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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170 Comments
2005-01-23 4:57 pm
Anonymous
I think you’re confusing Sun with SGI in this case — Sun was never as strong in special effects arena, it always belonged to SGI, which later suffered to Linux. As far as I know only “Toy Story” was rendered on Sun workstations in the early ’90s, the rest belong to SGI.
Regardless, the number of Sun workstations is now non-existant and getting smaller. No one is talking about replacing their Unix workstations with Unix replacements like Solaris.
Sure there is, if you can consolidate hundreds of Linux boxes into one Solaris machine (zones), this makes one hell of a business case for any company. Sprinkle that with Dtrace and ZFS and you have a perfect recipe for jumping ship from Linux.
I’m afraid you’re yet another person who lumps x86 and Linux together. Although that’s primarily how Linux gets sold, plenty have consolidated all of their functions on IBM Power machines (which now increasingly run Linux) or SGIs. That’s another myth that does the rounds. Linux doesn’t scale. If you have so many x86 boxes clustered together that it becomes counterproductive, no it doesn’t, but if you consolidate on better hardware it does. That’s more a limitation of the hardware rather than the actual software. Before anyone whines, IBM and SGI are producing some very hefty machines scaling up a very long way and performing a variety of different functions. Worryingly for Sun though, this is increasingly a niche market and all they can hope to do is stand on the spot they’re currently on.
A company will simply ask: “We’re running web servers, identity management, database services, web application servers and alike. Are we simply going to replace one set of servers running functionality for our business with another set of servers performing exactly the same functionality, possibly with exactly the same software?”
“Yes?”
“Do we look stupid?”
There’s your business case, and the discussion doesn’t last long. Unless of course Sun decides to have a giveaway bonanza as they are doing with the x86 at the moment, but that rather defeats the object of revenue and making money because they can’t do that with indefinitely.
Quite frankly, Sun’s commitment to x86 only extends to the strategy of being able to give things away in the hope of stemming the tide of Linux on x86 (they’ve done it before). That just isn’t sustainable long-term, simply because companies like IBM have the volume and they have the revenue.
2005-01-23 5:18 pm
2005-01-23 5:19 pm
Anonymous
Did SGI contribute code to Desktop Linux users?
Last time I looked Linux wasn’t doing too well on the desktop. It’s doing much better as a server. So I would say that the improvement done to it that have helped it gain market-share as a server have been of a much greater value than the improvements that have helped it gain better market share on the desktop (negliable).
2005-01-23 6:19 pm
Anonymous
…besides being the first computer that I ever wrote HTML on or read EMail on (waaaay back in ’94), was that it displayed – even in pure CLI mode – black text on a white background for the command line. Besides being the best possible combination of colours in terms of contrast, I began to associate it with more powerful/industrial strength operating systems.
The first time I tried Linux, I was very disappointed to discover that it did the white text on black background. How downright DOS-ish!
2005-01-23 6:38 pm
Anonymous
Didn’t Sun a few years ago talk about abandoning Solaris on x86? I used to be a big Solaris fan but you know what? After hearing of their plans to scrap itof x86 I realized that the people running Sun are just stubborn and out of touch. If I made decisions for IBM I’d ignore Solaris too.
2005-01-23 6:42 pm
Anonymous
Hey, you know what? Everything IBM did is self-serving, and is eclipsed (ha) by NFS. Yes, there you are, NFS is the most valuable contribution to open source ever. Just see how many are using it, corporations and privates, on UNIX, Linux, Win32 and other platforms.
2005-01-23 7:30 pm
Anonymous
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
Also, SPARC is maintained by an independent company, SPARC International, which is not part of Sun at all.
Yeah? And?
In your list of POWER vendors, you forgot Hitachi 
2005-01-23 7:57 pm
2005-01-23 8:08 pm
Anonymous
SUN has a partnership w/ Microsoft!!!!!
In all honesty, I wouldn’t read too much into that. It’s one thing when two executives get up on stage, hug and make a groundbreaking agreement – it’s quite another to actually carry it out.
Those at the top of Sun perhaps believe that they will get access to Microsoft’s software, I don’t know, but they’re very deluded if they think that. Microsoft will never give Sun anything other than token access to some of their protocols (if at all), and even if it was offered, it is highly doubtful that Sun’s engineers would cooperate with Microsoft’s engineers in a constructive manner or vice versa. Microsoft’s people would be looking to see how little they could actually give Sun, and Sun’s people would probably never believe them anyway. Microsoft offered some money simply to get Sun off their back and join in the fight against the common enemy, Linux, and no company is going to turn down a cheque for 2 billion dollars.
Sun’s software engineers are still extremely hostile to Microsoft, and no decree from Schwartz, McNealy or anyone else will change that. What either side gets out of that deal is anyone’s guess, but the conspiracy theories will probably give way to reality sooner or later.
2005-01-23 9:13 pm
Anonymous
>> SUN has a partnership w/ Microsoft!!!!!
Like IBM doesn’t???. IMHO IBM’s partnership with MS runs deeper than Suns.
2005-01-23 9:27 pm
Anonymous
> If a company has adopted Linux and it works well for them at a low cost, the only thing that will make it them switch back is something that delivers significant ROI. Show me the ROI for using DTrace for a user (not a developer, a user).
As mentioned above consolidation using Solaris zones will be the biggest contributor to ROI — ability to throw out hundreds if not thousands of Linux machines and hordes of Linux administrators maintaining them in favor of just a few Solaris servers serviced by just a few admins makes fenomenal business sense and will blow your ROI numbers through the roof. Linux doesn’t stand a chance in this departments. DTrace is a nice addition that also a big contributor to the supportability of the platform as it can drastically reduce the time to resolve problems, Linux has no answer for that either. Solaris kills both linux and windows on all fronts as far as ROI is concerned. May be it’s time to drop the arrogant linux fan boyizm and IBM ass kissing to face the reality for once.
2005-01-23 9:41 pm
Anonymous
“ability to throw out hundreds if not thousands of Linux machines and hordes of Linux administrators maintaining them in favor of just a few Solaris servers serviced by just a few admins”
Meanwhile, Intel and AMD keep producing bigger and bigger x86 servers on which Linux will keep improving until…
If you look into the future, it’s clear that Linux and x86 will keep progressing just fine. They are industry standards. Any Sun standard won’t stand a chance against the rest of the industry. Time to produce JavaPods and get on with the times. 🙂
2005-01-23 9:44 pm
Anonymous
> SUN has a partnership w/ Microsoft!!!!!
So freaking what? Sun will gladly eat Microsoft’s lunch any time of the day and vice versa — they hate each other’s guts to this day. Please don’t pull these low guilt-by-association punches, it just underscores the lack intelligence on the subject.
