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Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Is it too little too late?

I read several articles recently about Sun's efforts to promote OpenSolaris and build a credible rival to Linux. Sun's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz often claims on his Blog (and elsewhere) Sun's position as the #1 contributor in open source: "Sun is by far the single largest contributor to the open source marketplace, having recently dwarfed even UC Berkeley's contributions". Sun has also added Roy Fielding, a founder of the successful open-source Apache Software Foundation, as the 5th member of the OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board.

In an open letter to IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano, Sun's COO touts Solaris 10 as the best Operating System out there offering incredible opportunities for IBM's business. It may be true but I cannot blame IBM for betting on Linux even after the news about OpenSolaris came out. Linux might not be the best OS out there (it's getting there fast), but there is a huge momentum behind it and a ton of IT organizations using it on cheap machines. You cannot reverse all this even when you're Sun by simply announcing that you are open sourcing "the most secure OS the world has ever seen".

I may be wrong but I think it's too little too late and I even wonder if Sun’s move serves the Operating System open source community. It was doing just fine focusing its resources on the thriving Linux, sometimes more is less. Somebody must be happy up in Redmond.

posted by Omar Tazi at 12:35 PM
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27 Comments:

  • Frankly I'm happy to have another choice than dealing with Red Hat's crappy quality. The only reason we're looking at Solaris is because of it... more choice is a good. The only folks who don't think so work at a competitor that doesn't like competition.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:32 PM  

  • I appreciate your opinion; I happen to agree that choice is good. By the way RedHat is not the only commercial Linux vendor out there. I am not against more people working hard and innovating to make Linux more user friendly (especially on the Desktop side) and provide us with more choices but I am not sure throwing a completely different OS (such as Solaris) as good as it may be serves the interests of the OSS community.

    By Blogger Omar Tazi, at 7:34 PM  

  • I guess I don't see Solaris as a "completely different OS." We've got about 1,000 boxes running it today, and Red Hat on about 100 Intel boxes. And we're ditching Red Hat to go back to Solaris on the Intel boxen. As I see it, Sun just put a little pressure on the linux community to improve faster - and they used a totally cool license (that I don't have to go worrying about exposing internal code to). That more than anything serves the OSS community.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:12 PM  

  • Thanks for your comments. I am sorry but I still think Sun's move is: too little too late. It looks very much like a desperate move to sell Sun hardware (the only thing they have ever been able to sell). In your case they are not going to sell any hardware (short term) because you are using Solaris on a 100 PCs...

    BTW, there is more choice in the Open Source operating system space: Apple’s Darwin. Darwin is the core operating system of Apple Computer's Mac OS X, and runs on an open source kernel called XNU. Apple on the other hand is really selling a ton of hardware. I see Apple notebooks and desktop everywhere now and I even see their servers occasionally.

    By Blogger Omar Tazi, at 9:14 AM  

  • I think that only time will tell what the strategy of open sourcing Solaris will yield for Sun. On the other hand there is little doubt that there is value in Sun's operating system. Now it would be good to see a detailed comparison of what OpenSolaris offers that Linux doesn't, and the other way around. If I was making a decision on an open source OS, I would certainly welcome such a comparison, which would also help me assess the potential for success of OpenSolaris.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:53 AM  

  • Erik, history has taught us that the success of a product or project has not been driven by the features or the quality of a product (or project in the case of open source). There are so many examples of better products dying while their competitors go on to become very successful. I am also curious to see the feature comparison but the result of the OpenSolaris vs. Linux war will not necessarily depend on which one presents better features. The truth is Linux has already crossed the chasm (which is a very tough accomplishment). But you are right, time will tell.

    By Blogger Omar Tazi, at 1:06 PM  

  • Sure, but if Solaris hypothetically didn't have any compelling feature or other aspect that Linux has, then I would be convinced that it would be very unlikely to go anywhere. So this comparison still says something bout the chances of OpenSolaris.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:21 AM  

  • zones, dTrace, whip fast performance on networking, AMP runs awesome... what's not to love. Red Hat's going bye bye from our shop, too (and other than those two, the only other choice was Windoze).

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:43 AM  

  • Do you deny the global Solaris market already exists and has for decades? Do you deny all the obvious innovations in Solaris 10? Do you deny the more than 1 million registered systems downloaded from sun.com since S10 shipped just a couple of months ago? Do you deny that the Solaris market is currently migrating to a community model and not only wants access to the Solaris source but also wants to contribute to Solaris development? Do you deny that Sun and our customers, partners, developers, and system administrators will all benefit from OpenSolaris and that collaboration will make a better product?

    Just what are we doing that is "too little" and what is that "too late" for? We are building a community of Solaris developers, Solaris system administrators, and Solaris users around the Solaris platform. They already exist, actually, and the timing is perfect.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:55 PM  

  • I can only take my developers word for it... Solaris is awesome according to him. Apparently he switched his laptop from Linux to Solaris, and loves it! Dtrace is such a feature that he informs me that other developers are using Solaris to develop apps and the go to production on Linux, only because some CTO decided to go with Linux. Not long before the CTO should get the picture, it's cheaper and well... my developers use it. I bet you would have said "too little too late" about Apple a few years back... odd seems like you REALLY like them now. Bet you wish you would have grabbed some stock during the Apple slump. : ) Too much going on at Sun to count them or Solaris 10 out in my opinion.

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