SGI is selling 512-processor boxes to the Gov't. and sub-contractors. And no, I do *not* mean clusters, I mean boxes. Meanwhile, there is progress on hot-swap CPU and RAM.
Err getting an embarassingly parallel (hand up if you don't know what that means) workload to scale is rather different than getting a mixed workload to scale.
Almost anything can to the former, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, Windows. A much smaller subset reliably scales with the latter and Linux aint one of the members of that Subset.
Just to hammer this point home, the only mixed load commercial type workload test that SGI have ever published for the Altix 3000 (which you think can scale to hundreds olf CPU's) scaled to 13x throughput when you went from 1-28 CPU's and trust me thats terrible.
I despair at how badly Sun has botched strategy at every point in the entire OpenOffice saga. I spent a large part of Tuesday talking with two Sun representatives. They admit the strategic botches, and unfortunately they have so much trouble getting Sun's front office to listen that they are not able to prevent similar botches going forward.
You despair but seem unwilling to explain what these botches actually are or how they manifest themselves.
Speaking as a long time user of both StarOffice pre the Sun purchase and OpenOffice now that it is OpenSource I am extremely happy with the progress that has been made. In my opinion it is by far in away the best alternative to MS office currently on the market. OpenOffice is also a dramatically better tool than the pre-opensource StarOffice.
If this is the result of a botched OpenSource program then it doesn't say much for other programs I could mention that have significantly failed to deliver the same levels of benefits to the OpenSource community as OpenOffice has.
I really don't care who develops the code providing it is OpenSource, in the same way that I really don't care who develops my Kernel. If Solaris 10 x86 ends up being buildable from OpenSource which I fully expect it to be then I will consider it on equal footing with Linux.
I am fully aware that many Linux advocates consider Solaris particularly OpenSource Solaris to be a significant threat to Linux and they should do Solaris 10 is impressive. However none of this threat translates into any increase in threat to OpenSource itself and to claim it does is simply an attempt by the pro Linux lobby to wrap themselves in the OpenSource flag.
This is the second time that someone attempting to do PR for Sun in this thread has mentoned a magazine award as proof of the quality of the OpenOffice community.
Hardly Sun PR more boredom on my part when yet another Linux advocate wraps themselves in the OpenSource flag and then tries to suggest that Sun having a pop at Red Hat or not fully supporting Linux represents an all out assault by Sun on OpenSource.
Although in this case it's not even a magazine, just a weblog.
LinuxUser and developer is a magazine not a weblog.
And like the last time, the award did not attempt to judge the quality of the community and so does not back up your assertion. And in any case you should know that magazine awards are made to get publicity for the magazine, and there's no sense reading much deep meaning into them.
Odd you have sat on panels constituted to hand out the same magazine awards that you suggest are just media publicity vehicules ! Why ?
And lets just examine your claim that there are flaws in the OpenOffice program.
Firstly OpenOffice actually represents the largest single donation of code to the OpenSource community, in itself dwarfing all the donations made by IBM, HP and SGI companies held out as exemplars in comparison to Sun.
Had you forgotten that Sun bought Star Division and then released almost their entire code base.
Is it also suprising that most of the developers of OpenOffice are from Sun ? They are the people Sun aquired when the aquired Star Divsion. Or did you expect Sun to make half of them redundant in order to engender more community participation in OpenOffice (how funny).
So what have Sun done apart from sacking half their OpenOffice developers ? Well the Engineering Council does not have a majority of Sun personnel, programmers from Debian, Red Hat and Novell aka SuSE aka Ximain are also working on the project, the Ximian folks for example did the Gnome/Evolution integration.
Secondly there are large numbers of community reviewers and testers with timely response to their RFE's.
Finally OpenOffice is actually a finished product, it really does work, it isn't on a.9 release and it is highly usable. Contrast this with the sucess of Wine also attempting to provide compatibility though of a different type with MS products.
The hugely amusing thing about this discussion is that even of you take Linux itself Sun is the largest commercial contributor of code.
