bruce.armstrong wrote: Somebody just said it better than I did, and with more chops to say it:
Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg & Facebook Mobile
Scott McNealy one famously said, "We're down to three" - a reference to the fact that the enterprise software world was now a race with only three horses, his own company Sun Microsystems, Sun's arch-rival IBM, and then the 600-pound gorilla of Redmond, Microsoft.
McNealy's No. 2, Jonathan Schwartz, has had a similar epiphany it seems. Only in Schwartz's case, it's down not to three companies but to three operating systems: Windows, Linux...and Sun's own industrial-strength OS, Solaris, which it is today declaring free to download for commercial use
It's the "Sun's own" part of the Solaris equation that Schwartz and his team is committed to changing - convinced by the recent and growing success of Linux against Windows that open-sourcing Solaris is the best way to assure its long-term success as an alternate OS.
In response to questions raised by the Linux community as to how, with the "Java desktop system" (JDS) - that Sun reminds everyone in every press release is Linux-based - Sun expects to ride both the Linux and the Solaris horse at the same time without falling off, Schwartz last week blogged the following explanation:
"In addition to JDS/linux, yes, we are committed to JDS/Solaris. An open source Solaris, with its security and virtualization infrastructure, is a perfect match for JDS."
He continued:
"And as Red Hat's rhetoric continues to alienate customers and the open source community, we're finding a welcome audience for bringing an open source Solaris 10 to new markets. Competition is a good thing for the open source movement. Those who truly believe in open source welcome competition - those hiding behind marketing veneer and vendor lock-in hate it."
Refuting as "plain wrong" any suggestion that Sun isn't yet in a position to fully open-source Solaris due to licensing restrictions on some of the IP behind Solaris 10, Schwartz in the same blog suggested that such talk emanates only from folk who "stoop to parroting IBM."
Rather than stooping to parroting IBM, LinuxWorld News Desk hastens to parrot Sun's John Loiacono, who succeeded Schwartz as Sun's EVP, Software and therefore must be considered to be a source less likely to draw fire from "Jonathan's Blog."
"The reason that people talk about operating systems so much is that the operating system is a means to a lower-cost deployment, meaning that it runs on low-cost x86 hardware," Lioacono explained.
"When Sun didn't have low-cost x86 hardware, it was hard to have that conversation with customers. We now have that. We were behind in getting to Xeon. We caught up and now we are leaders offering Opteron 1-, 2-, and 4-way. In fact, Sun has committed to going beyond 4-way on Opteron. We're trying to say to customers that the things that they believe are valuable - open source, price, etc. we are going to address."
"There is a technology available in Solaris, Janus, coming out in Solaris 10 that allows customers to run Linux applications, unmodified, no recompiling," Lioacono pointed out. "Janus allows customers to run their Linux applications at no additional charge. If you want to take advantage of container technology, the dynamic tracing capability, the new networking stack, the security features, and you have some Linux applications that you want to run, then you can run them on Solaris/x86 at near native performance."
Loiacono wanted no doubt left in anyone's mind: "My intent is that we need to bring Linux and Solaris together more rather than bash or trash one or the other."
About Linux News Desk SYS-CON's Linux News Desk gathers stories, analysis, and information from around the Linux world and synthesizes them into an easy to digest format for IT/IS managers and other business decision-makers.
Reader Feedback: Page 1 of 2
#29
Emil Per. commented on 24 Nov 2004
Is it true that Sun is making most of its money from selling hardware? If this is true, then I guess it's in their best interest to copyleft what can be copylefted from Solaris, merge it with Linux, have one of the best operating systems on the market and move as much money as possible from software development to hardware design.
I began understanding computers while using a Solaris, have been tutored by the admin of a Solaris network during my first steps in Linux, Sun is a great contributor to FOSS, and I think it is a pitty that this exchange of flames is going on. I suspect that the Linux vs. Solaris bashing is just the result of a power struggle inside Sun and shouldn't have happened: both Linux vendors and Sun are going to lose from it.
After all, there is plenty of market space for Unices to grow into ;-)
#28
Lorenzo Jimenez commented on 19 Nov 2004
Way to go SUN!!
The problem with some Linux fans is that Sun has the stamina to develop a system that can me much better than Linux in less time and more secure that any other Linux provider.
