Yesterday, the OpenSolaris team released OpenSolaris 2008.05, the fruit of Project Indiana. The first review we found was published over at Blogbeebe, which is overall fairly positive. At the same time, Practical Technology believes that "OpenSolaris has finally been released just in time to die".
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From the blogbee review:
"One feature that finally (finally!) worked for me is the gears inside the cube effect. I've never gotten it to work in any of the Linux distributions, but it worked like a champ on OpenSolaris. I know it's silly, but hey, if you're going to have eye candy, then it should all work."
The Practical Tech article was just lame FUD and didn't even talk about the 2008.05 release. That article could easily have been written when OpenSolaris was first announced years ago. Hardly relevant now.
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Agreed. It is almost 100% FUD only (= Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. That is what that article is all about, isn't it?), not much relevant content that could be taken very seriously.
Also I don't like the choice of using that article's title for both reviews here on Osnews (especially as I've been marked as the article submitter although I submitted only the Blogbeebe review link and not the FUD article..
). Why not use a neutral title like simply OpenSolaris 2008.5 reviews or something like that? Or maybe only publish the Blogbeebe review that has some real content worth reading? Edited 2008-05-07 07:36 UTC
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I don't think would be in the best Novell interest to stop OpenSolaris.
They already pissed off lots of people from the community, when they made the deal with Microsoft.
Now, suppose they move on to stop OpenSolaris. It would put them in the very strange situation where they use, or have free access to, code from lots of projects (FOSS code) and at same time make impossible to the same community to have access to code NOT MADE by Novell. That would be really awful.
Only a lunatic would act like that and pretend to be part of the community. And if they do act, this would really trigger I way bigger response from both, developers and users.
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There's zero evidence that Novell has any intention of trying to take legal action to impede publication of Solaris source code. After all, source availability for Solaris is in no way new.
In addition, since I'm not a kernel hacker, I'm not affected in any way if Solaris beats Linux or vice versa, since either way I get a full free Posix-compatible system that runs on cheap commodity hardware and has Gnome, KDE, or whatever else you want on top for desktops, and runs whatever server apps you want as well. Even Linus will tell you that all of the exciting work is happening in userland these days.
It might even be optimal to run both in your home or small office network: maybe you prefer the Linux hardware support for your desktops and laptops, but want to try out a ZFS file server.
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"OpenSolaris has failed to develop a strong developer community."
It has a lot of developers. They are Sun employees working in Sun offices!
OpenSolaris development happens totally differently than it does for linux. Does anyone think this is by accident?
The fact that the author of this article assumes that everyone is striving to be like him (and therefore are failing when they are not) really shows off his sickly biases.
OpenSolaris is obviously trying to copy the success of linux and ubuntu and red hat. But they are not obviously trying to copy the development model.
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I think you've just touched on exactly what the article is talking about.
No. The only problem for some people who have looked to get involved with OpenSolaris is the fact that if Sun wanted to do a MySQL type open source model, then they should just come out and admit it.
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I like some features of Solaris .. but the whole package leaves a lot to be desired. I think trying to position Solaris as a linux wannabe with a few cool features ( Dtrace is nice, ZFS is blingy although it uses Vistaesques amounts of RAM ( like 0,5 GiB ) ) and like 1% of the drivers is not wise.
People are well aware of the possiblity of vendor lock-ins and OpenSolaris just seems a bit like the first free fix. Once you are hooked it will be hard to switch .. this kind of fragmentation does not help anybody.
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What vendor lock in are you refrering to?
I have not seen a modern piece of software that runs on OpenSolaris that can't be compiled for Linux also. "
Mate, obviously you seem to have issues finding code or reading sentences. He has said that by OpenSolaris existing it stops vendor lock in. That vendor lock in being software written in the opensource world that only compiles on Linux. Want proof? go grab a generic wine tarball and try to compile it on OpenSolaris out of the box - it won't compile.
Lame, up until decently, same situation - it didn't compile unless you used patches (3.98beta8 works without patching). Code is still being locked into specific operating systems - even when that code is opensource. Programmers using Linuxisms, gcc'isms and any other possible ism I might have forgotten.
