from Citrix.
Sun isn't alone in pushing this stuff.

Sun can't beat Linux ... Microsoft might ... by squireson · 1999-09-21 09:25 · Score: 1

The enemy of my enemy is my friend . You've heard it before but it is only true if you are sure that you can beat the snot out of your new found friend after your common foe is smited ... er , smote , that is . Sun can't hope to beat Linux but Microsoft has the leverage and money to make the Linux movement a bone crunching experience for all of us . I can't count the number of people I know who believe that Microsoft is the future , absolutely the future ... Their marketing is too dangerous to discount .

Re:Where are your files safer? by Kaufmann · 1999-09-21 11:45 · Score: 1

(Since you've posted this twice, I'm going to just reply to the second one.)

Well, I know all that. I was just pointing out the absurdity of the argument that your files are safer in your own box (which, frankly, seems to stem more from personal reasons than from logical argument).

--
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.

Re:Linux vs Solaris BROUAAAAWAAAWAAAAAAA!!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:45 · Score: 0

Linux is only a few steps away from completely replacing the need for Solaris. As soon as Linux has enterprise calibre performance, there will be little incentive for anyone to use Solaris. IBM knows this too

Hey kiddo! when you are done tweaking your enlightment settings why don't you learn some C and go help the TCP team scale the linux stack beyond 2 threads, huh? and then, when you've been under some real fire... come back here and then do share your wisdom.

Matt (Unix sys-admin)

Re: ...but thin clients aren't by twinpot · 1999-09-21 11:57 · Score: 1

New Zealand has free local calls (and unlimited net access for NZ$29.95 per month), and Aus has a per call fixed charge (not time based)

Re:Linux vs Solaris by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:51 · Score: 0

Linux has some good points, but it simply is a long way from replacing every OS on the planet...and a long way from Solaris in particular.

(Score: -1, Heresy)

Or should that be (Score -1, Blasphemy)? Dang, these moderation categories are subtle.

Re:Sun has a right to be worried by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 12:06 · Score: 0

Sun is a hardware company. They aren't interested if you are running Linux or Solaris - as long as it runs on their machines. BUT have you compared costs/performance between UE450 and 4way INTEL box? That's the problem - and this will make Linux a greate enemy of SUN - because it makes hardware really compareable. Linux/SPARC, Linux/INTEL, Linux/ALPHA, ...

Re:All non OSS companies will go out of business by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 13:38 · Score: 0

ROTFL Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that. Don't let the little fact of you being totally wrong upset you.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by Kaa · 1999-09-20 22:58 · Score: 1

The problem with buying a computer as a general purpose tool is that sooner or later this stuff is all going to morph into a few appliances to make it easy for the masses to do things.

I am not sure about this. I've heard predictions about this coming for a looong time, but I still see no signs of this happening. One exception, though -- there are and will be "appliances" for browsing the Web and email (WebTV, etc.)

Computers are complicated. People like you and me can use them just fine, but there's a lot of dough to be made in taking spreadhseets and wordprocessors and applying them to lo-tech solutions with simple consistent UIs.

First, it has been tried. Remember the electronic typewriters (take an electric typewriter, add a small LCD screen and some memory...)? This is exactly your lo-tech wordprocessor appliance with simple, known and consistent UI. They failed utterly.

Second, computers are complicated for a reason. When you have a sophisticated task to do, it is the complexity of the task that determines how easy it is to use to appropriate tools. Programs like, say, PhotoShop or PageMaker are complicated because they have to do complicated things and a simple UI isn't going to help much. Tasks that you can do with a couple of clicks (again, rowsing, email) can be turned into an appliance with a couple of buttons. I doubt that this is true for a general-purpose word processing program or financial software (major applications for home users).

And yes, I agree that PCs will be used for serious gaming, while consoles will be for the unwashed masses. But then again, that is very similar to the situation we have currently, no?

Kaa

--

Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 15:15 · Score: 0

I don't want to upset everyone here, but the "great unwashed masses" aren't as computer illiterate as they used to be. A lot of people are using computers at work, picking up more than just the base skills and using them on their home PC.
Pick up any photography magazine and you'll find reviews of the latest colour printers, sections on using Photoshop, guides on how to buy a good PC, and things like that. Photoshop is being learned and mastered by "average" hobbist photographers; they don't think it's some scary programme, they treat it like a fun toy to play with.
PCs are being an integral part of our society, and I think we need to step back from the cutting edge and see just how far everyone else has actualy come.
Oh, and you don't need to spend extra money for your fancy 3D accelerator cards any more; it's been a long time since I've seen a PC for sale that didn't come with either a Voodoo 3000 or an ATI Rage, or a Maxtrox G400. Most PCs come bundled with a printer/joystick/scanner set, and it's bundles like that which most home users buy; they want their new PC to be able to do everything straight out of the box, and these days, they can.
Well, that's just my two penneth.

Re: Read McNealy's lips by Amphigory · 1999-09-21 16:07 · Score: 2

FWIW, my sarcasm was directed less at your article than at the dot-heads around here whining about how it wouldn't play quake-2 very well and completely missing the point that most people don't play quake :)

I have to suspect that Sun's aims for the home market are primarily for that low-end segment currently valiantly resisting the forces of WebTV.

--
-- Slashdot sucks.

Completely irrelevant by TurkishGeek · 1999-09-20 23:02 · Score: 1

There's no valid analogy between the bandwidth from the CD-ROM drive to the computer and the bandwidth of the network. The CD-ROM drive is used to read actual data for the game functions, like textures, bitmaps and sound samples. The network does not transfer this kind of data in most cases, it is highly optimized data traffic to inform other game clients of the player's current position, etc.

This network traffic is highly optimized to minimize the latency which affects the gameplay negatively, whereas some latency and delay is tolerable, and inevitable during the initialization phase where the game is loading its data from the CD-ROM drive or whatever local storage it is using.

If the game was being played from a shared network directory mounted over the network connection, then your analogy would have been relevant. In this case, it is not.

--
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog

Re:Completely irrelevant by osmanb · 1999-09-20 23:20 · Score: 1

But that's exactly the point! If Sun's model were to spread everywhere (homes, as well as corporations) then we wouldn't have useless equipment like hard drives on our PCs. Our software would be stored across a network, so things that we now load from CD would actually be coming over the net. Granted, we may still have CD drives for some apps, but the whole point is to move software and its maintenance out of the hands of the average user, which means storing EVERYTHING on servers.
-Brian
Re:Completely irrelevant by Mija+Cat · 1999-09-21 07:58 · Score: 1

Sun's business model lives and dies by the LAN, it's that simple. HP sells a lot of engineering workstations, they also live and die by the LAN, although they're "chunky" clients - i.e. they have hard drives, so the OS is local. They usually load apps across the net, though, and our engineers scream bloody murder if this takes more than a minute or two. 100mbt to the desktop is *mandatory* for the network to "be" the computer today, and files are not getting any smaller!

--
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.

Re:Amazing. by grem_ · 1999-09-21 16:08 · Score: 1

I agree that hardware thin clients are not being marketed at the home PC and I don't think sun has even considered this market. But there is much more to thin clients than just cost.

Thin clients have some great benefits for large organisations of many kinds( some of these comments may be specific to sunrays in particular or just generally of thin clients.) The folowing is a collection of points of interest on both the theory and practical application of thin clients.

1. Reduced Admin and maintanence. Remember if all of the processing is being done on the server then admin doesn't need to install anything on each desktop or fix any changes on a desktop that a user may make. Keep in mind this can be a much more signifigant problem when an organisation has users spread of multiple locations.
Upgrades can be done more efficiently and clashes of versions between users can be avoided.
The environment can be controlled much more tightly. In situations where factors such as the version of browers and plugins installed can effect performance of apps this controll of the users environment becomes very inportant.

2. Network traffic can be reduced by processing any data on the server where or near the data store. This can make a large performance difference for apps such as database style apps where the data need not be sent thru the network only the display data. (yes I have done some benchmarking on this did help a lot in some situations )

3.Shared workstations. If all the desktops are identical thin clients then they can simply can be used by several users and keep all the customisation of the current user. This becomes relevant in situations such as call centers with shifts operation or organisations like universities or libraries with public terminals.
This is where the sunray smart cards can be used to their best to swap users instantly by keeping the session live but not tieing up the physical terminal. Thus the number of terminal need only be the number of simultaneous users not the maximum number of users.

4. Another use particullarly relevant to me at the moment. The use of smart cards for hot desktoping enables users to literally pull out thier smart card and walk into a meeting with they session set up for a presentation, demo or even an error to show admin rather than calling admin to walk up and look at their screen.(the mountain to mohammad). The portability removes the need for everybody to have a laptop to do their presentations they mearly need to take their smartcard. Now compare the cost of a sunray to that of a laptop rather than a desktop and see if the saving is worthwhile now.

5. On a software level thin clients are much easier much quicker to develop. Numerous diferent thin clients can be developed to work with the same server and thus allow for a wider range of client interfaces to be designed giving the user a product more specific to their needs and thus easier to use and making the user more efficient, which is one of the goals of all this technology anyway. This model of thin client is increasingly usefully with the 'opening' of commercial software. This means where the vendor supports one of the communication standards like CORBA COM/DCOM and the like the client may be developed inhouse to connect to a commercial backend product even if the backend is a commercial closed source product.
A good example of this is a particular commercial database style product I know of. It is in part a database available on most platforms(not linux yet) and has made availabe thru CORBA/COM/DCOM an interface directly into some of the internal object used in the server. Available with the system are 2 different thin clients with no processing capabilities and will not do much at all without a connect to a server. This does mean that any third party could write a simillar thin client to work in exactly the same way.
The clients can be written in numerous different languages including java and thus can be run in a browser downloading the thin client java app from a web server as needed.

At this stage I feel I am begining to go off the point and getting into too much detail so I'll just wrap it up by saying that thin clients aren't necessarilt dumb and can be used in many more situations than first thought if not the home PC as yet.

-Grem

Re:Follow the money. by _Sprocket_ · 1999-09-20 23:08 · Score: 2

I think you just described a win-win situation for OEMs.... or, at least, OEMs not dedicated to white box PC clones.

1.Thin-client costs less

I'm sure the component costs area also less. Since your heavy lifting is being done by your server, which the OEM also makes, it also means less of a moving target to produce workable thin clients. You sell more of these boxes at a cheap price (and still pull down a profit per unit). Then you sell the back-end server to support them - along with support contracts, etc.

2.Business PC purchases would no longer be driving Home PC development. That means that Home PC prices (or volume) would have to rise to pick up the slack

Currently, cheap PCs are a commodity item - bussinesses discovered they don't need "latest, greatest" to run Word. So they go for cheap. Consequently, cheap also drives the consumer market. Direct business to thin clients. Direct Average Joe User to embeded devices and game consoles. What's left? Hobbyest and power users. Folks willing to blow a higher profit on power machines. Voila - stand alone PCs stop being a commodity item. Prices rise and a profit can once again be made in the PC arena.

Of course, this is more of a Devil's Advocate argument. I don't completely buy into the thin client and ebeded device concepts. It'll take a good implementation before it becomes popular. But then, the same thing was said about PDAs. Pilot did it and changed the market.

And finally, we'd have to assume software houses and white box OEMs just sit back and let it happen. I wouldn't bet on that either. Clone shops could either clone the thin clients or price white box PCs at an amazingly competative rate. Meanwhile, software houses produce products that enable existing fleets of white boxes to handle the task of a thin client (therefore saving existing fleets as well as opening up future sales of both software and hardware).

Sun is going to become Linux by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 23:15 · Score: 0

While this is an excellent article, I have to disagree. I think that eventually Sun will migrate what is known as Solaris to a Linux base. All the indications are there. Right now, in my opinion, Solaris is far superior in a server situation, but as Linux ever-betters itself, this becomes less and less true. Linux, by it's own existence, and the definition of the GPL guarantees its success. Whereas people under a BSD license tend to take a piece of software and commercialize it, when it gets really really good, they HAVe that option. Do I think Sun is as bad as Microsoft? Yes, probably. Would I prefer a Bill Gates dictator to a Scott Mcnealy dictator? Probably. And as an aside note, I'm not a GPL/Linux "bigot" so direct flames elsewhere. These are just my opinions, and I, in fact, love open/freebsd. I just feel that the GPL really inspires a self-nurturing community, so I prefer it. Richard Stallman is a nut, but I love him and what he's done. :-)

Re:Dumb clients != dumb idea by gmhowell · 1999-09-21 16:15 · Score: 1

It's like complaining that Ford made a bad decision to produce a 4 passenger car, because you and your 6 buddies can't fit into it. There's a huge market that's filled by all sorts of different vehicles. When's the last time you've heard someone complain about a company that made semi-trucks, because semi-trucks aren't a family vehicle?

Well, complain no longer. There is a new concept in SUV's. I can hardly wait.

--
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon

Re:Linux vs Solaris by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 23:23 · Score: 0

Right on Man, Dump that piece of crap E10K with 20GB/sec of backplane bandwidth, all I need it 800M/sec. Screw Those CPUs w/8M of cache, all I care is Mhz. nuke those hot swap hardware with extensive diagnostic & autofencing, I want to flip dip switches 4ever. Who needs 64CPU on 1 machine? Do I look like I have 64 brains capable of doing 64 things at once(What!!! pthread/kthread??? what the fsck is that? I want my kernel to work like my brain, 1 thing at a time.) Who needs 64G RAM capability and 20TB of disk storage? I just need what Quake3 requires.

Does Solaris have "ls" in 8 colors?
CDE doesn't even look like our always hated, always emulated desktop(winNT) (just like all the KDE/enlightments do.)

As far as anything that Linux doesn't have(which at last count is 1 or 0,) we will have it. You want Fully MTkernel? heck, when Tera bites the dust, they will gratefully hand it over to Master Linus. You want 10000way scalability?(who know why,) when IBM goes down the tube, the will port it from ASCI Blue to Linux. You want system partition? Didn't you read the above sentence? It will be there when IBM sinks like the titanic(from above) and the last thing they did before laying off 200,000 people, was to port it from OS/390 to Linux. There is NOTHING that Linux don't have.

If Intel is anything, it ain't nothing compared to the Associated Branching Algorithm Caching Unlimited Scalability(ABACUS) architecture. Nobody could beat its 7x24x365.24x1000000 reliability of it. It has expandable bitesize(need to expand from 32 to 64 bit? Just get 2 or replace with a bigger one. code is 100% compatable.) How swap with full memory replication on failover. Hot swap component(even parts of the memory register.)
Ultra low power usage, stateless, persistent memory, dynamic scalable architecture, and everything that nobody even invented. So dump those Intels and lets Beowulf every ABACUS computer there is on earth(>1 billion on last count.)

Is this news? by JohnZed · 1999-09-20 20:42 · Score: 1

Well done piece, but has anyone been thinking otherwise? Their failure to support Java or server-side apps on Linux has been apparent for a long time. If platforms really did become irrelevant due to the wide availability of great JVMs and Java software, wouldn't that push most low-to-mid-range users towards free, stable platforms on commodity hardware? Not exactly what Sun wants.
Of course, IBM will put out their Java2 JVM for Linux soon enough, and then we can really kick things up.
--JRZ

Java is a big money loser for Sun by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:42 · Score: 0

Sun could learn a few lessons from Microsoft and make Java versions truly backward compatable. Sun's software has always sucked - they make their money solely through hardware and consulting sales. Look at their balance sheets - Java is a bigtime money loser for them.

Scott McBuckttoth And Billy Borg--two great tastes by tomwhore · 1999-09-20 20:42 · Score: 0

that go great togther...

Yes folks, for those not already hip to this sort of trip, this is just Biz As Usual....menaing each biz is out to maximize profits and minimize the other guy.

For all the Linux Jihaders out there who praise sun and talk about them as some sort of comrade in arms this will be dismissed as MScentric bashing of thier freinds. Cool. I like it when clueless folks walk zombie like thru life only to be rudely backstabed.

When Scott McBucktooth twists the knife in the sacred penguin, where ya gonna be on the lines?

(sig to be sung out loud)

--
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!

Re:wary by AJWM · 1999-09-20 20:43 · Score: 1

Sun didn't kill "Wabi for Linux", they killed Wabi, period. And why not -- it was a proprietary Win 3.x platform in a world where the open Win32 WINE existed.

I'm amazed at people worried about Sun. If Linux and friends can defeat Microsoft, do you really think Sun is going to be a problem?

(Free clue: No commercial company wants to "further Linux for Linux' sake". Even Red Hat acknowledges that they want to make the pie bigger so that their piece gets bigger too. Commercial companies further Linux (or not) for perceived benefit to them, not for the benefit of the Linux community (although the two may well be parallel -- it's called 'enlightened self-interest').

--
-- Alastair

Old news to Slashdot readers by JordanH · 1999-09-20 20:43 · Score: 1

Every move that Sun makes that seems to be, on the surface, pro-Linux that is carried on Slashdot has been questioned here by Slashdot contributors as being not so much Pro-Linux as it is Anti-Microsoft.

It's not a bad article, don't get me wrong, but for Slashdot readers it's should be marked down as Redundant.

I hate giving ZD-Net credit for being insightful with opinions that we've seen on Slashdot for a long time.

Amazing. by Amphigory · 1999-09-20 20:45 · Score: 5

I find it absolutely amazing that so few otherwise intelligent people completely fail to get the point of thin-client computing.

READ MY LIPS: THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR HOME PC!!!!

I am consulting at a company right now that has over 1000 UNIX boxes on people's desk. They also have about that many NT boxes. And they have a dozen people to keep them running probably making an average of $50K/yr.

What do I (and most of the other people with this equipment) use it for?

Netscape. Rlogin to a server where we do our development. Maybe Applix or StarOffice. And we don't have root access or access to anything but our NFS mounted home directories. Why not? We don't need it.

I don't need a full, independent workstation to do what I do here. I certainly don't need a $3000 Ultra 5. Thin clients are wonderful in this kind of environment.

The last place I worked (a large health-care organization) had literally hundreds, possibly thousands of users who used their PC's for two things: netscape to access the intranet (no Internet access for the masses) and Rumba to emulate an IBM 3270 terminal. We started to use Winterms because of the maintenance situation and they worked pretty well -- it looks to me like the Sun ray is an order of magnitude better than a winterm as well as being cheaper.

I see people whining about games on thin clients... HELLO!??!! How on earth is that relevant in the environment that these things are actually aimed at? It's not.

Finally, let me come back to the home PC. My wife uses a PC for three things: email, netscape, and quicken. That's it! No games, no office, no nothing. Why does she need a full PC running Linux or anything else?

The biggest problem with thin clients to date has been that they have not been cheaper, just easier to maintain. The Sun Ray looks to be changing that, and I wish them luck.

As for Star-Portal: Star Portal seems like a wonderful idea to me for occasional users of office applications (like me) -- Emacs is all the WP I need most of the time. When it's not, pull up one of the corporate licenses for star-portal. Don't forget that you don't have to install the software on every desktop as you do with conventional office apps like Star Office or MS-Office.

I guess the bottom line to this post is this: if you can only think of the home market and are reading slashdot, you don't need thin clients. But realize that most of the computers in the world are not aimed at the home market!!!

--
-- Slashdot sucks.

Re:Amazing. by Christian+Smith · 1999-09-20 23:25 · Score: 1

If the Sunray is a crap games machine, people JUST WON'T BUY IT!!!

Why do people try to tar Sun with the same brush as MS, just because they're big.

Remember, Sun have been a big contributer into the UNIX community since before Linux was out of nappies. Sun are one of the most open computer companies there are!

If Sun break the MS monopoly (even if it needs Linux's (or any other free OS, like *BSD,) then the field is open to EVERYONE. Sun got their (arguably) dominant UNIX position because they're good, not bullies.