Why the Linux fans afraid?
Their retorica is all about MS hating.
Innovation needs fuel and SUN is building Solaris to give Enterprises choice, standards, power and security.
Does Linux really has that capability?
Welcome Solaris!!
#27
Decaff commented on 16 Nov 2004
Sun is not competing with Linux. They are competing with commercial Linux vendors selling support e.g. RedHat. Sun sells Linux, and provides commercial and free products that run on Linux (e.g. Java)
#26
Kamau Osaze commented on 15 Nov 2004
Red Hat is one of the older Linux destroys and Sun has bee anti-Linux as long as there has been a Red Hat. Sun intention is to turn the Linux folks against Red Hat, which will never happen.
Furthermore, Sun is now allied to Microsoft and with MS paying SCO over $16M for Unix license MS will soon be doing the same as Sun; running Linux Software on Windows.
However, there is only Love in the Linux community whereas there much indifference and rivalry in the Commercial Arena. Love will always win out over everything else because unconditional Love will destroy everything that is not Love because Love is the greatest thing in the world.
Companies like MS are the reason why Capitalism will fail because they try to kill all small businesses, which are the real back bone of any Capitalist society.
Monopolies and Democratic/Capitalism are not conducive to the extended life of any country or way of life. One only need to look at the fact the American worker is making less money and are forced to buy legions of goods produced not by Americans but by Americans corporations in foreign countries.
We have to be careful when our businessmen are International businessmen because this type only care about money and has no love for the peoples of any country including the country of his or her birth.
I could go on and on; however, I will close with the fact that FOSS is here to stay and the only people who will seek to kill it are Judges and politicians who buy stocks in monopolistic corporations.
These folks should always remember when they are dead and gone they will be leaving children and grandchildren therefore it is not a good thing to force their offsprings to pay their debts.
#25
mike commented on 15 Nov 2004
For companies already running Solaris systems, this may seem like a real boon; free upgrades with new features. To anyone else, what would be the point? If you're a Mickeysoft shop, the switch to Solaris would be no different than Novell, Redhat or some in-house configuration; you would still have to R&D all your apps on a *nix system. For anyone running Linux already; you've already moved to a free system, paid the cost of R&D, moved your apps, etc - what would you have to gain? I just don't see how this will help Sun at all, except again, for people already running Solaris.
#24
Safe Bet commented on 15 Nov 2004
Schwartz hasn't put a foot wrong yet - if he reckons $0 for Solaris is what'll turn Sun round, I'm betting he's right.
#23
SCOoooo commented on 15 Nov 2004
Sun paid SCO $9.3 million to license UNIX for Solaris - I wonder how that fits the "Happy Families" scenario? That probably has kept SCO's anti-Linux FUD machinery going for months longer than it might otherwise have done.
I wonder what SCO says to this, seeing as how Solaris, like AIX, is a unix derivative. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to litigate (why not? how else do we make money around here?), and they may actually have a more substantial case than that against IBM, as this time it would be the actual unix-based product in question rather than something else that may or may not have derived benefit from it.
#21
Konster commented on 15 Nov 2004
Free as in Free From Market Relevance.
Free as in Free from an Audience That Cares.
Free as in...free, this might have mattered in 1991, but in 2004, free no longer counts.
Free features that have seen little development time versus ... a decades' worth of mega development in all aspects from the kernel to the GUI.
We have been free for a decade, and our progress shows that.
Now that Solaris is free, let the revolution begin!
Let Solaris matter once more! Let!
Let? Let people who still develop for this platform breathe a sigh of relief.
Let the rest of us embrace Linux, not because we are paid to, but because it is free, and has been since day 1.
And day one was a long long time ago. Free, free indeed.
#20
Sun Groupie commented on 15 Nov 2004
Dont let all the haters bum you out. Solaris under an open source license is pretty awesome any way you put it. Very cool Sun!
#19
Solaris Terms commented on 15 Nov 2004
Free as in beer does not always equate with free as in speech.
#18
Daniel Wallace commented on 15 Nov 2004
>"There is a technology available in Solaris, Janus,
>coming out in Solaris 10 that allows customers to run
>Linux applications, unmodified, no recompiling,"
Solaris 10 won't be GPL'd. Ayatollah Kameni will
convert to Judaism before that happens. How's this
technology going to be incorporated into Solaris 10?