2005-01-23 9:50 pm
Anonymous
> Meanwhile, Intel and AMD keep producing bigger and bigger x86 servers on which Linux will keep improving until…
So is Solaris, only Solaris is progressing in more sensible directions, what is your point?
> it’s clear that Linux and x86 will keep progressing just fine. They are industry standards. Any Sun standard won’t stand a chance against the rest of the industry.
Err, Solaris is standards compliant through and through and Linux is absolutely no better in respect to this. For god sakes Solaris is even capable of running all Linux software.
> Solaris is awesome, but no amount of hype will save it.
Wishful thinking, but dream on brother, dream on… Solaris will be very successful.
2005-01-23 10:00 pm
Anonymous
I think you’ll find that I’m not the only one who finds these projects important.
Yes linux zealots and IBM groupies like yourself do make quite a handful. Doesn’t mean it is relevant or factual.
The fact is IBM contrubutes project aimed at linux and undermining Sun’s Java strategy. They have very specific reasons to opensource anything they do. Linux zealots pledge their support for IBM.
Take the number of non linux centric IBM Open source project and the list is miniscule. That is the point we are trying to make here. Open Source doesn’t equate to linux.
2005-01-23 10:14 pm
Anonymous
So says Sun, but it depends on what you buy and when and how Sun changes its products, charges and subscription models in the future. All things considered, the cost of switching to Solaris just isn’t worth it when you consider any Linux box will be doing exactly the same thing, usually with exactly the same software. People already have switched – to Linux. They’re not going to switch again.
Stop generalizing. I used to be a linux evangelist and I hardly ever use linux anymore other than on my Tivo.
I use MacOS X, Windows and Solaris. No linux, I did make a switch.
All it takes one example to disprove a generalzed statement.
2005-01-23 10:20 pm
Anonymous
A company will simply ask: “We’re running web servers, identity management, database services, web application servers and alike. Are we simply going to replace one set of servers running functionality for our business with another set of servers performing exactly the same functionality, possibly with exactly the same software?”
Then what is your justification for your claims that people are switching to linux from Solaris. What about linux on x86 -> linux on Power? The same discussion and the same conclusion would aply there too.
If people are switching they will continue to switch where they find a benefit. All you are saying is if there is no benefit why switch?? DUH.
You can use that argument for any platform. You really aren’t saying anything.
2005-01-23 10:36 pm
Anonymous
As mentioned above consolidation using Solaris zones will be the biggest contributor to ROI — ability to throw out hundreds if not thousands of Linux machines and hordes of Linux administrators maintaining them in favor of just a few Solaris servers serviced by just a few admins makes fenomenal business sense and will blow your ROI numbers through the roof.
Again, you’re mixing large numbers of x86 servers and Linux up again – the two are not mutually exclusive. You can consolidate an awful lot on Power-based (pSeries) IBM machines or those from SGI, and a lot of people do, but this approach is very expensive and has to justify the cost. You’re not going to be able to do this with Sun Solaris and x86 servers for that reason.
Throwing out hundreds if not thousand of servers is just a total exaggeration. Consolidation has been around for years, and if anything, everyone has gone in the other direction. No one is going to throw out that investment anyway.
Solaris kills both linux and windows on all fronts as far as ROI is concerned.
Don’t see any evidence of that – sorry. It certainly hasn’t helped Solaris so far.
May be it’s time to drop the arrogant linux fan boyizm and IBM ass kissing to face the reality for once.
Feel free to do so.
2005-01-23 10:41 pm
Anonymous
So is Solaris, only Solaris is progressing in more sensible directions, what is your point?
In what way? The stuff they’ve produced so far is not convincing for reasons I’ve outlined elsewhere. Those points have gone without reply.
Err, Solaris is standards compliant through and through and Linux is absolutely no better in respect to this. For god sakes Solaris is even capable of running all Linux software.
If you’d done any reading around Project Janus (heh, heh) you would know that Sun has had major difficulties in getting Linux applications running unmodified on Solaris. They probably won’t release it in time for Solaris 10.
Would you care to elaborate on why you think Solaris feels the need to get Linux applications up and running on Solaris? No one feels the need to do things the other way around .
Wishful thinking, but dream on brother, dream on… Solaris will be very successful.
I’m afraid saying that won’t make it so. I’ve certainly outlined many good reasons as to why this will not be the case, as well as addressing how development will go with Open Solaris and how it will be maintained. No one has addressed any of those points.
2005-01-23 10:47 pm
Anonymous
Focus on writing insinuating articles in the tech press to hopefully gain popularity by guilt and blaming other corporations for not making Sun’s platform offerings of 3rd party applications/frameworks as prevalent as Sun would like other companies to make.
Of course I suppose this is his new idea of strategic partnerships?
Here is a clue Sun. IBM is not obligated to port their applications to Sun. IBM’s customers if they were so disgruntled that IBM hasn’t ported this or that to Sun’s hardware can drop IBM hardware and switch. Of course this is sheer suicide for the customer who has no moral or ethical obligation to serve Sun’s best interests.
Sun clearly can’t manage to make their platform so cost effective that customers are willing to sacrifice part of their networks using IBM in favor of Sun Solaris x86.
IBM just dropped the PC division. There focus is PPC. Where in the hell does it say a business must offer all its products to all platforms?
Sun should be encouraging agile 3rd parties to develop similar tools that work for Sun hardware.
2005-01-23 10:47 pm
Anonymous
I wrote:
So says Sun, but it depends on what you buy and when and how Sun changes its products, charges and subscription models in the future. All things considered, the cost of switching to Solaris just isn’t worth it when you consider any Linux box will be doing exactly the same thing, usually with exactly the same software. People already have switched – to Linux. They’re not going to switch again.
—–
Stop generalizing. I used to be a linux evangelist and I hardly ever use linux anymore other than on my Tivo.
I use MacOS X, Windows and Solaris. No linux, I did make a switch.
All it takes one example to disprove a generalzed statement.
Would you care to tell me how the above response has anything to do with what I’ve wrote? I’ve pointed out that no one is going to replace anything that not only does the same thing, but will probably run the same software as well. That’s perfectly logical. The above is just bollocks, and simply waving away something as a generalised statement isn’t a response.
The fact that you may have switched proves absolutely sweet FA I’m afraid – you’re not that significant. The fact is that businesses don’t throw things away and replace them with something else that does exactly the same thing.
2005-01-23 10:57 pm
Anonymous
Then what is your justification for your claims that people are switching to linux from Solaris.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and in case you hadn’t noticed Sun have lost several billion dollars in revenue over the past two or three years. Couple that with increased Linux server sales from many vendors, not just IBM, and there you have your justification. I’m afraid claiming anything to the contrary is just denial and seriously wishful thinking.