Christian
Re:Amazing. by jxxx · 1999-09-24 06:21 · Score: 1

Im thinking maybe you underestimate the impact of running netscape on a system. I admit that I use it in a non-resource friendly manner, but even so, it sucks up everything you give it. On my system, for instance, it's using ~15MB at the moment, and Ive seen it go as high as 30. At times, it manages to suck up 98% of a k6-2 at 350mhz. Running hundreds, or even dozens of copies of netscape on a server doesn't sound pretty. And hardware doesnt seem to get cheaper at the high end. a $50k server != 50 $1k PCs. I admit that on the administration side, thin clients make things simpler. But you had better have a good admin on hand ALL the time. If netscape needs to be reinstalled on a PC, thats one use out of commision for a bit. If the same needs to be done on your thin client server? how would the average company feel about giving their entire staff a break while some software package gets reinstalled? Sure you can have a backup server, but then it becomes like 50 people all having netscape crash at the same time. well, you get the point.
Re:Amazing. by DanaL · 1999-09-20 21:13 · Score: 1

But I doubt that Sun would stop at the office. Microsoft starting off with software for the home PC (Flight Sim is the first Microsoft product [other than DOS] that I encountered). They branched into the office and now are going after the enterprise/server markets (and, well, every other market =) ). If Sunray boxes turned up in Offices with Netscape & StarPortal people will start to purchase them for home use. Then the same old battle will start with a Dictator trying to crush everyone else. They'll start to tout Sunray as a game machine, even if it is a terrible idea, simply to conquer more. Never under estimate greed!

-Dana
Re:Amazing. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 02:24 · Score: 0

That didn't stop people from buying PC's while they were remarkably inferior games machines. People will get hooked on tomorrows iteration of Lotus 1-2-3 and just force the machine they buy for that purpose into an inappropriate mold AGAIN.
Re:Amazing. by bcaulf · 1999-09-21 06:52 · Score: 1

How is this flame bait? Is the moderator who bumped this down just sarcasm-impaired?
Re:Amazing. by jms · 1999-09-20 22:33 · Score: 1

There are MAJOR advantages, from the management point of view, to use what is essentially a dumb terminal in a business environment. It eliminates the millions of lost hours that people spend messing around with windows, installing and playing games, downloading viruses, trying to upgrade, etc. It makes software upgrades MUCH easier, and reduces troubleshooting time. Basically, it's a return to the mainframe philosophy ... which is a move AWAY from individual creativity, but in many business environments, the purpose of your using a computer isn't to nurture your creativity ... it's a tool you use to do your uninteresting work. There's a reason why security camera monitors are small, inexpensive dedicated CRTs instead of big, color televisions with cable hookups.

Re:Suckers.. by proj_2501 · 1999-09-20 20:45 · Score: 1

Actually, that's actually encouraged.

Check this out.

"So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money."
--
"I was a fool to think I could dream as a normal man."
B. B. Buick

Re:Network Computing Is The Answer by richnut · 1999-09-20 20:45 · Score: 1

Sun doesn't care about workstations anymore anyhow. They want java. they want servers. If you need to run a workstation they'll be happy to sell you one, but you might as well go with something like Linux which integrates naturally into their idea of the future, unlike NT.

-Rich

Sun Not the only ones betting on Net-Centric Apps by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:45 · Score: 0

desktop.com for one... and IBM just expanded their line of network computers I've even had occasion to use one of these little puppies (just for web-surfing) not super impressive, but cheap for what they were being used as; basic web terminals.

Re:why not wait and see if it works by JSBiff · 1999-09-20 20:48 · Score: 2

Well, while I sort of agree with this comment, on the face of it, I also don't see a "thin client" future. When you can produce "smart" clients (PC's running linux + XFree86) almost as cheaply as you can build thin clients/java clients, why use a thin client? I mean, I see some real good potetial markets for thin clients, don't get me wrong; a couple that come to mind is any type of situation where a PC is used primarily for one app that gets all of its data off a server anyway, like company accounting departments or hospital patient information systems.

However, when it comes to home usage, I'd like my apps and my data on MY PC thank you very much. I don't want to get on my computer one night to find that I can't type up a paper, letter, report, whatever because whoever I'm getting my apps from has had a server crash. Now granted, my computer could crash just as easily -- but then only I'm affected, not thousands of users.

OH, and I agree with the ZDNET author -- from what I can tell Scott McNealy is just as much a control freak as BillG. Does anyone know if Sun can arbitrarily terminate the "free" licences, even if you got the software from pre-sun Star-Division under a different licence? Eventually I plan to switch to one of the truly free Office Suites, once they're developed sufficiently, but until then I'd like to know that Sun can't just decide one day that I can't use StarOffice anymore.

Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by Brandon+Hume · 1999-09-21 16:47 · Score: 1

Typed like a person who has never ported anything between "just another Unix" and another.

Grab the source to any multi-Unix program. GCC is a very good example in this instance, since the JVM acts very much like a compiler. Check all the #ifdefs and the configure script and all the special cases in the code.

Between Solaris boxes you might be able to assume things are the same, but when you go from Solaris to AIX or Solaris to HP/UX, include files change, IP headers change, byte orders changes, etc etc etc. And, as much as people don't like to hear this, porting to/from Linux can be one of the worst cases, since Linux Does Its Own Thing so often.

Your thesis is bogus and only servers to demonstration how absurd your position really is.
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

Re:Sun as the next MS? by ushirageri · 1999-09-21 17:28 · Score: 1

I agree, McNealy seems to be a no more than a thinly disguised Bill Gates Wannabe. He stands on his soapbox and gives hellfire and brimstone speeches about the evils of MS and Gates. All the while he's plotting and aligning himself to try to take over as top dog after his attack dogs, the DOJ, have taken a bite out of MS. It's kinda like the pot calling the kettle black. He's like the General, who stands miles behind the battlefield and then takes complete credit for the victory. If Sun can't compete directly with MS, without being propped up by government intervention, then they should get the hell out of the high tech industry and maybe make wicker baskets or something. I wonder how loud McNealy will scream foul, if Sun ever is lucky/unlucky enough to be in the same position as MS.

Personally, I think he has somewhat of an obsession, not with beating MS, but with destroying Gates on a personal level. That is not an admirable trait on any level.

Just my rant.

Re:WABI's untimely demise by evan_leibovitch · 1999-09-21 18:11 · Score: 1

I appreciate the new info, but there are still a few issues about Wabi I find disturbing:

Sun released 2.2E for Solaris, but refused to bring those important bugfixes to any other port (including Linux), where it stopped at 2.2D;
When it became clear that selling and maintaining Wabi was more trouble than it was worth, Sun could have and should have open sourced the parts that it owned, to at least provide a safety net for the newly-orphaned users. Instead, it prevented licensees from even doing their own bugfixes.

I understand what you're saying, and grant that the dropping of Wabi wasn't done specifically to hurt Linux users -- but that's indeed what the consequences were. Subsequent actions could have lessened the blow (such as allowing users and/or sub-licensees to maintain the orphaned product), but Sun chose the path of greatest shafting instead.

Part of my original point was that StarOffice is a strategic product for Sun, much like Wabi was. As Linux users got shafted then by the way Sun treated Wabi (deliberately or not), we must watch that the scenario doesn't repeat itself with StarOffice.

--
- Evan

Re:Dumb clients != thin clients by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 18:16 · Score: 0

Dumb clients are usually thin clients; if they're not, nobody in their right mind will buy them. But the concept of thin does not require the concept of dumb.

Putting a case, a decent (for a non-gamer) graphics card, 32M RAM, a NIC, and a motherboard with a couple of open slots should be able to be done fairly cheaply, say $250 instead of $200. You still have it boot off the network, it still mostly just runs X-windows, but it can run things like Quake locally. Then, when installing software, the admin can make the decision, 'Would this be better to run on the server or on the client?'

This would let users upgrade them if needed, although I really doubt most businesses who purchased them would want to. Doing this, you could even allow a local floppy drive.

Hmm... this gives me an idea of something to play with in My Copious Free Time.

However, I do agree that the primary utility of thin clients for the home user is to give them a cheap home PC which lets them work from home and have the exact same configuration and file access as their computer at work, even when they just changed their configuration at work. I would imagine that many of the people who had (employer provided) thin clients at home would also have their own computer(s), because of course the employer would put on conditions such as 'company business only' (that is, no Quake, even if it does run well.) and 'all data entered into thin client is company property', not to mention the non-privacy involved.

And, for employees on the move, I can even see a laptop thin-client, for around $1000, which has just enough smarts to figure out if it's plugged into the network or a phone, and connect to the company accordingly. It could even have a cellular modem or radio modem, for on-the-go operation, in case it wasn't physically plugged into something. Suddenly the company can afford laptops for more employees, and damaged laptops aren't nearly as much of a problem. Of course, it would still be cheaper to buy desktop-based thin clients for home and work for most employees who would just be doing occasional off-hours work.

linux biggots. by etardieu · 1999-09-21 18:46 · Score: 1

As a linux user since 1994, the "linux community" strikes me as having developped a slightly paranoid behaviour. This group of people turns more and more into a sect-like organization which views evil just everywhere. Maybe they are getting infatuated of their own importance ? Currently linux has zero influence on any big business computer architecture deployment decision. As long as linux guru will act like paranoid biggots, this OS will remain a coding toy for brain damaged, socially challenged geeks. Do not mistake me, I support linux solution over microsoft. But get real, nobody cares about linux in the real world yet. Do not oversize your importance by thinking you are Sun's mischevious plan's target : linux and sun aren't playing in the same league. Cordially, Emmanuel T. -- IT consultant.

Badly Chosen Analogy by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 23:41 · Score: 0

If M$ were a cyberdemon, Sun can't possibly fire its chaingun fast enough to kill it. :)

Re:wary by Captain+Teflon · 1999-09-20 23:27 · Score: 1

If Linux and friends can defeat Microsoft, do you really think Sun is going to be a problem?

Linux defeating MS hasn't happened yet, and it's not likely to either. IMHO, this attitude of "war" and "Microsoft as the enemy" is part of what makes Scott McNealy so annoying, and what turns so many away from Linux because they see rightly or wrongly that the user base is full of rabid Microsoft haters.

Both McNealy and Larry Ellison would gladly take over from Bill Gates as monopolist in a nanosecond if they got the chance. And IBM were no better in their heyday - in many ways, they were worse.

Ultimately, I can't see Sun's strategies succeeding because they are focusing on dethroning Microsoft rather than the market and what users want (and that ain't Java!). A lesson there for the more one-eyed of you Linux treehuggers.

--
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Where are your files safer? by Kaufmann · 1999-09-20 23:27 · Score: 1

I've read a lot of stories about the good old days, about how they were typing away at their terminals when suddenly the server went down, and with it everything they had on storage. For this reason, they claim, their files are safer in their own workstation's HD.

Well, I don't know about you, but I feel a whole lot more secure knowing that my data is stored in a high-quality, mirrored, constantly backed-up hard drive in a computer run by a well-paid person whose job is to make sure that data is kept safe, in a locked office in a building with top-of-the-line alarm system, and transmitted to me using ridiculously hard-to-break cryptography.

Currently, it resides locally - on my iWhack's cheap-ass HD with practically no protection or damage control except for Disk First Aid, in an empty room within a building where there's usually no doorman at the door; I tell you, I'm not too happy about it.

--
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.

Re:Where are your files safer? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:23 · Score: 0

There's no reason that a console system wouldn't be able to manage the same sort of thing or do something similar with minimal network needs. A fileserver (which is what you described) is just such a thing. This is considerably different than what Sun is suspected of being up to: get people hooked on their office suite and then orphan it in favor of what is essentially a repackaged X server arrangement. The real problem isn't the existence of a possibly suitable thin client option but rather the potential for someone who completely owns a thing to destroy that thing when they view such a course of action to be to their benefit. This is precisely why ownership of software is such a problem. You entrust your data to applications you hope will be supported indefinitely because you need them to get to your important data. Thus, you become deathly dependent on that vendor in order to ensure that next year you can get to your data. If they 'tell you to jump', you likely will. Microsoft's empire is built on this. Sun is being accused of just wanting to replace the old 'drug lord' with itself: the new 'drug lord'. This is a serious issue for anyone who might be harmed or extorted by putting themselves in the position of being data format dependent on Sun. This sort of situation is an obvious prerequistite for the sort of abuse that Sun is being accused of contemplating. Sun is being put in the position of being able to exercise such abuse. If people are going to coaxed away from one abuser, they should be made aware of this situation so that they might be informed enough to decide to got that extra step and move away from vendor lock entirely. "Wait for KOffice" or "Wait for AbiSuite" might be a more appropriate response from the alternate OS advocate.
Re:Where are your files safer? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:23 · Score: 0

There's no reason that a console system wouldn't be able to manage the same sort of thing or do something similar with minimal network needs. A fileserver (which is what you described) is just such a thing. This is considerably different than what Sun is suspected of being up to: get people hooked on their office suite and then orphan it in favor of what is essentially a repackaged X server arrangement.

The real problem isn't the existence of a possibly suitable thin client option but rather the potential for someone who completely owns a thing to destroy that thing when they view such a course of action to be to their benefit.

This is precisely why ownership of software is such a problem. You entrust your data to applications you hope will be supported indefinitely because you need them to get to your important data. Thus, you become deathly dependent on that vendor in order to ensure that next year you can get to your data.

If they 'tell you to jump', you likely will. Microsoft's empire is built on this. Sun is being accused of just wanting to replace the old 'drug lord' with itself: the new 'drug lord'.

This is a serious issue for anyone who might be harmed or extorted by putting themselves in the position of being data format dependent on Sun. This sort of situation is an obvious prerequistite for the sort of abuse that Sun is being accused of contemplating. Sun is being put in the position of being able to exercise such abuse.

If people are going to coaxed away from one abuser, they should be made aware of this situation so that they might be informed enough to decide to got that extra step and move away from vendor lock entirely.

"Wait for KOffice" or "Wait for AbiSuite" might be a more appropriate response from the alternate OS advocate.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by Sideshow+Vox · 1999-09-22 09:05 · Score: 1

Upgradeable consoles?? NOOOOO!! All of the people I have spoken to who prefer consoles to PCs enjoy the fact that once you have bought a console, say a Playstation, you can buy any game that says "Playstation" on it without having to do a check of all the "Minimum System Requirements" on the side of the box. Once you've spent the $100 or whatever, that's it for a few years. Your playstation is as good as the neighbours. That's my 2cents worth. And Warwicks too.

Could Sun be this dumb? by osmanb · 1999-09-20 20:15 · Score: 3

If this is true (and it makes quite a bit of sense) one has to wonder what rock the geniuses at Sun have been living under. Have they not noticed that NO ONE seems interested in network computing as a general purpose solution? While it may make inroads in certain markets, one of the single largest (if not the largest) markets for home PCs completely precludes this model of computing: games. Thin clients (in their current incarnations at least) can't run (nor store) the latest games. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but this is still a motivating factor in the hardware race, and anybody that's willing to pay in excess of $200 for a 3D accelerator is not going to want to deal with lag just to load their games.

If nothing else, we can take solace in the fact that Sun seems to be the only ones interested in their vision of the future, and that the market has already demonstrated it's not viable. Maybe once they wake up, they'll start supporting Linux in spirit, not just as a horse and pony show.

-Brian

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? by kevinank · 1999-09-21 01:06 · Score: 1

Even most Linux users wouldn't claim that Linux is set to overrun the desktop. In its desktop role Linux is in a niche market of computer hobbyists. Most would argue that the cost of administrating any UNIX system will be too high for mom and dad to get interested in using the system.
What Sun is arguing IMHO is that new users coming on line in the future will be less and less interested in managing their systems (upgrading software, operating systems, managing access, etc.) and only interested in running the latest app which the system should ideally automatically offer them.
As such Sun doesn't need to kill off Linux, they need Linux and Windows compatibility to show that they are offering a reasonable alternative that is just less work.
Over time it is possible that some people who are fed up with maintaining their own systems will move over to NCs, but I think that killing the standalone StarOffice would only be shooting themselves in the foot by killing the credibility of the NC as other OS's are forced to move to new formats.
-kls

--
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Re:Could Sun be this dumb? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 04:00 · Score: 0

If you think about it, and read the various articles on the subject, the NC vision is about replace $1500 PCs that require a shit-load of maintenance to $500 NCs where all the maintenance is done on the server. Ignore the MS FUD, the NCs are the 'dumb-terminals' for the next millenium. There is no requirement for all the stuff that comes with any OS, when all that's required is a connection to the bespoke corporate apps. If I didn't know M$ so well I would be stunned at the lack of support for something cheaper and easier to maintain. The NC was never meant for the (relatively) small home market, but as a way for large corporations to reduce the bloatware budget. Now that Sun has an M$Office-compatible suite, the FUD becomes even less relevant. I fully expect to see an NC on my desk within the next few years, but I'll still use my PC at home, because I want to do more at home than is required of me at work.
Re:Could Sun be this dumb? by Geekholder · 1999-09-21 08:42 · Score: 1

The SunRay is aimed at corporate markets. Not being able to run games is considered a major plus by IT departments.
Re:Could Sun be this dumb? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:39 · Score: 0

True. And most importantly, almost all home users are connected to the net via very low bandwidth connections such as telephone modems. Even ISDN is low bandwidth. And the few who have cable modems often find their bandwidth intentionally choked off at 200 KBits/S or so. No amount of hype will increase the reality of low residential bandwidth. All the hyped net technologies are blind to this fact. Think of games' requirements for bandwidth--an ancient 1X CDROM drive offers many times the bandwidth of a typical residential net connection. And most gamers know that a 1X CDROM is useless for gaming purposes.

Re:Dumb clients != dumb idea by Hard_Code · 1999-09-22 22:51 · Score: 1

That's why I qualified my statement with the "home user arena." As I said, "thin" clients are a GREAT idea in many cases. For example, my university has deals with major computer manufacturers, so when I go into the library I see ROWS and ROWS of PIII 400mhz Dells and Gateways and all they do is run TELNET to the library's electronic catalogue for chrissakes!! This could be solved wonderfully buy DUMB, really DUMB, terminals with NO state, all hooked up to a FREE *nix OS. It's awfull really. So for business environments, environments like this with many clients, thin clients make sense. However, I don't think the home user arena is ready for this. Perhaps when high bandwidth becomes ubiquitous (cable modems?) then this may start to become a practicality, at least for software (a renting model now). I still think the hardware is cheap enough so that it would be trivial to make a thin/dumb client into a rather spiffy one rather easily.

--

It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?

what Goes around comes around by alop · 1999-09-20 20:15 · Score: 1

It's only natural for Sun to try and stab at Microsoft... Microsoft has always worked hard at keeping others down, especially Sun, I mean come on! First the try to kill Java, then when that didn't work, they just made their own polluted version of it to try to confuse (ala Tower of Babel) the industry. Retaliation on Sun's behalf is only to be expected... As long as they don't make StarOffice a "Java-only" application, I don't mind!

--
--alop

Re:what Goes around comes around by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:40 · Score: 0

I'm afraid that there are more than a few of us out here who think that Sun crippled Java themselves, certainly more than Microsoft did, by holding it too close, not implementing it widely and in an Open Source spirit. They did their best to keep it from being widely embraced on Linux by not providing an official JDK. Sun can fantasize that there is only Solaris and Win32, but they can't make it so.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by richnut · 1999-09-20 23:29 · Score: 1

The thing is PageMaker and Photoshop are WELL beyond what your average joe wants to do with his pc. There's no doubt that those programs could never be appliances. But sit down and watch people use computers in a computer lab someday. When they are word processing they pretty much type, save, print. Anything beyond changing the fonts/tabs/margins and spacing is for advanced users. Add support for tables, diagrams and templates you'll cover most of the business users too. Moore's law tells me that appliances are getting more powerful just as fast as PC's are. sure they are significantly behind the curve, but when you talk about handheld devices that are as powerful as the last generation of computers it makes a great argument for simplfying all this crap down to something people will understand. I think that the needlessly complicated software out there actually makes people LESS productive as they spend time screwing around with things experts can do better and more efficiently.

