In an open letter to IBM‘s CEO, Sun president Jonathan Schwartz accuses IBM of ignoring customers’ requests on supporting Solaris on x86. He says the customers are “feeling that your withholding support is part of a vendor lock-in strategy.”
Sun’s Schwartz criticized IBM on ignoring Solaris on x86
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And why should IBM support Solaris on x86? Isn’t that Sun’s job? To provide support for an OS that they want to run on the customers hardware?
Trojan horse, or not?
Why does not Sun complain with their new partner Microsoft, too? Come on…
Agreed.
Well, if you actually RTFA, you’ll notice that Schartz complains of IBM not releasing some of its main applications for the x86 Solaris 10 :
“We’ve repeatedly passed along customer interest in having IBM support Solaris 10 with WebSphere, DB2, Tivoli, Rational and MQSeries products. Customers have made repeated calls to you and your staff. Those same customers have now asked me to begin communicating with you in a more public and visible way – they’d like the choice to run IBM products on Solaris 10, and they’re feeling that your withholding support is part of a vendor lock-in strategy. A strategy to trap them into IBM’s proprietary Power5 platform only.
Frankly, that behavior is reminiscent of an IBM history many CIO’s would like to forget.
We’ve made sure your engineers know that moving from Solaris 8 or 9 to Solaris 10 takes no work, given that we offer true binary compatibility. If you’re on SPARC, and you’d like to take advantage of a world of x86 systems, it’s a simple recompile. There’s no recoding at all. Same applies to scaling up from Intel or Opteron to SPARC. No recoding. ”
This seems like a pretty logical complaint to me…
Jonathan Schwartz has flipped his lid…
this is like Linus Torvalds asking Microsoft to support Linux…
hehehe, nutz…
You’re right, it’s just like asking MS to support Linux…err wait…doesn’t that help prove his point? MS doesn’t do Linux apps because they don’t want to see Linux succeed. IBM is not rolling out it’s apps for Solaris/x86 because? Seriously, what’s the difference?
“And why should IBM support Solaris on x86? Isn’t that Sun’s job? To provide support for an OS that they want to run on the customers hardware?”
————————————————————–
Well, IBM has the source code to the applications in question. It would be IBM’s job to recomiple said apps to run on Solaris. Unless, IBM is going to release the source code and let the community do it.
Schwartz has no lid to flip; it’s been gone a long time now. The guys been bashing everybody (Red Hat, Novell) for a long time now and for some reason I will never see, there where always lots of people on his side.
lol… aint that the truth….. When I first read the letter, I thought, gee… you want IBM to port some of their server os applications to your platform so you can KEEP what customers you have left. Hey, I loved SUN way back when the internet was starting to ramp up, but when they kept telling me “no we are not porting to X86, please send huge amounts of dollars on solaris sparc…”. Ironically, SUN never listend to its customers, and their customers have left the building.
I hope for one IBM doesn’t do it, just for spite off all those email replies they told me “no, we are not supporting X86” years ago.
However that does not really matter, cuz i went with Power970FX.
Jonathan Schwartz has flipped his lid…
this is like Linus Torvalds asking Microsoft to support Linux…
hehehe, nutz…
______________________________________________________________
1)First things first. MS never ported applications to Linux (w/the possible exception of wmp).
2)IBM doesn’t have to do the porting just the recompiling of the source. SUN is asking for the applications to be updated via a recompile. No porting just a recompile.
Sun has the SRC for Solaris on their download page if anyone is curious. It requires a registration.
as a workaround, if their compatibility layer is as good as they claim, they could do that.
Oh wait, then why not just run linux…
>>Jonathan Schwartz has flipped his lid…
this is like Linus Torvalds asking Microsoft to support Linux…
hehehe, nutz…
What are you talking about? How is this the same? Sun and IBM have colaborated in many projects, including JAVA. When has Linux Tovarlds developing Microsoft projects.
This reminds me of when Linux users tried hard to convince Oracle to port to Linux and ended up using SCO emulation (remember that?) to run Oracle binaries on Linux. Eventually Oracle came around and did a native port of their SCO version to Linux.
Solaris customers should just use Janus to run Linux version of Websphere until such time IBM comes around.
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
Well, Schwartz certainly is. Clearly, he’s also lying. He knows IBM supports x86 – the entire software portfolio depends on Windows and Linux for its success. His true goal is to have Solaris truly competitive with Linux on x86 and that cannot happen if IBM throws all its Unix-on-Intel muscle behind Linux. Sun won’t be able to get those DB2/WebSphere/IBM shop accounts away from Linux (much less Windows) without those tools.
Schwartz may have made a big mistake in turning away from his Unix compatriates to play footsie with Microsoft. Sun has been such an inconstant friend to Linux that no one can say definitively what the company thinks of it. That’s worrisome, as IBM (not to mention Sun’s customers) cannot know how its Linux strategy aligns or not with Sun’s. If Sun used Linux as a stalking horse to push Solaris x86 behind it, as it now appears, then it has betrayed the Linux community and those who support it – and that includes IBM.
Businesses are always amoral – they’re not people, after all – but Sun’s conduct, perhaps in desperation, has become almost nakedly self-serving and with no interest in the computing community of which it has been an important part. Sun risks becoming the new SCO – hopelessly out of step with computing’s current directions and clawing viciously against the harbingers of those directions. IBM should stand pat.
Don’t forget that if IBM make these packages available for solaris x86, then they need to provide support too. Given that Sun seems to change its mind about whether solaris x86 should exist every five minutes, why on earth would IBM make the necessary investment in it?
Schwartz asking Redhat to port their work on solaris
—-
Honestly, after all words against IBM (most of them were made by Schwartz). Schwartz is now sounding really stupid.
“Oh wait, then why not just run linux…”
Because there is a lot of stuff in Solaris 10 that is not in Linux. People are saying that Solaris 10 is the most debuggable OS on the planet, for example, because of dtrace. It also is a lot faster in certain tasks like networking apps. Just go to Sun’s website and read the features list.
Also, Solaris tends to have interfaces that don’t chance between point releases (I recall some complaints about Linux 2.6 doing this).
read the article. the title in here is misleading.
there is only like 2 disses in this letter. i think its remarkable that he was so nice to IBM. I think the POWER comment was uncalled fore (openpower.org) IBM is copying off of Sun’s community SPARC long-aged efforts to make it no a lock-in.
Bottom line is he is lobbying IBM supporting Solaris and he claims it’s the customers that are driving it. (This is misleading–most sun customers use sun hardware, its mainly people from slashdot and so on that e-mail schwartz to have ibm support)
He makes it seem like the customers are crying for help and I applaud Schwartz in that job.