What about linux on x86 -> linux on Power? The same discussion and the same conclusion would aply there too.
Except that we’re talking about Solaris on x86 primarily, versus Linux on x86. If someone moves from x86 to Power, certainly with Suse and Red Hat they have a migration path because they’re using the same software and the same distribution. Presumably, they would move to Power to consolidate their computing and because they just need more resources. Maybe clustering isn’t going to work for them. Moving from x86 Linux to x86 Solaris is just pointless – that’s my point.
If people are switching they will continue to switch where they find a benefit. All you are saying is if there is no benefit why switch?? DUH.
Yer, which is why few people are going to see any reason to switch their x86 Linux servers over to x86 Solaris servers. Duh…..
You can use that argument for any platform. You really aren’t saying anything.
Was it you who talked about generalising?
2005-01-24 12:10 am
Anonymous
Would you care to tell me how the above response has anything to do with what I’ve wrote?
Sure. You wrote:
People already have switched – to Linux. They’re not going to switch again.
That is a general statement. I a person, who makes up people have switched from linux to every other platform that is of any consequence. Hence your General statement is disproven.
I’ve pointed out that no one is going to replace anything that not only does the same thing, but will probably run the same software as well. That’s perfectly logical.
It is perfectly logical but doesn’t mean it makes any sense. A perfectly logical statement is ” If A is greater than B and B is greater than C, then A is greater than C”. But is has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Your statement is something like that.
“No one will replace anything they don’t have a need to”. DUH. Obviously but what does it have to do with anything we are discussing here.
If you are attempting to say that linux is the answer to everyones question and Solaris is not. I would say you need to get your head checked.
2005-01-24 12:22 am
Anonymous
Except that we’re talking about Solaris on x86 primarily, versus Linux on x86. If someone moves from x86 to Power, certainly with Suse and Red Hat they have a migration path because they’re using the same software and the same distribution. Presumably, they would move to Power to consolidate their computing and because they just need more resources. Maybe clustering isn’t going to work for them. Moving from x86 Linux to x86 Solaris is just pointless – that’s my point.
That’s a lot of maybes there. Just a few posts ago you were claiming different.
Have you thought that Maybe customers privy to Sun’s future road map may switch to Solaris x86 becuase of it. CIOs usually tend to buy what suits their business needs, they don’t often make purchase decisions based on sentimental reasons like “let’s buy linux it is the righteous desicsion becuase of the GPL”.
No matter how much I try to tell my wife how good openoffice or neooffice is and how free it,she still complains that it doesn’t meet her needs like MS office. The reality is most people don’t care a damn about ideological reasons when buying software. They buy what meets thier needs.
If soalris meets thier need they will buy it, Be it for ZFS, DTrace, Perdictive self healing, or XYZ. If they periceve a need they will switch. Just because you think Solaris 10 doesn’t have anything you think linux doesn’t already provide doesn’t mean everyone thinks that.
That is why I keep telling you to stop generalizing. Stop using your perception of the world and claim that it is the ultimate truth. Only fools and fanatics do.
Yer, which is why few people are going to see any reason to switch their x86 Linux servers over to x86 Solaris servers. Duh…..
That statment can be easily rephrased as follows and still hold true.
Yer, which is why few people are going to see a reaon to switch thier Solaris x86 servers over to linux x86 servers. Duh…
See my point, You are trying to say something and obviously making a hash of it.
You can use that argument for any platform. You really aren’t saying anything.
Was it you who talked about generalising?
What is general about my statement? I stated that you argument is so general that it is stupid. My statment was pointed specifically at your argument, thus it can’t possibly be general.
2005-01-24 12:28 am
Anonymous
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and in case you hadn’t noticed Sun have lost several billion dollars in revenue over the past two or three years. Couple that with increased Linux server sales from many vendors, not just IBM, and there you have your justification. I’m afraid claiming anything to the contrary is just denial and seriously wishful thinking.
And you are claiming that thier losing money had everything to do with linux.
That is extremely naive. There were multiple reasons for that one of which is linux but it is by far not the biggest reason.
I would like to go over them but it would be pointless becuase you won’t get it. Not becuase it won’t be true becuase you won’t believe it.
2005-01-24 12:28 am
Anonymous
> You can consolidate an awful lot on Power-based (pSeries) IBM machines or those from SGI, and a lot of people do, but this approach is very expensive and has to justify the cost. You’re not going to be able to do this with Sun Solaris and x86 servers for that reason.
No you can not consolidate a lot of system on the pSeries and certainly not on SGI. Hypervisor micropartitioning in pSeries allows for only 10 OS images per processor and imposes a very significant overhead (30% performance degradation if you run 10 micropartions per processor). Additionally with micropartions you still run the overhead of babysitting each and every OS instance. With zones on the other hand you can consolidate up to 4000 zones (theoretical limit) on to a machine regardless of the number of processors and you don’t carry the admin overhead as you can maintain thousands of virtual servers as easy as one. I’ve seen an ancient Ultra 10 with 360Mhz processor run 50 zones without much problem, so I would assume that even a single processor modern server can easily work with at least a hundred zones. Throw a multiprocessor machine with good VM subsystem at the problem and you can easily host thousands of zones in one box. There is absolutely nothing in IBM arsenal besides mainframes ($$$$) to answer this. Repeat after me “Solaris is just better”.
2005-01-24 12:45 am
Anonymous
Are you Linux fan boys really that naive to believe that IBM is full of Linux love? Get a grip and try talking to one of the IBM sales people. IBM sales people use Linux as a bargaining chip and a foot in the door. As soon as they’ve got you attention they will be shoving the same ultra proprietary stuff down your throat as years before (AIX and the mind numbing crap they call iSeries or even mainframe if you’re a big enough shop). IBM is still the same wolf in sheep’s clothing, the same company that invented the words proprietary and vendor lockin. All that matters to IBM is high margins and maintenance/support contructs with GS and they still have vested interest in locking you in. Linux is just a loss leader that IBM uses to attract attention — Linux is just a sacrificial lamb on the altar of IBM vendor lockin. Sun as a company is a lot more open and easier to deal with than IBM.
2005-01-24 12:50 am
Anonymous
I didn’t say Sun didn’t contribute now, did I? Sun does contribute. The big problem is Sun fanboi’s assertion that IBM does not contribute. That’s a bald-faced lie, and I don’t much care for lies.
You were far from claiming that both Sun and IBM contribute. You claimed IBM had made more significant contirbutions than Sun.
I think people were trying to point out that Sun had contributed more than you give it credit for and certainly more than IBM. I don’t see that as a lie any more than what you claimed was a lie.
