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I think the correct term here would be neither fork nor work but port.

I think this sort of answers it:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB...

"<u>Is your business model similar to the ones at mainstream open-source vendors, such as Red Hat?</u> In a sense, but not completely. We believe software should be free to anyone. If you want to buy a support contract, it is there for you. [But] there is no premium version [of Ubuntu] that costs money. We're also happy for you to get support from someone besides us. We list companies on our site that provide that -- we're up to 200 around the world. Some customers buy support just from [another] firm, others buy it with escalation support from Canonical. That way, a local company will provide front-line support. But for really hard problems, they can escalate trouble tickets back up to us."

Basically, I'm guessing that Sun will produce a customized version of Ubuntu with Sun branding (Canonical has spent a lot of effort towards making Ubuntu custom OEM friendly) and will support Niagara specific problems relating to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu will handle the Ubuntu-specific issues.

Does anyone have any more info to confirm or deny this theory?

> I'm guessing that Sun will produce a customized version of Ubuntu with Sun branding

I guess not.

The most valuable asset (in terms of marketing) of Ubuntu is the "Ubuntu" name (besides GNU/Linux, obviously).
Why bother with a new Sun brand? Just like not many people know "Canonical".

Basically, I'm guessing that Sun will produce a customized version of Ubuntu with Sun branding (Canonical has spent a lot of effort towards making Ubuntu custom OEM friendly) and will support Niagara specific problems relating to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu will handle the Ubuntu-specific issues.

Sun will not be releasing a ubuntu version for the T2000/T1000 or any other piece of hardware. They are focusing on solaris/OpenSolaris. Sure marketing will drop a T2000 in the lap of David Miller to perk his interest in porting linux to the chip, how much advertising did that one $27,000 piece of hardware generate? I would guess currently its equal about $500,000 in tradinal ad dollars and growing about $50,000 a day that it gets featured on osnews.com. slashdot.org, etc.

Sun will even encorage there T1000/T2000 engineers to give time to the Linux porting effort, #1 its good PR, #2 when there is competition there is improvement. The current stance at Sun is AnyOS that is faster than Solaris on the same hardware is a top priority bug we need to fix it.

Wow.. you have absolutly no idea what you are talking about. Impressive.
.adam.

I wish I was able to ethically mod you down for paranoia, but that's not on the list of reasons and I'm not overly inclined to lie.

Ah well. Linux users/devels see Ubuntu going down hill they will jump to another distro. Debian, Mandrake, Suse, Slack, Gentoo - whatever.

Or, they can (using the term a bit more correctly) FORK it and start their own community based distro. Ubuntu dies or waivers and shrinks. New distros rise up.

That's why we call it Freedom. Because if it does happen, it's crap we just don't need to deal with the same way we'd need to deal with something proprietary. It's community or die. Maybe they can go the way of Red Hat and survive on business alone. Dunno. Stop with the conspiracy theories already, it's not that bad

Stop with the conspiracy theories already, it's not that bad

Well they say all paranoia is half true More likely I put it badly. It is not a question of a conspiracy wich requires some kind of premeditated plan. The point is that Sun don't seem to have a plan. Sun chop and change the whole time and we've been here before with their Linux endorsements. What was it, 100,000 or maybe half a million Sun Java Linux desktops for Indonesia? Never heard of again: all hands sunk without trace. Next year Sun are perfectly capable of completely changing their Linux stance the day after announcing, say, 16 million Sun Ubuntu desktops on Sun hardware for the Inuit.

So yes, for a Linux distro to treat with Sun is pretty lightweight and risky. Definately slippery. You are dealing with people grasping at straws, and like drowning men if you get too close they may take you down with them. Of course this is just my 2 cents and a pessimistic view of Sun's future, but it has done nothing for my estimate of Mr Shuttleworth. I'm surprised he should want to tangle with them.

And BSD has been "dying" for years, too! So until Sun is delisted from the NYSE I would hold off on proclaiming its demise.

Sun has waffled about Linux support for years, so while this can be seen by a number of people who look at the glass as "half empty" as another lame attempt for Sun to "embrace Linux", let's give Jonathan a chance and see what he does.

To your comment about Sun and Indonesia, most vendors don't run full page ads describing their failures.

I haven't used Ubuntu Linux so I won't comment about that, and it's history I am even less knowledgeable on. But a number of posters here and the guys at LugRadio (yes, a Solaris "fanboi" listens to LugRadio) like Ubuntu a lot. So maybe this is the start of competition for RedHat and SuSe.

The T2000 is one of the most exciting pieces of computing hardware that has come out in years, I only wish I had more "play time" to use the machine I had. I made the mistake of mentioning I had one in the presence of two RedHat employees (including a "former Sun employee") and the first thing they tried to do is bad mouth the machine ("poor floating point") until I told them what I was doing with the machine. The same two employees tried (and wasted their time) to sway me to RedHat on x86. The way I see it is RedHat and Novell are the ones that are missing out by not porting their products to use the T1 series of machines. A machine that has as much power as a V880 and only consumes 2u of rack space rocks!