……
Bottom line is if he gets IBM to support Solaris Sun’s software unit will more than likely become extremely profitable
…….
“Given that Sun seems to change its mind about whether solaris x86 should exist every five minutes, why on earth would IBM make the necessary investment in it?”
??? A long time ago, Sun moved to discontinue x86 support, people complained, and Sun brought it back. This was one cycle much longer than five minutes ago. Solaris x86 is here to stay.
@Mark
“Sun won’t be able to get those DB2/WebSphere/IBM shop accounts away
from Linux (much less Windows) without those tools.”
Project Janus anyone? You do know that Solaris 10 can run Linux binaries unmodified, right?
“Sun’s conduct, perhaps in desperation, has become almost nakedly self-serving and with no interest in the computing community of which it has been an important part.”
Except for the whole, open-sourcing Solaris thing. . .
@Richard
“Given that Sun seems to change its mind about whether solaris x86 should exist every five minutes”
OpenSolaris would prevent this from occurring. A non-Sun port of Solaris would get as much support as the community gives it — and I hardly think SUNW will be backing down from Solaris on x86/x86-64 anytime soon.
IBM will kill Sun’s JVM by opening its own JVM:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/index.php?p=114
1/22/2005
Real open source JDK?
Weiqi Gao reports that a true open source Java Development Kit, perhaps from IBM, could come out as early as this coming week.
Reports of an an open source JDK have been around for some time. Back in November Eric Raymond wrote “IBM’s intention to release a fully open-source JRE and class libraries within the next year or so is about the worst-kept secret in the industry. IBM executives scarcely even bother to deny this any more.”
post early this week re-prints traffic from the JPackage forum among himself, Nicolas Mailhot, and Pete Chown concerning the reports.
I read a great article in this month’s Linux Magazine about “Open Solaris” and how open it is *NOT*.
I particularly liked the author’s comment that Sun is like the great athelete who just can’t quit doing and saying stupid things, like Mike Tyson. So much potential but such a disappointment in the end.
Apparently, and this is only from what I’ve read, the CDDL license is not as open as most people might realize and will prevent the spread of Solaris technologies into other systems, such as the Linux kernel.
I personally think this will kill most interest in Solaris in the open source “community” and shun interest, at best.
The hypocracy is staggering, really. It’s alright for Sun to borrow X and other open technologies but it’s not alright for them to give back by sharing Solaris technologies.
Now this guy is trying to muscle IBM into helping them market their own product?
IBM has been a massive driving force in the advancement, both corporate and open source worlds for Linux and other open source technologies. Sun has as well, I’m not discounting that either. Both want to benefit from open source, which is fine, free-market capitalism is a beautiful thing…and everybody wins in this case (investment from corporate bodies speeds development, the open source community gets better code…and vice versa.)
However, if the demand is there, IBM will surely be smart enough to recognize it and move to supply it. If it is not, which is probably the case right now, then why should they invest the capital to meet it?
Clearly the demand is not great enough and if it is, IBM would be making a mistake and it will hurt them as well, and they surely know this.
In summary, Schwartz should try stuffing something in that great piehole of his and give everyone a break for once.
When Microsoft failed to usurp control of Java from Sun through the addition of its performance-improving proprietary changes to the platform, and Sun went through the process of nailing them for violating their license, and then Microsoft retaliated by deprecating Java support on their platform, Sun went through all of those hoops to allow OEMs to bundle Java with Windows. They basically constructed a hostile environment with themselves against a juggernaut and reaped the rewards, but beyond the shadiness of Microsoft’s tactics and Sun’s eventual victory, Sun basically ascribed their poor desktop market performance to Microsoft’s behavior, when it was much more likely that after the Java Applet and Java is Slow era, the market simply had little (though extant) desire for client Java out of the intranet.
Toward the end of the dot com nonsense, x86 hardware started to replace the purchase of more expensive Sun installs for a lot of companies as they attempted to conserve money after wasting unfathomable quantities of money on useless capacity and gluttonous decadence. Sun never put much emphasis on x86 Solaris, and its adoption has been virtually insignificant. Sun largely preferred to sell their more profitable hardware and support, and again they’ve reaped what they have sown.
So now it’s time to blame IBM for its problems, by pointing out that IBM doesn’t want to provide its software to the Solaris/x86 market. Perhaps that’s because IBM does not see any value in providing its platform to the Solaris/x86 market, or perhaps it really has no interest in ‘helping’ its competitor. Even if we assume the most sinister of IBM, the reason Solaris/x86 has seen little adoption isn’t IBM’s fault.
It seems that Sun is a company that is always going to war with its competitors in the public arena; you could really see this during the ’90s with respect to their new partner Microsoft. Microsoft, Linux companies, IBM, and probably others. I think it would be much more helpful for them to simply try to unify their company into a coherent business, since they do sell a number of interesting technologies, and stop with the Crusader behavior.
Than again, I don’t understand why the CEO of Sun has to beg for support in a blog… This just seems odd.
I mean, if Mr. Schwartz wants to lament the lack of support by IBM for Solaris 10… well, maybe he should actually release the product first.
I mean, how can there be significant customer demand for a product that isn’t out the door?
I know its been available as a public beta for some time, but still… if it’s just a recompileas he says, its going to be a no-brainer for IBM to introduce support at any time after release.
And if the beta product is so close to the final, why the NDA on benchmarks etc.?
If Sun is pissy that IBM isn’t adding to the fanfare around the Solaris 10 release, perhaps they should take a hard look about the trash-talking they’ve been doing about HP, IBM, Linux etc… If I was IBM, I guess i’d be keen on extracting money from a strong Solaris 10 userbase, but i’d be completely ambivalent about helping to build it up.
I guess IBM is really simply going to wait and see how strong Solaris 10 really is compared to Linux, and how ‘Open’ Sun actually end up making the source release of Solaris 10 before making a call.
Personally, I wouldn’t believe anything Schwartz tells me either without taking a ‘wait and see’ approach.
“IBM will kill Sun’s JVM by opening its own JVM: …”
What you say cannot happen, as IBM still has to comply with the Java specifications. Choose IBM’s JVM, choose Sun’s JVM, do whatever makes you happy. It isn’t like the JVM’s feelings will be hurt.
“Die, Sun ! You gives money to SCO and now you will die like SCO.”
Hi, Mr. Allen, you have no understanding of why Sun had to buy _device_drivers_ from SCO to make Solaris x86 _better_. It has nothing to do with SCO’s parasitic evil business model. Sun even sells Linux. Go back to your troll cave, please.
“The hypocracy is staggering, really. It’s alright for Sun to borrow X and other open technologies but it’s not alright for them to give back by sharing Solaris technologies.”