IBM contributed primarily to linux. Sun contribure primarily to the entire open source community. Openoffice, NetBeans, NFS, Gnome, Mozilla, Tomcat … etc. are primarily platform agnostic. Since linux community is not equal to enitre Open Source community, I would say Sun has contributed more to the OpenSource community thant IBM. Now the list includes Solaris which is to be under and OSI approved license.
Most linux zealots would like to to be GPL’ed but tough luck. OSI approved means it is legitimate to call Solaris OpenSource.
2005-01-24 1:11 am
Anonymous
He’s going to have to do more than say they have customers. He’s going to have to produce the customers. Knowing how Sun
Make up your mind. Are you claiming Sun is grandstanding or lying. Your first statement says Grandstanding != lying. But the statement above says you are calling them a liar.
Also IBM didn’t send the letter for the better of the community, IBM has thier own JVM why can’t they open soruce it. Blackdown is already the Opensource JVM. IBM sent the letter to create a opensource media frenzy and to paint Sun as an enemy to opensource. If sun had given into the pressure they would have lost control of Java to IBM.
2005-01-24 2:08 am
Anonymous
Regardless, the number of Sun workstations is now non-existant and getting smaller. No one is talking about replacing their Unix workstations with Unix replacements like Solaris.
66 thousand workstations, and growing per quarter, I would hardly call that non-existant considering that they sell workstations loaded with either Red Hat Linux Enterprise WS or Solaris.
Each quarter the number of server shipments have grown, both their x86 and SPARC business; they’ve realised that they can no longer get the same massive margins off their SPARC hardware, hence the reduction in price, and thus, a reduction in revenue; the x86 business is also bringing in profits as well. They’ve now stopped the leaking of SUN customers to other vendors, and you’ll find in the next 12-18months, will be the deciding fact as to whether SUN continues to go forward.
Read and repeat, SUN sells more servers than IBM/AIX do. The number of AIX servers out there can be counted quite easily, without needing to breack out a calculator.
2005-01-24 11:31 am
Anonymous
The fact is IBM contrubutes project aimed at linux and undermining Sun’s Java strategy. They have very specific reasons to opensource anything they do. Linux zealots pledge their support for IBM.
Umm…undermining Java undermines Websphere. Last I checked, that was a very important part of IBM’s strategy. What kind of sense would it make for IBM to undermine its own software? Its wagon is hitched just as firmly to Java as it is to Linux.
The problem with common sense is that it apparently isn’t all that common.
2005-01-24 11:44 am
Anonymous
As mentioned above consolidation using Solaris zones will be the biggest contributor to ROI — ability to throw out hundreds if not thousands of Linux machines and hordes of Linux administrators maintaining them in favor of just a few Solaris servers serviced by just a few admins makes fenomenal business sense and will blow your ROI numbers through the roof. Linux doesn’t stand a chance in this departments. DTrace is a nice addition that also a big contributor to the supportability of the platform as it can drastically reduce the time to resolve problems, Linux has no answer for that either. Solaris kills both linux and windows on all fronts as far as ROI is concerned. May be it’s time to drop the arrogant linux fan boyizm and IBM ass kissing to face the reality for once.
It seems I’m not the one who’s being arrogant. My posts are full of facts, yours are full of hopeful optimism for Sun.
The fact of the matter is despite your claims of these things being no-brainer for ROI, you haven’t provided any proof. Common sense dictates that the ROI must be demonstrable and proven. Marketing is 90% of the battle. If that weren’t true, Windows would have never gotten to its current position.
As far as arrogance goes, I have none. I’m a servent of the truth. I don’t tolerate falsehoods. IBM is no angel, but it’s no devil, as you Sun fanbois seem to think. Companies have no soul. They deal only with what’s best for their shareholders. You may counter that Sun is delivering technology that will be more helpful to customers. If it does and is successful, that benefits the shareholders. The sad truth is that, save the non-profits, all corporations are beholden to shareholder interests FIRST. They own the company, and frankly to act against their interests would subject a corporation to shareholder lawsuits. Everything a corporation does centers around that core fact.
2005-01-24 11:52 am
Anonymous
If soalris meets thier need they will buy it, Be it for ZFS, DTrace, Perdictive self healing, or XYZ. If they periceve a need they will switch. Just because you think Solaris 10 doesn’t have anything you think linux doesn’t already provide doesn’t mean everyone thinks that.
No. They will buy Solaris if they think it will save them money. Businesses don’t buy technology just because it sounds cool (that went out the window, for good, in the dot-com bust).
Make up your mind. Are you claiming Sun is grandstanding or lying. Your first statement says Grandstanding != lying. But the statement above says you are calling them a liar.
I didn’t say he was lying. Not at all. You can’t find one word I wrote that says Scwartz was lying. What I did say essentially boils down to he failed to provide proof. If his goal is really to get IBM to support Solaris, he should have produced the figures. Alternatively, he should have approached IBM in a less public forum and paid them off to do the ports…which is how most companies get other companies to support products.
Grandstanding is not lying. It’s just playing for the audience and is often plagued by not telling enough of the truth. It may include lying, but I don’t think that’s the case here.
That is why I keep telling you to stop generalizing. Stop using your perception of the world and claim that it is the ultimate truth. Only fools and fanatics do.
Exactly my point.
2005-01-24 2:13 pm
Anonymous
That’s a lot of maybes there. Just a few posts ago you were claiming different.
I wasn’t claiming anything of the sort. To see the sort of confused logic you have:
That statment can be easily rephrased as follows and still hold true.
Yer, which is why few people are going to see a reaon to switch thier Solaris x86 servers over to linux x86 servers. Duh…
I’m afraid not. The problem is that there are very, very, very few Solaris x86 servers out in the world compared to Linux x86 servers. They’re also available in a multitude of forms, and even Sun sells more Linux on x86 than Solaris.
You’re digging for something that just isn’t there, and you’re tying yourself in knots in order to make me think that you actually have a point.
2005-01-24 2:23 pm
Anonymous
No you can not consolidate a lot of system on the pSeries and certainly not on SGI. Hypervisor micropartitioning in pSeries allows for only 10 OS images per processor and imposes a very significant overhead (30% performance degradation if you run 10 micropartions per processor). Additionally with micropartions you still run the overhead of babysitting each and every OS instance. With zones on the other hand you can consolidate up to 4000 zones (theoretical limit) on to a machine regardless of the number of processors and you don’t carry the admin overhe……………………..Blah, blah, blah
You’re totally missing the point. For consolidation purposes the vast majority of people can consolidate on a pSeries or an offering from SGI or another supplier should they need the raw hardware power – you still need more powerful machines to consolidate on. I’m afraid you just can’t host “thousands of zones on one box”. You still need it to do the work. The vast majority will not do that though because the x86 servers available for them will do a good job, so consolidation is few and far between now.
