… strategy, saying, “IBM has been using Linus [Torvalds] like a tool and exploiting the open-source community.” Those fightin’ words come from Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president for Sun’s software group. Read it at ComputerWorld.
Sun Exec Blasts IBM for Linux…
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Namecalling. How adult. Doesn’t bolster my respect for Sun that much, I must say.
…as Sun gives a big high five to SCO…
That’s the level that Sun has shown us they’re at. Between this and the opportunistic giant ads they’ve taken out about switching from AIX, I’ve lost all respect for the executives of Sun, where once I regarded them as luminaries.
…so tired of this crap. Imagine Sun name calling….hmmm…..I wonder if it’s ever happend before…..
i dont understand what the point is…
if sco and sun would shut up and produce better operating systems they wouldn’t be in the positions they are in now… if unix was that much better than linux as they seem to enjoy claiming why do their sales suck?
comments? flames?
Yeah.. when I started reading about McNealy a couple years ago I lost all respect for the management or direction of that company. It does do some excellent things for the industry, but it wastes so much potential trying to be the next Microsoft. Sun could have been the heart of Linux and Enterprise computing, if they wanted to. Instead, they want to compete. And I wish them luck. They’re going to NEED it.
Oh, and often the best technology doesn’t win over the most cost effective. Sun may have a better kernel and better hardware, but the difference between 99.99999% and 99.9999% is not worth the difference in cost between Sun and generic Linux for most companies. We’ll see.
I hope Sun doesn’t become a Smith Corona…a giant of industry reduced to a struggling niche player…but history does repeat itself i guess
annonymous, don’t say if SCO AND SUN because sun already has produced the best server OS out there.
In addition, tehy are kind of right really, and its good that tehy aren’t affected by SCO’s case even if it is valid, they’re playing it safe.
And, i think that IBM did use Linus, maybe not as much as sun says, but they did.
Anyway, SCO has no case, so who really cares.
http://opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html
Schwartz is a bitter man.
I’ve seen far worse things coming from any of the other unix vendors about Sun in just the last 2 months than this half paragraph about AIX and Linux. In comparison Sun’s execs are saints. I guess because Linux isn’t linked in on the periphery it’s not news on an OS site.
It’s called “competition”. Yes it is rubbish, that’s what marketing is about – taking advantage. Welcome to Capitalism. To single Sun out for it is grossly misplaced. In fact, I doubt this AIX->Solaris scheme will convince anyone (that wasn’t already planning it for some bemusing reason) to change. As for the persistent Sun flamers around here, I don’t know where the hell you lot get off at, or for that matter what you base your opinions of Sun on.
>if sco and sun would shut up and produce better operating systems they wouldn’t be in the positions they are in now… if unix was that much better than linux as they seem to enjoy claiming why do their sales suck?
>comments? flames?
Happy to oblige. Get your facts straight. Interesting world this, where the main vendor that’s not getting sued MUST therefore be in league, no?
I don’t understand why all the negative attitude to Sun. I agree with their assesment of IBM. IBM was out in the cold with all the different hardware and OS they had to support, and then they used and abused Linux and Linus. Now Linux is mutating into something it never was meant to be. It was an OS that runs extremely fast and stable on cheap hardware that most end users use and 99% of businesses needed. It was an OS that was immune to lawsuits because it had no attack points. Now it isn’t. But I guess I’ll be thankful for all these awesome advances in the 2.6 kernel when I upgrade my home computer to a 64 cpu system with 1 terrabyte of ram. In the meanwhile, while I slave away for my bosses in the IT department, my boss would like to express his gratitude to all the Linux hackers since it has dropped the business cost for all software practically to 0. And no, he doesn’t plan to donate any money to the distros and he actually has cut back IT budget since everything is cheaper now. Oh yeah, just one more thing, Sun has contributed to Gnome, OpenOffice, and netbeans to the open source world. But just forget about this, Sun is out to destroy the open source world.
Similar to what others are saying, it’s obvious Sun isn’t putting their efforts toward what’s best for the company. If their goal is maximum profit, they need to be doing far better in the PR department. They have an image of high quality but at very high cost. This sorta stuff doesn’t help their image at all. I’ve seen other articles about their big push in marketing. They really better work at their image and the scope and price of their product lines. It’s hard to believe they don’t realize these sorts of news stories only hurt them.
Schwartz just doesn’t understand the GPL. But that’s okay, McNealy didn’t understand it either.
In a way, Sun is using this for all it’s worth. Sun’s Solaris will rise if Linux is hobbled in any way.
