“Sun Microsystems will announce on Wednesday a free software initiative aimed at undercutting Microsoft and other rivals in the battle over Web services software.
Sun plans to give away a basic version of its application server software, a key piece of infrastructure software for building business applications. Application server software is technology that runs e-business and other Web site transactions. The giveaway targets computers that run Microsoft’s Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems, Sun said.” The story is at ZDNews. Our Take: Why does that reminds me Microsoft and their giveaway of IE back in the day, in order to win over Netscape? Microsoft ended up in the courts for it…
Sun Loads Free Software Against Microsoft
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Monopolies have to play by different rules than the rest of the companies.
Did you mean giving away IIS with NT or IE.
Microsoft’s give away (IIS) is exclusively for NT, Sun’s stuff will run on NT, Linux, Unix… Big difference!
Microsoft is an illegal monopoly, Sun is not. Big difference!
Sun’s move is to prevent Microsoft from illegally monopolizing the market not to monopolize (hence the Linux and other releases) Big difference!
Microsoft is a crooked, illegal monopoly, Sun is a great company
(hence the Linux and other Unix releases) Big difference!
Sun wants to set Web services free.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-937297.html?tag=fd_top
“Sun’s move is to prevent Microsoft from illegally monopolizing the market not to monopolize (hence the Linux and other releases) Big difference!”
Heh, you act as if Sun is doing this for the ‘revolution’, as if they really gave a shit what MS did if it didn’t affect their bottom line. Sun is a corporation, and therefore just as evil as MS … they care about one thing, and it’s green.
They are no different. They’re just not in the same position and are not allowed to act like the bully that MS is, but IMHO would not hesitate to do so if given the chance.
Darius, you got Sun all wrong. They are a great company.
“Sun is a corporation, and therefore just as evil as MS”
Your are a nut case. So every corporation is evil? Where do you think the world would be if corporations didn’t put billions of dollaring into developing technology? Even open source projects are funded by corporations. Sun has done a lot of great things, you should thank them.
God bless Sun Microsystems.
.. have invaded! run for the hills!
Really though, someone said it in a previous thread regarding java. Sun seems to be reactive rather than proactive. It also seems that lately, their sole purpose is to step on MS’s toes. Not that i mind, but i’d rather them come up with something good instead of some half-baked ideas targeted at pissing off some people at microsoft. Web services were possible before microsoft and sun came around, they just didn’t have the buzz word. How far will sun’s or ms’s implementation’s REALLY go to make building them easier? And will the fact sun’s is free really make it any more attractive to the “roll yer own”‘s out there who’ve already started?
I can’t help but think sun’s new business strategy is to piss on shoes for fun and profit.
nivenh
Corporations are neither good nor evil. People are. Bad people can do a lot of evil with a big corporation and vice versa.
There are a lot of good people in MS, but judging by its actions, there are some real nasty twerps in positions where they can throw their weight around. This is very bad PR because it has led to an emerging consumer movement to avoid MS products at all costs. I suspect it will take many years to redress unless they can crush the open source movement in this next year (before the free OpenOffice.org suite reaches critical mass in its market penetration)
Sun has consistently supported open software and given extensively towards it. This is good PR, and it is attracting consumer support.
“Your are a nut case. So every corporation is evil?”
This is what I’m saying …
Corporations do what they need to do to make money .. doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, so long as they can get away with it. People accuse Microsoft as being evil because they do this. So, by their own definition, you have to conclude thet every corporation is evil.
Afterall, what corporation do you know of that isn’t in it for the money? Do you not think for one second that if Sun, Apple, or whoever else owned 97%+ of the PC desktop market, they wouldn’t do the same damn thing as MS is doing? If you don’t think so, you’re dreaming.
I’m not saying that MS is or is not evil – I am saying that they are no different than the rest of the corporation ilk, so draw your own conclusions.
This is actually very interesting.
Here we have Sun delivering a free, and DEPLOYABLE J2EE app server for the masses. Not just Solaris, but also everyone else.
Just because it’s not suitable to run Yahoo, doesn’t mean it’s not viable for small businesses or departments.
In many a sense, this is no different from what HP is doing, save that Sun has more mindshare and may make a bigger splash in the space.