Organisations dumped Solaris on SPARC in thir droves for Linux and x86 simply because they found they could get something far cheaper, and they realised the expensive stuff Sun was offering just wasn’t necessary. If Sun and Solaris had got to x86 first then things may be different. As it is, they aren’t.
2005-01-24 2:36 pm
Anonymous
66 thousand workstations, and growing per quarter, I would hardly call that non-existant considering that they sell workstations loaded with either Red Hat Linux Enterprise WS or Solaris.
With 66 thousand workstations they can’t have been growing for very long. This may come as a shock, but that’s just a very small splash in a large ocean. How many do you think specify Red Hat to be pre-installed?
Each quarter the number of server shipments have grown, both their x86 and SPARC business;
Their SPARC business is not growing (why do you think Sun are in the position they’re in?!), and they sell more x86 servers installed with Linux than they do Solaris. That’s why Sun desperately need someone like IBM to support Solaris to drive some demand, because at the moment there’s just no need for Solaris on x86, or Solaris period.
IBM can quite happily support their software on Suse or Red Hat, installed and running on a Sun sold x86 server! Sun are no Dell I’m afraid, so they’d better hope that they manage to flog an awful lot of services, support and generally meaningless add-ons to justify the giveaway. At the moment all Sun are with x86 is a reseller, which is why Jonathan Schwartz’s open letter is so damn hilarious!
Read and repeat, SUN sells more servers than IBM/AIX do. The number of AIX servers out there can be counted quite easily, without needing to breack out a calculator.
Please don’t do meaningless comparisons – they aren’t worth anything. The discussion is about Linux, particularly on x86, compared with Solaris on x86. AIX is out of the equation, even at IBM. With that factored in, even without other vendors in there, I’m afraid Sun have been murdered. Their bottom line has revealed that much.
2005-01-24 3:45 pm
Anonymous
Umm…undermining Java undermines Websphere. Last I checked, that was a very important part of IBM’s strategy. What kind of sense would it make for IBM to undermine its own software? Its wagon is hitched just as firmly to Java as it is to Linux.
Are you really that oblivious. I sadi undermining Sun’s control of Java, or atleast I meant to say that. If IBM get’s control of Java from Sun, it will most certainly not going to hurt Websphere.
You are drinking too much IBM koolaid.
The problem with common sense is that it apparently isn’t all that common.
That is most certainly the case with you I am afraid.
2005-01-24 3:47 pm
Anonymous
You’re digging for something that just isn’t there, and you’re tying yourself in knots in order to make me think that you actually have a point.
That’s funny. I thought I already accused you of doing the same.
2005-01-24 3:50 pm
Anonymous
I didn’t say he was lying. Not at all. You can’t find one word I wrote that says Scwartz was lying. What I did say essentially boils down to he failed to provide proof.
Why would you ask him to prove his statement, if you didn’t think he was lying?
Most legal systems take eye witness testamony as proof.
2005-01-24 4:13 pm
Anonymous
Their SPARC business is not growing (why do you think Sun are in the position they’re in?!), and they sell more x86 servers installed with Linux than they do Solaris. That’s why Sun desperately need someone like IBM to support Solaris to drive some demand, because at the moment there’s just no need for Solaris on x86, or Solaris period.
You really need to post data to support your theory. In th last year, You have constantly regurgitated the exact same incorrect views. A lot has changed in that time expecpt you dillusions that you have accurate information to share.
Here is excrept Sun’s Q2 FYO5 earnings call transcript.
We were pleased however, with year over year and sequential revenue growth in 1-8 way SPARC® and x86 Opteron servers. Other product categories with year over year and sequential revenue growth include Netra servers, entry and data center storage arrays, and software. In addition, our Java Enterprise System subscriber count increased by nearly 21 percent or 73,000 subscribers sequentially, bringing the total JES subscriber count to 418,000. X86 server unit sales, while not yet material to revenue, increased 160 percent year over year.
Year over year sequential revenue growth in mid to lowend SPARC systems. They claim their x86 systems sales don’t yet affect the revenue numbers much. They also have increased thier unit shipmnets year over year, However Margins are lower, hence decline in revenue. Gross Margins is the biggest gripe most analysts have with Sun.
Repeat after me that Sun is selling more SPARC systems than before, just a lower prices than before, to meet the market. So Solaris volume has never been higher.
Here is an excrept from the FY04 annual report.
While our unit sales of Computer Systems and Network Storage systems increased as
compared with fiscal 2003, we responded to competitive pressures with price reductions and sales discounting actions
resulting in a decrease in fiscal 2004 products net revenue. An increase in fiscal 2004 services net revenues, as
compared with fiscal 2003, partially offset the decline in products net revenues. Although services revenues were also
affected by competitive pricing pressures, services revenues grew primarily due to an increase in the support services
contract penetration rate, as we increased contract renewals with existing customers and entered into a higher
percentage of support services contracts with new products sales.
2005-01-24 4:18 pm
Anonymous
At the moment all Sun are with x86 is a reseller, which is why Jonathan Schwartz’s open letter is so damn hilarious!
Really care to post some proof. You constantly make outlandish claims that don’t have a shred of evidence associated with them.
It’s time you started posting dome facts and not your over year old stale arguments. That’s all your posts have sounded like for the past year, like a borken record that just will never play right and gets stuck on one track.
2005-01-25 2:33 am
Anonymous
Are you really that oblivious. I sadi undermining Sun’s control of Java, or atleast I meant to say that. If IBM get’s control of Java from Sun, it will most certainly not going to hurt Websphere.
I’m not Dion Warwick. I responded to what you said, not what you claim to have meant.
You are drinking too much IBM koolaid.
If that’s a true statement, then it would also be fair to say you’re drinking too much sunscreen.
“The problem with common sense is that it apparently isn’t all that common.”
That is most certainly the case with you I am afraid.
And here we see the problem with the Sun fanbois. You can’t make your claim with facts, so you have to resort to ad hominem attacks.
I will not engage in a battle of wits with someone who chooses to go in unarmed.
2005-01-25 4:06 am
Anonymous
I’m not Dion Warwick. I responded to what you said, not what you claim to have meant.
Then you are worse than I thought. I said exactly what I meant to say, you misunderstood.
The fact is IBM contrubutes project aimed at linux and undermining Sun’s Java strategy. They have very specific reasons to opensource anything they do. Linux zealots pledge their support for IBM.
Umm…undermining Java undermines Websphere
This is the post in context. I don’t understand how you can conflate undermining “Sun’s java strategy” to mean undermine Java.