Of course this is all my opinion :-)

-Rich

wary by Suydam · 1999-09-20 20:19 · Score: 3

I'm going to have to agree with the author of the article. I am very wary of Sun's motivations. Killing Wabi for Linux was perhaps the first indication that they don't want to further Linux for Linux' sake....just to help their own position. What will they do when Microsoft is gone, and it's a Sun vs. Linux world???

--

Werd.

Re:wary by Skeezix · 1999-09-20 20:57 · Score: 1

What will they do when Microsoft is gone, and it's a Sun vs. Linux world???
I think it is a bit naive of you to assume that Microsoft will just "go away." While Open Source software, and Linux in particular may present a threat to the monopolistic stronghold that Microsoft enjoys now, they are not just going to "go away." Believe me. As much as it hurts to say it, I think we'll be seeing Microsoft as a dominant player in the computing world for a long time. They have so much money and resources, they can adapt to (embrace and extend) just about anything that is thrown at them.

--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org

--
Celebrate the finer things in life
Re:wary by Peter_Thompson · 1999-09-21 01:34 · Score: 1

First off, I agree with the other replies that Wabi was just obsolete compared to Wine. However, it is not wise to think that Sun is going to be kind to StarOffice. They've already killed other fine products for OSs other than Sun. Perhaps it is unkind, but they bought a company making products for NeXTStep/OpenStep, and then pulled all the personnel off to other projects. Effectively killed the products.

I'm sure the decision to move the people elsewhere made sense from a business viewpoint, but it didn't help the OpenStep community one bit.

Let's see how Sun treats the Linux community.

--
----------------------------- Work Sucks - Let's Go Flying!
Re:wary by eoghann · 1999-09-21 01:59 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, but why is this surprising anyone? Sun's basic
strategy has been clear and consistant for months. Pretty much
everything they do from Java, to buying Star Office and creating
Star Portal all points back to the server.

And did anyone seriously think that Sun was helping Linux just
for some good vibes? Its a business and it wants to make money.
If it can see a way to improve its
profitability/marketshare/mindshare with Linux, it will use
Linux. If not, it won't.

I don't see this as an particular sort of threat to Linux either.
So I'm not at all sure what the fuss is about.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by Kamikaze · 1999-09-20 23:38 · Score: 1

I do have to agree that most current televisions do suck pretty badly as computer monitors. That's pretty obvious. But with things like high definiton tv's, which could actually display an image at a reasonable resolution, that may change. The only other thing that would need changing to make consoles catch up to PC's are upgradeable systems...I know I sure would like a faster cdrom and a more capable video card in my playstation. Yeah, they'll come w/ playstation2, but I have wanted better console performance (and an hdtv ;) for a lot longer than playstation2 has been forthcoming.

--
Save the children; quit overparenting!

Companies and GNU/Linux by m4xwell · 1999-09-20 23:38 · Score: 1

The fact of the matter is that no companies are going to support linux unless they stand to profit from it in some way. If they don't profit, they're not going to do it. I'm willing to bet that if linux becomes the OS on the majority of computers in the world, even Microsoft will port to it. It just makes sense in the business world.

But, due to the nature of open source software, linux can also profit from the deal regardless of what companies do. Commercial interest will not harm linux, it will only make it better. If you don't like what a company is doing, don't support them!

Re:Is Sun even a friend to Java? by ucblockhead · 1999-09-27 04:33 · Score: 1

Reasons to numerous to count. One, which you mention, is standards compliance. Perhaps it is because I'm somewhat anal, but there are some annoying deviations. What makes them most anying is that they don't get fixed. As an example, this won't compile under VC++ 6.0:

for(int i=0;i10;i++);
for(int i=0;i10;i++);

This, despite the fact that this has been part of the standard since 1996. What makes this most galling is that if you make it work like this:

for(int i=0;i10;i++);
for(i=0;i10;i++);

it will stop compiling under compilers that do comply with the standard. Now, this is a minor thing, but it galls me that Microsoft couldn't find the time to fix the above (which should have been trivial) in between the latest iteration of the COM/OLE/ActiveX/COM+ object from hell release.)

--
The cake is a pie

Good article by god_of_the_machine · 1999-09-20 20:20 · Score: 1

They make a good point: The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend We all know that the driving force behind Scott McNealy is his hatred of Microsoft/billg. What happens when they are not the dominant player anymore? Of course... anyone would be quite silly to think that thin clients would run Solaris when Linux is much cheaper (can't beat free!)

--

-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy

All non OSS companies will go out of business by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 23:43 · Score: 0

If the ain't OSS, they ain't got a purpose on this earth. They should just go out of business and donate their source to Dr. Linus(of course, they have to port it before being laid off, who has time to port it for them? I'm too busy quaking.)

That is how all those "scam artist that tries to bribe us to use what should be free product"'s code would eventually move to open source.

Anyway, who needs DB2 when I got perl, who needs renderman when I got xv? Man, stop wasting our time and do something constructive, like porting your company's software to OSS.

Sun as the next MS? by dkh2 · 1999-09-20 20:20 · Score: 5

The article raises a lot of very good questions. Personally, I can see Sun going too far with badmouthing Linux because, in the long run, it will hurt Sun to be seen as the bad guy. Support for Linux serves Sun for the present and that's good for Linux now. Let's see what the future holds.

As for their plans to move applications to the net... That could never again be the main mode of operations in the computing world. That's exactly what we had before the Altair, Apple, IBM-PC... came along and confirmed the market for desktop computing. There are certain situations for which hosted software is a very good idea. Computers in public librarys and such come to mind. I don't want to go to the library to use a public terminal that some cyberpunk has rendered unuseable by filling the HD with their favorite games. I want to go to the library to use the research tools that were intended to be there.

Ultimately, Sun can go ahead with their plans to serve apps across the net. There is a relatively untapped market for that service. However, as I paraphrase an old NRA bumper sticker, I'll give up my locally installed apps when they pry my cold dead fingers from my keyboard.

D. Keith Higgs
CWRU. Kelvin Smith Library

--
My office has been taken over by iPod people.

Re:Sun as the next MS? by soldack · 1999-09-21 01:49 · Score: 1

From what I have read about McNealy, he would love to be as powerful as Bill G. He would love to be powerful enough to do what Gates does. His biggest push (once you get past the "Gates is the devil, go team, go!" speech) has not been that what MS is doing is not a bad or evil thing but a business thing. He feels that there is nothing wrong with these business things when they are done by the little guys but Microsoft is one of the very big guys. There should be laws to regulate a big guy like MS and protect the little guys. He wishes he was in a position where his company needed to be regulated like MS does.

I think that Sun wants to make loads of money by ruling the world just like MS does and like IBM did. They are just attacking it from the hardware side and not the software side. IBM was pretty successful for a time with this strategy. Sun thinks they can be too.

Microsoft is doing what Sun wants to do. I disagree with their tactics on a philosophical level but I have to really applaud MS on a business level. If I owned stock, I would love them. On a philosophical level you want a friendly company but sadly on a business level...these companies rarely make it.

--
-- soldack
Re:Sun as the next MS? by jilles · 1999-09-20 21:40 · Score: 2

As many articles on this topic this one tries to simplify stuff by explaining things terms of friends, enemies, dictators and the like.

It really is very simple. SUN produces hardware. Their main motivation for also producing software is to sell more hardware.

Linux runs well on sun hardware. So sun supports it.

Sun is not going to get rich of selling Star Office. The only reason they bought star is because they see it as a tool to boost server sales. So giving it away is a smart thing to do. There's no evil intention.

Star portal is an even better tool to boost server sales. They won't make much money on selling the portal though since the potential number of customers is rather limited. That's why they intend on giving it away (if i understood the press releases correctly).

A lot of nice things are happening with SUNs software lately. You should realize that none of it is charity though.

The relation between SUN and OSS is a symbiotic relation. As long as it is good for both it will continue to last. The OSS community profits from SUN's gifts. SUN profits from the OSS comunity's contributions. Both parties don't seem to have much conflicting interests so I don't see any reason for this relation ending anytime soon.

Sun doesn't want to rule the world like MS does they just want to make shitloads of money (which is a healthy thing to want for a company). Sure they will use dirty tricks like MS does. Which company wouldn't. Companies are not driven by ideology but by making money. This also applies to typical linux companies like read hat and VA. the only thing that's different from conventional companies is their business model.

--

Jilles
Re:Sun as the next MS? by mce · 1999-09-21 02:01 · Score: 1

You just lost a bet.
I would never give up total control over my home machine, if only because playing around with kernels is a hobby, but at work things are different.
So different in fact, that I've been one of the forces behind the introduction of X terminals over there 3 years ago and have never regretted it. Oh, and I'm not one of those idi.. ehrmm users who log into screens on a backend server (look at my signature for a related hint). I work in the EDA business, and develop ECAD software for a living. Other people at the place where I work actually design quite big chips using this software and working in the same computing environment. Apart from a few Micro$oft fans, they are all pretty happy with the general architecture of our infrastructure.
Besides using computers I also happen to know about UNIX system administration and all that lot, and so will claim that I know why I pushed for thin clients. I can only say to Sun that they should push the Sun Ray concept as much as possible, e.g. by opening up or licensing the comunication protocol (e.g. to HP, hint, hint ;-). Moving the X server out of the X terminal solves the last remaining problem caused by distributed management. And it has other nice advantages as well. Especially the ability to move to another terminal, without logging out, and still having all of one's open windows around, together with all the associated state information, independent of how well the tools are written. This is very yummy stuff.

--

--
Linux user since early January 1992.
Re:Sun as the next MS? by doog · 1999-09-20 21:56 · Score: 1

My girlfriend uses linux without even knowing it. She knows how to login via xdm and launch netscape. She does her email via Yahoo mail and surfs the web. Thats about it. The only other thing she uses is word processing, and star office works fine for her. If she could do that via a browser she would. That way when she goes to school she could still bring up her documents, just login and go. For people like her, suns vision works, for people like me, who need web servers, compilers, graphics utils and games... it doesn't.
Re:Sun as the next MS? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:41 · Score: 1

I bet there isn't a single reader of this site who would give up locally installed apps. I don't think thats what Sun is after. I think they are after the idi...I mean users in hum...I mean certain deptments in the enterprise. These folks check email, cruise the web and log into screens on a backend server. A PIII 500 on their desk is just a waste. As far as home users go, I bet most of our grandmothers don't really need the mainframe we bought them to send email. A slim little box running Linux or downloading apps off of the ISP would work great for what they do. Frankly, I don't think Sun trying to change the game. I think they are trying to build a new stadium to play in. My .02 -- take it for what its worth.

Is Sun even a friend to Java? by Mr.+Blonde · 1999-09-20 20:22 · Score: 2

Java 1.0.2 was a truly beautiful thing (except for the AWT, but we can't all be perfect). Java 1.1 and Swing (though not wonderful) really rounded everything out, but when those bastards released Java 2 they bloated Java to the size of that guy in "The Meaning of Life."

It seems that most a fair amount of their specifications are reverse-engineered directly from the stuff that their product engineers have developed as opposed to the other way around.

That's just my opinion, but I know a lot of Java developers who are very turned off by Sun's behavior in relation to Java and the progression of the language and core APIs. They're a wanna-be Microsoft and they're just as bad at producing software.

After more than 3 years of being a devout Java developer, I've recently switched back to C++. Why? Because Sun's not going to get an screw that up anymore than it already is. Thank God!

Re:Is Sun even a friend to Java? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 00:31 · Score: 0

I'm curious... What makes you so disgruntled about VC++? Ignore what you dislike about Windows. I've found the compiler to be close with the standard, but not exactly perfect. 1. Not really part of the C++ standard. MFC sux, but it is frozen in time. Though you could always override the parts you don't like. 2. STL could use an update. 3. The Partial Template specialization is still not 100% with the standard. 4. Other minor issues with the template support, but they are recognized as bugs & have workarounds until fixed. 5. Too many macros in their libraries. Though that is something old C hackers will do. Still beats doing all the makefiles by hand :).
Re:Is Sun even a friend to Java? by ucblockhead · 1999-09-20 21:58 · Score: 1

After more than 3 years of being a devout Java developer, I've recently switched back to C++. Why? Because Sun's not going to get an screw that up anymore than it already is.

yeah, that's Microsoft's job!

- A disgruntled VC++ developer

--
The cake is a pie

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by samf · 1999-09-20 23:45 · Score: 1

Besdies all the people who do real computing and the people the idi^H^H^H average users ask advice of will never go for it. Who wants their typewriter to stop working when the phone does? "Johnny where is your homework?" "Oh, a network card blew at the CO, I think a dog peed on it."

Oh, come on. You're saying that your phone line is less reliable than your computer? Or that the average idi^H^H^Huser does better backups than a centralized provider would?

Rag on thin-clients if you want, but if they ever do take off in a home or SOHO environment, I imagine that their reliability will be one of their main advantages.

why not wait and see if it works by vyesue · 1999-09-20 20:23 · Score: 3

I'm not sure why anyone even considers any of this a big deal. if Sun wants to try and bring us into a server-centric future, if they think that they can deliver more utility and ease-of-use by selling users thinclients and server-based software on a dependable network, let them.

people keep yelling nonsensically that the mainframe paradigm has already been proven wrong and useless; I would suggest that maybe they might want to compare the performance of a mainframe in 1975 on the other end of a hacked together network connected to a vt100 to that of a Sun e450 connected to your full color thin client (with smartcard slot for authentication) via adsl or cable modem or soemthing of that nature.

I say ignore Sun until they produce something; then judge it on its merits, not the MAINFRAMES R DED hype youve been hearing for years.

Re:why not wait and see if it works by bmetzler · 1999-09-20 21:24 · Score: 1

However, when it comes to home usage, I'd like my apps and my data on MY PC thank you very much. I don't want to get on my computer one night to find that I can't type up a paper, letter, report, whatever because whoever I'm getting my apps from has had a server crash. Now granted, my computer could crash just as easily -- but then only I'm affected, not thousands of users.
I don't think Sun is concerned about the "home" market. There are many market segments, one thing isn't going to fit all. Certainly, home usage is going to be Linux/Microsoft/PC/Specialized devices (PlayStation, WebTV, Other black boxes). But the Business segment which thin client fits into very well is a different story.

Anyway who's worked in a large corporation knows that computing is server centric even if they use fat clients. If they actually have the apps on the clients, the databases, word documents, excel spreadsheets, and other data is on the server. If the network is down, it's a small consolation that you can run Word. There's no access to your data anyways. So thin-client *are* a viable solution. If your data is gone, apps being gone doesn't cause too much more lost productivity.
-Brent
--
Re:why not wait and see if it works by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:10 · Score: 0

Guys, the Sun Ray is not a thin client. It's not a client at all. It's just a VGA card soldered to a TCP/IP stack. Don't compare it with the Java Station, it's an apple and oranges thing (I know, I've voided the warranty on both :-)). Whether Sun means it serious with Open Source, incidentally, will be seen if/when/how they release the protocols and other relevant specs to how you talk to the thing.
In the mean-time, it's just what I've been waiting for at the office. Once you pull your smartcard, the screen goes blank. You hop over to another workstation, insert your smartcard, and there's your desktop. What we'll probably do is get a Sun Ray on everyone's desk, dump a couple of (to-be-announced) 19" rackmount Solaris servers to serve the things, and at the back of that all we'll have a 1gig switch connecting to a bunch of Linux/Solaris/WinNT boxes.
I'll probably even drop a box in there just for myself (the Sun Ray doesn't preclude that!), or maybe not (after all, everyone at our shop is using the same ol' stuff: SuSE, JDK1.2, Emacs, Enlightenment, XMMS - it's just too boring to do system administration yourself).
I think the Sun Ray is a great idea, and just what the doctor ordered for a lot of shops that are currently fighting huge PC maintenance costs (a large academic hospital here in .nl calculated 100 support hours per PC per year - they could have done more useful things with these 450,000 man hours, methinks, than trying to keep fat clients running).
To get back to the article: Sun has to prove itself in the coming year, I think. They way they'll go with StarOffice, JDK openness and assorted things with Sun Ray specs will necessarily give us a good peek in their hidden agenda. Let's have a poll "we still like Sun better than M$" up here next year :-)

OpenSource Bandwagon of Pick Pockets and Thieves by ggoebel · 1999-09-20 20:48 · Score: 3

Maybe the bandwagon has a few too many pick-pockets and thieves on board. I'm tired of hearing companies say "Open Source". I'm not listening. I wait a couple weeks and see how many people complain about the latest public embrace of "Open Source" by yet another big name company.

Honestly, once you expand beyond the bounds of GPL, BSD, and Artistic licenses... I don't really know whether it is open source or not. The Open Source Initiative has a pretty resonable definition of "Open Source". But what does it matter if everyone under the sun can chime in with the magic words "Open Source"... If there isn't a way to tell if they really are || aren't.

It'd be nice if "OSI Certified" takes off. Then someone could make a blacklist for everyone who claims to be Open Source, but isn't. Until someone does that... I'll remain dazed and confused by the plethora of licenses being used.

In the end, I don't really care what the hell you call the license. I just want to know whether it is open source or not. -And any license that is OSI compliant is going to be fairly decent at capturing the spirit of what exactly open source means (to me).

--
Life is like an egg better scrambled than fried. -- Ken Sawatari

Are their motivations that important? by Bero · 1999-09-20 20:49 · Score: 1

The free release of Star Office was a good move [though it should have been more free, not just $0], no matter what their real motives are. StarPortal, being a network solution, CAN'T be used everywhere (think of all the poor Europeans who have to pay $.03 per minute of Internet connections to their monopolist phone companies), and therefore they won't be stupid enough to drop the "normal" solution. They will probably use it to advertise StarPortal, but that's ok with me, as long as we get SO for Linux. In the long run, if Sun is really trying to force Solaris on everyone, will that hurt us? I don't think so:

Linux will continue as long as there are users.
There will always be users.
Interface-wise, Solaris and Linux are not too different - if they really manage to make Solaris the #1 OS, that's much better for us, as we'll just have to recompile and make minor changes to get a Linux port, instead of having to do complete rewrites (as in porting Windoze stuff)

I don't know if Sun wants to be a friend of Linux - but intentionally or not, right now they are.

Sun really should support JDK on Linux ... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:49 · Score: 3

... as much as it does for Solaris and Windows!

I mean, c'mon! The people who tend to run Linux as their desktop OS (CS students, hackers, etc ) are probably the best people Sun could possibly want to adopt the Java language.

Sun needs to make Linux the third officially supported OS along with Solaris and Windows. Blackdown.org can't just do it all by themselves.

Re:Sun really should support JDK on Linux ... by soldack · 1999-09-21 01:31 · Score: 1

I agree with you but don't think it will happen. They should support the JDK on Linux but the don't have to. They do have to support it on Windows and Solaris, though. Until big companies start staying, "If I don't have Linux Java, I am not using Java," Sun doesn't have to support Linux Java. This is the same issue with getting other companies to port their software to Linux.
I know, many database vendors ported to Linux and they did not have to. They did it in order to cover themselves if Linux really took off and because it was good press. Sun could follow that thinking except that database vendors don't sell a competing product to Linux and Sun does.
Of course SGI does (or did...) sell a competing product and they are embracing Linux. Again there are major differences. SGI is in trouble and laying off workers. The are scrapping IRIX because it cost them too much money to maintain. Meanwhile Sun is making money and growing at 20% a year or so. Solaris still has major features that make it needed to sell their big iron machines that happen to also be their biggest profit margin machines.
Expecting Sun to support Java on Linux is like expecting Microsoft to support Active-X on Linux. It isn't going to happen.