Now, if they’d just make a desktop-grade SPARC box….
>> Sun’s Solaris will rise if
>> Linux is hobbled in any way.
Would that be Solaris on Intel, or Solaris on Sparc? The former sucks, the later is too expensive when compared with the competition. If linux wasn’t there, FreeBSD or any of the other OpenBSDs is more likely to hold turf. The primary war that Sun is loosing is the hardware end.
BSDs actually should be where Linux is today on the server market. They could already be there, for all I know, but I consider BSD a far more stable and secure solution for server class systems. RedHat would not even be an option for me in most cases. Slackware, Debian, LFS, possibly, but SuSE and RedHat have a lot to learn about enterprise class computing IMHO.
“i dont understand what the point is…
if sco and sun would shut up and produce better operating systems they wouldn’t be in the positions they are in now… if unix was that much better than linux as they seem to enjoy claiming why do their sales suck?
comments? flames?”
Have you ever used Solaris? I’m guessing you haven’t, because if you had this is probably as much of joke for you as it is for us.
Unix is much better than linux. Its trusted to actually work in the enterprise environment.
I didn´t expect much from Schwartz, but I must say this comment has just caused me to downgrade him to the bottom of my human scale (among with lawyers and SCO executives).
To put the facts straight:
1) IBM, like HP, Dell, SGI and quite a few others, has adopted Linux as an industry standard replacement for their proprietary versions of Unix. The decision to do so was based on the technical merits of the Linux kernel, the GNU software chain and the Free Software development process.
The move to industry standards is irreversible, and GNU/Linux is already an industry standard, whether Schwartz and the rest of Sun can appreciate it or not (and many Sun engineers understand that, believe me).
2) Linus has had no direct contact with IBM, and he is probably the least easily manipulated person I know of. So alleging that IBM used him like a tool smells a lot like FUD of the worst kind.
3) Similarly, based on what facts can Schwartz claim that IBM used the the open-source community? There are tens of thousands of Free Software developers working on the most diverse programs. Claiming that IBM is using these developers as tools is just low-grade nonsensical FUD.
This is the third interview that Schwartz has given to the press in one month, and he is starting to sound a lot like McBride. I guess I´ll have to run his interviews through my SCO Bullshit (TM) filter from now on.
Unix is much better than linux. Its trusted to actually work in the enterprise environment.
And Linux is not? I’ve been working in the trenches for the last 5 years. Working with OSs like Linux, AIX, Solaris, HPUX, DEC OSF, IRIX and some BSDs for both large monopoly sized corporations and start-ups. Linux is on par with all of these commercial solutions. On quality hardware Linux can be just as stable, possibly more-so. And it scales and performs better than anything. If it doesn’t today, it will tomorrow. There’s no competing with something as big as Linux, unless you’re as big as BSD. And being a UNIX admin I give BSD the benefit of the doubt.
” And it (linux) scales and performs better than anything”
Oh, really you have been working in the “trenches”? Is that the new nickname for “dorm room” nowadays?
Sun builds top notch hardware and their OS is a great piece of software. Why on earth did they need to take a dive in the swamp alongside SCO, a comatose company ?
It’s not the first time this kind of silliness has happened between executives, but over the last months, McBride and Sontag have done their best to make this exercise look like a remake of “Let’s all get filthy” (by an anonymous producer).
All of the IT companies that are going down are trying to drag down Linux. The SCO and Sun are both losing money fast. Just imagine what will happen once Microsoft starts falling down. We are seeing traces of it here and there already, but their attacks on Linux have just begun.
Sun and the SCO are upset that IBM jumped off the Unix bandwagon while they didn’t. Now they are taking the plunge.
In a way, Apple and Sun are facing similar challenges, to the extent that both face an uncertain, dwindling niche market. But you can see that Apple is proactively trying to diversify its products and find new revenue streams. Sun, on the other hand, is basically reactioning to other people’s success, be it Microsoft or IBM. McNeal and his hench need to go. They have been good for Sun, but I think they are now out of touch. A new, strong and purposeful leadership is what Sun needs most of all.
… strategy, saying, “IBM has been using Linus [Torvalds] like a tool and exploiting the open-source community.”
Isn’t it that you have benefited from Linux and from the Open Source? Oh, except those sucking businesses who can’t make money from it.
Wow, it’s first time in the past decade that, as a Microsoft customer, I don’t feel like I’m standing right in the middle of the storm …
“Linux is on par with all of these commercial solutions.”