And here we see the problem with the Sun fanbois. You can’t make your claim with facts, so you have to resort to ad hominem attacks.
Your statement about common sense, isn’t and attack. Please.
I will not engage in a battle of wits with someone who chooses to go in unarmed.
Ok this isn’t an attack then. You started the personal attacks first. I chose not to battle it out with dimwits eaither.
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.
Sorry, that’s just not true. Eclipse is a more important IDE than NetBeans. IBM’s Linux support is more important than Suns late-to-the-game partial open sourcing of Solaris. Cloudscape is an all-Java database. Apache’s XML libraries started life in IBM research labs.
Solaris thumps its chest about how much code it has donated to open source. The only problem is that there is no heart behind the chest-thumping. It’s just become another marketing gimmick, just like the open letter.
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.
Umm…Websphere, DB2, and so on are available for 35 different platforms, including Solaris. If Sun wants IBM to support Solaris 10 for x86/x86_64, they’ll need to provide cold, hard facts. The kind of business that IBM targets for its products is the kind of business that will run Solaris 10 on Sparc.
Trusted Solaris is certified at EAL4+, whereas z/OS is still an rather mundane EAL3+.
That’s good. The question becomes: did IBM try to certify z/OS at EAL4+ and fail?
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.
What hypocrisy? Maybe you’re reading two different letters. The only thing they had in common is grandstanding. The only difference is that IBM is actually good at grandstanding without making it blatantly obvious that they’re grandstanding. IBM’s letter was about working together for the benefit of the community. Sun’s letter was about IBM working for the benefit of Sun.
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.
IBM supports Solaris on Sparc along with 34 other platforms. What it has been indicated that they won’t support is Solaris 10 x86.
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.
…and…
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.
The issue with Sun’s JVM isn’t money. It’s control.
IBM’s view of open source is very utilitatian: let’s collaborate on the things that are standardized (and therefore cannot make money off of), and compete on the value-adds — performance, ease of administration, and so on. IBM wants to see the JVM open-sourced so that they can meet Sun’s stated goal of WORA.
> Sorry, that’s just not true. Eclipse is a more important IDE than NetBeans. IBM’s Linux support is more important than Suns late-to-the-game partial open sourcing of Solaris. Cloudscape is an all-Java database. Apache’s XML libraries started life in IBM research labs.
This list sounds rather bleak compared to what Sun is putting out. BTW, in my opinion NetBeans is more important and more capable IDE than Eclipse, which in itself a reactive effort to NetBeans, Cloudscape is meaningless roadkill that would otherwise been completely forgotten, and IBM’s XML libraries is just drop in a bucket. IBM is more of a flag waver, not a real contributor.
> Solaris thumps its chest about how much code it has donated to open source. The only problem is that there is no heart behind the chest-thumping.
If by “no heart” you mean Sun does less flag waving and actually giving something to the community, then yes.
> It’s just become another marketing gimmick, just like the open letter.
BTW, it is IBM that invented this gimmick with open letters. IBM started posting these stupid inflamatory letters about “open-sourcing” Java. I guess they are now getting poisoned with their own poison…
> If Sun wants IBM to support Solaris 10 for x86/x86_64, they’ll need to provide cold, hard facts. The kind of business that IBM targets for its products is the kind of business that will run Solaris 10 on Sparc.
GM (one of IBM’s biggest customers) has already voiced their requirements for support of Solaris x86. IBM is deliberately playing stupid for the amusement of the crowd, whereas they know their customers want support for Solaris x86.
GM (one of IBM’s biggest customers) has already voiced their requirements for support of Solaris x86. IBM is deliberately playing stupid for the amusement of the crowd, whereas they know their customers want support for Solaris x86.
Cite sources (Sun marketing material doesn’t count).
Let’s not forget that Sun also contributed Gridengine, which powers most of the compute farms built nowadays. It runs on almost everything!
And OpenOffice is cool…
And Solaris 10 has Zones, ZFS — those are nice features to datacentres.
IMO, Intel should put more $$ into opensource, since they are the one who benefit the most from it!
> Cite sources (Sun marketing material doesn’t count).
Do you think Sun can make it up ?
Sun should just buy some IBM hardware & software and whatever else they need and do the work themselfs…
Judging by the amount of take up I see in the press….
Posted by Sun to news sites in a frenzy
.
A lot of Linux customers are likely to jump ship to Solaris as it is superior in every department and costs significantly less.
No one who has moved to Linux will jump back to Solaris. Sun knows that, which is why they desperately need IBM to support it so they can physically supplant Linux – Solaris by itself, no matter how good it is, is nowhere near enough.
There’s the cost and the pain of moving for one, not to mention that they’ll mostly be running the same software on it as on Linux. It just isn’t going to happen. How that costs less is anybody’s guess, but that seems to be Sun’s logic these days. Let’s bombard news sites and lets bang away at our blogs and surely people will be convinced.
Solaris x86 supports pretty much all x86 server grade gear from all major vendors (IBM, HP, Dell).
Linux had that years ago, and yet it was still important for it to support more exotic hardware, sound cards, multimedia cards, graphics cards (not Linux per se) and other peripherals because people developed Linux and its infrastructure on workstations and desktops. That is vitally important for Sun if they expect a community to develop Open Solaris – they need their desktops! Whining about “Oh, it’s for servers” doesn’t cut it. If that support isn’t there (not to mention the license) then no one is going to bother developing for it, however enthusiastic they are.
Do a ‘make menuconfig’ and have a look at the devices available within Linux before making silly comments.
…the overwhelming majority of drivers for Linux stink and shouldn’t be allowed to be used in production.
And yet shockingly enough, people use the drivers in the Linux kernel 24/7/365 in production – and they work flawlessly. Please, don’t make stupid comments. The hardware argument is over – Linux won that battle long ago. It is naive in the extreme to think that Sun has gone from practically zero x86 Solaris support to something as good as Sun and the fanboys say it is. It hasn’t happened and it will take them years with the full support of an Open Solaris community, as they nor their IHVs can do it by themselves.
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.
And yet hardware does get ported to Linux. It took Linux years of community effort, with some IHV support, to get to the level of hardware support there is now. IHVs didn’t pay much attention to Linux, and still don’t, because its share especially on desktops is so small. Server hardware has been done and dusted via open sourced, GPLd drivers anyway.
You think that IHVs are simply going to port all their hardware to x86 Solaris in particular, with an incredibly miniscule desktop share even compared to Linux (and on servers), and they’re going to be motivated to continue to maintain those drivers? IHVs and Sun cannot possibly do that by themselves. I’m afraid you need community support to do that, and to get community support you need it to be fully open sourced, and to get the level of community development needed to do that you need the right license…… See where I’m going with this?