Forget IBM and SGI with their hardware ports and their eminently subsitutable fileystems, forget the HP Itanium port instead concentrate on the basic plumbing which Sun did boring but hugely usefull.
I agree, their participation so far appears to be cynical and they seem to intend to operate as a "spoiler", fragmenting the Open Source community rather than supporting it. Otherwise, we would see them dual-licensing with CDDL and GPL, and their patents wouldn't be barred from use in Linux.
Odd the last time anyone counted more source in Red Hat had been donated by Sun under GPL or a GPL compatible licence than any other commercial company. I don't know how that squares with your claim that Sun is actively fragmenting the Open Source community but it certainly doesn't help.
My point is that Sun has not been successful in building much of an outside developer community, for what should be the second most important software program in all of Open Source software, behind only the kernel. Of the people participating, a good many are Sun contractors, etc. And it's difficult to find very many volunteers.
Says who exactly. 50% of the project leads on OpenOffice.org do not work for Sun.
In addition there is a very large community of reviewers and testers who don't work for Sun.
Finally OpenOffice.org has won a number of awards for the quality of the SW it has produced and in addition the quality of the OpenSource program itself.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/11244/
Refers to a recent award not for the quality of OpenOffice but for the OpenSource project itself
Care to explain what leads you to your conclusion when all the facts tend to suggest the opposite.
>Don't say stuff like that before you even understand what I am talking about.
>My point is that Sun has not been successful in building much of an outside developer community, for what should be the second most important software program in all of Open Source software, behind only the kernel. Of the people participating, a good many are Sun contractors, etc. And it's difficult to find very many volunteers.
Says who exactly. 50% of the project leads on OpenOffice.org do not work for Sun. In addition there is a very large community of reviewers and testers who don't work for Sun.
Finally OpenOffice.org has won a number of awards for the quality of the SW it has produced and in addition the quality of the OpenSource program itself.
Refers to a recent award not for the quality of OpenOffice but for the OpenSource project itself
Care to explain what leads you to your conclusion when all the facts tend to suggest the opposite.
Slashdot Mirror
SGI is selling 512-processor boxes to the Gov't. and sub-contractors. And no, I do *not* mean clusters, I mean boxes. Meanwhile, there is progress on hot-swap CPU and RAM.
Err getting an embarassingly parallel (hand up if you don't know what that means) workload to scale is rather different than getting a mixed workload to scale.
Almost anything can to the former, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, Windows. A much smaller subset reliably scales with the latter and Linux aint one of the members of that Subset.
Just to hammer this point home, the only mixed load commercial type workload test that SGI have ever published for the Altix 3000 (which you think can scale to hundreds olf CPU's) scaled to 13x throughput when you went from 1-28 CPU's and trust me thats terrible.
I despair at how badly Sun has botched strategy at every point in the entire OpenOffice saga. I spent a large part of Tuesday talking with two Sun representatives. They admit the strategic botches, and unfortunately they have so much trouble getting Sun's front office to listen that they are not able to prevent similar botches going forward.
You despair but seem unwilling to explain what these botches actually are or how they manifest themselves.
Speaking as a long time user of both StarOffice pre the Sun purchase and OpenOffice now that it is OpenSource I am extremely happy with the progress that has been made. In my opinion it is by far in away the best alternative to MS office currently on the market. OpenOffice is also a dramatically better tool than the pre-opensource StarOffice.
If this is the result of a botched OpenSource program then it doesn't say much for other programs I could mention that have significantly failed to deliver the same levels of benefits to the OpenSource community as OpenOffice has.
I really don't care who develops the code providing it is OpenSource, in the same way that I really don't care who develops my Kernel. If Solaris 10 x86 ends up being buildable from OpenSource which I fully expect it to be then I will consider it on equal footing with Linux.
I am fully aware that many Linux advocates consider Solaris particularly OpenSource Solaris to be a significant threat to Linux and they should do Solaris 10 is impressive. However none of this threat translates into any increase in threat to OpenSource itself and to claim it does is simply an attempt by the pro Linux lobby to wrap themselves in the OpenSource flag.