As for the value of OpenSolaris, it is nice to do something CPU intensive and not find that it is impossible to surf the internet because the network connection dies. Yes, I've had happen with Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Fedora - its pathetic; are we supposed to believe that in 2008 one shouldn't multitask?
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I have admined about 80 Fedora, CentOS, and Ubuntu boxes of widely varying harware configs and OS versions for some years now, and I call bullshit on that one. I have never observed such a problem.
I did not bother with the ¨DOA¨ article, and I'll take your word for it that it was bad. But that is no reason to start gratuitously talking baseless trash about Linux.
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Excuse me, how is it bullshit when I have a bloody wireless internet connection that drops faster than Britney spears on a crotch?
Excuse me, maybe the next time you're in New Zealand I'll invite you over for tea, coffee and 'why Linux sucks' classes. Point out the joys of ripping a cd and finding that the wireless connection slows to a crawl or simply stops responding.
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Umm.... I love blanket statements with no real numbers to back them up.
Currently, the destop that's being used to post this message is running boinc (180% CPU), two vmware virtual machines (one is checking for updates), email client, firefox, large number of VI's and being used as a file and printer server for my wife's desktop.
.... And this is a mid-end Athlon64 5000X2 machine; The dual DC Opteron that sits next to is far more busy.
- Gilboa
Edited 2008-05-07 04:06 UTC
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Maybe you shouldn't run your IE in Wine as root, pal
Who is using IE on wine? I'm using the Firefox included with the distribution - Why the heck would I want to use Internet Explorer anyway?
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That vendor lock in being software written in the opensource world that only compiles on Linux. Want proof? go grab a generic wine tarball and try to compile it on OpenSolaris out of the box - it won't compile.
Lame, up until decently, same situation - it didn't compile unless you used patches (3.98beta8 works without patching). Code is still being locked into specific operating systems - even when that code is opensource. Programmers using Linuxisms, gcc'isms and any other possible ism I might have forgotten.
Wow, is this a straw man argument or what :O You do realize that it's open code and it just might not compile on a new platform out-of-the-box unless someone has taken the time to test and make it work? And well, talking about wine..it works on SkyOS, Windows, Linux, BSDs...so, what were you saying about vendor lock-in?
As for the value of OpenSolaris, it is nice to do something CPU intensive and not find that it is impossible to surf the internet because the network connection dies. Yes, I've had happen with Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Fedora - its pathetic; are we supposed to believe that in 2008 one shouldn't multitask?
As others have already said, it seems no one believes what you have written here. And neither do I. I'm not saying it's not possible...but heck, I have never come across such issues. And believe me, compiling things like FireFox on a Athlon 1ghz IS CPU intensive yet network connection never died and it was still very much possible to multitask. I don't own a single multicore machine yet multitasking has always worked just fine, no matter if I've had Blender rendering in the background, compiling stuff, backing up the system or anything such.
RE[4]: Sun is a bit strange
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I can't foresee Novell starting litigation against Sun regarding Solaris. I don't anticipate that Solaris is in a doom position either.
But OpenSolaris is attempting to become a Linux clone with a few intersting features and that doesn't score many points in my book.
I think businesses that deploy Linux will opt for Ext4 or FUSE ZFS (devel versions are somewhat usable) and SystemTap, which is now implementing most of the kernel and user-space application debugging/tracing features of DTrace.
http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/SystemtapDtraceComparison
Embracing similar technologies of the current platform is more cost-effective and efficient than migrating to another platform and re-training the staff.
Edited 2008-05-07 00:37 UTC
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I'm all for accepting the short comings of OpenSolaris - but at the same time Practical Technology established nothing in their article. The article jumped all over the place, it claims there is no opensource development community around it and yet provides no evidence to substantiate such claims.
Infact, if you read the article, most of it was dedicating to digging up FUD over the legality of OpenSolaris and putting the contract between USL/Novell and Sun (the original one, the one made when Novell used to own USL/Novell) where by the purchased a broad reaching agreement which entitled them to rights which no other UNIX vendor has.
Is this really the quality of articles these days, when web rags like Practical Technology can't even mount a logical argument, so they skip between different topics in the illusion that they've actually addressed some of the issues?
Sure, OpenSolaris has challenges, but if Practical Technology got off their fat chuff and had a look at the discussion lists on OpenSolaris they would see that development is happening rapidly.