--
-- soldack
Re:Sun really should support JDK on Linux ... by Geekholder · 1999-09-21 07:41 · Score: 1

If Sun started producing a JDK for Linux, a thread would start up on /. bitterly complaining that Sun was trying to kill off the free Java implementations. Sun just can't win in this forum.

Re:Everybody is doing it. by IQ · 1999-09-20 20:52 · Score: 1

Correction: Sun makes decent Hardware. Their software sucks.

SunOS, Solaris user since '87

--
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by evilpenguin · 1999-09-20 20:53 · Score: 2

I basically agree with this, but I think it is fair to say that commercial market is more profitable rather than necessarily "larger." It would not surprise me (I have no numbers) if there were more PCs in homes than in businesses, but it would surpise me if per seat spending in commercial markets were not at least twice that for the home market. Probably a lot more; I don't know about you, but at work I tend to get a new PC every couple of years while at home, well, okay, I tend to get a new one every couple of years too, but I don't think I'm typical...

Re:Dumb clients != dumb idea by bmetzler · 1999-09-20 20:57 · Score: 2

While I actually /_LIKE_/ the idea of pervasive, "thin"/dumb clients, if you look at the figures it doesn't make /all/ that much sense in the home user arena.

PLEASE! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!! I think I'm gonna cry...

Everytime an article comes up about thin clients, a ton of people pipe up and say, "that's a stupid idea. Who's going to play Quake on a thin client?" Believe me, no one is going to ever play Quake on a thin client. At least they'd be dumb to try. But when I consider upgrading the PC's in the office, believe me, I do *not* have the ability to play Quake as one of the criteria for the choice that I make.

It's like complaining that Ford made a bad decision to produce a 4 passenger car, because you and your 6 buddies can't fit into it. There's a huge market that's filled by all sorts of different vehicles. When's the last time you've heard someone complain about a company that made semi-trucks, because semi-trucks aren't a family vehicle?

It's the same way with the computer market. It's a huge market with the ability for all sorts of hardware to fit in. The computer market isn't a cookie cutter market where every computer has to be the same, regardless of need. Sun has chosen one segment of the market to focus on, a segment where the thin client *does* make sense.

Who's the one saying that the "mainframe" is dead? Is it not Microsoft? Why would they say that? They have a client server product, which was great in the 80's and early 90's. If the market abandons the client/server market then Microsoft is doomed. They have virtually no thin-client technology. So of course they are going to try to force us into the client/server mentality for as long as they can. But I'll be the first to say it. Microsoft, the client/server model is dead. DEAD!

Not in every segment though. This is what people need to realize. You play Quake on your PC, and I'll run my call center on thin client technology. And no, the lack of ability to play Quake won't hurt me at all.

-Brent
--

Linux is a pawn? EXCELLENT! by heller · 1999-09-20 20:57 · Score: 1

We must remember one very important thing about being a pawn, it's quite possible for a pawn to become a queen! And certainly, few companies would voluntarily lose a queen in the great chess game that is capitalism!

Seriously, the way things are shaping up, NT is going to knock Solaris down based on price and that will leave Sun holding Linux as the queen. This is a position that most Linux users will have little trouble with, I know I'll like it.

** Martin

Wabi/Sun's agenda by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:59 · Score: 1

Um, let's not ascribe to a sinister hidden agenda that which can be sufficiently explained by common sense. Wabi (for Solaris as well, not just for Linux) was killed because, essentially, it was obsolescent. It never supported anything more recent than Windows 3.1, and it was losing out to more up-to-date products like SoftWindows. Furthermore, Sun really wanted to start selling things like the Sun PCi. And besides, Wabi wasn't making Sun any real money - it was bundled with almost every copy of Solaris for a while - so they didn't have a good financial justification for further development. So it didn't fit in their plans. So they dropped it. That's all there is to it, really. Sun never was particularly interested in Wabi on Linux to begin with - hence the decision to license it to Caldera - so the argument that they dropped it to spite Linux, or even that Linux had anything to do with the decision, doesn't hold a lot of weight with me. I will grant you this: The only interest Sun has in Linux is selling hardware on which to run it, and even then, they'd prefer you used Solaris instead. Sun really has no interest in furthering the adoption or development of Linux; after all, it directly competes with Solaris (which isn't going away any time soon.) Their position is pretty clear: they make great hardware that happens to run Linux very well, and the more support they lend to Linux on SPARC, the more machines they'll sell. Simple economics. Is that an "anti-Linux" position? Not at all. In the end, it's really no different than the position taken by Intel system vendors like Dell, Gateway, etc. Linux is hot, so offer support for Linux and watch sales rise. Bandwagoneering? Sure. Genuine interest in Linux development? Probably not. Secret plan for destroying Linux? Hardly.

"a ell-argued piece" ??? by akehurst · 1999-09-21 00:34 · Score: 1

Don't you people ever check your spelling or look at what you are typing? Ell-argued? C'mon.

At least pretend to be educated to some extent.

--
-

Re: Read McNealy's lips by evan_leibovitch · 1999-09-21 00:48 · Score: 2

Listen to Sun's announcement and hear for yourself. Putting thin clients into the home market is exactly one of Sun's goals with its StarOffice/StarPortal strategy.

Sun's future would have people depending on mega-ISPs (using Solaris servers, of course) that would store your files and serve your apps for you. Think WebTV with decent video.

Sun's intent is quite clear in this regard. The main point of my argument, which will be concluded in a second column appearing next week, is that neither Sun's nor Microsoft's world-view is right for everyone. Thin clients are great in some situations, horrible in others. Linux is flexible enough to serve as an excellent thin-client, fat-client, or server. Neither of the commercial approaches is best in all cases, yet neither does much to acommodate models outside of its own.

Linux is a threat to both Microsoft and Sun because it offers the flexibility to serve either model -- or some hybrid of the two -- very well. Linux isn't trying to push the user into one world-view or another of the way computing should be done.

--
- Evan

Sun ought to be kept irrelevant by Crusty+Wizard · 1999-09-21 00:54 · Score: 1

Whether Sun is making good business sense, or whether they're going to get everybody hooked and yank the rug out from under their feet, ought to be irrelevant. And it's the Open Source community's job to keep it that way.

It's dangerous to depend on the goodwill of *any* for-profit corporation, since ultimately they will make the decisions that keep their bottom line where they want it. For now, it's profitable for Sun to promote Linux as a weapon against the Borg, and we can ride that wave, but we have to remember that waves go down as well as up.

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by Wah · 1999-09-21 01:00 · Score: 1

No I'm saying that the reliability of my computer and my phone line are less than my computer by itself. The reliability of the server and everything in between comes into play. Not to mention the extra vulnerability that comes from having this type of setup.
Backups would actually be an advantage of thin clients, but I don't think people in general want to give up their machines. It seems to me a lot like the difference between public transportation and having your own car. Americans are great wasters and computing power is no exception.

--
+&x

Re: ...but thin clients aren't by PrinceOfChaos · 1999-09-21 01:03 · Score: 1

Hmm.. In Mexico and in Russia local calls are free (no pay-per-minute charges).

Re:WABI by evan_leibovitch · 1999-09-21 01:10 · Score: 1

I never said that Wabi was cancelled because of Linux. I did say that Sun's move to mothball it, rather than open source a product that was no longer selling, indicates it's more interested in strategically pushing its own plans than it is in helping the open source community.

Contrast Sun's actions wrt Wabi with the decision to LGPL the Willows TWIN software when the company decided it wasn't going to sell. Now TWIN is a part of helping Wine be ready for prime time.

Wabi could have also helped Wine, but Sun chose to kill the software and orphan its users because it wanted to strategically push Java instead of emulation.

--
- Evan

Re: game consoles are the future by Wah · 1999-09-21 01:17 · Score: 1

Face it, *CONSUMERS* want SIMPLE, CHEAP, DISPOSABLE APPLIANCES. Slashdot users aren't representative of the general populace that will decide the success

No, they are representative of the early adopters that help a company decide if the product is viable for a larger market.

I switched. I'll never waste time futzing around on my computer for games again.

They you'll never play truly challenging, unique games again. The computer game market is so much more sophisticated than the console market. Ave age PC gamer:30, ave. age console game:17.

Go play Alpha Centauri on a console and tell me what you think.
Better yet, go download the demo of Unreal Tournament to your console and tell me how it plays. Hardcore gamers want hardcore machines, consoles are for kiddies.

--
+&x

Confusing words you may wish to avoid.. by Kitsune+Sushi · 1999-09-21 01:23 · Score: 1

I believe there's a very good reason Richard Stallman wanted to continue using the term "free software".. because other available terms were even more ambiguous or had some other disadvantage tied in with their usage. "Open source" doesn't really imply much of /anything/ that people associate with it these days.. except that it's, well, open source.

All open source means is that you get the source code, not just the binary. That's it. Software that is "open source" could be like BSD or X stuff. Sure, you could make changes to the code, but later someone could modify it themselves and instead of sharing with everyone else as you might have done, they could make it proprietary. Just like you can do with BSD itself (I personally think its funny the three BSD projects do all this work and some of the people on them think its cool that there are commercial derivatives..). Life is not a popularity contest and there is nothing unique, special, or even original about the licensing for BSD or X. Nothing at all.

Then you have stuff like the NPL or the even weirder license from Sun. Netscape Public License.. not only is it GPL-incompatible, but you can even make all these great changes so Netscape can bundle it up into a proprietary package no one can have the source to.. Yeah!

Most software companies in particular have very little to gain by supporting Linux. Take for example, Adobe Photoshop. Who needs to buy that if they can get the GIMP for free? Or Paint Shop Pro? Or any other image manipulation program? GIF Construction Set? Get whirlGIF. You sure as hell won't need WinZip, or anything else of the sort. Face it, most software companies who make Windows stuff make overpriced software to do a ridiculously simple job. Most UNIX types take zipping and unzipping files for grant, although Windows users are expected to pay for that priviledge. If World Domination(tm) does indeed occur, most software companies with products that perform similar purposes as GPL'ed ones will have to adapt or die.. and fast.

Hardware companies, especially those like Dell, only see it as a way to increase their profits by diving into new and untapped markets. You have to do this constantly if you're a hardware company as big as Dell, or else you risk tapping the market you're already in to such a degree that it's almost impossible to grow.

Therefore, anyone who thinks a company would be interested in free software for its own sake is either completely mad or has found a unique case. Businesses are here to make money. That's what a business does. That's what a business will always do, until they fail. Otherwise they would be non-profit organizations.

Companies with a moral? Oh please. There are a few who might actually have a clue, but even then, how much of their "moral identity" is inseparable from their vision of a profitable venture? Some companies have found that supporting free software is in their best interests.. financially. What these companies do is a new market.

Sun has never cared about anything other than hype and money. You don't have to go any farther than Java to realize this. They insisted it would take over the world then and there. But did Java live up to the hype? Well, yeah, it would run on just about anything, but the performance was so bad.. who the hell cared? Now it just kills the load time of several Web pages authored by people who think to be a kick ass designer you have to plop 5 megs of "high tech" junk onto each page. Sun is just here to make money, as clearly evidenced by their crazed overcapitalization of Java. Is it a mature technology yet? No. Do tons of people write Java applications anyway? Yes. Does Java have tons of Java applications of their own, all with the word "Java" in it? Yes. As I said.. Just here to make money. Anything else.. has nothing to do with them. Don't consider them in terms of friend or enemy, because their only friend is themselves and their only enemies are those that threaten their current or potential market share.

That's the corporate mindset as I've percieved it, anyway. Perhaps you think differently than I do..?

--

~ Kish

Who's afraid of the big fat Sun?? by Kris+Warkentin · 1999-09-21 01:24 · Score: 1

Hey, Linux is competing with the 800 pound gorilla when nobody said we had a chance. If Sun can't compete with Micro$oft, why would be be even the slightest bit frightened of them? So they kill Star-Office....Who gives a flying fsck? It's just one office suite among many and I don't see Koffice, Corel or the folks at Gnome going anywhere soon. Bottom line: Linux has momentum and as long as there are coders who aren't accepting the status quo, we're going to keep on rolling and there's nothing McNealy or Gates or anyone else can do about it. We have an army of millions.

--

In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.

Even if it's true, it's no problem by Markee · 1999-09-20 21:00 · Score: 2

Even if the article is right, I don't think that's bad news for Linux. Remember the World War II Allies USA, Soviet Union, UK and France. Once the evil empire (Nazi Germany) was defeated and partitioned, the Allies became enemies. The Berlin Crisis right after World War II almost started World War III, and the former Ally, the Soviet Union, became the West's enemy for the following 45 years.

It's normal for allies (unless they are VERY idealistic) to become enemies once their common #1 enemy has been defeated (usually the most evil and strongest one).

Sun and Linux are allies now, and their Alliance makes them stronger against M$. Once M$ will be defeated (if it will ever be), Sun will turn against Linux. Ok, but Linux will be strong enough to defend its part of the cake.

--
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?

Re:Suckers.. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:01 · Score: 0

Yes, but on the other hand, we're not all suckers. Open Source is not magic fairy dust. We have to actually like the product AND the code before we'd ever consider meddling with it. I thumbed through the mozilla source for a good 10 minutes before I realized that I'd be wasting my life for absolutely nothing if I dedicated the time to understanding it. I guess I didn't have all that strong an itch. --Michael Bacarella

It's not just Sun by Zoltar · 1999-09-20 21:01 · Score: 1

Linux has been sort of a political tool for a lot of other companies. I really doubt that many big companies do many things because they are community minded, or because they really give a crap about promoting technology. Major companies do things because it will enhance the value of the shares of the almighty stock. So when the suits are sitting in the boardroom and they look at all of the positive PR that the Linux bandwagon is getting...uh..well..why not.

In reality I think that Sun would do just about anything to take away business from Microsoft.

Re:Dumb clients == dumb idea by richnut · 1999-09-20 21:02 · Score: 1

I bet a dreamcast would do a fine job with networked Quake. It's only $199 and it's built for controlling compelx characters in a 3d environment, unlike a PC. Some games lend themselves to computers, strategy games, role playing games, games that require exorbinant amounts of data for maps and enemies, but the gap is thinning. The 3D environment of my Legend Of Zelda cartrige is far beyond something like Quake II (IMHO). N64 is $99, my PC was about $2000.

-Rich

Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by L0rdJedi · 1999-09-20 21:04 · Score: 1

I agree with you totally. If Sun really wanted to support Linux, they would have release a Java for Linux by now instead of forcing The Community to develop it for Linux (not that this is a Bad Thing).

Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by fishlet · 1999-09-20 21:04 · Score: 1

That's why ibm's kicking into action. IBM JDk for Linux is going to rule when it is finished.

--

Blender And Linux Fan

Put Hemos through English 101! by Rejemy · 1999-09-20 21:04 · Score: 0

>A ell-argued piece.

Jeez, anyone can tell you that proper grammer dictates the use of the word "an" instead of "a" before nouns and adjectives beginning with a vowel sound, such as the adjective "ell". But I applaud Hemo's word choice, most men would have gone with a less daring adjective, such as "well" or "thuroughly"

Re:Put Hemos through English 101! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:29 · Score: 0

thuroughly?

Know them by their acts - Java, SCSL by Nelson+Minar · 1999-09-20 21:04 · Score: 3

I'm not one to be terribly religious about this kind of corporate positioning. If you look at Sun's recent actions, it's clear that as a corporation they are not terribly friendly to Linux or open source.

First, look at the sad state of Java ports. Sun *still* does not support Java on Linux. They have helped out the Blackdown team some, thank you for that, but it's a half-hearted effort on Sun's side. My reading is that Sun is internally conflicted about whether Linux is an ally or threat and can't decide whether to work with Linux or not.

Second, look at the SCSL, a bizarre amalgation of open-source-like licensing and proprietary restrictions. My impression is that Sun was trying to ride some of the open source wave and satisfy their "partners" who were getting increasingly agitated by Sun's lock on Java, while still retaining traditional controls over the technology. I don't think they're motivated by any attempt at actually improving the world through source releases.

Sun's a big company. They're caught in a major change in their market, where expensive workstations have been supplanted by $1200 Linux boxes running on Intel hardware. It should be no surprise that they aren't a friend to Linux, they're trying to stay on top of the heap.

The place where Sun differs from Microsoft is that, in general, Sun technology is pretty good. Solaris is a good Unix. Java is a fantastic development platform. Sun does create quality in their technology, and that should be applauded.

Re:Know them by their acts - Java, SCSL by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:34 · Score: 1

Sun technology is pretty good

For having worked there 3 years, i can tell you it really varies. It is not so much the company as the individuals behind the technology that make it. I have seen teams with little technological talent and management up the wazoo. Middle management at SUN is power less it the top management and the top developers that make SUN what it is the rest is leeches. On the other hand, get teams like the EJB team (Shel Finkelstein) and you will see great quality.
Matt

Don't get worked up over uninformed speculation by David+E.+Myers · 1999-09-20 21:04 · Score: 1

Why would anybody give credibility to some guy's random, uninformed speculation about a company's motives? His sole source is this "one person" who had bad things to say about Sun. Everybody's a conspiracy theorist these days.

Look, for its entire existence, Sun has built systems based on open standards. A large amount of the free software (like most GNU stuff) we're now running on Linux was first developed on Suns and later ported to Linux, proving the openness of both systems. Microsoft, on the other hand, has avoided openness all it can. Please stop comparing the two companies. Sun could never dominate the way Microsoft does now.

And even if Sun becomes an "enemy" of Linux, what possible impact could that have on Linux itself? Will it hurt Linus' feelings such that he shuts down kernel development? Why all the fear and loathing?

Anyone who believes there's not a market for thin clients has never:

1) Worked for a large corporation, where desktop costs are enormous; or,

2) Tried to teach their parents or grand parents how to get around Windows simply to use E-mail.

Finally, the Sun Ray 1 is a **WAN** product. It has nothing to do with home use. Nothing. Sun isn't trying to take your toys away. It's trying to reduce corporate desktop expenses.

Re:Don't get worked up over uninformed speculation by Slothrup · 1999-09-20 21:50 · Score: 2

I gotta disagree with a bit of this.

1) Sun may have been the platform for a large amount of free software to have been developed on, but they can't be credited for this. Oh, I'm sure that there were a few piddly donations to the FSF over the years, but the main reason that their hardware served as a common development platform was its ubiquity.
2) SunOS used to be BSD-based. Then, after Sun entered into an unholy alliance with AT&T, they shifted over to the SysVish Solaris -- a considerably less-open, less-accessible platform. I'm sure this had nothing to do with the Sun clones that started coming out at the time.
3) Sun's licensing for Java is at least as much "embrace-and-extend" of Open Source concepts as Microsoft's attempt to subvert that language.

--
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
Re:Don't get worked up over uninformed speculation by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 04:03 · Score: 0

Actually after having to deal with both Solaris and HP-UX, I'd say Sun is by far more open with how their OS works than HP (can't say about other commercial variants), and seems to have far more accessable information...
Re:Don't get worked up over uninformed speculation by David+E.+Myers · 1999-09-20 21:24 · Score: 1

Duh, that should read **LAN** product. The Sun Ray 1 is NOT a WAN product.

Re: THE TRUTH?? by bjorng · 1999-09-20 21:06 · Score: 1

What you say may be true, but it is irrelevant.

While the Linux crowd (e.g. slashdot readers) will never accept non-free software per se, most companies aren't trying to sell software to hobbyists. They are trying to sell to private companies, which are for the most part perfectly willing to buy software that they can't fix themselves.

Furthermore, many people who work for private companies (such as myself) are willing to make the "sacrifice" of recommending a non-free software package to get the benefit of running Linux, instead of running a similar non-free application on a non-free operating system. Thus even the people who bitch and moan about Company X being evil or whatever will end up being potential customers in the end.