I think the terms of the CDDL will need some time to become familiar enough where people know exactly what it means. It is based on the Mozilla license, which many people find adequate (Mozilla is still used by many FOSS advocates, right?). Before you go spouting “witch!” in a public forum, at least make sure you have a basis for your statements.
I’ve been reading the very cool os galaxys here at osnews and I don’t want to hear anything else from Sun at this point. They have nothing technically new to say, and they are just propaganda machines. Rather than, why don’t we make Solaris better(like maybe by making Solaris x86 work at a higher res than 640×480 on nvidia cards…or just adding agp support in general), it’s why doesn’t IBM port all this crap to an operating system/architecture that has probably closer to 0% market share than any other number.
(Eugenia, I know that osgalaxies will be ad free if I have a subscription, so does that mean that all the Sun posts will be gone?)
So IBM should support Solaris instead of Linux and SPARC instead of AMD and POWER?
Jonathan Schwartz has got to be stoned out of his mind. That’s the only possible explanation for this.
🙂
Schwartz’s purpose in releasing this “open letter” is transparent. It is a thinly-veiled attempt to make swipes at a competitor while trying to create artificial meta-buzz around his own product.
For a vendor that says that Java doesn’t need to be submitted to an industry standards organization, Sun’s claim that Power 5 is proprietary rings hollow. Power 5 is an open specification, just like Java. The fact that it’s been 64-bit longer than Sparc or Intel must be particularly guiling.
Moreover, the point that Solaris can move apps from one hardware architecture to another with a simple recompile is old news to IBM. They’re iSeries platform has had a better solution for that problem since its definition in the 1970s: during a hardware upgrade, program objects are automatically translated to take advantage of the hardware. In the move to 64-bits, for example, the existing 48-bit programs were automatically translated and became 64-bit programs with no recompilation.
Sun should stick to technology. It’s obviously not good at rhetoric.
Websphere (bits of it anyway) are ported to 35+ platforms so I think it is a bit much for sun to take this stance. The rest of websphere run on many platforms including Solaris/Sparc. IBM are working at releasing more products on 64bit Linux which is available now. Solaris/x86 may be the next platform that things get released for but that depends upon supply and demand. No demand, then no port. If Sun was to come up with a some of money I’m sure the guys at Hursley (And elswhere in IBM) would gladly port their software to Solaris/X86.
But, readers here should bear in mind that for IBM(or any serious commercial software supplier) to release a port of a product on a new platform is far more than just compiling the code. Here are a few of the things that need to be done.
1) Produce Documentation
2) Perform a complete set of regression tests on the new platform to verify that there are no gotchas in the product that are unique to this platform before shipping
3) Train support people
4) Get H/W and setup support systems to run Solaris/X86
and a million and one other things that need to be done before releasing a new product especially the leagalese stuff.
Sun should know this as they do all of the above themselves. Why didn’t they wait until the software was released and then if demand was good from corporate’s then they could goto IBM with real data and ask nicely (even please Mr IBM) can you port these critical products to my platform.
Some years ago, I remember a now defunct H/W manufacturer paying IBM to port a product to their platform. IBM did not have the resources to do it in the timeframe required so the manufacturer put a number of their staff into IBM to do the job. How about that Mr Sun?
Sometimes, CEO’s should really think at least 4 times before saying anything about anything. Some of the drivel that comes out of thier mouths at times is unbelievable (or FUD depending upon your point of view)
“That sounds like a pretty logical complaint to me.”
Really? It sounds more like trolling. How does telling IBM that Solaris is the most secure operating system help Sun make its case? It’s an arguable point at best. Solaris is secure, but show me how it is more secure than z/OS or i5/OS. That means nothing. It’s grandstanding for the real audience.
Actually, Sun telling IBM how its products actually require recompiles is pretty stupid. IBM’s products don’t require recompiles. They just run. For example, when OS/400 went from 48-bit CISC processors to 64-bit RISC processors, all program objects were automatically converted to take full advantage of the underlying hardware – no action on anyone’s part required. Recompiling sounds positively medievil by comparison.
How about you release the source to Java or port your ZFS filesystem, debugging tools, etc. on Linux?
Many of us can play this selfish capitalist perspective on the communist game of “give me what I want for free”, but I don’t think Jonathan Schwartz wants to honorably try to give everyone what they want, even if it is within his power. I think IBM is far cloesr to that side of Linux than Sun. Linux and the movement behind it are about sharing everything with everyone, or more precisely showing everyone how to make your product, so they can go make similar products and improve on the design. Sun just don’t get that. They don’t understand that when we take all these legal walls away we can become faster at designing and improving on a product that costs us a fraction to maintain, becase a lot of the maintenance is coming from our competitors.
Time is of the essence. The important things to all of us in life have very little to do with patents and copyrights and trademarks. We don’t care who made what or how it got built, we just care that it works and doesn’t waste our time, so we can spend it with the people that matter the most to us.
So if we stop playing these games we see the opportunity to build better products faster by sharing our knowledge and allowing eachother to compete based on creativity and innovation, not some bizarrely intense competition from the feudal era that forces one side (or, with a monopoly, many sides) to lose. We’re all in this to win, right, we get that. But that doesn’t mean we have to make some of us lose. It just means the winners have to be a little more humble and share a little, where it matters, like knowledge and freedom and free broadband.
Productivity and profits are more important than costs. Just be intelligent and make your costs efficient. Don’t pay for IP when you can get it for free. Duh. That’s really a no-brainer, there.
I must say that the comments attached to this post (or brainless rants) show just how little people actually think. I mean read the first one…he/she/whatever didn’t even even take the time to read the content of the letter before diving headfirst into what seamed to me to be a stream of binary refuse.
Then we have the open-java club, sure I agree but IBM is definitely no knight in shining armour (have a look who’s behind software patents in the EU) for the Open Source Community.
So where was I…the only reason why IBM would make an announcement such as this, announcing that an OS is not popular enough before it even hits the market is to warn it’s customers that if they plan on using Solaris IBM definitely aren’t going to be making it easy for them.
Believe it or not but the Sun does not shine from IBM’s giant corporate behind. If this was really related to supply and demand wouldn’t you actually gage what sort of demand is on the market when Solaris 10 is actually released.
Anyways…go on flame me.
“I must say that the comments attached to this post (or brainless rants) show just how little people actually think.”
They don’t care as long as it furthers their narrow and often naive agendas.
Jonathan Schwartz has to try to appeal to a very very broad audience, now, going from CEOs all the way down to individual users regarding OpenSolaris. That’s one tough job. With his blog entry regarding IBM, he’s going for people who can actually afford to use IBM’s middleware–not anywhere near the trolls posting above. But the trolls still act like bitchy little children, no matter what.
Umm, let me get this straight …..