There will be a similar "Janus" technology in
Micro$oft's Longhorn that allows customers to run
Linux applications, unmodified, no recompiling.
So... think about it FOSS folks.
Daniel Wallace
#17
rocjoe71 commented on 15 Nov 2004
So are there people out there really chomping-at-the-bit to do Solaris open-source projects?
I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just curious to know what sort of a gap Linux/BSD left behind that Sun felt the need to fill...
#16
NewMover commented on 15 Nov 2004
Despite Solaris's availability on myriad platforms, we haven't seen Solaris migrations pushing down the floodgates. Maybe this will do the trick.
#15
Solseeker commented on 15 Nov 2004
I wish Sun the best of luck with this. They've spent tons of $$$ on Solaris and it deserves to succeed. Linux isn't going to disappear overnight because Solaris has become free too.
Emil Per. wrote: Is it true that Sun is making most of its money from selling hardware? If this is true, then I guess it's in their best interest to copyleft what can be copylefted from Solaris, merge it with Linux, have one of the best operating systems on the market and move as much money as possible from software development to hardware design.
I began understanding computers while using a Solaris, have been tutored by the admin of a Solaris network during my first steps in Linux, Sun is a great contributor to FOSS, and I think it is a pitty that this exchange of flames is going on. I suspect that the Linux vs. Solaris bashing is just the result of a power struggle inside Sun and shouldn't have happened: both Linux vendors and Sun are going to lose from it.
After all, there is plenty of market space for Unices to grow into ;-)
Lorenzo Jimenez wrote: Way to go SUN!!
The problem with some Linux fans is that Sun has the stamina to develop a system that can me much better than Linux in less time and more secure that any other Linux provider.
Why the Linux fans afraid?
Their retorica is all about MS hating.
Innovation needs fuel and SUN is building Solaris to give Enterprises choice, standards, power and security.
Does Linux really has that capability?
Welcome Solaris!!
Decaff wrote: Sun is not competing with Linux. They are competing with commercial Linux vendors selling support e.g. RedHat. Sun sells Linux, and provides commercial and free products that run on Linux (e.g. Java)
Kamau Osaze wrote: Red Hat is one of the older Linux destroys and Sun has bee anti-Linux as long as there has been a Red Hat. Sun intention is to turn the Linux folks against Red Hat, which will never happen.
Furthermore, Sun is now allied to Microsoft and with MS paying SCO over $16M for Unix license MS will soon be doing the same as Sun; running Linux Software on Windows.
However, there is only Love in the Linux community whereas there much indifference and rivalry in the Commercial Arena. Love will always win out over everything else because unconditional Love will destroy everything that is not Love because Love is the greatest thing in the world.
Companies like MS are the reason why Capitalism will fail because they try to kill all small businesses, which are the real back bone of any Capitalist society.
Monopolies and Democratic/Capitalism are not conducive to the extended life of any co...
mike wrote: For companies already running Solaris systems, this may seem like a real boon; free upgrades with new features. To anyone else, what would be the point? If you're a Mickeysoft shop, the switch to Solaris would be no different than Novell, Redhat or some in-house configuration; you would still have to R&D all your apps on a *nix system. For anyone running Linux already; you've already moved to a free system, paid the cost of R&D, moved your apps, etc - what would you have to gain? I just don't see how this will help Sun at all, except again, for people already running Solaris.
SCOoooo wrote: Sun paid SCO $9.3 million to license UNIX for Solaris - I wonder how that fits the "Happy Families" scenario? That probably has kept SCO's anti-Linux FUD machinery going for months longer than it might otherwise have done.
blackr0se wrote: I wonder what SCO says to this, seeing as how Solaris, like AIX, is a unix derivative. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to litigate (why not? how else do we make money around here?), and they may actually have a more substantial case than that against IBM, as this time it would be the actual unix-based product in question rather than something else that may or may not have derived benefit from it.
Konster wrote: Free as in Free From Market Relevance.
Free as in Free from an Audience That Cares.
Free as in...free, this might have mattered in 1991, but in 2004, free no longer counts.
Free features that have seen little development time versus ... a decades' worth of mega development in all aspects from the kernel to the GUI.
We have been free for a decade, and our progress shows that.