Now, in the long term, there might be a problem: once the operating system is commoditized, the next step for the OSS community may become making first-rate free versions of whatever applications are most widely used. This could turn into a problem for certain market segments. But I submit that most companies don't think in time frames anywhere near that long; in a standard five-year (or six month:) business plan, porting a non-free application to Linux and supporting it does make sense.

(Yes, this is *completely* off-topic.)

--

--

--
This is why I don't post much.

With a GPL'ed Linux you can't lose. by john187 · 1999-09-21 01:31 · Score: 1

Okay,

Your worst fears are realized. Sun pulls support for StarOffice at some time in the future. Beyond that, Sun dumps their entire Linux bandwagon into the nearby bog.

So what? You still have your GPL'ed Linux kernel, and your free version of StarOffice that you downloaded and continue to use legally.

Ultimately, you benefit, and your benefit can not be taken away from you, so what's the problem?

John

Re: Read McNealy's lips by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 01:34 · Score: 0

Linux isn't trying to push the user into a one world view. because it doesn't have a view. It has hundreds of distributions and is riding a wave of whatever you want the guy next door will write it up for you. As a UNIX consultant in the industry I think Sun is great in the business community. Not a place for it in the home...

Re:Sun Shine by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 01:42 · Score: 0

Um. I don't think Sun will be dropping Star Office any time soon. Damn near everything we [1] do in Office Productivity arena internally is done on S.O. Every engineer I know has either already downloaded/installed it, or is planning to when they get enough time.[2]

I can't officially speak for Sun [3], but I do believe that it was a good idea to buy Stardivision because we use it extensively internally. As for StarPortal, most of us [4], have SPARC 5's on our desks, and Ultra 2's on the backend. Not exactly the "dream configuration" for such an app. :-)

This article is one person's opinion. [5] Don't PANIC! :-)

-Ra
[1] Oh yea, I work for Sun.
[2] Myself included.
[3] Hence the A/C posting.
[4] In smaller, remote offices anyway.
[5] Just like this comment is just *my* opinion.

No UNIX vendor is a friend of Linux. by john187 · 1999-09-21 01:42 · Score: 1

As a community we are very naive. Don't think for one second that any of them are interested in the success of Linux when it doesn't benefit them to want it.

This is all about scoreboard. Sun, and Digital are selling hundreds of millions of dollars annually in Linux based workstations and servers. IBM, and SGI want a peice of the pie in a UNIX market that is almost stagnant otherwise. The bottom line is that all of these companies didn't even mention the word Linux once until they saw a multimillion dollar market emerge, ordering servers but NO OS.

On the other hand don't throw the baby out with the bath water. This is the beauty of the fundamental protections in the GPL, Sun, HP, IBM, SGI, and I can all sell Linux, rewrite it, or anything.

In the end YOU decide what you wan't to use.

GO DEBIAN!

John

Re:Network Computing Is The Answer by nevets · 1999-09-21 01:44 · Score: 2

Network computing is the answer but not "thin clients". I have network several computers, both at home and at the office. At home I mainly have linux (Slackware and Redhat) and at work I have an array of Linux, AIX, Sun, and even NT. I use each for a different task, or mutliple tasks. I have found that the most efficient way of doing things is to have the clients run the applications but use a central server to store the data. This way, the servers don't get bogged down when we have a hundred users.

Even doing simple tasks as word processors and spreadsheets, it's more efficent to have the client run the applications and retrieve data from a central location. You only need to back up the data. Yes it is more of a pain to do upgrades, but it saves on network traffic for either loading a network app, and running completely off another machine.

Please, don't ask for bench marks. The only bench marks I used was the drop of complaints from users that the system is too slow.

--
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind

The subject of quality... by c0re_pump · 1999-09-21 01:48 · Score: 1

Sun no matter has several reazons why to be involved with linux:
-Is trendy right now, fresh, radical in way, secure to some degree, reliable and the appz are coming and are coming strong, and is UNIX!

On the other hand!! Sun already has his product straight, SOLARIS an expensive elitistic OS, and a dream for a any serius *nix server or, needy user. I love linux, it has what i need so far, but if my interest where to change from a home PC to something more... professional AND i had to get my hands on solaris, i probably would, it has the just has the name, its the way to go if you from mere to professional, and really reliable. Course some will disagree, with very valid pts linux does have options to cut the trick, but thats just my opinion, and view of a partially mended relatinionship sun has with linux.
enothing IS really clean, guys... well prob linux hehe i dunno.. im just ranting

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Linux vs Solaris by falser · 1999-09-20 21:07 · Score: 2

Everybody at Sun obviously knows that Linux is as much or more of a threat to Solaris than it is a threat to Windows. Linux is only a few steps away from completely replacing the need for Solaris. As soon as Linux has enterprise calibre performance, there will be little incentive for anyone to use Solaris. IBM knows this too, why do you think they like Linux? They know very well that it's their best weapon to out-muscle both Sun and MS.

I'm surprised Sun is even partially supporting Linux. I guess they think that if they stay in stride with the Linux movement long enough for it to entirely eclipse the Microsoft era there will still be enough of a server market left to do business.

"The voices in my head say crazy things"

Re:Linux vs Solaris by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:23 · Score: 0

ZZZZZZ, another Unix techie bores everyone shitless with a lot of hex and hot air. Here's a thing for you, Sun should be a great deal more afraid of OS/390 than Linux. Linux has not had the chance to run very large enterprise software, but OS/390 has. It is very scalable, reliable etc etc. The nerds in our Unix department can't even get Solaris to talk to our TCP/IP printers never mind anything hard. Linux doesn't have to compete in this sort of arena, it just has to remove NT from the mid to lower server market, which it is doing very well. Solaris can't compete here due to cost and OS/390 could very well kick it away from the high-end. No wonder people think Sun are worried. They should be.
Re:Linux vs Solaris by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:50 · Score: 0

I was just thinking the other day that I should try running linux on my Enterprise server.

But, here's a pmap from a running process that's using 1 TB of memory.

How will linux handle this?

$ pmap -x
23637: a.out
Address Kbytes Resident Shared Private Permissions Mapped File
0000000100000000 8 8 - 8 read/exec a.out
0000000100100000 8 8 - 8 read/write/exec a.out

snip lots of useless mappings...

FFFFFFFF7F400000 696 696 504 192 read/exec libc.so.1
FFFFFFFF7F5AC000 64 64 - 64 read/write/exec libc.so.1
FFFFFFFF7F5BC000 8 8 - 8 read/write/exec [ anon ]
FFFFFFFF7F680000 112 112 104 8 read/exec ld.so.1
FFFFFFFF7F79A000 16 16 - 16 read/write/exec ld.so.1
FFFFFFFF7F7C0000 16 16 8 8 read/exec libc_psr.so.1
FFFFFFFF7F7E0000 8 8 - 8 read/write/exec [ anon ]
FFFFFFFF7F7F0000 8 8 - 8 read/exec libdl.so.1
FFFFFFFF7FFFC000 16 16 - 16 read/write [ stack ]
---------------- ------ ------ ------ ------
total Kb 1048576960 1048576960 209720616 838856344

Of course, getting the enterprise caliber performance is sort of the hard part...isn't it.

Linux has some good points, but it simply is a long way from replacing every OS on the planet...and a long way from Solaris in particular.

game consoles are the future... Not! by Kaa · 1999-09-20 21:07 · Score: 2

Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.

First, I am spending money for the computer so that I can do word processing, spreadsheeting, email, etc, etc. and play games. You argue that I should buy another machine for that -- why? I'd rather have one machine that does it all.

Besides, your prices look funny. To buy a new system today I would probably spend ~$1000 for a computer, $40 for a joystick, $80 for a graphics card. And it's not like all games demand the latest hardware. If your life is Quake and you crave that teeny edge that the extra 5 fps give you, maybe. I don't play Quake and I find that my very very old [cringes in shame] 200Mhz Pentium system plays all I want (including System Shock 2) perfectly well.

One other thing that is pretty obvious -- TVs as computer displays suck. Really, really suck. I am not interested in fuzzy low-res graphics that make my eyes tired after an hour or so.

Plus, the selection of PC games (specifically, good sophisticated games for adults) is much better than for consoles. Consoles cater to the teenager crowd and it shows.

Kaa

--

Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.

Re:game consoles are the future... Not! by richnut · 1999-09-20 21:40 · Score: 1

The problem with buying a computer as a general purpose tool is that sooner or later this stuff is all going to morph into a few appliances to make it easy for the masses to do things. Computers are complicated. People like you and me can use them just fine, but there's a lot of dough to be made in taking spreadhseets and wordprocessors and applying them to lo-tech solutions with simple consistent UIs.

The games on a PC argument could go forever. Honestly I do think i get my money's worth out of my $2000 PC (lots of upgrades, custom built by me), but not for gaming. I dont take gaming seriously enough to muck around with 3d cards and crap like that. Of course a machine that is 10 times the price of a game console is going to excel in the details. The thing is though, the most compelling electronic games are never successful becasue of their details, they are successful because the quality gameplay/story/longevity and many other non technical factors. Space Invaders did not become a famous game becasue of it's incredible graphics. The atari 2600 had positively DISMAL graphics, even for the time, but it still managed to roll over the competition with it's games and it's value. Often game systems with superior graphics are a joke compared with other systems that simply have better games.

I dont think consoles will ever replace PC's for high end gaming becasue a PC's general purpose nature will lend it to a task that current consoles just are not designed for. OTOH I dont think PC's will ever replace consoles because they're too hard to use. Consoels are for everybody, PC's are for geeks and hard core gamers.

-Rich

SOLARIS BITES, LINUX RULES! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:08 · Score: 0

THAT'S RIGHT. WHO CARES WHAT SUN DOES REALLY, BECAUSE IN 2 YEARS OR LESS THE ONLY UNIX LEFT WILL BE LINUX!!! SOLARIS CANNOT EVEN MATCH UP WITH LINUX FEATURE TO FEATURE. AND SUN HARDWARE JUST PLAIN SUCKS. MY DUAL CELERON OUTPERFORMS EVEN A SUN ULTRA ENTERPRISE 4500!! LINUX DOMINATION IS COMING. BE PREPARED.

Sun doesn't understand linux... by incubus · 1999-09-20 21:08 · Score: 1

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I think in the end, Sun will be ambivalent towards linux. They want to sell hardware and storage solutions. If that's on their unix platform, fine.. if not, fine... as long as you're buying their relatively kick-ass hardware.
I doubt Sun has any beef with people who want to run sparcLinux.

I could even see them becoming a linux vendor... way way way down the road.

IMHO, OSS will just gut the traditional software industry's profit margins... *but* the overall computing industry will make huge gains.

On the other hand, I could be just stupid.. :-)

It's all about Solaris, baby. by Artie+FM · 1999-09-20 21:10 · Score: 1

Linux is a direct competitor to Solaris. When you thnik about it.. Linux is much more of a threat to Solaris than NT. SUN still thinks they can make money by getting more people to use Solaris. Not putting Java on Linux means that if you want unix + Java they want you to buy an OS from SUN. Before Linux, Solaris was the dominant Unix OS. Linux has rapidly stolen the lime-light and the Apps that would have been done on Solaris. They will talk about Linux say how good a thing it is but deep down they feel just as afraid as MicroBorg. It all boils down to this, if you talk about Unix to SUN.. they will try to sell you as OS they wrote, for a machine they designed, which runs apps they will make money off of.

--
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name

Fallacious comparison by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · 1999-09-20 21:11 · Score: 1

Don't compare 1975 technology to 1999 tech, obviously 1999 is better.

Instead you need to ask, what were the strengths and weakness of server vs client based in 1975 and has that change in 1999? My opinion is that nothing substantial has changed and that desktops are here to stay (for some applications).

The only place I can see server-based computing working is in situations where the user is voiceless (socio-politically, not literally). Data-entry clerks, Internet kiosks, etc. Home users don't want it (for good reason) and home users drive PC hardware. Don't believe me? Look how many business desktops have sound cards and 8MB video cards.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)

Re:Fallacious comparison by vyesue · 1999-09-20 21:25 · Score: 1

in 1975, servers and networks were s-l-o-o-o-w.

therefore mainframe-client computing was not as good as desktop computing.

in 2005, servers will be even faster than they are today and networks will be too. I would venture that that's a pretty substantial change.

Sun, M$, and the root of all kinds of evil. by Skeezix · 1999-09-20 21:32 · Score: 2

When Java was first announced, I bought into a lot of Sun's hype surrounding it. It seemed that they were a company truly intent on destroying Microsoft. And that pleased me, because I saw Microsoft as the Evil Empire, intent on controlling and monopolizing everything, beginning with the computer industry. And yes, they were intent on demolishing Microsoft, but for the wrong reasons. They wanted to harm M$ because Microsoft was a thorn in their side...they were jealous of the success in Redmond. They were envious and coveted what Microsoft had. I've seen Sun time and time again over-hype technology and mislead the community into thinking that they are a company devoted to being open for the sake of the community. The truth is, it's all a bunch of bull. Sun just wants to benefit themselves.

Like many of you I used to be a devout Java follower. I saw it as the next Big Thing. But with time, I got sick of Sun's tactics, and their stronghold on the source and API, and gave up on it pretty much altogether. I have absolutely nothing against commercial software. I am, however, against companies who hoard and maintain a stronghold on API's, document formats, algorithms, and the like that are in widespread use, simply for the purpose of making a buck. That is precisely why there is a need for truly Open Source software. Not just so that we can have a free OS and free apps to go with it. Yes, there is a need for that...I don't think people should *have* to pay for those things unless they want to..but it goes beyond that. It's a social imperative that we have open standards and open source libraries to hack with, and open document formats. Without them, innovation is truly stifled. Without them, we don't have widespread scientific advancement. We humans thrive in an environment in which we can share ideas. We build on each other's discoveries. That is why Microsoft's recent barking about how they ability to innovate has been stifled is ludicrously hypocritcal. That is why Sun saying they are victimized by companies like Microsoft who stifle innovation is absurd in light of their history of maintaining strongholds on technologies like Java. Almost any company will claim to be the victim if it will benefit themselves, but the truth is, folks, they're just out to make the extra buck and gain more control over you. What's at the root of all this is greed. Most of us, in their position, though we might refuse to admit it now, would behave no differently. Whether you believe the Bible or not, you may at least appreciate the truth of this verse:

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.--I Timothy 6:10

We need open source software, open standards, and an environment in which we can share our ideas and innovate, in order to keep ourselves in check.

--Jamin Philip Gray
jamin@DoLinux.org

--
Celebrate the finer things in life

Hey! by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · 1999-09-20 21:12 · Score: 1

Are sigs copyrightable?
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

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http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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WABI by stange · 1999-09-20 21:33 · Score: 3

This needs to be cleared up a bit.

Sun didn't kill WABI for Linux. WABI as a product from Sun was killed quite some time ago. It isn't Sun's fault that some other companies licensed it and continued to sell it...until March. IIRC, Sun dropped WABI about two+ years ago.

Quite simply, WABI no longer made any sense. It only support Win16 apps, and even then the apps need to be certified to run under WABI.

There are much better solutions available that WABI. SoftWindows is rather nice. Even better are the Citrix type products in which a group shares a single NT box. Any app can then run and run quite well. At a previous employer, we purchased WinCenter on the spot while it was still a beta. That was many years ago.

To think that WABI was cancelled because of or for Linux shows how lame the analysis in this article really is.

Finally, Sun bought StarOffice to help sell SunRays. Again, this has nothng to do with Linux. People need to understand that some companies, banks for example, having 10,000 PC's...doing nothing but running a few small apps that used to run on 3270 terminals. The Sun Ray is a perfect solution for this. Think of a bank teller...or a cashier at a point of sale. This is a HUGE market. Only a fool would want to install a PC (Windows, Linux or Solaris) to do something so simple....which is why people are feeling as though Bill Gates and Microsoft has been playing people for a fool.

--
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.

Re:WABI by stange · 1999-09-21 02:22 · Score: 1

So many claims and so few facts.

Your post should be prefaced with "I claim that ..."

Do you have any documentation that Sun chose to kill WABI and orphan WABI users because it wanted to push Java?!

Again, WABI was killed years ago. WABI only does Win16, not Win32, and WABI was _always_ a limited solution at best.

There are a long list of potential reasons why Sun hasn't released the source code for WABI. Chief among them is that the source code probably isn't Sun's to release...not without a big code review, etc.

WABI is hardly comparable to TWIN. Sun has made for more contributions to Unix and public domain software that has Willow's.

Get some facts to back up your rather empty claims...

--
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.

Re:Network Computing Is The Answer by N3MCB · 1999-09-20 21:14 · Score: 1

I don't think Network computing is the right answer for everyone. I think this all boils down to the fact that the same solution isn't for all users. Just like a one size fits all t-shirt usualy dosn't fit anyone very well.

In an office environment where you want to provide a very standard environment to a large mumber of users the SunRay solution looks very attractive to me. How much time does your typical sysadmin spend keeping patches and application software up to date? For a lot of people all they realy need is a web browser, email, calander, and office suite (spreadsheet, wp, slide show). Between StarOffice and Netscape all that is pretty much taken care of.

At home I wouldn't want to have a network setup like that. I don't spend that much time keeping my system set up the way I want it and I don't mind downloading or installing applications that I want and I don't want to rely on the network being alive to use my system.

Each particular setup has a user that it best fits and some others that it does not fit at all. At least we have a choice here as to which products best fit the job.

Re:Follow the money. by cjs · 1999-09-20 21:33 · Score: 2

Just because thin client costs less does not mean that Sun makes less money on it. Thin client tends to sell bigger servers, and the main savings are in on-site administrative costs, which means your big saving is getting rid of six or eight junior sysadmins (at, when all costs are factored in, probably around $100K/year on Wall Street).

cjs

--
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.

Use, Abuse, and Evolve by Capt+Dan · 1999-09-20 21:34 · Score: 2

Does this really affect us at all in a negative way?

So in three years sun may drop linux development support. So? That's three years of full time employees working on the Linux system. So what if SGI does the same thing? The release of their journaling filesystem was a major enhancement to the kernel.

The best thing about the Linux/Open source development model is that it *evolves*. Star Office apparently is top notch right now. In three years KOffice and Gnome office could easilly compare to it.

So sun starts pushing thin clients. Big deal. As Amphigory stated in his post they have their place.

If it bothers you that much, go develop a Thin Client Linux distro. I believe that most of the system is already complete, you just have to figure out what options to use. Evolve your own aspect of Linux.

--
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.

Home PC market safe... by deefer · 1999-09-20 21:14 · Score: 1

Maybe Sun will knock Micro$lop out of the business arena; the idea of a MultiVac type machine supporting dumb terminals works well for business (and for tech support guys - how many times have you had to explain to an irate/hysterical user that the grinding sound coming from the PC is their files being shredded on disk as the heads scour the platters, and there's no way to bring the files back? ;) ). At least diskless wonder clients will force this on business users who have the bandwidth to support such a model, which is possibly a good thing.

But even if the home market can be supported (which will only happen if everybody gets LAN-like bandwidths through their modems - dream on!), how many people are willing to let their files be distributed across the Internet? I mean, these will not be harmless pictures of the family holiday, the data will actually be peoples' tax accounts, letters to lawyers, etc etc. And people get squirelly over these things. Especially in the light of the recent security breaches the largest corporation in the world has been exposed to recently, the public are slowly realising that security across distributed systems is not a simple matter, and they will want their confidential files where they feel they are safe from the evil "haX0r d00dz". This is surely perception over reality, but that's the general public for you...