I'm not a big Linux fan, but if Sun and Ubuntu can get a server distro to run on T1, it provides more choice for those wanting to purchase a T1000 or 2000, and isn't this what "freedom of choice" is supposed to be about?

I use Ubuntu from time to time. That doesn't mean I have to rate it 10,000 per cent. I guess what this thread has really shown is that on Osnews if you suggest that Ubuntu's founder is even slightly less than a blend of St Francis of Assisi, Bono and Einstein, you get marked down by the hordes of Ubuntu fanboys. I don't think Sun are ever going to succeed in the Linux game. For good or ill, Sun means Solaris. The rest is not much more than PR.

It's really not that complicated, you're making it to be.

From Sun's point of view, the more HW sale the better.
All they need to do is help porting the Linux kernel and show some love with Mr Shuttleworth
-- which are exactly what they did. It's a no brainer.

Does it matter which OS Jonathan likes better? No.

> Sun don't seem to have a plan.

Jonathan's plan has been pretty obvious to me, even as an outsider. Also he's been consistent for the last 2 years (I didn't pay attention to Sun before that).
To summarize into one word: "volume".

He will do whatever to increase the volume of Java/Solaris/SPARC/x64 from Sun, be it opensourcing, flirting, re-branding, etc.
Those are all business decisions that should be judged from business perspective, not some pro/anti-Linux/Freesoftware perspective.

And IBM hasn't done something like that before with Linux and AIX?

>And IBM hasn't done something like that before with Linux and AIX?

I don't know. I wasn't commenting on IBM; I was commenting on Sun. The topic is "Sun To Support Ubuntu Linux on Niagara."

But anyway, good Linux support means more customers and that means more revenue and that is what interests Sun.

No kidding, and Sun is the only vendor to use "bait and switch", I don't think so. And thanks for reminding me of the topic, I submitted it! My previous position I dealt with IBM Global Services, so I seen their tactics first hand.

>>>And IBM hasn't done something like that before with Linux and AIX?

>I don't know. I wasn't commenting on IBM; I was commenting on Sun. The topic is "Sun To Support Ubuntu Linux on Niagara."

He wasn't really asking you a question, rather making a comment that IBM was doing the same by means of a question.

And IBM hasn't done something like that before with Linux and AIX?

There's been some slight indecision there when Linux and AIX's paths have crossed, but in reality, all IBM's commitments have been towards Linux in all but their really high-end stuff that runs AIX. In many cases they've simply bitten the bullet and accepted Linux. Even if there has been some indecision, in the cold, hard light of day (and their bottom line) it hasn't mattered.

In Sun's case there is a huge amount of cross-over between Linux and Solaris to the point where Sun really just don't have a clue what to do. Do they sell Linux to get a foot in the door and push Solaris later? On what basis is Solaris pushed to customers? On that basis, what happens if customers get jittery about Sun's commitment to Linux and what they've actually sold? To double up, they also do this with SPARC and x86 and cheaper hardware.

If Sun had bit the bullet, accepted what was happening and committed themselves wholeheartedly to something like Cobalt, then the perceived threat from Linux and x86 need never have happened. They've done it before, and history repeats itself.

Until about 18 months ago I have always seen Sun reps push Solaris on SPARC, only when the V20z's rolled out did we start to see the x86 push. We purchased 10 V20z's and they are OK boxes, we haven't had a lot of problems with them. But we also decided not to purchase any more x86 machines from Sun because we don't intend to run Solaris on x86. We use HP DL380's and DL385's for RHEL and we ended up installing RHEL on the V20z's because the security software we used had no Solaris x86 port.

I work with a former Bank of America employee and we have both seen what IBM does, this is why chills go down our spines when we hear about anything IBM. At my last job we had Linux running on Dell workstations and IBM never approached us about an IBM solution, in fact IBM never talked to us about Linux at all (they had us with AIX and Tivoli).

I never used one, but I heard that Cobalt boxes were pretty sweet. In that case it is a shame Sun killed them off.

I don't agree with you about Sun's confusion about Solaris over Linux. Both operating systems do essentially the same thing, Solaris has features that Linux doesn't and Linux has features Solaris doesn't. The customer makes the call on what they use and I can understand their concerns if they pick Linux given some of Sun's moves.

People also need to give Jonathan a chance to do his thing, everybody has been clamoring for Scott to go so let's see what happens with Jonathan at the helm.

This one is easy ( I'll respond to your other post if I have time ).

One only needs to look at the history of AIX and Solaris, (particularly their market position in the 90s) to understand why IBM and Sun had chosen different strategies on Linux.

It was an easy choice for IBM. AIX didn't have much Unix market, so what will they do to weaken Sun before AIX catches up? I don't want to state the obvious (as if the answer is not already _too_ obvious).