Practical Technology also mounts a pathetic case of participating being the benchmark for the success or failure of OpenSolaris - open sourcing Solaris was never a matter of simply dumping code out there, firing programmers and using free labour to reduce costs; to make such claims (opensource dumping) without evidence seems to me that a Linux advocate has their nose bent out of shape because its no longer the darling of the IT industry. There is a new kid in town with UNIX pedigree - and the big boys are swooning around it like horny teenagers around the 'hot chick' at the pub.
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Agreed.
The guys in Linux community are worried, that's pretty obvious. They keep claiming "this is bad, that is bad" while they realize that such kid has a block to stand onto.
Even people like me who aren't Unix/Linux users can appreciate how good it would be a free Solaris (because let's confess it: it's about price now) fully loaded with Enterprise-ready technologies and with a big guy like Sun behind it. That has a tremendous business value, expecially when you consider that even if Solaris is OS, Sun will always be able to bring a basic platform for "serious computing" while kids will keep releasing MyOwnLittleModifiedSolaris distro (though there are some distros which aren't just about the new Gnome theme or the last MP3 player).
While I'm not interested in Linux for business reasons (at least until it will look so half-finished and dependent on untrustable pieces), I'm monitoring Solaris. It won't be easy to drive us out of Windows field but if it will EVER be, it will be to Solaris, that's for sure.
My concern is about Sun itself: will it be able to profit enough from all those open-sourced technologies? Sure, they have some advantages since they a h/w-maker too, but bringing Solaris back to compete with Windows and Linux means being able to profit enough to sell your hardware, keep R&D for that, continue development of Java, MySQL and Solaris itself and flood market with good apps / services to attract users. That means LOTS of resources.
Edited 2008-05-07 11:37 UTC
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The guys in Linux community are worried, that's pretty obvious. They keep claiming "this is bad, that is bad" while they realize that such kid has a block to stand onto.
True. Lets put it this way; its like two beer companies; one is an expensive boutique beer and another is a cheaper one. The cheaper one gets most of the limelight because it is cheap - and good enough. The boutique beer comes out and makes their desirable beer cheaper; those who would have gone for the cheaper beer are now looking at the boutique beer. Guess who the cheaper beer is - its amazing when I see Linux advocates foam the mouth over Solaris when it should be a great thing there is more choice, more competition and more resources spent in the opensource world.
I'd say that Sun won't create a desktop distribution in terms of the 'unwashed masses' but I do see Indiana becoming the operating system for workstations they sell - hopefully get people developing on OpenSolaris and then moving it beyond that to deploying it in enterprise desktops. I think that Sun has realised that Sun Ray product may be nice in theory, but business still want to keep traditional desktops - they've woken up and finally created a product to address that need.
My concern is about Sun itself: will it be able to profit enough from all those open-sourced technologies? Sure, they have some advantages since they a h/w-maker too, but bringing Solaris back to compete with Windows and Linux means being able to profit enough to sell your hardware, keep R&D for that, continue development of Java, MySQL and Solaris itself and flood market with good apps / services to attract users. That means LOTS of resources.
Well, I think Sun is going to continue to improve - the problem is that wall street want instant results and simply ignore the reality that turning around the company takes time. Turning around HP was easy - it was bloated, over employment and bad direction. It was matter of slicing and dicing it down to size.
Sun's problems are a hell of alot more complex than just a matter of firing a few people, bobs ya uncle, and things get back on track in an instance. When the whole business model has been changed, its going to take time, there will be a transition, but I think for the long term, profitability under the new model is going to be smoother, the margins are going to be better, and ultimately, you won't see the dramatic swings in either extreme in terms of profitability/loss.
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The problem is that the expensive boutique bear, that now have gone cheap is not ready for consumption just yet.
At least not for the big parties. ZFS and zones are nice, but even though already open sourced by Sun, software for clustering is, as far as I know, not yet integrated into the latest OpenSolaris release, and ZFS still doesn't support concurrent access.
If you are going to do things like that, you are better off using Red Hat or CentOS using GFS, and on the Desktop Solaris is still Gnome 2.20, so you will miss the latest and greatest.