In open sourcing Solaris it is a question of balance and swings and roundabouts, and that’s what Sun and all the fanboys desperate to get a foothold cannot comprehend. Sun thinks it can keep contorl of Solaris, but open source bits of it and it will miraculously become like Linux and all will be well with the world again. I’m afraid it just doesn’t work like that, and that’s what Linus Torvalds pointed out. He should know – he’s went out and done it.
Do you think Sun can make it up ?
They can certainly offer them a fair bit of money, free hardware, services etc. and you can get any company to say almost anything. Microsoft does it all the time.
This list sounds rather bleak compared to what Sun is putting out. BTW, in my opinion NetBeans is more important and more capable IDE than Eclipse, which in itself a reactive effort to NetBeans, Cloudscape is meaningless roadkill that would otherwise been completely forgotten, and IBM’s XML libraries is just drop in a bucket. IBM is more of a flag waver, not a real contributor.
Running down Eclipse, Cloudscape, and Xalan/Xerces demonstrates you still don’t get it. That’s just the beginning of a very long list. If you don’t know how much IBM contributes (despite ample evidence that can be found using Google), maybe it’s because they’re not as big of a flag-waver as you think.
There’s a difference between selling Linux and being an open source flag-waver. IBM has a stake in the success of Apache, Linux, and other technologies, and makes decisions that best align with its business priorities. It makes real contributions. Is it because they buy into the through that all source wants to be free? No, but they do contribute.
If by “no heart” you mean Sun does less flag waving and actually giving something to the community, then yes.
That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it, but that doesn’t make it right. Sun hasn’t given anything truly signficant to the community since Tomcat. Open sourcing something and giving something are two different things.
> There’s the cost and the pain of moving for one, not to mention that they’ll mostly be running the same software on it as on Linux. It just isn’t going to happen. How that costs less is anybody’s guess, but that seems to be Sun’s logic these days.
All over sudden your arguments sound a lot like MS being afraid that Windows will be supplanted by Linux — you started to quote the cost of switching, so you admit that Solaris is a better and cheaper platform in the first place. Solaris is whopping 40% cheaper to purchase and support than RedHat Linux, I’m sure it’ll make a lot of people moving. Solaris is just too good to be ignored, a lot of people will jump ship from Linux and Windows.
> mportant for it to support more exotic hardware, sound cards, multimedia cards, graphics cards (not Linux per se) and other peripherals because people developed Linux and its infrastructure on workstations and desktops. That is vitally important for Sun
The overwhelming majority of the run-of-the-mill business desktops from IBM, HP and Dell can run Solaris without any problems, may be you should try it for your self.
> And yet shockingly enough, people use the drivers in the Linux kernel 24/7/365 in production – and they work flawlessly.
May be in moms-and-pops and wanna be l33t hacker shops it is, but in corporate data-centre Linux is still having trouble gaining much traction compared with the proven Unix platforms.
> You think that IHVs are simply going to port all their hardware to x86 Solaris in particular, with an incredibly miniscule desktop share even compared to Linux (and on servers), and they’re going to be motivated to continue to maintain those drivers?
By the amount of growth in the size of HCL, all I can say is Sun seems to be quite successful at subscribing big IHV’s under Solaris program. Solaris can take a pretty good chunk of the x86 and AMD (especially AMD) market in the server space, so the IHV’s should be well motivated.
> They can certainly offer them a fair bit of money, free hardware, services etc. and you can get any company to say almost anything. Microsoft does it all the time.
GM is certainly not one of those customers, I don’t think GM would make public statements like this just because Sun greased some elbows.
> Cite sources (Sun marketing material doesn’t count).
Do you think Sun can make it up ?
Do you think they wouldn’t?
IBM’s Linux Technology Center hosts over 80 projects, many of which have patches supplied by IBM. They opened the code and ported their JFS journaled filesystem to Linux, and are one of the founding members of OSDL ( Sun is a member).
As I stated earlier, IBM’s contributions have been largely towards making Linux perform and scale better – hugely important goals. Let’s not forget that IBM wrote the NGPT threading library which, although it wasn’t adopted as the default for the 2.6 kernel, offered comparable performance to
the NPTL library which is the new default.
Also, let’s not forget that IBM open sourced Wietse Venema’s Postfix, an able (superior?) alternativeto Sendmail.
And, I’ve already pointed out the IBM developerworks tutorials and articles.
By comparison, the list at sunsource.net seems quite meager although the contribution of OpenOffice.org is very significant.
so you admit that Solaris is a better and cheaper platform in the first place.
Did he? I don’t see how “That seems to be Sun’s argument nowadays” translates into an admission.
The overwhelming majority of the run-of-the-mill business desktops from IBM, HP and Dell can run Solaris without any problems, may be you should try it for your self.
But most users (Hollywood studios as an example), have ditched their Sun workstations to go with Linux. They’re not going to be jumping back unless the services companies that they paid millions of dollars to help them make the switch help them switch back for free. There is no business case to replacing something that’s low-cost and works to something else that’s low-cost and works.
May be in moms-and-pops and wanna be l33t hacker shops it is, but in corporate data-centre Linux is still having trouble gaining much traction compared with the proven Unix platforms.
Again, cite sources. According to most media accounts, Linux is making serious in-roads into UNIX accounts. Give us an unbiased and reliable source from the last two years that shows otherwise.
Gridengine and GEP (Grid Engine Portal) have million lines of code. Without SGE, you will need to stick with other close source packages, and those cost $1000 US per CPU (so you will end up paying tens of thousands of dollars for an average cluster).
> By comparison, the list at sunsource.net seems quite meager although the contribution of OpenOffice.org is very significant.
It is just Sun’s list is mostly composed of the OSS projects that really matter (i.e OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gnome, Tomcat, Xalan, JSF, Solaris,. etc), not little known and vague projects as in IBM’s case. It is a proven fact that Sun is the biggest contributor to OSS being second only to UCB, so IBM trails far behind in this respect.
Solaris thumps its chest about how much code it has donated to open source. The only problem is that there is no heart behind the chest-thumping. It’s just become another marketing gimmick, just like the open letter.
Openoffice is an order of magnitude more important than any of those for linux’s current desktop penetration. Let’s not massage facts here, NetBeans was open sourced before Eclipse.
Importance according to your perception is irrelevant.
who made early contributions to Linux kernel profiling, performance management and ported their XFS filesystem.
And, let’s not forget OpenGL, the Altix and their contributions to Apache, Mozilla and Samba.
> But most users (Hollywood studios as an example), have ditched their Sun workstations to go with Linux.