So, I think the home market is safe for a loooong while, and who in business will replace a £2000 Linux webserver for a £50000 Sun server? It's only the desktop I see Linux having to fight for, and that will be a capricious market for Sun to capture. Here's a sample business case for you - as IT manager:

1) Install Linux for free on your worthless old Pentium 100Mhz's

or

2) Buy our thin client toasters at £300 per desk. Oh, and you'll need a whacking great server to sit behind these, and a FDDI LAN to go with it...

--

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

it's "thoroughly" you idiot by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:37 · Score: 0

thOroughly

Control vs freedom by jflynn · 1999-09-20 21:38 · Score: 3

I've also been watching Sun with a doubtful eye, and it seems many share my fears. I've been thinking on why Sun bothers me, and it's because they are pretending to not understand the fundamental tradeoff involved with open source.

You can either control a product, in which case you hire all the labor you need for it, or else you can turn it loose and let open source developers take it from there. Sun wants it *both* ways, and that isn't going to work.

It's not that anyone thinks all their patches should be accepted without question, reasonable people know that peer review and subsequent rejection is often for the good of the software. But the rejection is only acceptable when it's a pure meritocracy. Developers are afraid of the SCSL because Sun's political and corporate aims are likely to provide reasons to reject patches and entire directions for development.

There is always a narrowing of an open source project at the top, some kernel of trusted people who make the tough decisions and control the future of the program. This doesn't result in authoritarian control only because the option to fork is always present. If nearly half of a project's developers disagree with the folks at top, the pressure to accept some control from below becomes intense due to the threat of forking. Sun's SCSL provides no such mechanism of checks over Sun's leadership. They could be terribly wrong, and there's not one thing you could do about it. No one wants to work on a project *for free* when they feel they have little to no control over it.

I think Sun understands this perfectly well, but simply is not willing to lose control over any software they feel has importance to them. They *should* give up trying to sound like they are sorta climbing on the Linux bandwagon, they're not. This doesn't make them an enemy, just another proprietary vendor that happens to sell Unix-like boxen. For now, they are very useful to Linux. We've got the cyberdemon(MS) and spiderdemon(Sun) fighting, so we should quietly go about our business and reassess matters after the fight is over. It's likely the competition will look more fair than now afterwards.

Re:Control vs freedom by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:50 · Score: 0

Could someone please tell me why anyone in their right mind would think that a large corporation would volunteer to help out a competitor. Sun are not going to do Linux any favours. Why should they, what would be next, NT for SPARC? So long as people keep the word competitor in mind they can't go wrong. Sun can only screw Linux if there's no alternative, and StarOffice is not the only office suite for Linux, and to be honest I think it's not that good anyway. I only use it to encourage people to move away from Win98 (encouraging noises from all corners of the office at the moment). Let's see how KOffice works out before we start slagging Sun.

Why worry about Sun? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:38 · Score: 0

I don't get where this fascination with closed software comes from. Sun is just a little to incompetent to take over the world. They are one of the few corps to make a vertical solution that is not dependant on MS (and if you can afford it, you have paid as much as you're going to - hardware, os, software). They aren't going to take over the world with Solaris x86. Nor will Star Office have the lead in office software in this decade. On the other hand, if MS wants to charge 100 more dollars for MS Office, few will stop buying it, even with "free" solutions available. If you want "free" office software use software that is really free, and stop bitchin'.

What FUD. This guy is absolute moron by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 02:24 · Score: 1

I don't know who Evan Liebovitch is, but he obviously knows very little about Sun.

"Sun is as deep into control as Microsoft is," I recall one person saying." Oh great, some unnamed person has a bad opinion of Sun. That convinces me.

"As someone who lost money because of Sun's decision to kill Wabi for Linux in March"

How exactly did he lose money? WABI is a Win 3.1 emulator. It still works running Win 3.1 apps. If he bought it, it is still useful. WABI was killed on Solaris a couple of years ago. Sun continued to licensed it to Caldera. Besides, what kind of moron buys WABI in 1999?

"stop official development". Evidence, please.

"hoping that suckers (aka "volunteers") within the open source community will do any necessary bug fixes and extensions"

SCSL will keep this from happening, but other companies may get involved, especially with respect to a Mac version.

"In the medium term: drop StarOffice like a hot potato the second that StarPortal is ready" If so, someone can continue to sell the product under the SCSL.

"offload support to Linuxcare". Give me a break. Dell uses Linuxcare, and I believe Compaq does also. Does this mean they are "offloading" support. No, Dell is supporting the Linux community by giving business to a Linux startup.

"the scalability and flexibility we've come to appreciate from Linux". I like Linux like the rest of us, but scalability is not one of Linux's strong points. Solaris has been running on 64 CPU machines since 1995 on the old Cray Superserver. Give Sun a little bit of credit here.

"It's no coincidence that there are no plans to port StarPortal to Linux, just as Sun has never released any of its server-side tools -- such as Sun WorkShop -- for Linux." Hey moron, Sun is a BUSINESS. They don't even sell Java development tools anymore because they can't compete with Netbeans and Code Warrior. Get it through your thick skull. Nobody OWES us anything. If someone wants to market a Linux IDE that is their right. This is probably they stupidist argument in your whole article.

"Sun's generosity is both lukewarm and temporary". Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth: It's not free enough, they want me to register, it's not open source, and Sun won't give me free open source development tools. God, stop your GenX/GenY 90's whining and start coding and make a difference.

"StarOffice user needs to register so that Sun can do a hard sell on them when their thin-client stuff is ready." Oh, I'm waiting for the phone call from my Sun rep now. NOT.

"This is Sun's second attempt at driving the public" The "public"??? Since when is Sun into selling to "the public". Sun is not Gateway or eMachines. Have you noticed that Sun Ray is called an "Enterprise Appliance".

"towards a world in which your ISP stores your files" Okay, it is now painfully obvious you have not even looked at a datasheet for Sun Ray. There is no way to access an ISP from a home Sun Ray, unless you had the Sun Ray hooked into a Sun Ray server that is attached to a gateway machine that is connected to your ISP.

"Next week, we'll have a look at what's wrong with Sun's vision" Oh boy, a multi week tirade. Get a life Evan.

Re: game consoles are the future by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 02:34 · Score: 0

Regarding RTS/TBTS style games. There's nothing limiting that sort of game on a console. Most of the issues you might have with such a title on a console are more due to the failings of the developers. Such games were more than adequately managed on systems such as ST's or Amigas that for the purposes of this discussion could be considered little more than Sega Genesises with keyboards.

Linux babies by stange · 1999-09-21 02:34 · Score: 1

Booo hoooo!

Evil Sun doesn't give it's software source code away. SCSL is just so nasty. Boo hoo hooo! Sun is just using Linux to compete with Microsoft.

Ok everyone. How about all the folks whining about Sun Microsystems start writing some code and/or documentation instead. Do you really think for a second that some company is going to give us everything for free just because we whine a lot?

Crying about Sun isn't going to make linux scale better than Solaris (it doesn't now), it isn't going to get Netscape 5 finished to run on Linux (it's way late), it's not going to get better development tools, yada yada yada.

So, stop yer crying like a bunch of babies and do some work!

--
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.

Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:02 · Score: 0

Solaris is still just another Unix. There is no good reason that there aren't as many official and unofficial binaries for the JDK on as many platforms as there are Netscape binaries.

Things simply need not be that way. This isn't like porting something between Unix and NT.

It's an extremely bogus excuse and only serves to demonstrate how absurd Sun's position really is.

Re:Sun doesn't want your Linux Desktop by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 03:12 · Score: 0

Yes, we are all aware of that great example of the seggregation of the home market which is the IBM PC XT clone...

Get the a grip.

Business machines spilling into the home market is why I don't have the option of running a contemporary Amiga or Atari and pretty much forced to deal with this cobbled together with bubblegum and duct tape bastard grandson of an IBM PC.

Working business model for SUN by SiliconJesus · 1999-09-20 21:14 · Score: 1

Lets be honest friends and fellow Linux Advocates, SUN is a Hardware manufacturer first and foremost. Making money off of Linux would be as simple as them dropping their Solaris Development team, and embracing Linux as the *One True Operating System* (tm). I'd love to install Linux on an Enterprise 10000 and set it up as a "One box Beowulf" system.

Those that fear SUN as much as M$ are just plain silly. The Solaris environment was created because the other UNIXs at the time were insufficient and kludgy. Now with Linux on the scene, SUN Developers are taking notice. As many of you know SUN gives away Solaris OS free to anyone who would want it for a nominal fee.

It may not be official yet, but eventually I think SUN will come around and include Linux as an operating system choice just like SGI.

--
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.

Re:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss by richnut · 1999-09-20 21:14 · Score: 1

If there was ever a company that had the potential to be as pompous and megalomaniacal as Microsoft, it's Sun

I sort of agree with this. Soctt McNealy is one of those guys in the Valley who is more motivated by defeating Microsoft than by making a superior product or enhancing his business plan. I dont quite know if he really has any other desire beyond control.

The good news is, it won't happen. People are in love with speed and convenience. Even the most powerful Intel machines don't
run software as fast as people want, so a network connection certainly isn't going to fulfill the need. Maybe someday when we all
have full-time gigabit connections directly to our desktops and never want for speed during even the most intensive operations,
Sun's vision may become reality.

But the most powerful Intel machines are a terrible terrible waste of money for what the majority of people do. Sun's argument is that if you simplified the software and the client it will be better. This does hold water when you think about Microsoft's cultre of bloating up the wares for no real reason.

Where Linux fits in is the in between. People who need power and flexibility, but dont wnat commercial bloatware and dont want simplistic appliances. The fact that most of /. would fit into this group is probably why everyone here hates thin clients so much.

-Rich

Re:Sun Shine by Io · 1999-09-20 21:17 · Score: 1

Their telephone support in Britain is OK for most of the general faults that one finds, but we've had to fall back on USA 'phone support for issues with NIS+ before now...

As a long time user of Wabi, I was quite disturbed to find that Sun had dropped all support for it. Not having 2 computers on my desk was a godsend... (It's rather a pain at the moment)

What people have to remember is that Sun makes its money selling hardware, not software.

I've never been particularly impressed by any of the desktop software that Sun has come out with recently - there are better IDE's than Workshop, for instance, and I'd rather use KDE than openwin/cde any day of the week.

Just think of the furore if Sun bought out KDE or any of the other desktop organisations, then ditched that in 2 years time...

Io

Follow the money. by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · 1999-09-20 21:17 · Score: 1

Clearly thin-client is not for home-users. But think about this: If the EOMs split the market by creating thin-client for business and fat for home, they get less money for two reasons:

Thin-client costs less
Business PC purchases would no longer be driving Home PC development. That means that Home PC prices (or volume) would have to rise to pick up the slack

---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

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Re:Follow the money. by DirkGently · 1999-09-20 21:45 · Score: 1

Here I would have to disagree with one of your points. The home market drives the business market. Most of the pushes in PC technology have been to facilitate better gaming. Don't believe me? Look at MMX, SSE. 2 of the most heralded technologies that basically did nothing for the business user (well, MMX Pentiums had more L2, but thats not the point). Dell now makes SERVERS with PIIIs. And that ain't to get higher refresh rates on that web page...

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Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by Milican · 1999-09-20 21:20 · Score: 1

Good point. I was wondering when anyone would mention that. Sun *still* has not put out version 1.2.x of JAVA for Linux, but they have it for Solaris. What a crime. Sun support Linux.. yeah right.

JOhn

--
Campaign for Liberty

Masonic secrets of the fifth order. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:20 · Score: 0

Now that you all know that Sun doesn't care about Linux, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: The sun is going to rise tomorrow! Really! I'm telling the truth. I love intelligent journalism, but there's just too damn much of it nowadays for me to digest. I wonder what Bill Gates' stance on Linux is.

Re:Sun should be careful.. by Kool+Moe · 1999-09-20 21:21 · Score: 1

I agree completely.
However. I think thin clients are a GREAT idea for the home user.
I have 3 fully-stocked (more or less) computers at home. One for me, one for the lady, and one for the kid.
I NEED a robust machine with local apps.
The wife only uses Netscape, Word, ICQ, Excel, etc. for basic things. A powerful machine is somewhat justified, but not really.
The kid uses Yahoo checkers and those First Grade educational CD's (and maybe a little Quake when the wife isn't around ;). He doesn't need a phat machine yet.
I'd LOVE to setup a power server and feed thin clients.
Could have a client in the kitched for net recipes, or ICQ with Mom as I am stepped through the meatloaf-making process.
Could have a client in the TV room so I could make a quick trade online if I hear some breakin news.
Or check out the Steelers' website for stats as I watch Monday night football.
Could have a client in the bathroom pumping out MP3's while I sh**, shower, and shave.
Could have a client in the bedroom for some online pron with my honey.
Could have a client in the workshop for online how-to manuals when building a clubhouse for the kid.
And so on.
I will have a wired house. Right now, the three machines are wired together with 100baseT ethernet, and will soon feed out a gateway to a 460kbps DSL line. All run Windows right now, cause it's all I know. But I'm definitely psyched to try Linux or BeOS on the gateway some time.

Point is, I think thin clients will be the future of the home. A central server in the basement feeding out to a DSL or Cable line, and feeding in via Fast/Giga-ethernet. Why install the latest patches, updates, software to 3+ machines in the house?
I will never COMPLETELY go the client route- I MUST have local apps and control and stability for my development projects and Quake ;)
But I think it is certainly a viable option in the future for most household needs.
The definition of Thin Client may need to change a bit...I'm not sure what the current 'specs' are, but I definitely think the IDEA is a good one.

--
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool

Nice Link by mholve · 1999-09-20 21:45 · Score: 1

WABI for Linux Review

Re:Standard Business Practice by Io · 1999-09-20 21:21 · Score: 1

Rain today, maybe sun tomorrow, possibly with showers.

Hmmm. Sound familiar? :)

Sun wants to *BE* Microsoft by Jack+William+Bell · 1999-09-20 21:23 · Score: 2

This is nothing new. It has been evident for years that Sun (and Oracle) want to dethrone Microsoft only so they can ascend to the vacated heights themselves.

If you need a metric as to how predatory and controlling a company is, you need look no further than how they handle their API's. If they use API's controlled by independant standards organizations without adding proprietary extensions then the company is open. If they produce in-house API's and turn them over to independant standards organizations then the company is open.

However, if the company extends open API's, keeps their own API's proprietary and constantly changes the API's themselves so that anyone using the API's must use the companies toolsets and must compete against the company at a disadvantage, then the company is not open.

Does this sound like anyone you know?

Jack

--
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?

fucking nitpickers by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:23 · Score: 0

people are so anal about stuff. you got the idea of the article, right?

Re:fucking nitpickers by AstroJetson · 1999-09-20 21:32 · Score: 1

Perhaps, but would it be asking too much to just proofread it once before he posts? Right below this box where I'm typing it says, "Use the Preview Button!" He should practice what he preaches.

--
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.

they are the only ones interested in their vision by EdlinUser · 1999-09-20 21:48 · Score: 1

Scott McNealy is so blinded by envy/hatred of Bill Gates that he can't see that.

--
1000 SlashDot sigs

I'm suprised... by Graymalkin · 1999-09-20 21:51 · Score: 1

at the lack of logic or thought in alot of the comments I've read not to mention those in the article. Sun has never said "lets move to linux", they've merely announced linux binaries will run in Solaris. You're confusing SGI and Sun. SGI is abandoning IRIX in favour of linux so they can save money on software development costs. Sun isn't going to abandon Solaris any time soon to move to linux. Solaris is a well matured and very powerful OS that can kick linux's ass in several respects. And when has Sun NOT wanted to make everyone'se house/office Sun centric? Java was released on the pretense that you would have a bunch of relatively dumb client machines with a single server with Java apps on it. The Sun Ray is typical of Sun's view of how computers should work, you have a client box with no storage of it's own and then you have a Sun server with all the apps and data on it and never have to worry about maintaining the systems but this computing model isn't for everyone. It's also a model thats highly out of date since whole computers have become as expensive as the Java client boxes. Sun is comparable in many ways to Microsoft, they want their software running on everyone's computer and they want all your computing needs served by them.

--
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by iceT · 1999-09-20 21:52 · Score: 2

If Sun doesn't have their eye on the home market, then they will NEVER pass Microsoft in the marketplace. There are two factors in the US workplace that are becoming more and more prevelant: 1) More people are doing work after hours, at home, and 2) these people are going to want the same tools there that they have at work, because no one wants to learn multiple programs, and have to worry about format conversions, and etc.

I've seen this happen on two separate occasions in a VERY large company. The first time was with WordPerfect and MS Word. More people had experience with MS Word, and they felt that WordPerfect was 'inferior', and too hard to use. The company then went from a WP/Lotus suite to MS Office. The second time was with Windows95. Windows95 came out to long after the start of the home PC surge. More people had Windows95 at home (because it came with the new PC), and they wanted the same thing at work.

From a business standpoint, this makes sense, esp. when you look at the reduction in Training costs. If they already know Win95, why should I pay them to learn Win3.1? The same goes for Word, Excel, and everything else. Then, add to that the extra hour, or more, of work you can get from your employee after he/she has gone home, had dinner w/ the family, bathed the kids, and put them to bed. Then, instead of TV, they then hit the computer to finish that spreadsheet. If they're salaried, it just sweetens the pot.

Sun's 'lite' computing will never become anything but a novelty unless the home market follows suit. And that won't happen until Sun addresses ALL the things that people want at home as well. Things like educational games, and personal finances as well as Office tools.

--
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.

Sun doesn't want your Linux Desktop by MidKnight · 1999-09-20 21:53 · Score: 1

Realistically, Sun could care less about what OS your home PC uses. Even if you work for a small business, Sun probably isn't all that excited about getting you as a customer. Their vision is not about the home PC/small business side of things.

They want to sell their networked vision of computing to the people with the big money -- the Ford Motor Company & CitiBanks of the world. Selling to a regional ISP so they can offer server-side apps to their customers? If it happens, great -- but don't think they're banking on it.

Don't fool yourself into thinking of Sun as a software company either (at least, not in its current state). Sure, they write lots of software (again, almost exclusively for business) -- but the real $$ is in the hardware they sell (aka Big Honkin Box in the server room). And no individual or small business wants or needs one of these.

Dragging this ramble back on topic, I don't think Sun's 10 year plan includes killing Linux. I doubt it includes jumping onto the OSS bandwagon either. It's simply not their business. They bought StarDivision to go head-to-head with M$ Office in the workplace environment, nothing else.

My $.02

--Mid

Suckers.. by RobSweeney · 1999-09-20 20:24 · Score: 2

..stop official development, hoping that suckers (aka "volunteers") within the open source community will do any necessary bug fixes and extensions ...

I think this is most illuminative of the attitude of software vendors toward open source projects. They see it as a cheap way to get development done. Why pay for developers when they'll do it for free? The vendor gets product which, while they can't sell at Microsoftian price levels, they can sell "official" versions, ostensibly charging for putting the distribution process together and for such support as you get... and then they can direct the effort toward their own ends. "Suckers"? From the strategic viewpoint of a Sun - or a Netscape - for sure.

Re:Suckers.. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 07:24 · Score: 0

Hmmm...sounds like Red Hat Software!

obvious by paul.dunne · 1999-09-20 20:26 · Score: 2

Of course Sun isn't a "true" friend to Linux. Sun is a friend to Sun, period. They are a big corporation, and, just like any of the other big corporations out there, if you put them in Microsoft's place, they'd behave in a very similar way (although perhaps not as effectively; say what you like about BG's programming credentials, but he sure knows a lot about business). Sun will use Linux to bash MS, yes; and as long as Linux is useful to them for this or some other purpose, they'll be "friends". But friends like that can quickly turn into enemies. It's a moot point, though; I think Linux has reached the stage where it is self-supporting in the commercial sense; Sun needs Linux more than Linux needs Sun.