Once ZFS gets support for concurrent acccess, it will be great for datacenters, especially combined with its ability to easy export as iscsi devices.
Anyway, the new OpenSolaris feels snappy, and looks very good as a Desktop, even though it lacks the latest and greatest from Gnome. It is the first Solaris version in a very long time that I actually could consider for my desktop.
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The performance on my laptop (Thinkpad t61p w/ Nvidia Quadro graphics card) works wonderfully; performance on my Dell Dimension 8400 is pretty spotty - basically the graphics card sucks (ATI X300) - I'm tempted to replace it with a low end Nvidia card some time in the future - I saw an elcheapo $80 one, I might get that.
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Not really. There's a sense of bemusement that Sun is trying to take on the one hand and not give anything back on the other. The license incompatibility is one thing, and the pseudo-MySQL development model that no one wants to talk about is the other. The rest of the open source community, and Linux, has been through all of this stuff.
Yer, and those resources have to come from somewhere. Sun don't have them, otherwise they would have put them in by now. What they need is a community of kernel developers writing lots of drivers and people testing their software on Solaris systems along with Linux equally. In order to keep those developers, you have to give something back to them in terms of control and autonomy. That ship has sailed.
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Not really. There's a sense of bemusement that Sun is trying to take on the one hand and not give anything back on the other. The license incompatibility is one thing, and the pseudo-MySQL development model that no one wants to talk about is the other. The rest of the open source community, and Linux, has been through all of this stuff.
Can you please lay off the Anti-Sun FUD? Sun just completely open sourced MySQL.
Yer, and those resources have to come from somewhere. Sun don't have them, otherwise they would have put them in by now. What they need is a community of kernel developers writing lots of drivers and people testing their software on Solaris systems along with Linux equally. In order to keep those developers, you have to give something back to them in terms of control and autonomy. That ship has sailed.
Please share with us some examples of where nothing was given back. You can download the source from the website and people have come up with complete distributions like Nexenta and Bellenix from those sources.
Please don't point to that one thread by Roy Fielding where you completely misread and misunderstood the issues that were being discussed.
On the other thread I asked you to provide examples to substantiate your claims but your disappeared and came here to spread more FUD. Now put up or shut up.
Edited 2008-05-07 16:18 UTC
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If I may make a comment here... I have not followed this thread, but I assume that the objection is to the joint copyright policy on some or all of Sun's projects. To that I would say (and referring specifically to MySQL here) that while GPL with joint copyright requirement is qualitatively a different thing than pure GPL, and it is useful to make a distinction between the two, the distinction is mainly relevant to contributors to the project and not to users. If it somehow results in a difference in volume of contributions to the project, that would only be relevant to users indirectly. The joint copyright agreement is "in your face" enough that the developer can hardly accidentally contribute without realizing what he is doing. All else being equal, my aesthetic preference is for a project not to require joint copyright. But it is really a decision which is up to the individual developers to evaluate.
Edit: And, of course, joint copyright on MySQL contributions is nothing new; MySQL AB did that, too. Also, I seem to recall that Sun's agreement is or was not exactly joint copyright. I don't know that it makes any fundamental difference.
Edited 2008-05-07 16:47 UTC
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If you have something relevant to what was said, be my guest.
MySQL was already open sourced sweetheart. What they're not admitting to everyone is that they're following a pseudo-MySQL development model of in-house development with some possible open sourcing, and they're simply not admitting it to the people who are involved. That's what the Roy Fielding thread was all about.
If they're going to do the MySQL thing, then fair enough, that's OK. But they're trying to convince an awful lot of people that isn't what's happening.
I'm afraid I misunderstood nothing, no amount of jumping up and down on the spot will change that, and you proved beyond any doubt that you simply hadn't read what was going on and didn't want to face it - for whatever reason.
Project Indiana is now OpenSolaris (the trademark part of the issue), no one else is allowed to call their distro OpenSolaris, or even to use the name, and Indiana is an internal project headed by Ian Murdoch where code is thrown over the wall. Some people on that thread even talked about forking the code and calling it OpenUNIX.
That's hardly the open development project model, where you would see Sun and other people committing code in a public repository, that was promised loudly by Sun's executives and is continually being promised to everyone by various Sun employees. It's been three and a half years now.