I think you’re confusing Sun with SGI in this case — Sun was never as strong in special effects arena, it always belonged to SGI, which later suffered to Linux. As far as I know only “Toy Story” was rendered on Sun workstations in the early ’90s, the rest belong to SGI.
> There is no business case to replacing something that’s low-cost and works to something else that’s low-cost and works.
Sure there is, if you can consolidate hundreds of Linux boxes into one Solaris machine (zones), this makes one hell of a business case for any company. Sprinkle that with Dtrace and ZFS and you have a perfect recipe for jumping ship from Linux.
What hypocrisy? Maybe you’re reading two different letters. The only thing they had in common is grandstanding. The only difference is that IBM is actually good at grandstanding without making it blatantly obvious that they’re grandstanding. IBM’s letter was about working together for the benefit of the community. Sun’s letter was about IBM working for the benefit of Sun.
Bullshit. You are basically saying IBM is very good at lying becuase the intent is the same, but IBM is just better at lying without getting caught. IBM has never cared for any community but it’s shareholders. And they are very good at lying.
Consider Schwartz’s entry with customers wanting support and IBM handwaving claiming none wants it but you to multiple customers.
SGI sucks!!!
They copied some code from other unix versions to the Linux kernel, and SCO was using that piece of code to spread FUD!
And mostly because they needed to dump IRIX, so they needed to port their code to Linux, and use Linux as their OS.
Did SGI contribute code to Desktop Linux users?
Running down Eclipse, Cloudscape, and Xalan/Xerces demonstrates you still don’t get it. That’s just the beginning of a very long list. If you don’t know how much IBM contributes (despite ample evidence that can be found using Google), maybe it’s because they’re not as big of a flag-waver as you think.
You really should take your own advice and use google to search for Sun’s contrirbutions before accusing others.
Here I have done it for you.
http://www.sunsource.net/
It is just Sun’s list is mostly composed of the OSS projects that really matter (i.e OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gnome, Tomcat, Xalan, JSF, Solaris,. etc), not little known and vague projects as in IBM’s case. It is a proven fact that Sun is the biggest contributor to OSS being second only to UCB, so IBM trails far behind in this respect.
Let’s go down the list, shall we?
OpenOffice: Yes, it’s a good thing that Sun open-sourced it. However, to be fair, the same criticism you applied to Cloudscape can be applied to OpenOffice when Sun donated it to open source. It was slow, bloated, and the only way it was going to make inroads against its competitors was to give it away for free.
Mozilla: This isn’t an advantage for Sun. Anywhere you can find contributor lists, there are as many IBM employees as there are Sun employees.
GNOME: Same as for Mozilla.
Tomcat: This is the feather in Sun’s cap.
Xalan: I’m not sure how a project that began life at Lotus Development Corp. as Lotus XSL is a Sun contribution to open source.
JSF: This is a Java spec.
Solaris: Same as you claim for Cloudscape. In the face of declining marketshare from Linux encroachment, Sun seeks to undermine Linux by going open source. “Me too!”
IBM’s contributions are numerous and to be found many places on the web. Here are some of the more important ones.
Xalan’s cousin Xerces began life as IBM XML4J.
Apache SOAP began life as IBM SOAP4J.
Apache HTTP Server: not IBM’s project, but IBM has 6 of the 52 contributors (remember that Apache is a meritocracy — they didn’t become contributors by doing nothing).
Linux: IBM contributed code that helped make its feature set more attractive to enterprises (not that this was a benevolent move — an enterprise-capable Linux helps IBM sell servers).
@Raptor: I think you’ll find that I’m not the only one who finds these projects important.
You seem to be confusing technical reasons with business reasons.
If a company has adopted Linux and it works well for them at a low cost, the only thing that will make it them switch back is something that delivers significant ROI. Show me the ROI for using DTrace for a user (not a developer, a user).
All over sudden your arguments sound a lot like MS being afraid that Windows will be supplanted by Linux — you started to quote the cost of switching, so you admit that Solaris is a better and cheaper platform in the first place.
It depends if the cost of switching is worth it. Considering that most organisations will be running a black box with all the same software on it as they ran on their Linux boxes (certainly functionally speaking), what’s the point? I’m afraid I admit nothing, so don’t assume things that aren’t there.
Solaris is whopping 40% cheaper to purchase and support than RedHat Linux, I’m sure it’ll make a lot of people moving. Solaris is just too good to be ignored, a lot of people will jump ship from Linux and Windows.
So says Sun, but it depends on what you buy and when and how Sun changes its products, charges and subscription models in the future. All things considered, the cost of switching to Solaris just isn’t worth it when you consider any Linux box will be doing exactly the same thing, usually with exactly the same software. People already have switched – to Linux. They’re not going to switch again.
The overwhelming majority of the run-of-the-mill business desktops from IBM, HP and Dell can run Solaris without any problems, may be you should try it for your self.
So what? They’re not going to. Why is that? Because Linux does what these companies want – there’s simply no reason to move. Simply plucking 40% savings out of the air isn’t a reason, and as a black box Solaris 10 isn’t going to do anything different.
May be in moms-and-pops and wanna be l33t hacker shops it is, but in corporate data-centre Linux is still having trouble gaining much traction compared with the proven Unix platforms.
Ahhh, boo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo – that’s a pretty desperate comment. I’m afraid Linux is in corporate data centres, and although there’s still a lot of Unix there after many, many years of it being used there (not just Solaris), the only way for Linux is up. It is doubtful whether Sun will be able to play King Canute and make the tide go back.
By the amount of growth in the size of HCL, all I can say is Sun seems to be quite successful at subscribing big IHV’s under Solaris program. Solaris can take a pretty good chunk of the x86 and AMD (especially AMD) market in the server space, so the IHV’s should be well motivated.
I’ve given ample evidence as to why this is not the case, and more importantly, it is not maintainable. Simply making statements doesn’t change that.
GM is certainly not one of those customers, I don’t think GM would make public statements like this just because Sun greased some elbows.
I see no evidence to suggest otherwise. Sun gets GM involved with some Solaris pilots and GM then starts making some pro-Solaris statements. There’s a pretty definite correlation there, and it must be costing Sun a bit. It is naive of anyone to suggest otherwise.
You are basically saying IBM is very good at lying becuase the intent is the same, but IBM is just better at lying without getting caught. IBM has never cared for any community but it’s shareholders. And they are very good at lying.
Grandstanding != lying. Sun isn’t lying, and neither was IBM.
Consider Schwartz’s entry with customers wanting support and IBM handwaving claiming none wants it but you to multiple customers.
He’s going to have to do more than say they have customers. He’s going to have to produce the customers. Knowing how Sun
You really should take your own advice and use google to search for Sun’s contrirbutions before accusing others.
Here I have done it for you.