Dumb clients == dumb idea by Hard_Code · 1999-09-20 20:26 · Score: 2

While I actually /_LIKE_/ the idea of pervasive, "thin"/dumb clients, if you look at the figures it doesn't make /all/ that much sense in the home user arena. Computer prices are dropping so fast that a "dumb" client is only marginally cheaper than an acceptibly "smart" client. I know *I* don't want a whole bunch of dumb terminals (although they are the perfect solution in many cases). What, am I going to rely on the server's graphics card to accelerate my Quake3 match??? Pshaw.

--

It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?

Can't trust anybody by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:26 · Score: 0

I think that the linux community should be very careful about trusting any corporation. Companies like SGI are giving away lots of their technology but when it suits them they will turn on Linux. People will say what about the GPL... well the GPL has not been tested yet. If a company like Microsoft with almost unlimited resources took on the GPL who would there be to fight back? Corporations exist for one reason and one reason only... MONEY and lots of it. Now making money is not evil however when you get blinded by greed you end up doing ,being and acting just like Microsoft.

Sun Shine by Col.+Panic · 1999-09-20 20:28 · Score: 2

I like Sun - for one thing they have the best online support I've ever seen. If you can afford their products, they're great.

However, I am disturbed by the idea that StarOffice might be dropped. In Micro$oft fashion, it would be a pretty smart way to force people to convert to StarPortal.

The Linux community is so vocal, however, that I doubt Sun will make such a move. If they have any concern for how the professional IT community regards their business practices, which Micro$oft obviously doesn't, Sun will anticipate how much bad publicity that would cause.

Network Computing Is The Answer by fishlet · 1999-09-20 20:28 · Score: 3

I think Sun's fundamental vision of network computing is the right way of doing things. People seem to get all up in arms when mentioning network computing.. they think it's like communism or something. I like to remind such folks that a NT workstation with an administrative password is just as restrictive. So... I wish these people would just stop whining. Also, contrary to popular belief... a network computer can be just as customizable as a workstation if the software is well designed. Provided I could afford a fast enough connection to the internet... I'd just assume never have to install another program locally again. As far as Sun's taking shots at Microsoft... good for them. M$ is a enemy of Unix, in any way , shape and form. I think that for anyone that stands up for Unix (whatever form)... it's a GoodThing TM.

--

Blender And Linux Fan

Another insightful article concerning SUN's plans: by StirFry · 1999-09-20 20:28 · Score: 1

http://segfault.org/sto ry.phtml?mode=2&id=37da29ae-06cf9da0

Re:Sun should be careful.. by Maddux · 1999-09-20 20:29 · Score: 0

In accordance with the profecy.. Anyway, let Sun blow it, if it gets more Linux Boxs into the market, more focus, means more public, means more support and more backers. Though this article has a lot of speculation and is highly opinionated if this is Sun's "Master Plan" let them drag themselves down, as the open source public reaps the benefits.

Re: ...but thin clients aren't by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 04:12 · Score: 0

Not in the rest of Europe, unfortunately.

And why does this matter? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:30 · Score: 1

Tried to read the article... could not get past the first few lines. Information free piece in classic tabloid style. Who cares what sun wants. If they want to shoot themselves in the foot I'll tell them "Good Luck". The fact that some companies are trying to use open source to get some free labor is well known and (that's why) this tactic have never worked. Is zdnet or slashdot expecting us to go in anti-sun mode ? I'am pro Linux and all I care about is a good project with the right licence (prefferably GPL) If I like both of these things I'll code. When I get smarter, I might start one myself (GPL only). I don't see the place of the sun, the moon or the monosoft in this process. Why should I care about them?? AC

Who are you calling bloated? by MrCreosote · 1999-09-21 04:34 · Score: 1

"but when those bastards released Java 2 they bloated Java to the size of that guy in "The Meaning of Life."

Hey, I resent that remark!

--
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it's about technology, not friendship by jetson123 · 1999-09-21 05:49 · Score: 2

It may be surprising to some, but Sun is actually a business and they have to make a profit. As a business, they have been pushing for some pretty good technologies, they have documented their interfaces well, stuck to standards, and released a lot of code into the market. They have done so because it serves their business interests, not because they are philanthropic.

Compare that with Microsoft. Microsoft resists any careful documentation or standardization of their APIs, Microsoft constantly strives to replace non-proprietary APIs with proprietary APIs, and Microsoft's software (in particular, their APIs) is a mess.

As for StarOffice, if an X11 and UNIX-based office suite catches on widely in corporations, that's good for Linux, all things being equal. The server-based nature of their system is a boon to businesses, something Microsoft can't match right now. If the whole thing runs on Linux, that's nice, but if it doesn't, no harm done.

Sun is no "friend" of Linux beyond what serves their business needs. And that is as it should be. As long as they keep doing what they are doing, Linux and Sun have similar goals and they deserve our support.

Re: ...but thin clients aren't by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 06:28 · Score: 0

can you provide some evidence how KPN is any different than ANY other provider in europe?

from my perspective, i don't see too terribly much difference in the end between what i'm paying and what you're paying...

in fact, let me think about this a bit more out loud:

i pay $18.00 per month (USD) for my local phone service.

if i use it for 2 hour a month, i'm LUCKY. (cable modem for the remainder). that's 3x what you're paying. (granted, i can cut my calling plan down if i so choose)

now, does this STILL seem like that good a deal to you?

i'm not sold by your arguments just yet...

i'm not sure that flat-rated per-minute use charges wouldn't be just what we need in the u.s.a to promote a GREAT DEAL more competition to bring about alternative physical-layer infrastructure...

;)

Thin client strategy foolish by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:25 · Score: 1

I don't think Sun will suceed (achieve MS-like domination) with this network computing model for a few reasons.

1 - Isn't M$ in the lead in the consumer market for thin clients with WebTV?

2 - Small businesses won't invest all their cash in a Sun server & clients package when they could go for cheap, flexible desktops. M$ achieve domination through appealing to the lowest common denominator. Sun can never really do this. Their stuff is just too good and too expensive. I must say I don't hate Sun too much as a company. I admire their commitment to UNIX. I honestly think they seem to be lead by what their engineers are capable of, not purely by business strategy. That's the difference between Sun, Apple and M$. The latter 2 seem to want world domination with good products, M$ just wants world domination by any means necessary, because they were never driven by any dream or hackerish motive in the first place just pure profit.

3 - Large businesses will adopt the model, but that brings me onto the real drawback of thin client computing. Someone said "it isn't like Communism". But psychologically and aesthetically, a dumb end user feels infinitely less empowered with a thin client. Computers are like vehicles. Thin client vs. desktop is like a regular car vs. an electric bus. It may be more economical, even better performing, but it can't give you that sense of personal empowerment. M$ have an advantage in their very good marketing that really emphasizes this aspect - of dynamism and freedom in their products (where do you want to go today?). To consumers they still have the aesthetic of a small, thrusting, company like Apple rather than a heavyweight like Sun or IBM. That's ironic and purely because of hype and the kind of products they make (desktop software), but it works and makes people buy Windows.

As for what the article said - duh. Of course they're using Linux to hurt M$! I actually think Sun do not want to be, nor think they can be the next M$ for the moment at least. Do they really have the necessary business acumen outside their core markets? I haven't seen them attempting to straddle as many sectors as M$ do. They are still a relatively specialized company. I honestly think they'd just like M$ to piss off so they can grab a fair share of the marketplace. Right now their Linux strategy, while it may not be altruistically charitable, is good. They can't destroy Linux any more than they can buy it. What might be cause for concern is if non-GPL code from them or other vendors gets into a commercial distro and becomes seen by consumers as an integral part of Linux. This would be harmful. The solution as ever, is to be a conscienscious user and stick with Free software whenever possible.

Am I naive?

Re: ...but thin clients aren't by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:26 · Score: 0

I agree with you about game consoles, but not about thin clients...
Only in the US, local telephone calls are free. In the rest of the world you pay a certain amount of money per minute online to your phone company. Using a piece of software that forces you to be online for a few hours a day, already costs more than a very expensive PC after a few months.
This is not likely to change, at least in the Netherlands, because the telephone monopolist KPN will soon be offering free internet access to all it's customers. Thus making it impossible for other providers to compete in the market for home internet access, and ensuring that for a long time to come home internet traffic will be through the telephone lines, at a charge of 5 cents per minute.
At an off topic sidenote: Dutch readers beware. It is IMMORAL to use the services of KPN and the NS.

They never claimed to be. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:30 · Score: 0

Sun never claimed to be a friend of Linux.
Even Gosling has been slamming Linux in his interviews, and the Linux ports from Sun.....well, I don't need to go further.
This has all been hashed and re-hashed here. This is why we need to write/use Free software, not help out some half-hearted company who wants to get 'on-board' the 'next big-thing'.

Re:Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more importa by Brandon+Hume · 1999-09-20 21:32 · Score: 1

Uh... Java was NATIVELY DEVELOPED on Solaris.
It seems like a natural function of REALITY that
Java for Solaris would be out first.

Wasn't it only a few months ago that Sun took up
Java for Linux personally? I think you seriously
underestimate how difficult it is to port a large
system between achitectures, to Linux in
particular. (Hello, glibc, libc5, application
kernel includes, inconsistent interfaces, endian
mistakes, etc, anybody?)
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

Instead adding to the "LINUX bug" on JDC, go here: by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:06 · Score: 0

Sun does not read those 4000+ comments telling
them what they don't want to hear.

So instead of replying to it, just add your own bug, telling them to support linux now.

http://java.sun.com/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi

who needs "friends" in business? by whocares · 1999-09-20 22:09 · Score: 2

Is Sun really a friend of Linux? Is SGI? Of course not. The closest you have to support in business is a vauge alliance towards a common goal.

I'm sure one or two of you out there have jobs, and for those jobs you receive paychecks. Those paychecks are dependant on your company making money. In fact, your company *exists* to make money - a concept abhorant to all of you, I know, I know.

Now, here's my point. You see Linux and the open source movement in general to be basically an altruistic effort, for the good of the community. You draw more from Stallman than you'd probably like to admit. If you think that companies are altruistic, and are going to support Linux because it's a good right thing to do, you are simply uneducated in the ways of business, and for that matter, the real world.

Businesses exist to make money. Let me say it again.

Businesses exist to make money.

And to make money, they will do whatever they think will get them the next slice of pie. So enjoy your hobby, and get off your hobby-horse - Sun, SGI, and Microsoft aren't going to bow to your bedroom experimenter's whims. They will simply use it as they see fit. None of this should come as any surprise, and frankly, I can't figure out why it even counts as news.

ZD is Microsoft's ally by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 21:32 · Score: 0

Hah, as a former OS/2 user, I seriously DOUBT the ZD writer is doing us a favor but rather is spreading FUD among the Unix/Linux ranks.

It is not unreasonable for Sun to provide Solaris-centric tools (Linux-to-Solaris conversion tools mentioned), not push as hard for Linux as say, other big vendors, etc., as they have their own server operating system -- Solaris!

And what the heck does a comment like people preferring Gates over McNealy as dictator have to do with Sun's supposed lackluster support for Linux? And how did he come to the conclusion that more people prefer Gates? FUD FUD FUD

Freedom For us ALL... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:11 · Score: 0

Not in America will this work. Its like my right to bear arms. I will and alwayts have excersized this right. I like the fact that It is my choice. It should and WILL always be this way. Same way with my software. Imagine the scenario. I am now getting rid of all my pc's why? Sun says I Can its fine. Okay sure. Quake 7 just came out. Gee I sure wish my ISP would carry it.. But its ran against MAQ(Moms against Quake) Oh well.. SO much for that. Ill switch Isp's.. yeah just to play a game!!! Ugh.. This is not the answer for a lot of people. Some people yes.. but anyone beyond the level of beginner enjoys the fact that they can choose, and ultimately control there PC's via the software they buy and install ( in windows you have a little control ). Its america.. Freedom of Choice is to important. Thin-Client/Server model does not give you enough freedom! From Braveheart, quoting William Wallace 'Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom' Its an eternal struggle that common man has been fighting since we were able to understand the concept... Linux for example is a product of this struggle..

Re: game consoles are the future by blazer1024 · 1999-09-20 22:11 · Score: 2

Game consoles may be nice, but they're not my idea of the future. It's great for some people, but what if you already have a computer? Rather than shell out $300 for a brand new game console, or even $99 for an N64 or Playstation 1, you could spend $150 on a good 3D accelerator, and you still have the option of playing older games as well. (Is there anyone else who would like a Nintendo that plays 3d games, SNES games, as well as the original Legend of Zelda, SMB, or Excite Bike?)

PC's can always be upgraded, and they are usually compatable (for the most part) with their predecessors. If you upgrade from a 512k Paradise SVGA card to a 16Meg AGP Voodoo3 card, you can still play games made for an XT with a CGA card. (Of course, you have to slow your PC waaaaay down, since that damn XT had no clock, but still, it's possible.) You can't do that with a game console.

The big clincher, IMO, is the fact that a good percentage of the US population has a computer, and needs one for many different non-game related tasks. So, if they see a good game, which a lot of times has both a PC and a game console version, they would rather spend the $50 or less for the PC game, as opposed to the $60-$70 for the console game, and just play it on a machine they already have.

That's why I think the PC game market will never be destroyed by the console market. (Plus, there are many more game genre's than first person shoot-em ups, sports, and racing games.) It's real hard to do a strategy, complex role-playing, or other such game, especially without a keyboard. :)

Let's not get carried away... by Jeff+Monks · 1999-09-20 22:14 · Score: 1

I think it's good to be skeptical of Sun's motives here, but let's not start labeling them the Next Great Satan just yet.

Sun's goals with the Sun Ray and the move back to network computing are targeted squarely at corporate users. Big installations. Sun may be blustering about ISPs and home users right now, but that's just to get the big business customers to buy in. They know the model won't work for home users.

And from a business standpoint, the server-centric model makes good sense. How much money has the client-server model cost in terms of man-hours lost due to crashy PCs, or employees installing Quake 2 and LAN gaming all day? Is it really cost-effective to have an army of techs constantly re-installing Win98 and NT Workstation when DLLs get munged by an employee installing the latest screen-saver his aunt e-mailed him, or file systems getting corrupted by users just flipping the computer off at night? I'm not even going to mention viruses...

And assuming Sun is successful here and starts migrating the business world back to this model? It's a severe blow to Microsoft, and one that could topple them from the monopoly position they currently enjoy, but it's not going to put Sun in their place. The industry is finally waking up to the problems of having one super-dominant company running the show, and you can bet IBM and HP at least would show up with "Sun Ray"-like offerings of their own.

In short, Sun's goals, driven as they are by McNealy's obsession could break MS's stranglehold on business, but it certainly won't give Sun the same 400-pound gorilla status.

What I think we'll see is a transition of business systems to a more server-central environment, with a sprinkling of PCs for odd tasks (notebooks especially) - all provided by a variety of vendors (system solution providers like IBM will thrive in this environment, while "us-or-them" hardware/software providers like Microsoft, Sun, and Apple will suffer unless they change their business models). Home users will continue to use PC's, and if the server model works right, they'll be able to exchange work with their business systems using standard, open interfaces and file formats. The game market alone will keep the PC alive in the home for many, many years...

Re:Sun has a right to be worried by jtn · 1999-09-20 22:18 · Score: 1

Linux runs on a small number of sun4 machines (sun4, sun4m, and some sun4c, not sun4l or sun4d); UltraPenguin just isn't there for the sun4u hardware. I'll take Solaris on my UE450's any day of the week, thank you very much. No slam against Linux in general, but please get your facts straight before you spout this nonsense.

Re:Not a friend yet, but server apps work by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:18 · Score: 0

The client is irrelevant for everything except games and office apps

:-)
You got me there. I always thought the playStation graphic engine was superior to what you find on PCs anyway. Matt

java-only staroffice by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:32 · Score: 0

so you mean that instead of taking 999 e36 hours to do something in star office, it'll take 1024 e36?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss by Fortissimo · 1999-09-20 20:33 · Score: 2

If there was ever a company that had the potential to be as pompous and megalomaniacal as Microsoft, it's Sun. Remember a few years ago when they were threatening lawsuits against anything and everything that had the letters JAVA anywhere? If they win over MS, it will be a scene like the end of Orwell's Animal Farm.

The good news is, it won't happen. People are in love with speed and convenience. Even the most powerful Intel machines don't run software as fast as people want, so a network connection certainly isn't going to fulfill the need. Maybe someday when we all have full-time gigabit connections directly to our desktops and never want for speed during even the most intensive operations, Sun's vision may become reality. Considering that I live in a major metropolitan area and don't even have ADSL or a cable modem available yet, I think we're still years away from that scenario.

Linux lovers, relax.

-F

Not a friend yet, but server apps work by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:33 · Score: 0

Sun isn't a "friend" of Linux yet. They won't be until they produce a business model in which they profit from Linux.

The server-side model will work, though. Like mainframes? No, try "like Hotmail". How about quote.yahoo.com? My Excite? The client is irrelevant for everything except games and office apps, and soon we'll be down to just games. (Just in time for Playstation 2. (Is that a fat client? Hmmm.))

Lack of Java support 4 Linux seems more important by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 20:33 · Score: 1

Yes, I know there is Blackdown available for Linux and I heartedly applaud them. But, if Sun was serious about crushing the MSborg you would think they would at least brought out their own Java for Linux a long time ago. I think perhaps they are a bit peeved at the attention Linux as garnered over Slowaris. Does anyone know why they did this?

hum by darklink · 1999-09-20 20:33 · Score: 1

the enemy of my enermy is my friend kinda thing right now. we are the lesser of 2 evils realy.for now , sun realy cant hurt the ossc , imean realy star office is great and all but it isnt that great, we are pumping out a few new office suites right and they can be powerful if not more powerful then star office , i think sun will keep its heart and not bow to linux . i mean hell i am still thinking of getting a few sun computers some time in my life time , if they wherent so damn expincive.. there is going to be a strugle but look how far the linux community has come in a few years. look at how it has stood up and made ppl take notice and we arnt going away any time soon .

it is impressive what the ossc has over come realy .

Re: game consoles are the future by poopie · 1999-09-20 20:35 · Score: 3

Hey, fewer and fewer people are going to be willing to spend $2000 for a computer, $150 for a joystick, $200 for a new graphics card, $150 for decent speakers *JUST* to *PLAY*GAMES*.

People will be more likely to tolerate a lag to load a game when they have access to newer games on cheaper hardware. (witness how willingly linux users download ISO images over PPP!)

As to computers for gaming machines, I got tired of having to upgrade my OS/drivers/hardware every few months just to play a game.

... and I only had *one* joystick, so 2 player games were difficult.

You can get a playstation or N64 for $99, and there are tons of games that just work, don't need to be installed, configured, uninstalled, reinstalled, upgraded, etc.

I switched. I'll never waste time futzing around on my computer for games again.

Face it, *CONSUMERS* want SIMPLE, CHEAP, DISPOSABLE APPLIANCES. Slashdot users aren't representative of the general populace that will decide the success

Standard Business Practice by JimStoner · 1999-09-20 20:35 · Score: 1

What gets me is that your comments suggest that many of you weren't aware of this *smiles*. I cannot name a company that doesn't have a similar attitude of market domination. Do you really think that beloved RedHat is not trying to sew up the Linux market? Finally, why worry anyway. Remember that, according to the Buddhists, the only constant is change. So it's... IBM yesterday, Microsoft today, maybe Sun tomorrow !

Makes perfect sense by grmoc · 1999-09-20 20:36 · Score: 1

IT makes perfect sense... perfect BUSSINESS sense for Sun (or any other pre-linux corporate culture) to use linux any way they can in order to increase profits.

After all, that is what most (if not all) pubic companies are about: profits!

If SUN thinks that it can make a better profit by .. understating .. linux's effectiveness, then they will do it.... it makes perfect finantial sense..