Now that Solaris is free, let the revolution begin!
Let Solaris matter once more! Let!
Let? Let people who still develop for this platform breathe a sigh of relief.
Let the rest of us embrace Linux, not because we are paid to, but because it is free, and has been since day 1.
And day one was a long long time ago. Free, free indeed.
Daniel Wallace wrote: >"There is a technology available in Solaris, Janus,
>coming out in Solaris 10 that allows customers to run
>Linux applications, unmodified, no recompiling,"
Solaris 10 won't be GPL'd. Ayatollah Kameni will
convert to Judaism before that happens. How's this
technology going to be incorporated into Solaris 10?
There will be a similar "Janus" technology in
Micro$oft's Longhorn that allows customers to run
Linux applications, unmodified, no recompiling.
So... think about it FOSS folks.
Daniel Wallace
rocjoe71 wrote: So are there people out there really chomping-at-the-bit to do Solaris open-source projects?
I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just curious to know what sort of a gap Linux/BSD left behind that Sun felt the need to fill...
NewMover wrote: Despite Solaris's availability on myriad platforms, we haven't seen Solaris migrations pushing down the floodgates. Maybe this will do the trick.
Solseeker wrote: I wish Sun the best of luck with this. They've spent tons of $$$ on Solaris and it deserves to succeed. Linux isn't going to disappear overnight because Solaris has become free too.
FreeSchmee wrote: So let me get this right. Anyone who registers with Sun will be able to use Solaris for free on servers with x86 processors. Sun will provide security updates in the free version but will charge an annual subscription fee for bug fixes and support. And this is free in what sense?
gregarican wrote: I believe that Sun is trying to adapt to a changing environment to keep their collective heads above water. Much akin to Novell's migration toward SUSE and all of the Linux inclusions in their new services.
If most **experts** view Linux as the most serious threat to Microsoft these former big players are trying to grab a life preserver. Hopefully they can help elevate and improve what they are latching onto, however. If not then things will get more fragmented and more financially endangered in the end.
Thomas Miconi wrote: I mean its not like Sun didn't earn Linux user's scorn will the BS they've put out about Linux over the years.
Like funding GNOME and opening StarOffice ??
I guess Linux could do with more "bashing" of that kind !
bogie wrote: Its not like Sun didn't earn every Linux user's scorn with the BS they've put out about Linux over the years. Should Linux users be grateful? Fine. Should they like Sun after all of the Linux bashing? Why would they?
Navigating the complex web of regulatory and compliance requirements related to the processing and storage of sensitive enterprise data in the cloud is a huge challenge for business. The cloud is borderless – so how do you cover your business risk and security requirements when y...
As a Bronze Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, HP is offering special passes to SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
HP is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries a...
The latest generation of cloud computing is now capable of addressing the needs of the enterprise mission-critical applications. These applications require computing infrastructure that is secure, optimizes performance, and is highly resilient.
In his Opening Keynote at the 10t...
The convergence of cloud and mobile trends has created demanding new challenges for IT departments to support global users accessing applications from many different devices. In addition, as more mission-critical applications are deployed to the cloud, sensitive data must be prot...
As an exhibitor at Cloud Expo New York, AT&T is offering special passes to SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
AT&T Inc. is a premier communications holding company and one of the mo...
About Newsfeeds / Video Feeds
.gif)
Navigating the complex web of regulatory and compliance requirements related to the processing and storage of sensitive enterprise data in the cloud is a huge challenge for business. The cloud is borderless – so how do you cover your business risk and security requirements when y...
As a Bronze Sponsor of Cloud Expo New York, HP is offering special passes to SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
HP is a technology company that operates in more than 170 countries a...
The latest generation of cloud computing is now capable of addressing the needs of the enterprise mission-critical applications. These applications require computing infrastructure that is secure, optimizes performance, and is highly resilient.
In his Opening Keynote at the 10t...
The convergence of cloud and mobile trends has created demanding new challenges for IT departments to support global users accessing applications from many different devices. In addition, as more mission-critical applications are deployed to the cloud, sensitive data must be prot...
As an exhibitor at Cloud Expo New York, AT&T is offering special passes to SYS-CON's 10th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 11–14, 2012, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
AT&T Inc. is a premier communications holding company and one of the mo...