Sun is accusing IBM of vendor lock-in?????
Personaly I have tried using solaris 10 beta’s and they are far from good on normal hardware.
(only reason openSolaris is comming to a store neer you)
Even solaris sales team in Australia support of solaris is UGLY at best on x86/64_x86. Personaly I was excited but then that has become a Valve excited now.
Note Valve excited is not a good rating.
The only big vendor with substantial lock-in, anymore, is Microsoft. IBM and Sun run the same apps for the most part and both comply with the UNIX specifications. It’s much harder to move to/from Windows than it is to move between Solaris, AIX, and Linux.
Fine. I’ll post a little concerning my earlier post at the beginning of this thread. My opinion hasn’t changed.
This is just some marketing drivel:
1. the most secure OS the world has ever seen
Riiight. This is an opinion.
2. first open source vendor to offer a commercial version of our product with indemnification against intellectual property lawsuits
Riiight. I believe many linux companies provide this. Red Hat Enterprise Linux *is* a commercial version of their software. The offer indemnification on their commercial products.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3301221
3. withholding support is part of a vendor lock-in strategy
Riiight. As someone pointed out, these products are available on several systems including Linux. So, if you have such great binary compatibility in Solaris 10, this shouldn’t be an issue right?
4. given that we offer true binary compatibility
If you have true binary compatibility, then this isn’t a problem, as you can go and use the products that you are whining for from other x86 Linux distributions.
WebSphere – is available for linux
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/downloads/WASsuppor…
DB2 – is available for linux
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/linux/
Tivoli – is available for linux
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/access-mgr-e-bus/pl…
Rational – is available for linux
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/rational/linux/
MQSeries – is available for linux
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/integration/mqfamily/support/summar…
Gee, if you have such great binary support in Solaris 10, then what are you complaining about? IBM already supports Solaris 10!
“Personaly I have tried using solaris 10 beta’s and they are far from good on normal hardware.”
How so? Or are you just continuing the FUD surrounding the anti-Sun crowd? Solaris 10 with JDS is as good as the popular Linux desktops out there, and it is nearly on par with Windows usability-wise. Sure, you can’t put Quicken 2005 on it, yet, but it is otherwise a good OS.
A strategy to trap them into IBM’s proprietary Power5 platform only.
As opposed to what – helping Sun trap them into Sun’s proprietary Solaris platform?
What would be in this for IBM? AFAIK, Solaris on x86 has an almost nonexistent presence in the data centers IBM wants to sell it’s products in.
Maybe IBM will be more amenable to helping Sun gain market share for Sun’s operating system the day Sun starts building their servers on Power processors.
“As opposed to what – helping Sun trap them into Sun’s proprietary Solaris platform?”
Tell me, how can someone be trapped on Solaris? Does Java trap them there? No. What about POSIX…nope. In a few weeks, it seems, Solaris will even be open source. That is about as much of a trap as a jail with no walls.
Also, POWER is available only from IBM. SPARC systems are are sold by both Sun and Fujitsu. It can be argued that Fujitsu’s systems are better than Sun’s, though I think they are also a little more expensive. Also, SPARC is maintained by an independent company, SPARC International, which is not part of Sun at all.
OK, we all know this isn’t going to happen and IBM are going to be having quite a chuckle at this. Jonathan Schwartz and all the Sun bloggers that we’ve now got plugged into OSGalaxy are making it sound as if people are breaking down the doors, clammering for universal Solaris 10 support. Of course, this is just totally disconnected from reality and isn’t happening. We get the usual intellectual property swipe as well, conveniently painting over the fact that Novell, Red Hat and others handle all of that for their customers and SCO has been and gone. He doesn’t really hope to influence IBM by such weak arguments, does he?
The amount of Sun bloggers and blogs is really quite astonishing at the moment, and speaks volumes. The fact that an open letter is being produced like this is quite revealing as to how desperate Sun really are. Schwartz was ill-advised to have done something like this, as IBM and others are only going to laugh at the suggestion because they can see that Sun are hurting.
Sun tells IBM they can’t use Java anymore. Bye bye IBM.
Preventing IBM from using Java?
Well, that would be just silly.
The repercussions of that will hurt Sun more than it will hurt IBM.
Sun tells IBM they can’t use Java anymore. Bye bye IBM.
They can’t – all they can do is tell IBM to stop using the Java name. It wouldn’t have any effect either. IBM does most of their work now outside of the Java Community Process and has nothing to do with Sun, and all of Red Hat’s Java efforts are happening without any Sun involvement, directly or indirectly, whatsoever. Sun thinks it controls Java, but all it controls is the name and some meaningless trademarks.
It’s IBM’s job to port their own software to platforms that people want to use.. Not Sun’s
I wonder what ibm’s reaction will be.
Mr Schwartz should be serious at least for one or two minutes : porting and publishing an application when you are a big company like IBM does not only mean a simple recompile ! He does deserve his entreprise to publish such a dumb claim : porting and publishing applications also imply supporting the resulting products and IBM probably does not want to put human resources on “that other OS that comes years too late on the x86”.
Some days, people complain about Solaris x86 not being seriously maintained and Sun didn’t really listen at its own potential customers. Now, Mr Schartz knows how these customers feel, and you know what ? This is a good thing !
And stop joking, I doubt they are really so many people asking Sun “where are those IBM apps for Solaris/x86 ?” when Solaris has the worst hardware support on this platform, even free OSes have better support.
One day, I will download Solaris-x86.iso again just for the pleasure and the symbol to drop it on my desktop’s Trash icon.
<<I wonder what ibm’s reaction will be.>>
Proably no comment.
IBM is a successful, respectable, and dignified company, everything Sun is not. No need to drop down to their level and engage is Schwartz’s childish banter.
If you are too lazy to filter through all the decent comments to find those entertaining troll rants don’t worry I have done it for you:
Our dear friend “pojo” had this to say before even reading the letter:
“And why should IBM support Solaris on x86? Isn’t that Sun’s job? To provide support for an OS that they want to run on the customers hardware?”
“Cheapskate” wished to enlighten readers with this little epiphany he had:
“Jonathan Schwartz has flipped his lid…
this is like Linus Torvalds asking Microsoft to support Linux…
hehehe, nutz…”
“Bill Allen” has come out of his cave to offer these insightful words for you to ponder before you fall asleep tonight:
“Die, Sun ! You gives money to SCO and now you will die like SCO.
It’s too late fo Solaris x86. There are no time to catch linux’s popularity and no much differences from linux and *BSDs to offer.”
“hmmm” wished to remain anon…I don’t blame him/her:
“So IBM should support Solaris instead of Linux and SPARC instead of AMD and POWER?