There's little point in replying to any of that now (dead horses, flogging and all that) because you're just desperate to deny what's actually happening for whatever reason, and the points that I needed to make, I made. You can ask for examples until the cows come home, but they won't change a thing about what I described. If you're upset about them I suggest joining a gym or something.
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You know GNU/Linux is not UNIX but one of it's company own UNIX ... Open Solaris advocate are copying the BSD tactics of lying about being the same as GNU/Linux and blaming all it's problem on GNU/Linux instead of doing the work.
I higlighted the reality in your comment and offered copy paste of links , that are in the article that you claim don't exist.
" it claims there is no opensource development community around it and yet provides no evidence to substantiate such claims."
Linus gets more contributions while brushing his teeth than Open Solaris gets in a week. :
http://www.ratliff.net/blog/index.php/2008/02/14/not-with-a-bang-bu...
http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/04/19/what-sun-was-trying-to-do-wi...
"So if you run into a Sun salescritter or a Sun CEO claiming that OpenSolaris is just like Linux, it's not. Fundamentally, Open Solaris has been released under a Open Source license, but it is not an Open Source development community. Maybe it will be someday, as some Sun executives have claimed, but it's definitely not a priority by Sun; if it was, it would have been done before now. And why not? After all, they are getting all of the marketing benefit of claiming that Solaris is "just like Linux", without having to deal with any of the messy costs of working with an outside community. As a tactical measure, astroturfing is certainly a valid marketing trick. But after three years, the excuse of "just you wait a little longer, we're just trying to figure this open source community stuff out", is starting to wear a little thin.
Furthermore, if (as John Ploncher claims) this was about "empowering application programmers", why was it that Sun's first act was to trumpet how wonderful it was to release the Solaris source code under a Open Source license? This only seems to make sense if the Open Solaris initiative was really a cynical marketing tactic to try to save Solaris from being viewed as irrelevant. If that was Sun's intention, I think it is fair to say that from a marketing point of view, the tactic has been at least partially successful - although as John has admitted, the goal of creating a full community with application developers, university students, and so on, hasn't materialized for Open Solaris. Sun has the dream, the Linux community is living it.
However, from business standpoint, I wonder if Sun will really be able to sustain their Solaris engineering team if they will really be doing all of the work themselves, and outside contributions continue at the rate of 0.6 patches per day. After all, the margins when you are selling low-cost AMD servers are much lower than when you are selling über-expensive SPARC servers. With Linux, we have a major advantage in that kernel improvements are coming from multiple companies in the ecosystem, instead of being paid for by a single company. And given that 70-80% of Sun's AMD servers are running Linux, not Solaris, it's not clear how Sun justifies their Solaris engineering costs to their shareholders. Furthermore, if Solaris on x86_64 were to actually take off, there's nothing to stop competitors from selling Solaris support -except the competitors won't have to pay the engineering costs to maintain and improve Solaris, so they would be able to provide the support much more cheaply than Sun could. So while Sun's marketing tactics have kept Solaris alive in some verticals, I have to question how successful Sun will be in the long-term."
Edited 2008-05-07 13:06 UTC
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I higlighted the reality in your comment and offered copy paste of links , that are in the article that you claim don't exist.
" it claims there is no opensource development community around it and yet provides no evidence to substantiate such claims."
Linus gets more contributions while brushing his teeth than Open Solaris gets in a week. :
http://www.ratliff.net/blog/index.php/2008/02/14/not-with-a-bang-bu...
http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/04/19/what-sun-was-trying-to-do-wi...
Dear God that is f--king pathetic; it truly is; you've gone from 'no development community' to 'has less than Linux' in terms of development community; wow, what a change, what next? if we're going to use YOUR benchmark for it, we might as well claim that OpenOffice.org, Netbeans, Eclipse, KDE, GNOME and so forth are all monumental failures when compared to the almighty Linus "receives more contributions doing his teeth" Tovalds and his creation - Linux.
No, this is truly pathetic; when you move the goal posts, you make claims, and yet never substantiate them. Christ, is this the new trend now; instead of "*BSD is dying" we're going to see pathetic gutter snipe such as you coming out of your troll bridges to beat you chest and spam forums with "opensolaris dying' based on nothing more than what you 'feel'. Pathetic, truly pathetic.
