An enterprise Linux "expert" answers the question: "How can an open source software company like Red Hat stay in business if CentOS - and Red Hat itself - give their code away for free?" 
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Member since:2005-07-24
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eap, I guess its riddled with lock in *rolls eyes*
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*sigh*
Take a chill pill, kaiwai. I'm not attacking Sun. But you are claiming that they have long been as open as Red Hat. OpenSolaris is a relative newcomer to OSS. Java is a brand new player in OSS. How many *years* did we ask Sun to open Solaris and Java before they listened?
Open standards? Sure. Sun has always be good about that.
Edited 2007-12-05 02:11
Member since:2005-07-06
Java was fully open, fully documented for anyone to implement. Just because it wasn't submitted to a standards body, doesn't make it any more or less open than say any other thing that exists in the IT world.
Excuse me, but it was you guys who claimed that you need to be open source to stop lock in and proprietary formats. Well, Sun had a proprietary operating system using all open standards. The fact that sun didn't use proprietary protocols and formats, had no vendor lock in, and kept customers meant that a open standards based product model is workable. All Red Hat did was extend it out to open sourcing code. Hardly something new or revolutionary.
Edited 2007-12-05 02:18
Member since:2007-08-22
Open standards? Sure. Sun has always be good about that.
Sure, just look at the Cassini Network Card, or Sun's SunGem Network Cards; or the various chipsets used for the Sun IPC Workstation. (Yes, the processor itself is well documented, but there are numerous different chipsets that are combined with it for different versions of the hardware using the sun4c processor.)
I'd rather use Linux and hardware that is known better, more common, and from more than one vendor.
Member since:2006-12-28
Don't mean to get too involved in what I consider a bit of a daft argument but try NIS+ for a Sun closed standard lock-in. No other operating system can implement NIS+ without licensing the tech from Sun, therefore no support for Linux.
Although today NIS+ has been deprecated in favor of LDAP, with tools to help you migrate from one system to another, it's still impossible to implement a backup NIS+ server on anything other then Solaris.
Member since:
2005-07-06
What lock in have they been using? Processor - open, firmware, open and documented. Technologies used - again, all open.
Yeap, I guess its riddled with lock in *rolls eyes*