Jonathan Schwartz has got to be stoned out of his mind. That’s the only possible explanation for this.
:)”
[[note: Just a slight bit of investigation (read the letter?) on your part will reveal that SPARC will be supported by IBM]]
“hmmm” couldn’t help but highlight his/her ignorance once again:
“How about you release the source to Java or port your ZFS filesystem, debugging tools, etc. on Linux?”
[[re:ZFS, Maybe they will, but I think they might prefer to get it running on Solaris first (it will not be initially released with 10)]]
There are quite a few more, I just found these to be the most entertaining.
Mmmm last time I ckecked Solaris was still the biggest UNIX in the world– having round and about 35% of the UNIX market… So can someone explain to me how IBM can say that solaris isn’t popular enough?
Do you know why Sun is begging IBM to support Solaris on x86-64 NOW?
Because SUN refused to support Solaris on x86 for DECADES.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Sun…
I wonder if it is a requirement to have two mouths to talk out of to become a Sun senior executive…
i am tired of suns complaining and whining … please don’t post stories like that anymore …
to quote someone who knows what’s what, Thom Holwerda.
“Mmmm last time I ckecked Solaris was still the biggest UNIX in the world– having round and about 35% of the UNIX market… So can someone explain to me how IBM can say that solaris isn’t popular enough?”
Which is a damn site more than IBM, SCO or HP have…
How so? Or are you just continuing the FUD surrounding the anti-Sun crowd? Solaris 10 with JDS is as good as the popular Linux desktops out there, and it is nearly on par with Windows usability-wise. Sure, you can’t put Quicken 2005 on it, yet, but it is otherwise a good OS
Um excuse me? Im not some windows FUD generator. Sure I use windows XP/2k on my network. Whitebox EL. I was saying that SUN talked it up way too much (Just like Valve did).
Also SUN on paper sounds good and alot of people I know like it. But im not going to buy expensive hardware just to try it. Did you also go look at the HCL? its a joke.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sx/
It has grown slightly since I have last looked at it.
lets have a look at what a HCL should consist of
http://gerda.univie.ac.at/freebsd-laptops/
I also didnt mention anything about JDS personaly I have never used it. And maybe never will.
Sun has new and improved features use them if you can.
Come on. Sun pressured red hat to do java. they even agreed to distribute red hat enterprise linux for it.
sun just wants IBM to port its middleware to solaris so they can sell solaris and make money.
Now, if IBM has a chance to actually hurt sun if they don’t do that, then why port it? (Im a sun fan too)
Tell me, what do you think of Linux and its marketshare and promissing future compared to Solaris? 🙂
Mmmm last time I ckecked Solaris was still the biggest UNIX in the world– having round and about 35% of the UNIX market… So can someone explain to me how IBM can say that solaris isn’t popular enough
Read the Article! It’s not just Solaris, it’s Solaris on x86 and x86_64! I don’t have the exact numbers on the install base of Solaris on x86 and x86_64, but I would bet it’s not far from 1% of the server market, give or take. Sun will probably even stop porting their own software to Solaris x86 tommorow, although to their benefit, next week they will revert that decision.
“Did you also go look at the HCL? its a joke.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sx/
It has grown slightly since I have last looked at it.”
That HCL looks like it must be incomplete. Look at the HCL for Solaris 9–it is much much bigger (hundreds of systems rather than dozens). Sun is still probably populating the HCL for Solaris 10, but the only way to know for sure is after Jan 31 (“revenue” release of Solaris 10).
“Businesses are always amoral – they’re not people, after all – but Sun’s conduct, perhaps in desperation, has become almost nakedly self-serving and with no interest in the computing community of which it has been an important part.”
What are you talking about? Last I checked, businesses (even the largest corporations) are created and run by people.
At Sun’s HCL page it says: “Systems and Components that are supported in the Solaris 8 HCL, as well as any disclaimers and other notes, are supported in Solaris 9.”
If this applies to the Solaris 10 HCL, it will actually be quite impressive.
I think Linux is great…I use several distro’s across the board: Gentoo, Debian (UserLinux), Slackware. I also use FreeBSD and have been using Solaris since 2.6
I think Linux is great in certain applications. The one thing that I don’t appreciate however is losing binary compatability with each point release of the kernel (Take a look at 2.6.10).
I think the competition between the Unix and GNU/Linux camps is great…where would our desktop be today without the competition between KDE & Gnome.
As for market share you have no idea how happy I am to see Linux get to where it is today.
Take a look at Novell, they offer 5 years support for SLES 9. After which I assume you can buy support from some other 3rd party vendor. Much better than RedHat’s 3 year support policy.
> Take a look at Novell, they offer 5 years support for SLES 9.
> Much better than RedHat’s 3 year support policy.
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/
RedHat have 7 (seven) year support.
Much better than RedHat’s 3 year support policy.
Excuse me, but what crack are you smoking?
“For a period of 7 years from initial release (General Availability), Red Hat will provide errata maintenance for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
Tell me, how can someone be trapped on Solaris? Does Java trap them there? No. What about POSIX…nope. In a few weeks, it seems, Solaris will even be open source. That is about as much of a trap as a jail with no walls.
That’s slightly disingenuous – you’re not literally trapped on any platform as long as you’re willing to do the porting to something else. The problem is, porting an enterprise application even from one POSIX platform to another is a non-trivial effort. But then, both AIX and Linux PPC are POSIX compliant, so how would that statement be any less true for Sun’s platform than it is for IBM’s?
Also, POWER is available only from IBM.
That isn’t true at all.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-expert2.html
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/wonews/apr04/0404pow.html
http://www.bull.com/aix/index.html
http://freescale.com
Also, SPARC is maintained by an independent company, SPARC International, which is not part of Sun at all.
Yeah? And?
http://power.org
Funny how the majority of comments on this article favour IBM, I really don’t know why most posters think IBM needs their support. After all, IBM made $3.04 billion in profits in the last 3 months of 2004. Yes I know they support Linux and open source but so does Sun. If Sun were do die (as lot of posters are calling for) what do you think IBM profits would be 5 billion maybe 6 billion maybe 10? My point is this, I think that people should evaluate their loyalty to IBM because on one hand people hate MS and on the other they hate Sun while IBM keeps on coming out as the poster boy for good behaviour. The real truth of the matter is this, companies are out to make money and IBM and MS are making a ton of it right now while Sun isn’t. The funny thing is most posters want Sun to die a horrible death. Personally I’ like cheering for the underdog and in this case it is Sun.
While a programmer, I don’t thank Sun much beyond the knowledge that I gathered of OO and Java programming. Two years of Java was enough once .Net gained momentum. They lost the momentum to .Net, they lost momentum of taking too long to decide if they should support Linux or not. I never liked Java on Linux. Their J2EE was a waste of time to a lot of people, including me.