Edited 2008-05-07 13:03 UTC
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No , you are the pathetic one here , leave GOD out of your lies and insanity too , try to follow , I copy pasted the linked text from a third individual that the writer of the article link to in it's article to support is fact that there is no Open Solaris community. That you claimed don't exist.
I don't have any bechnmark , Those are your own creations and own words , and I don't need to point out that I don't support them or you in this case.
No , because WE don't work in claims or make any claims we leave that to you. Those are again your own words and claims.
I don't make claims and I proved that you where lying.
Insulting GOD sons name in vain too , leave that out too , I never said BSD is Dying , here , I said Open Solaris stupid advocate are copying the same failing attitudes.
You know , gutter snipe , spammers and trolls are removed from the site , It's not because you call me one , because your definition is really anyone who disagree with me and prove me as wrong and that make me angry , that I am identified as one.
Yes , you are.
Edited 2008-05-07 13:50 UTC
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You need to calm down a little, because you're missing the essential truth:
1. Over the past eight or so years Linux has hurt Sun and Solaris, badly, and it has changed the rules of the game in how an OS overall is developed. If you're hoping to maintain a large, proprietary kernel and OS by yourself, you want to port to lots of new and varied hardware and maintain lots of drivers, and you're not Microsoft, you have no chance. Novell discovered that with Netware, and even that is a truly painful road.
2. Solaris needs more development investment and movement, particularly in the form of drivers.
3. Sun don't have the resources to do that as Linux does, with various individuals and lots of companies being involved. They really do need a viable cost and effort sharing open source model for Solaris development to continue to be viable. When 70% - 80% of Sun's x86 server customers are specifying Linux to be installed, that is a pretty difficult cost to justify.
4. In order to get external contributors and keep them you have to give something back to them, and that means letting go of Solaris altogether - ethics, trademarks, code and all and doing your development in a public repository.
5. A truly open source Solaris would mean that lots of companies could provide cheaper Solaris support than what Sun provide. Sun desperately don't want that to happen, but they will have to grin and bare it if they want Solaris to have a financially viable future.
6. Rather than create that viable open source cost, code and resource sharing community, Sun seem to think they can quietly create a MySQL type open source model, keeping fairly tight control, but pretending it's just like Linux really for customer impression, and hope that this whole Linux thing just goes away. Eventually.
7. If you're getting 0.6 patches per day, and they're taking ages to then actually be merged, you don't have a community. Of any kind.
The above is what Theodore Ts'o's blog entry is about.
There are plenty of people within Sun who still passionately believe that Linux is just an upgrade path to a proper Unix OS in Solaris, and that attitude has even been displayed around here. They also still believe that the commodity hardware, x86 growth that Linux rode off is just an aberration before people come back to using real SPARC hardware. They still haven't learnt anything about why Linus wanted a Unix-like system to run on his 386.
It's all very sad really, because they have everything they need to change and move on. Their current path will destroy them eventually, unless their customers continue to buy x86 and Linux from them.
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I am calm (I am calm, I'm just passionate about certain things - to confuse the two says more about the reader than what is being spoken), the issue I have is hyperbole created by people on this forum who seem to create benchmarks for success on the fly.
I think that Linux is wildly successful - but that is based on a benchmark I created. To say that OpenSolaris is a failure, it has to compared to something, and for someones own subjective reasons. You might consider it a failure, but for Sun - their expectations and what has been achieved, it might be considered a great success.
I don't doubt that. Linux is ultimately what has forced many big name UNIX vendors to start justifying what they're charging; when a machine can do 95% of what a RISC UNIX machine can do - at half the price, the said company has to really justify the pricing - their whole business model in the case of Sun Microsystems.
Sun has a relationship with Intel, I just hope that the relationship with Intel will spur other companies on - hence the reason I purchased this machine (Thinkpad) 100% intel with an nvidia graphics card - all supported perfectly.
No doubt about that, but a the same time, I don't want to see garbage half finished drivers being merged with the promise to 'complete it later'. I'd sooner see finished and stable drivers merged into Solaris - and maintain the quality than seeing the half finished stuff that I seen enter the Linux kernel with a tag - "to be completed at a later date".