This is the second time that someone attempting to do PR for Sun in this thread has mentoned a magazine award as proof of the quality of the OpenOffice community.
.9 release and it is highly usable. Contrast this with the sucess of Wine also attempting to provide compatibility though of a different type with MS products.
Hardly Sun PR more boredom on my part when yet another Linux advocate wraps themselves in the OpenSource flag and then tries to suggest that Sun having a pop at Red Hat or not fully supporting Linux represents an all out assault by Sun on OpenSource.
Although in this case it's not even a magazine, just a weblog.
LinuxUser and developer is a magazine not a weblog.
And like the last time, the award did not attempt to judge the quality of the community and so does not back up your assertion. And in any case you should know that magazine awards are made to get publicity for the magazine, and there's no sense reading much deep meaning into them.
Odd you have sat on panels constituted to hand out the same magazine awards that you suggest are just media publicity vehicules ! Why ?
And lets just examine your claim that there are flaws in the OpenOffice program.
Firstly OpenOffice actually represents the largest single donation of code to the OpenSource community, in itself dwarfing all the donations made by IBM, HP and SGI companies held out as exemplars in comparison to Sun.
Had you forgotten that Sun bought Star Division and then released almost their entire code base.
Is it also suprising that most of the developers of OpenOffice are from Sun ? They are the people Sun aquired when the aquired Star Divsion. Or did you expect Sun to make half of them redundant in order to engender more community participation in OpenOffice (how funny).
So what have Sun done apart from sacking half their OpenOffice developers ? Well the Engineering Council does not have a majority of Sun personnel, programmers from Debian, Red Hat and Novell aka SuSE aka Ximain are also working on the project, the Ximian folks for example did the Gnome/Evolution integration.
Secondly there are large numbers of community reviewers and testers with timely response to their RFE's.
Finally OpenOffice is actually a finished product, it really does work, it isn't on a
The hugely amusing thing about this discussion is that even of you take Linux itself Sun is the largest commercial contributor of code.
Forget IBM and SGI with their hardware ports and their eminently subsitutable fileystems, forget the HP Itanium port instead concentrate on the basic plumbing which Sun did boring but hugely usefull.
I agree, their participation so far appears to be cynical and they seem to intend to operate as a "spoiler", fragmenting the Open Source community rather than supporting it. Otherwise, we would see them dual-licensing with CDDL and GPL, and their patents wouldn't be barred from use in Linux.
Odd the last time anyone counted more source in Red Hat had been donated by Sun under GPL or a GPL compatible licence than any other commercial company. I don't know how that squares with your claim that Sun is actively fragmenting the Open Source community but it certainly doesn't help.
My point is that Sun has not been successful in building much of an outside developer community, for what should be the second most important software program in all of Open Source software, behind only the kernel. Of the people participating, a good many are Sun contractors, etc. And it's difficult to find very many volunteers. Says who exactly. 50% of the project leads on OpenOffice.org do not work for Sun. In addition there is a very large community of reviewers and testers who don't work for Sun. Finally OpenOffice.org has won a number of awards for the quality of the SW it has produced and in addition the quality of the OpenSource program itself. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/11244/ Refers to a recent award not for the quality of OpenOffice but for the OpenSource project itself Care to explain what leads you to your conclusion when all the facts tend to suggest the opposite.
>Don't say stuff like that before you even understand what I am talking about. >My point is that Sun has not been successful in building much of an outside developer community, for what should be the second most important software program in all of Open Source software, behind only the kernel. Of the people participating, a good many are Sun contractors, etc. And it's difficult to find very many volunteers. Says who exactly. 50% of the project leads on OpenOffice.org do not work for Sun. In addition there is a very large community of reviewers and testers who don't work for Sun. Finally OpenOffice.org has won a number of awards for the quality of the SW it has produced and in addition the quality of the OpenSource program itself. Refers to a recent award not for the quality of OpenOffice but for the OpenSource project itself Care to explain what leads you to your conclusion when all the facts tend to suggest the opposite.