I know they support OpenSource, but maybe their reasoning was never clear. Maybe they shouldn’t have released Java in the first place.
Nowadays, Java is so boring that we need to use Eclipse or IDEA IntelliJ to get some work done.
They made many stupid moves. Some were good for us. Some were bad.
I really don’t feel pity at them. They should assume their actions.
Power.org was started a month ago…it shows potential but we need to wait and see. If it works, it’ll definitely be an improvement.
SPARC systems are are sold by both Sun and Fujitsu. It can be argued that Fujitsu’s systems are better than Sun’s, though I think they are also a little more expensive.
Anybody who would say that has obviously never supported Fujitsu’s servers. I do – we have two of them in our shop. We bought them because they were cheaper than comparable Suns.
They’re a royal pain in the ass to support, because you can’t load Sun’s stock versions of Solaris on them, and you can’t load the standard Solaris patches on them, either. You have to use special versions provided by Fujitsu. And that doesn’t even address the additional layer of complexity of having to acquire hardware support from Fujitsu.
Suffice it to say, they’ll be out of the door with the next hardware refresh. Fujitsu as a second source for Sparc hardware just isn’t a serious proposition. Choosing between Fujitsu and Sun for a Sparc-based server is long, long way form being as simple as choosing between Dell and HP for a PC.
> How does telling IBM that Solaris is the most secure operating system help Sun make its case? It’s an arguable point at best. Solaris is secure, but show me how it is more secure than z/OS or i5/OS.
Trusted Solaris is a level above in securtiy compared to z/OS. Trusted Solaris is certified at EAL4+, whereas z/OS is still an rather mundane EAL3+. As a matter of fact Solaris nowadays combined with Sun Fire or Fujitsu Primepower hardware can do pretty much anything mainframe can do, just check out the Sun’s mainframe rehosting program.
> IBM is a successful, respectable, and dignified company, everything Sun is not. No need to drop down to their level and engage is Schwartz’s childish banter.
LOL. I would expect this sort of comment from someone either extremely naive or extremely stupid. I guess you listen too much to IBM marketing drones. IBM is a predatory, letigious, lock-you-in-and-stab-you-in-the-back kind of company. May be if you’ve been in this industry for a little longer you would have known what I’m talking about. IBM has been waving the Linux flag a lot lately and won the hears of many clueless Linux fanboys. Don’t be naive, IBM is a money whore that will sell out to anyone who’s got the most shiny thing at the moment. Just look a few years back and the story with Windows NT. I’m pretty positive IBM will most definitely support Solaris 10 because it is becoming the next best shiny thing out there, it is just playing the FUD card to create an impression that Solaris on x86 is not popular. Well, truth is Solaris is becoming very popular on x86.
Sun is actually a bigger friend to OSS and Linux than IBM, just look at the gems that Sun contributes to OSS (OpenOffice, NetBeans, Solaris, Gnome, X.org, LookingGlass, etc, etc.) to roadkill that IBM is “donating” (Cloudscape comes to mind) to elevate its status. IBM is just a flag waver spreading more empty promisses than actually doing anyting.
Perhaps this post, a couple of them from below the open letter, from the blog
will put things in perspective.
IBM is giving customers the run around of saying ” you are the only one asking for this feature” and saying it to every one who requests it. Customers aren’t happy, so Johnathan wrote a letter. What is the problem?
But what’s been really interesting is noticing who’s not necessarily been so supportive of helping us drive more opportunity with our financial services customers: IBM. Yup, IBM’s deployed in a number of customer accounts we share, and with the rapid uptake of Solaris 10 in early access, some customers have been running into dependencies – from MQSeries to Tivoli, Rational to DB2 – that stand in the way of their deploying Solaris. What’s IBM’s stance on Solaris 10? “There’s no demand.” Please. We know groups of our customers have called in directly to IBM seeking Solaris10 porting dates – and heard the same story, “you’re the only customer that wants it.”
Which frankly, is pretty infuriating. A few of those customers have said it feels like the “old IBM,” the anti-competitive monolith that attempted to “lock and block” customers into proprietary IBM solutions. So if you run into an IBM representative, make sure to let them know you, too, would like to be considered the “only customer that wants it.” More seriously, that they shouldn’t attempt to lock customers in.
> They lost the momentum to .Net, they lost momentum of taking too long to decide if they should support Linux or not.
.Net fanfare is actually dying down. People actually started to realized what a POS it is and that you’re still better off with Java. Java actually seems to start talking the market share back from .Net. As a measure of what platform is more prevalent, just check the number of jobs available for each platform. There are almost 3 times more J2EE type jobs out there than .Net — that should tell you something. J2EE is much more proven and more capable that .Net, J2EE even caught up with .Net in terms of ease of development (new IDE’s address that pretty well) — there is absolutely no reason to choose .Net over J2EE nowadays.
It’s ok for IBM to write an open letter asking Sun to Open source Java. When they themselved have’nt, but it is not ok for Sun to ask IBM to port thier middleware to Solaris 10 on x86. The Hypocrisy of open source zealots never seizes to amaze. The same zealots villified Sun then and the are at it again.
The problem is they don’t know who thier enemy truly is. IBM is suddenly the good kid on the block becuase the support linux. The monpoloistic gargantuan IBM of yesteryears has been forgotten, A few billion dollars worth of advertizing can really do wonders.
Funny how the majority of comments on this article favour IBM, I really don’t know why most posters think IBM needs their support…<snip>… Personally I’ like cheering for the underdog and in this case it is Sun.
Possibly because Sun has taken a swing at IBM, and most of the readers here don’t think they’re justified?
Just because they’re an underdog doesn’t mean Schwartz isn’t being an arrogant git.
As I see it, Sun has a small platform. Solaris doesn’t represent an enormous market, and for whatever reason IBM don’t want to port all their software to it – that is their decision. Some people may not like that, but ultimately Solaris is a commercial platform – Sun aims to make money out of this, and IBM may not like that idea. Just because it’s an open letter rather than private talks between the two doesn’t mean it’s not about money.
Trusted Solaris is a level above in securtiy compared to z/OS. Trusted Solaris is certified at EAL4+, whereas z/OS is still an rather mundane EAL3+. As a matter of fact Solaris nowadays combined with Sun Fire or Fujitsu Primepower hardware can do pretty much anything mainframe can do, just check out the Sun’s mainframe rehosting program.