I think what they *need* to do is find out *why* 70 - 80% of their customers want Linux - instead of simply throwing in the towel, they need to ask and address the issues; it might be as something as simple as offering a free cross grade for a given application. A given application might not be available which might require Sun to invest some cash into the given company producing the given application.
I've actually flagged the idea of a bounty project; I'm quite happy to throw $300 of my own money into it - I'm a student, I have limited resources, but I'm happy to put my money where my mouth is and start up a project to pay for the unsexy things that need to be done - to get done.
To bad I was 'boo'ed' off the irc and mailing lists when I said such heresy.
I don't think that is the problem - the problem is simply, their marketing sucks. I've said it once and I'll say it again, the current marketing manager needs to be tarred and feathered for the terrible job he has done.
What I also think they need to do is do something radical; announce their OpenSolaris 11 commercial product will be based 100% on opensource code; setup some prizes and generate some buzz - then again, it goes back to marketing. Something Sun is incredibly crap at.
It would be interesting to see on what basis it is taking so long to get things merged. They have a high code quality, but at the same time, I do think they need to open the cvs tree to more access by non-Sun employees. Get things moving along quicker and the contributors seeing that their contribution is being merged promptly - and as a community, we all benefiting from these improvements.
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2006-07-15
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If you have a problem with the sound, just install OSS and you'll even get a driver for Creative Labs X-FI
http://www.opensound.com/
It's that easy.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Fans: 2
ROFL. Simeon is what you get when you only have hear-say. Next time do some research.
LOL.
Perhaps they meant Ximian.....
Edited 2008-05-07 09:46 UTC
Member since:
2007-07-27
Fans: 0
You guys. Why all this quarreling? You sound like some girls or something. (No disrepect to girls, but Ive heard some arguing in the bus just recently). Why dont we all be happy? Dont worry, be happy. OpenSolaris can only make Linux better. And Linux makes OpenSolaris better. Everyone benefits, even Windows. This competition is good. Or is it not? Lets sing "we shall overcome..." :o)
OpenSolaris, congrats for the release.
Member since:
2007-08-22
Fans: 0
Didn't RTFA, but from the various comments...
Try checking the SCOG v. Novell (er...Novell v. SCOG) trial transcripts over on Groklaw.Net and the various comments there. This isn't a matter of FUD for OpenSolaris - it's a reality that Sun has to face at the moment: the reality that Novell is contesting SCOG's ability to have even entered into any kind of agreement with Sun of the nature that their agreement was, and that agreement looks like (from trial testimony) what Sun relied upon to open source Solaris - OpenSolaris.
So, then if SCOG didn't have the legal standing to enter into that agreement with Sun, then does Sun have the ability to continue providing OpenSolaris? Not likely, unless Novell ratify's the agreement as is.
So what's the issue? The issue is that (a) Novell has not yet come out and said it would ratify the agreements, and (b) from the trial transcripts Novell seems to be hinting that it won't ratify them as is but wants some modifications - likely just more money than what was paid to SCOG.
Now, I'm not partisan to any of the above in any manner - I've just been keeping track of the SCOG saga via Groklaw, and have really enjoyed keeping track of the trial last week through Groklaw as well. The above is just my impression from what I've read on Groklaw, and by no way tells what Novell will or is planning on doing - so take it with a grain of salt.
However, to say that it is simply FUD is wrong.
My final take: Novell is trying to hint to Sun that it wants changes to the agreement so get ready to see Novell and Sun sit down and talk about OpenSolaris; but I don't think Novell will ultimately prohibit Sun from making/distributing OpenSolaris. More likely than not, Sun will just pay Novell more money and continue on its merry way - likely with some kind of re-occurring royalty stream going to Novell. In other words, Novell just wants a piece of the pie from any revenue OpenSolaris may generate, which I think makes business sense (that is the context that the comments were made in in the trail too - what would make business sense for Novell? - more on that below).
So, no - I don't see OpenSolaris going away any time soon; just more money to Novell.
Again - I have not insights into what Novell is actually thinking/planning. This is just my take on the entire scenario brought up from the SCOG v. Novell litigation and last week's trial. It's also something that should be seriously co