It was a tough decision for Sun though.
They sure made some mistakes alone the way.

You think they should have committed to Linux, I think they should have committed Solaris.
From an outsider point of view they did poor on both,
until they recommitted on Solaris (I don't know when they made that decision, 2003? 4?)

My point is, we can disagree on whether they should (have) commit to Linux or Solaris, but let's view their acts under the background of history and business perspective, and let's not compare Sun and IBM, they were/are in different shoes.

"bait and switch" doesn't conflict with the vision of "volume", so I am not sure which part you don't agree with ;-)

You probably also mis-used the phrase "bait and switch":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_switch
otherwise how you apply "bait and switch" to the Linux-Solaris scenario? I don't get it.

>"bait and switch" doesn't conflict with the vision of "volume", so I am not sure which part you don't agree with ;-)

"Volume" in this context means sell as much hardware as possible, regardless of the OS. "bait and switch" in this context is saying "we support Linux," but when the call comes in to Sun, they say, "sure we can sell you linux if your really want, but Solaris is so much better for all these reasons."

I agree that the two don't conflict, but at the same time, I think that with the "volume" vision, you would really see Sun support Linux, but I just don't see that. I think I did misused "bait and switch" in the sense that I didn't mean to imply fraudulent behavior. That's too harsh.

He, he, he, he. As far as I know telling it like it is isn't a crime. If you have something to add to the discussion, by all means do so:

Jonathan's plan has been pretty obvious to me, even as an outsider. Also he's been consistent for the last 2 years (I didn't pay attention to Sun before that).
To summarize into one word: "volume".

I've done it before, so I'll do it again for the benefit of Jonathan Schwartz and the uninitiated. To quote Sir John Harvey Jones:

"If you are playing that game you are straight into the necessity for greater and greater volume, together with ever decreasing price - and sooner or later this will lead to bankruptcy."

In reality they're not even going for volume on anything. Sun's strategy has always been to draw people in with stuff that in reality threatens them, but that they're not really committed to deep down. In this case it's Linux and cheaper x86 machines. When they feel as if they've weathered the storm they then withdraw those commitments, dumping products and customers they've committed to in the dirt, and replace them with Solaris and SPARC. It's happened many, many times before and it isn't much of a secret. Even if Jonathan Schwartz wanted to change all that he's got a hefty job on his hands. That strategy is unconsciously woven into Sun's employee psyche and corporate culture.

Unfortunately, the net effect of that is that customers, and potential customers, feed off the uncertainty over those things that Sun says they're going to do. They just never seem real and tangible, and quite frankly, they look like what they are - fly-by-night. That's never a good impression to give off as a company.

Edited 2006-05-18 08:52

REally I don't understand what could be bad and slipeery about this. He pays full time employers to work on Ubuntu and gives it to us free of charge. Do you really think that it would be stupid if he doesn't make any money out of it? I mean really he is allow to do whaever he want with it, but I have to say that he listens to the community alot and most people are happy. I am myself want to see Dapper become entreprise ready. SOmetime it sound that if Linux distro becomes enterprise ready all of the sudden is evil even if they don't charge. What are they suppose to do? Trow all their money for own pleasure and not extend Linux to business.

I agree.

Now all we need is for someone to step up and start supporting Gentoo! :-)

I would what kind of results freebsd would get.

who was the jerk that modded my score down to zero?. I'm serious i would like to know how freebsd will do in the comparison between linux and solaris on the t2000.

I don't know who modded you down, and it's a shame because the question is pertinent and on topic. I, also, am curious how the *BSDs would fare on a T1-based computer.

Regardless, I tried to mod ou back up, if it's any consolation.

thanks!, I'm a huge FreeBSD fan and once in a while i would also like to see freebsd tossed in the mix with other great os like solaris, linux and windows. FreeBSD is a great os. but not many people are giving the credit it deserves.

SGI died because it couldn't offer interesting hardware at prices people wanted to pay, the linux/Irix thing was secondary. Sun on the other hand is working very hard to make sure that the price of their hardware is competative.

I don't get Sun's strategy here, other than tweaking Red Hat's nose. Or will this be Johnathon's signature now, mocking Red Hat the way McNealy always did with Microsoft?

Yes I guess that would be it. But actually it is a sensible business strategy. RH is eating Sun's lunch. Offer people who are determined to move from Sun Solaris/SPARC to a Lainu/x86 solution a deal on Sun Ubuntu/AMD boxes with support from Canonical. You sell systems and block your competitor RH from a revenue source and you also get a chance to sell them Ubuntu on SPARC.

It seems likely that Oracle (which also has its own problems with RH following the JBoss aquisition) may also turn to Canonical and both certify Ubuntu for Oracle and push it as its prefered Linux solution. It makes sense for Sun to get in on the act, ahead of Oracle and have Ubuntu supporting its hardware