That’s pretty much irrelevant as far as a typical business I/T shop is concerned, because Trusted Solaris is a whole different breed of cat from the standard version of Solaris you’re going to be loading on your E15K. In fact, it’s different enough that you’ll be lucky to find anyone outside of government that knows how to configure and support it. I’ve been a Sun administrator for 13 years, and in all that time I’ve only met 1 consultant that was qualified to support it. They aren’t cheap, either. I only know of one I/T shop outside of government that ever deployed it, and it took them over a year to get it right. Best of luck if you plan to deploy Trusted Solaris.
“Sun is actually a bigger friend to OSS and Linux than IBM, just look at the gems that Sun contributes to OSS (OpenOffice, NetBeans, Solaris, Gnome, X.org, LookingGlass, etc, etc.) to roadkill that IBM is “donating” (Cloudscape comes to mind) to elevate its status. IBM is just a flag waver spreading more empty promisses than actually doing anyting. ”
No mention of Java when it comes to Sun, why? Why no mentino of linux when it comes to IBM?
have been mostly low-level compared to Sun’s but it was necessary to get Linux closer in terms of scalability and performance to the commercial Unices.
Check out there list of contributions here:
http://www-136.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/index.html
Not to mention that the developerworks site is probably the best free site for learning about open source. Combine that with O’Reilly’s Onlamp site and you’ve got all the resources you need.
I’m curious what Sun’s contributions to gnome are. Does anyone know what they did? The all knowing Google didn’t turn up much, and the wiki article just mentions that gnome is following the HIG, which is actively supported by Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME
Does that mean that Sun actively supports the HIG, or actively supports Gnome?
On my Sun Ray, they only have gnome 2.0, and it doesn’t work well with many programs.
> As I see it, Sun has a small platform. Solaris doesn’t represent an enormous market
Solaris does represent enormous market, 35% of all Unix servers (the biggest and most critical servers) out there are Solaris machines. Technical high-end workstation market also still belongs to Sun and Solaris.
> No mention of Java when it comes to Sun, why? Why no mentino of linux when it comes to IBM?
Open-Sourceness of Java is a very debatable point. I for myself consider it open-source because in strict (non-hippy) term it is open-source as you can see the source for all libraries and know the internals of Java. While “open-source” Java FUD is high on IBM’s agenda, the question I would like to have answered is when IBM is going to open-source their JVM? Speaking of hypocrisy. And the scale of IBM’s contributions to Linux is still a very debatable point as it is mostly limited to the port of JFS and small kernel improvements, I would certainly expect more from the giant IBM is and the amount of propaganda they put out.
BTW, while we’re still on the subject, the biggest reason Linux is making any inroads on the desktop is because of Sun, not IBM, which at one point contended with RedHat that desktop rightfully belongs to Windows and Linux has next to no reason to be there. Don’t forget that Sun is the desktop Linux vendor #1, Sun shipped more JDS desktop licenses than any other “Linux” vendor.
> On my Sun Ray, they only have gnome 2.0, and it doesn’t work well with many programs.
Gnome 2.6 is shipping with Solaris 10, I think you’re going to like it (I do anyways).
Yes, I agree, it is very funny when people say “that’s not open source” because it isn’t released under an OSI license but you can actually read the source. Of course, this is a case of you reap what you soe. After all the term “open source” in no way captures the most important principle of OSI licenses: the freedom to do with the source what you want.
> After all the term “open source” in no way captures the most important principle of OSI licenses: the freedom to do with the source what you want.
In my opinion and practice the ability to contribute to the source is grotesquely over-hyped. In 99.9% of the cases in relation to platform, customer don’t care if they can contribute, but rather the ability to see the internals of the platform to make it more supportable/tunable/etc that really matter. Look at MySQL, which is open-source, but all contributors are strictly internal to the company (MySQL AB developers). Nevertheless MySQL is very popular and there isn’t a whole lot of complaints about that. With Java Sun is trying to cater to that same kind of cround that want to look “under the hood” first and foremost and can contribute through an organized JCP process if they really want to.
Sun is actually a bigger friend to OSS and Linux than IBM, just look at the gems that Sun contributes to OSS (OpenOffice, NetBeans, Solaris, Gnome, X.org, LookingGlass, etc, etc.) to roadkill that IBM is “donating” (Cloudscape comes to mind) to elevate its status. IBM is just a flag waver spreading more empty promisses than actually doing anyting.
While I think IBM could certainly do a lot more as far as OSS is concerned, Sun gets a lot more from OSS than OSS gets from sun, with the exception of OO.org( and Netbeans which I know nothing about). I haven’t heard anything Sun has done for GNOME, it did a nice job of replacing Sun’s ancient CDE though. They haven’t really helped with the Java issues as far as GNOME is concerned either. I haven’t heard anything at all that they have done for x.org either. Looking Glass is totally useless for anything aside from an ad for Java. No one is really sure what’s going on with open Solaris at this point either. As far as open Solaris does go, it seems as if Sun’s x86 play is just an ad for Solaris on Sun hardware. Solaris doesn’t have a large amount of driver support on x86 and Sun themselves have been extremely shifty about their support for it. While I think an open Solaris will be a good thing, if Sun’s definition of open Solaris is the same as their definition of open Java, then they might as well just not do it all, because all it will do is create confusion and not help anyone.
Really, I think most people here don’t really care if IBM is involved in this, it could be microsoft, SCO, or any other company. I myself and I believe others are probably turned off by Sun though. Go, read the letter, and tell me if you yourself were the owner of a business in the kind of position IBM is in if you would think this letter is a serious attempt by Sun to accomplish the goal they are requesting or just a way to talk about x86/open Solaris while slapping IBM around. This on top of the way that Sun has been shifty about x86 Solaris, a truely open java, their opinion of Linux, and everything else that they have conflicting opinions on has just left me with a bitter taste in my mouth as far as Sun is concerned. Sun needs to make a rule of talking less than SCO, start making educated final decisions on their opinion, stop rubbing elbows with Microsoft, and start doing more of what they do well, developing good technologies.
I don’t think it’s necessary to put dirt on anyone here. We all know of the contribs from Sun because they are frontline apps like OpenOffice.org and on the 31st of this month we should start to see Solaris code come out slowly as part of OpenSolaris.
IBM on the other hand puts a lot of work in behind the scenes (How does 600 developers sound?) for Linux…
“Open-Sourceness of Java is a very debatable point. I for myself consider it open-source because in strict (non-hippy) term it is open-source as you can see the source for all libraries and know the internals of Java. ”
They refuse to hand Java over to a standards body.
They refuse to open source their JVM.
I find your spin interesting just like that of the IBM fanboys.
Sun, like IBM, do not care about open source.
They care about their bottom line. Hence why Sun doesn’t open source their JVM, doesn’t hand Java over to a standards body. Hence why IBM keeps websphere closed source.