Take with teaspoon of sugar by ndfa · 1999-09-20 20:36 · Score: 3

The article is like many others. I remember reading something about how Oracle was also porting their stuff over just to make sure that NT would not be the only OS that would have a Database on the PC servers!
Granted, StarOffice is really not something that you would associate SUN MicroSystems with, its more of a M$ style package! But then you need to remember that even Silicon Graphics became SGI.
It may just be that Sun now realizes that specializing in hardware and OS may not be the stratergy for the future (I kow Sun does a lot more). Besides I dont think that even Sun would be bold enough to "drop StarOffice" too fast. Granted its not a cash cow but hell they are giving themselves some breathing room.
Last i checked Microsoft still could not compete with Solaris on *REAL* machines like the EU10K. So if they do have to compete with M$, they better get to that correct playing field!!! Home and Business users, and thats where StarOffice will come in, even if they get their Java clients figured out, more is always merrier!

Some of the media hype about M$ is a bit overdone, hell if you were as big as M$ is you would almost need to have that much competition. Its just that emotions run a lot higher when BillGates is the person on the other side.
What LINUX needs now is apps. to get it accepted! If this does happen, there is NO WAY THAT Sun will pull out... Java Client or NOT!.

--
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by AJWM · 1999-09-20 20:36 · Score: 5

Uh, Sun isn't interested in home PCs, so what makes sense on those is irrelevant to Sun. Sun sells to businesses, and there the model does make sense. (Not always, but enough of a market that Microsoft is nervous about it.)
And that market is much bigger than the home PC market.

(In the future, perhaps, as broadband access to the net (cable, DSL, etc) increases, we may see more of an interest by Sun in the home market -- likely a lot of current non-PC owners would be interested in something like this that'll give them their email, their network-served office apps, and yes their networked games. WebTV just doesn't cut it. Remember that most potential home users have neither the inclination nor skill to manage a PC, they'd rather pay somebody else to do it - and if they can do that via a network, so much the better (no need to bring the PC down to CompUSA or wherever to have the latest software loaded up on it)).

Don't make the mistake of judging the mass market by your personal preferences. After all, look at the success of Microsoft and AOL.

--
-- Alastair

Re: game consoles are the future by osu-neko · 1999-09-21 06:56 · Score: 1

Sun would be thrilled to have them all using Linux, it's a great first step to Solaris.

As someone who recently reformatted the Solaris 7 installation on my SPARCstation and installed RedHat 6.0 instead, I find this highly unlikely. I'm not going back, that's for darn sure...

--

--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

Old people like playing simple games by bcaulf · 1999-09-21 07:05 · Score: 1

It is mostly young people who want the graphics goodies. Old people want to play the games they played as kids, like board games, card games, war games, old arcade games, etc.

It's also the case that young people are willing to put up with the flakiness and learning curve associated with high tech games. Most older people are unable or unwilling to deal with crap like drivers, determining hardware requirements, and learning complex controllers.

I think there is a lot of gaming revenue potential in zero-user-administration type devices, but in the retro and lower-tech area, not the games on the covers of PC gaming mags.

Re: game consoles are the future by m3000 · 1999-09-20 22:24 · Score: 1

Just to point out some inaccuracies, First off, console games for the PSX cost at most $50 at launch. Nintendo games cost at most $60. A new console (DC) also costs $200, not $300. And you say most of America has a computer, that is "sorta" true, but how good is that computer? Capable of playing the latest games and decent frame rates? Also, you can play your old console games, keep your old console. Simple as that. And just as a little help, the GameBoy color is doing some of what you wanted with playing old games. They already have SMB out on it, and they are planning on porting a couple of other NES games, like Zelda. And yes, the clincher to your arguement is that people already have computers. But some people don't want to put up with the hassle of installing, upgrading, configuring, and all that crap, so they get a console to do it for them. I personally see the computer market going down, not completely gone because as you said, RTS games are not really good for a console, but computers are just too expensive and fustrating for the Average Joe to mess with.

Re:Could Sun be this dumb? (Ans: no) by Wah · 1999-09-20 22:24 · Score: 1

Sun's 'lite' computing will never become anything but a novelty unless the home market follows suit. And that won't happen until Sun addresses ALL the things that people want at home as well. Things like educational games, and personal finances as well as Office tools.

I agree here. You are also right about the Home marketplace and more people commuting. Physical distance is becoming less important, but bandwidth is still the limiting factor. I think some people might like the thin-client idea, until their connection goes down and they are dead in the water.

Besdies all the people who do real computing and the people the idi^H^H^H average users ask advice of will never go for it. Who wants their typewriter to stop working when the phone does?
"Johnny where is your homework?"
"Oh, a network card blew at the CO, I think a dog peed on it."

--
+&x

BFD by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 08:10 · Score: 0

ten years ago i couldn't even touch our hp or apollo workstations without a cert, training, etc. every one of them had to have a phat s/w and h/w contract that made the workstation cost seem...low.

microsoft has done a lot of people a favor by kicking proprietary unix in the yarbles. but it's sometimes still ridiculous...$45K for three floating licences? (recent quote for a unix app i was eyeballing). c'mon.

sun is in business for sun. not MS, not linux, not you, not me.

they have done a lot of research in conjunction with universities that helped all unices, and MS.

I want linux to win, sun to do well, MS to DIE IN HELL, sgi to recover, etc.

But I don't want to go back to the days of those hideously exspensive, mandatory software and hardware contracts. the damn workstations were free compared to that...i loathed having to deal with the vaious sales reps who had us over a barrel every year...mo money, mo money.

I bought the workstation, why is it $2000 more to get it up? Oh i forgot you need another addition on that house in palo alto....grrr i'm still pissed about all those bugeting wars

Some points by ChrisRijk · 1999-09-20 22:27 · Score: 3

*) Just because you found someone several years ago, who thinks that Sun would be worse than MS, doesn't mean it's true. Even if Sun gained the same position MS is in, I doubt they'd act the same - MS has been acting like they are now for pretty much their entire history. For example, I've never heard of Sun trying to co-opt other people's standards, but MS does it all the time. Sun does good backwards compatability on all it's products - compile something for Solaris 2.5, and it'll almost certainly work fine on Solaris 2.7, or 2.8 when it comes out. MS mostly uses the cheapest programmers it can get, unlike Sun - and Solaris is far far more stable than any MS product. Sun's standard policy for anything that comes with Solaris is that they will continue to support for 5 years after they stop selling it - they're still supporting Solaris 2.3, unlike MS which tends to drop support for older versions the minute something newer is available. If you've followed the details of the DoJ vs MS trial in detail, like I have, you'll get a pretty clear idea of what lengths MS will go to force people to do what they want. The biggest reason my MS execs are so agressive is because of the share options - by working themselves to the bone to get raises and by improving MS's outlook, they can make loads of money. While Sun do offer share options, they mostly offer a good salary and a good working environment. btw, some Sun managers pay is tied to the reliability of Sun hardware/software solutions.

*) Sun aren't stopping development for StarOffice - they are keeping all 200 developers. If they wanted to kill off StarOffice at a later date, then why the heck would they release the source code and keep the developers?

*) Unless MS just dies very quickly, Sun would have very little to gain by suddenly dropping StarOffice - that would be a gift to MS. The 'StarPortal' thing with the Java client needs a server - so it'll be very hard to make a home user to switch. Corportations would be a bit different, but they're hardly likely to drop their general purpose PCs for a pure Sun solution just because Sun drop StarOffice. The StarPortal thing is more new markets, not current ones.

*) The SunRay 1 is a very focus solution, aimed at things like call centers, or where you would currently have terminals. It is absolutely not in any way at all a general solution or intended to be a replacement for all PCs. (just the ones that are doing simple basic things) Sun currently only supply Java for Solaris and Windows - if they drop StarOffice for the Java-only version (which might well require Java 1.3 which has just gone into beta), that helps MS, unless Sun massively increase the support they directly provide for Java on other OSs.

*) Wabi itself was dropped by Sun 2 years ago. It seems Caldera were doing 'Wabi for Linux' and it was them that dropped it in March this year. (I'm not sure of some of the details)

*) Sun is a hardware company - 85% of their revenue comes from hardware, and they have very good, and high end server solutions. It's hardly surprising that they'll play to their strengths. It would also be unreasonable to expect Sun to give away all their technology and software to Linux, as they only make a profit on their software stuff because it sells more hardware.

*) I've seen lots of people say that Sun is hurting because of Linux. Actually it's the other way around - Linux is growing and helping the general unix market, which helps Sun. Finantially, Sun is doing just as well as they've always been doing (20-25% growth per year, 2nd only to Dell for a large computer manufacturer) and I haven't seen any indications to suggest that they are being hurt by Linux. Scott McNealy actually said recently that he doesn't want Sun to grow more than 25% per year - can't hire good people fast enough to grow faster reliable. Besides, though Sun is somewhat vulerable in terms of hardware sales for boxes for software development, or web servers and the like, there is little

*) As for the liscense - I'm pretty damn sure it prevents you from say giving a copy of the binary to a friend, or using one download to install it on a load of machines in an office. Also, (though it's not officially confirmed yet I think), AOL will be distrubuting StarOffice on their standard CD-ROM, and Compaq and other PC manufacturers will be pre-installing it on some of their computers.

Well, that's enough for now...

Maybe Sun has a clue. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:29 · Score: 0

Maybe Sun does have a clue and us computer nerds are missing the point, look what a lot of consumers are buying, WebTV and Dream Cast ( Game systems), it what's typical wal-mart customers are buying, come on grandma's and non tech people want to get on the internet. What do they buy? $500 dollar computer systems, no $100 dollar web tv's. Or if they have kids, they use that as an excuse, and get a dreamcast with a modem included. Poof they are on the web. People are still buying dedicated word processors for god sake... for $200. yet they don't buy computers, why too complicated. Now In walks sun, they advertise, free word processing, free spread sheets at there portal. After a while they make an offer to a few large ISP's .i.e. netscape, at&t, to setup a server so people who use there service can use suns personal applications, for the price of a server the isp gets, a new draw that seperates them from the rest. Reduced bandwidth to the net, saves them money, high availability. Pretty soon all the ISP's want in just to keep up with the big boys, so now is selling 100's of servers and we haven't looked at the business market.

Now to capture the business market, They give us the software, both Windows and Linux, so now we are all using the same software, with 100% availiblity, home office, heck in the future PDA will run it too. joe bean counter is approached and told, that hey will give you the same software, the ISP's are running, just buy our server. and instead of buying secretaries new computers, just buy them $100-$200 game systems or a Webv with Ethernet adaptors, it will be available shortly for the dreamcast. So now they have a solution that requires one server, no more paying mircosoft. Get a major break from buying secretaries computers, all the higher ups get to keep all the same computers, use the same software. Sun sells all the servers, it needs to be prifitable, and Microsoft gets left in the cold, with no viable office package. And most home and low end office users buying game machines, and webtv's. Microsoft OS's became a non isssue. Sun Win's

WABI's untimely demise by Geekholder · 1999-09-21 08:20 · Score: 2

Sun acquired Wabi when it purchased a small company on the east coast (don't remember the name) in 1993. It got quite a bit of attention for a while, as Sun started a little crusade to document and standardize the Windows APIs (under the rubric of PWI, the Public Windows Initiative).

All of the developers who worked with Wabi were the employees of the little company Sun bought. Generally when a company is purchased the employees are issued options which vest over 4 years. You will note that they would have been fully vested in 1997. Flush with Sun options, the people who had worked on Wabi gradually left the company. On a product as complex as Wabi you can replace engineers if they leave one at a time, spaced far apart. If a group of them leave together (the day after their options for that year vest) it is nearly impossible the keep the product going.

Evan, I'm sorry you got burned when Wabi finally died. But there is an old saying:

Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Wabi became moribund a few years ago when Sun had so few people left who understood how it worked. Wabi was discontinued as an afterthought. I doubt anyone at Sun even knows where the workspaces with the final source code are, nor whether Sun owns the rights to every bit of code in it to be able to release its source. Over 6 years as a product lots of licenses for Wabi got negotiated, and all of them would have to be investigated to make sure Sun had the rights to all of the code.
No one at Sun sat down and planned it out that Wabi had to be killed in favor of Java. No one at Sun has given a second thought to Wabi for several years. It was a mercy killing.

Wabi's big contribution to Wine was giving impetus to the Wine project. Somewhere around here I have my Prime Time Freeware CD-ROM set, where I first saw mention of Wine. It was in a directory named "wabi". I remember thinking it was pretty rude to try to get mileage out of Sun's product name like that. Rather ironic now.

It is the Old Irons that has anything to lose by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-21 08:32 · Score: 0

Why should Solaris be afraid of OS/390? 10Yrs ago, the Fat Irons had 100% of the market, there is nowhere for Sun to go but up if they decides to enter it. Sun is only adding Mainframe features to solaris, allow it to penetrate deeper to the Dinosaur market.

Who wants to run a "ls" command and wait one week for the result to be ouputted in the datacenter 20 miles away? Those days are over.

As far as those nerds in your joint, they are your company's mistake for hiring them. Very likely due to most printers nowdays requiring a driver that only comes in 'doze 95 version.

I agree and disagree by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · 1999-09-20 22:30 · Score: 1

I'm well aware that the needs of the home market drive the supply of the business market, in fact, I said so in another thread.

My point is that it is the money of the business market that makes the cheap home market possible.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein

--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)

Sun, Linux, and the JFK assassination by Brandon+Hume · 1999-09-20 22:31 · Score: 3

Its very interesting reading the comments posted here. Most of them, overall, seem to be caught up in the same flow as the original article. Some seem intelligently placed. Some are just plain stupid.

1) "Sun just wants Linux to hurt Microsoft."

Well, there's only one thing that can be said to this... DUH! Does anyone really think that the Oracle, IBM, SGI, and anybody else are operating on any other motivation? Sun wants to sell Solaris. IBM wants to sell AIX.

Why is one more evil than another?

Was the UltraPenguin program faked? Sun got up, and declared Linux worthy. Was that a BAD thing to do? A lot of people were pleased when Sun did that, saying they were simply wise to do so... its interesting how fast people turn their coats.

Honestly... how many people run Linux without any concept of just what kind of OS is beneath their fingers and what it can do, but run it just because its not Microsoft? A fair number I think, because I run into these people every day.

2) "Sun will drop Linux as soon as it starts to threaten Slowlaris".

First off... Find something newer than "Slowlaris", its getting worn out.

Sun has been marketing Solaris x86 for a while now. They haven't turned against Linux over that yet. Secondly, Sun ships a copy of Solaris free with every Sun workstation. So, if a person gets their sparc and blows off Solaris, why should Sun care? They've done their duty.

Thirdly, I know this may shock some people, but some people LIKE Solaris, and they're not necessarily idiots for doing so. I like its filesystem layout. I like its driver model. I like how I don't need kernel headers to compile applications. I like its threading model, and its great SMP. I compared these to Linux (and other Unixes) equivalents, and I made a CHOICE. And generally I find that the people who like and use Solaris tend to KEEP liking and using Solaris.
I don't think Linux is going to erase Solaris from existence any time soon. Would you WANT it to? Isn't that what competition is about, even for free Unixes?

3) "Sun is trying to keep Linux down by not porting Java".

This is amazingly stupid. Sun IS helping port Java. The people complaining about it not being out yet seem to have no concept of just how complex and involved such a project IS. Java 1.2 exists from Blackdown, and they appear to be working on getting it passing the Java Compatibility Tests which Sun insists on. (And before someone starting griping about THAT, let me say that that's called being "fair". Sun stomped on MS for violating those tests, they can't very well turn around and let Linux get away without them, otherwise the conspiracy theorists will REALLY crawl out of the woodwork.)

So, if Java for Linux isn't moving fast enough for you, why not volunteer to help out with the project?

The rest of the comments, along with the article itself, appear to be just more FUD. Sun killed Wabi, the author is annoyed, and tries to spin off an anti-Linux conspiracy to make the zealots hurt Sun back. I don't think so. Linux is here to stay, Solaris isn't going to die anytime soon, Sun's actions have NOT been inconsistent, and the world continues to spin.
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

Re:Another insightful article concerning SUN's pla by Geekholder · 1999-09-21 08:36 · Score: 1

Yep, and now you know the real reason Bill Gates invested in Teledesic (a satellite communications company):

He needed to call in orbital strikes.

Death! To Scottie and the Sun Nazis! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-09-20 22:42 · Score: 0

Death to Oracle! Death to all those ASP out there, too!

Re: Are sigs copyrightable? by WillAffleck · 1999-09-20 22:45 · Score: 1

Yes, they can be either copyright (default in the US) or copyleft (include a GPL link in them).

But, if you copyright your sig, you have way too much time on your hands, IMHO.

--
Will in Seattle

Everybody is doing it. by Jeld · 1999-09-20 20:37 · Score: 2

What else would you expect. Every software ( and hardware too but to less extent ) manufacturer whants to hurt MS as much as they can. And it seems natural to use Linux for this purpose. Does it hurt Linux? No, because it get the commercial software and hardware support it desperately needs. Does it help Linux? Yes it does. For everybody start to say "Linux" where they used to say "Microsoft". Should OSS community be wary of this trend? Yes it should for corporations like Sun do not *really* care about OSS, but only about their own agendas. Let them help Linux beat MS, and we will see what comes next. If Sun tries to become second MS, IMHO it will only be another good challenge for Linux. Actually a much stronger challenge then the current one, for at least Sun makes decent software :)

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Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.

Sun has a right to be worried by asad · 1999-09-20 20:37 · Score: 1

If you have ever seen Linux on Sparc you would agree. Slowaris cann't compare to Linux on Sparc. For more info on Sparc Linux check out this link

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Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)

Umm, I though we new this.. by Ami+Ganguli · 1999-09-20 20:37 · Score: 2

This is a nice article, but I thought this stuff was pretty self-evident. I personally wish them the best of luck. They'll never be the next Microsoft, but maybe they can carve out a nice chunk of the market. I'd happily live in a world where I could choose between an MS desktop, a Linux desktop, or a Sun thin client and not give up basic functionality (like a decent speadsheet) no matter what I choose.

I do believe that Sun is seriously reducing their chances by not backing Linux, however. Home users will never buy the Sun solution (or at least it will be a LONG time). If they could get a significant percentage of home users hooked on StarOffice they would stand a much better chance of getting StarPortal into the workplace. Linux is their best hope of getting StarOffice into the home.

Instead, low-end home users will end up using Gnome Office apps or KOffice. Higher-end home users will buy WordPerfect Suite. The StarOffice user base will dry up and they'll have an uphill battle convincing companies to adopt StarPortal.

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It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow

Ray + PCX2... by Hobbex · 1999-09-20 20:38 · Score: 3

Firstly, the PC isn't much of games station itself any more. The PCs CPUs are so unfitting for modern 3D games that more and more of the load is being moved off the processor and onto the accelerator cards every day. Witness the new Nvidia card with the funny name, which does every part of the graphics processing from geometry setup and on. Gamers also invest in dedicated games soundcards, also equiped with their own chips for sound processing. Gamers regularly keep their games on a seperate harddrive, and besides OS I can't remember a single reason to have a CD-rom drive in my machine.

The most important aspect the games usage of my pc shares with the pc usage is the interface, and lets face it, besides the mouse and quake, the pc interface is far from ideal for gaming.

On the flip side however, combining one of Sun's dumb clients like the Ray with a next generation games console like the Playstation 2 seems like a very realistic idea. The only thing they are really missing is a good Internet connection (I can't imagine remote running applications over a modem like the dreamcast), and support for a monitor besides the TV.

I would say that this is a MORE natural marriage then that of the PC and the games station, which is quickly converging into two machines in one box.

(I have always hated consoles and their stupid single player games, btw. This is not console vs pc gaming post.)

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/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

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Is Sun Truly A Friend of Linux?

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