Uh huh… Sure… I’ve been in the trenches too. The real trenches with tens of thousands of users at the same time. Linux crashes and burns under high loads. No, it cannot cut it like the big iron solutions can.
You don’t notice Linux’s task scheduler and memory management problems at medium loads. But with very high loads, it becomes quite apparent that Linux can’t jungle thousands of users at the same time.
“Would that be Solaris on Intel, or Solaris on Sparc? The former sucks, the later is too expensive when compared with the competition.”
The former is great on SMP hardware. It takes a performance hit on single CPU boxes though because the Solaris kernel is very much optimized for multitasking.
Solaris SMP is not very good on low numbers of processors – less than 8, I would give Linux the advantage on Intel Hardware. On Sparc boxes, I would say that Solaris starts to gaing the upper hand at 4 procs.
I would be interested to see the shift when Linux 2.6 becomes available.
The now questionable loyalty of Sun to the Open source and free software communities just conferms my feeling that we should stay away from proprietary “virtual machines” like Java and .NET/Mono as possible copyright and patent traps and stick with native code compiled projects or free “virtual machine” languages like Python for our projects.
The concept of an application server is not such a bad idea, however with vendors controlling the libraries, it can become a money trap. They have focused on the object oriented paradigm (way of structuring data and algorithms). It has advantages to offer, but there is no reason why all emphasis should be on this paradigm, and presented as if there is a great deal of innovation happening. It’s more of a type of packaging, that has some benefits (framework organization which allows for reuse of interface (dynamic binding) and implementation (inheritance)) however it also bears contraints (heavy use of runtime libraries).
In a way we already have this knowledge and our technology should rely on multi-paradigms. There is much to be said…
I think though that if you use a vendor platform than you should follow the leader, however this is certainly not the case with open source, although open source is not yet refined.
Yep. You are seeing how dangerous using non-open IP is.
It’s never wise to build your house on a foundation that someone else owns and can take away whenever they want. Or start charging you rapacious fees for it.
Imagine down the road if Sun continues to falter and some leveraged buyout group purchases them. And then sends out 50,000 letters to all the biggest companies using Java and says “pay up or else”.
With Java not being an open standard, free of IP restrictions, it is always a risk. Same thing with most of .NET, although Microsoft has been somewhat more willing to move .NET (at least parts of it) to a real open standards group.
This year we are watching a conflict between compainies that
sell services and software for specific users on the one side
(like IBM, RedHat) and pure software companies on the other side (like Microsoft, SCO). The former group utilizes open software, while the latter gets strangled by it.
My predicament is that there will be no pure software company
left alive ten years from now.
DG
Apple is proactively trying to diversify its products and find new revenue streams. Sun, on the other hand, is basically reactioning to other people’s success, be it Microsoft or IBM. McNeal and his hench need to go.
Well, the Java Card business is burgeoning. See:
http://java.sun.com/products/javacard/
I’d certainly say that’s diversifying their product line… 90% of the world’s SmartCards are Java Cards, and they’re seeing use in more and more devices, from credit cards to satellite TV receivers.
SmartCards are a wonderful product. They can be used to store a private key for providing a digital signature without the risk of the private key falling into the wrong hands, even if they steal your SmartCard.
Solaris SMP is not very good on low numbers of processors – less than 8, I would give Linux the advantage on Intel Hardware. On Sparc boxes, I would say that Solaris starts to gaing the upper hand at 4 procs.
I would be interested to see the shift when Linux 2.6 becomes available
I thank you for that non-technical evaluation on Solaris vs. Linux SMP performance, but let me provide my own technical evaluation of the situation:
Linux’s I/O throughput on SMP systems is pitiful compared to Solaris due to its relatively coarse locking granularity. Linux continues to be crippled by the Big Kernel Lock (even in the 2.5 branch). Any system calls which depend on the BKL (or device drivers which hold the BKL) when it is being held by another process block until the BKL is released.
As for Linux/SPARC vs Solaris/SPARC in general, gcc/sparc64 is quite immature, especially in comparison to the Forte Compiler Collection in Sun ONE Studio, which is used to build the Solaris kernel. Furthermore, the Solaris kernel contains a number of optimizations in SPARC assembly which, of coruse, don’t port across to the x86 version, in which case the original, slow, and less debugged C code is used in its place. Consequently, Solaris/x86 suffers dramatically.
However, you’re one of the few to dispute the fact that Solaris is the only reasonable choice for performance-critical applications on UltraSPARC systems.