… on and on. I like eclipse, I love java, I love Solaris, Linux… I find the partisanship on this forum to be disgusting personally. So that is my partisan slant just to clear things up – whatever works and whatever is logical.
For Sun, Linux is a stalking horse intended to be supplanted by Solaris x86 – this is why Schwartz likes to conflate Linux with Red Hat – because it creates an equivalency between the two OS’s in customers minds. Solaris may or may not be better than Linux in any number of ways, but Sun has to find a way to stem the tide of Linux if Solaris x86 is going to find a niche. Open sourcing Solaris is one way. Releasing tools that run on Linux and Solaris x86 equally well (think OpenOffice.org, NetBeans, etc.) is another way. Playing up Solaris’s undoubted (to them) superior qualities is a third way.
But Sun also needs the same corporate players to work on Solaris x86 as on Solaris sparc and Linux – I get the impression IBM won’t support its Linux tools in a Solaris environment. If I’m right, that creates a big problem for Sun and its customers. Although IBM supports Windows and Linux equally, it has a big stake in Linux succeeding and none whatever in Solaris x86. And it may not want to treat the two as peers, for its own corporate reasons. Poor Sun: maybe they should just ask their new friends about SQL Server and Exchange on Solaris x86. Then there would be a horse race.
Are you claiming Freescale sells POWER5 class chip?
> Well, truth is Solaris is becoming very popular on x86.
LOLZ ! Please, try to be a little serious : Solaris has never been popular on x86 and is far from becoming popular as : 1) it come too late on the x86 platform and 2) it has poor hardware support on this platform and 3) Sun ignored the x86 platform for a long time, shooting itself in the feet.
But good lord, what a whiner Jonathan is; If IBM doesn’t port their applications, then who cares? there is BEA for application serving, Sybase for a database, and they have their own software stack that can provide all the functionality of Notes/Domino and other collaboration software.
As I said to a friend; SUN should simply have said, when IBM said that they wouldn’t port their applications to Solaris x86, “thats alright, less competition for us when providing x86 solutions”.
IMHO, SUN should see IBM’s lack of support as a bonus, not a bummer. If done correctly, it should be a great possibility for SUN to push their software stack – which is a true end to end solution, from instant messaging, calandering, messaging (email) right to an application server.
> Although IBM supports Windows and Linux equally, it has a big stake in Linux succeeding and none whatever in Solaris x86.
IBM actually has a vested interest in supporting Solaris as a platform for their middleware stack. Guess which platform is the #1 for deploying WebSphere, it is Solaris (on Sparc) not AIX or Linux. It is logical step to expect customers to want the support of Solaris x86 for middleware products from IBM. IBM will undoubtedly offer the support pretty soon, it is just playing the dirty card of spreading FUD that Solaris x86 is not important. And I’m quite disgusted with IBM for making such steps.
> That’s pretty much irrelevant as far as a typical business I/T shop is concerned, because Trusted Solaris is a whole different breed of cat from the standard version of Solaris you’re going to be loading on your E15K. In fact, it’s different enough that you’ll be lucky to find anyone outside of government that knows how to configure and support it. I’ve been a Sun administrator for 13 years, and in all that time I’ve only met 1 consultant that was qualified to support it.
I’m supporting Trusted Solaris (I’m working in financial sector) and yes it takes a bit more to work with it, but who said that having superior security is going to come at no cost. Actually running Trusted Solaris is not that difficult if you really understand security and know how to work with MAC/RBAC and labels. Any Solaris admin can be easily trained for Trusted Solaris, it is not brain surgery. If you want superior security to pretty much anything out there, Trusted Solaris is pretty much the only game in town.
> LOLZ ! Please, try to be a little serious : Solaris has never been popular on x86 and is far from becoming popular as : 1) it come too late on the x86 platform and 2) it has poor hardware support on this platform and 3) Sun ignored the x86 platform for a long time, shooting itself in the feet.
Judging by the amount of take up I see in the press, Solaris x86 is really becoming popular. A lot of Linux customers are likely to jump ship to Solaris as it is superior in every department and costs significantly less. As for hardware support, statements saying that the Solaris hardware support is poor are simply obsolete. Solaris x86 supports pretty much all x86 server grade gear from all major vendors (IBM, HP, Dell). Plus the hardware Sun quotes on the HCL is actually the certified hardware, not the “someone told me on the forum it works” kind of support Linux is abound with. As a matter of fact if you factor out all alpha and beta quality hardware drivers for Linux and leave only certified proven working drivers, you’re going to end up with the HCL that isn’t much larger than Solaris — the overwhelming majority of drivers for Linux stink and shouldn’t be allowed to be used in production. Plus Sun is growing the HCL list pretty quick and is subscribing a lot of IHV’s under the program. I actually think that if things go the way they are going now, Solaris will have better hardware support as the IHV’s won’t need to open-source their drivers and therefore will be more likely to port their drivers to Solaris without relying on flaky wrappers.
> IBM on the other hand puts a lot of work in behind the scenes (How does 600 developers sound?) for Linux…
I’m not sure about 600 developer working on Linux (probably not true), but I know for a fact that IBM has 3500 full time personnel dedicated to making Windows a resounding success. Now tell me who IBM loves more Linux or M$?
I got those figures from IBM…where’d you get yours from. I think you must be reffering to the PC division which was very MS focused. That’s OK because that’s Lenovo’s problem now.
@Utumno, yeah and Microsoft should make versions of Office for every OS that is in production. Otherwise they are engaging in vendor lock-in. While Sun is at complaining at IBM for engaging in vendor lock-in, they should make Solaris available on every hardware platform in production (they wouldn’t want to be engaging in vendor lock-in after all).
@Anonymous
Except for the whole, open-sourcing Solaris thing. . .
Hasn’t happened and I’ll beleive it when I see it. Note: Open-Source Dtrace /= Open-Source Solaris.
Why not port their applications to MS-DOS? Or BeOS?
Oh right … because it doesn’t make good business sense to port to what in their opinion is a dying OS.
Would you like to support that comment with some evidence?
> While Sun is at complaining at IBM for engaging in vendor lock-in, they should make Solaris available on every hardware platform in production (they wouldn’t want to be engaging in vendor lock-in after all).
Drawing these parallels is just immature and only indicative of a lack of understanding of what is really going on. Solaris is strategic platform for IBM as in many cases it is #1 deployment platform for their middleware products, IBM customers want IBM to support Solaris in all forms (Sparc, x86, amd). It is just in this particular situation IBM is deliberately making it look like there isn’t much interest in Solaris x86 support just before the official launch of Solaris 10 to undermine the viability. I’m sure IBM will announce support in probably one or two months, otherwise WebSphere will fly out of the window in many installations in favor of BEA, Sun or Oracle middleware that already support Solaris x86.