But if they do this properly, and give it decent support and GOOD documentation, it can potentially hurt groups like JBoss, and potentially really hurt something like JRun or Orion.
What this does is completes the circle, making J2EE completely accessible, and useable (via licensing), for simply the development cost of the application. Get your Free Java, Free IDE, Free Web and Appserver, Free Documentation. Test them, use them, deploy them, SELL your app on them? Run it against Postgres…pretty powerful I think.
This is what I’m saying …
Corporations do what they need to do to make money .. doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong, so long as they can get away with it. People accuse Microsoft as being evil because they do this. So, by their own definition, you have to conclude thet every corporation is evil.
Afterall, what corporation do you know of that isn’t in it for the money? Do you not think for one second that if Sun, Apple, or whoever else owned 97%+ of the PC desktop market, they wouldn’t do the same damn thing as MS is doing? If you don’t think so, you’re dreaming.
I’m not saying that MS is or is not evil – I am saying that they are no different than the rest of the corporation ilk, so draw your own conclusions.
What are you, some kind of socialist idiot? Of course Corporations do things for money. Is that evil? No. You have a job don’t you? I’m sure you do it for the money don’t you or do they pay stupid people with peanuts these days? Wouldn’t that make you evil too? Maybe you also work because you enjoy your job too, but one of the reasons you do it is for the money. Corporations are the same, they have to survie and to do that they need at least some money. Just like people there are gready corporations and there are less greedy corporations.
I want my Solaris 9/x86 now dammit Waaaaa!
“What are you, some kind of socialist idiot? Of course Corporations do things for money. Is that evil? No.”
Dude, chill out
First of all, *I* never said here that all corporations are evil – I said they’re just as evil as MS.
Don’t think I’m right? Sit back and think about this for a minute – do you REALLY think Sun would be into all of this ‘free’ campaign stuff if it weren’t for Microsoft? Hell no. If Sun were in Microsoft’s position, we’d all be paying out the nose for Sun Windows XP, and yes .. complete with product activation. Some of you treat Sun as the little guy trying to take out Golliath .. heh, f**k that .. Sun wants to BE Golliath! They all do; they’re exactly the same. There is no such thing as a ‘less greedy’ corporation. A corporation is a corporation is a corporation – they all do underhanded shit, just some of them get caught at it (Enron & Author Anderson anybody?) And some like MS are able to just do it all outright, or at least up until now anyway
Hell, just look at Apple – they have a hardware monopoly on their side of the world, and how much are people paying for Macs these days?
The day we all no longer expect to be paid for our efforts is the day I will start expecting corporations to ignore the profit motive and start investing in Porcine Aeronautics futures.
Free stuff is good – stop whingeing
Free stuff is only fun when there’s commercial stuff to make it look attractive. If everything was free, there would be no treat, and therefore no fun. So there’s at least one thing that’s good about commercial software.
I must agree with some of posts here, but for different reasons, even if we are comparing IE to an app server. The main difference I see, is that MS never gave away a scaled down version of ANY browser, and charged for a full blown version. Sun is giving away a “basic” version of their app server, and charging for two more “advanced” servers.
Eugenia wrote:
[i]Our Take: Why does that reminds me Microsoft and their giveaway of IE back in the day, in order to win over Netscape? Microsoft ended up in the courts for it…[i]
There’s a big difference that ought to check that reminder you’re getting (and I entirely understand why you’re getting it). Microsoft arguably had a monopoly at the time they decided to undermine Netscape.
<point=”bleeding_obvious”>Monopolists can’t play by the same rules as everyone else in the U.S., legally.</point>
That the U.S. DOJ didn’t decide to pursue the “operating system monopoly” question (the much more obvious transgression, in my opinion) than the “browser” issue rather than focus attention on the operating system monopoly doesn’t really change my point–Sun may have a significant market share, but they are far from a monopolist at this point.
They give for free their basic version of its application server software, but churge for Star Office.
“What are you, some kind of socialist idiot? Of course Corporations do things for money. Is that evil? No.”
Well, it’s not that corporations do things for money what makes them evil. It is what they do for money.
And if that’s not true you may call any criminal organisation “not evil”, because after all they do things for money, are they?
Don’t think I’m right? Sit back and think about this for a minute – do you REALLY think Sun would be into all of this ‘free’ campaign stuff if it weren’t for Microsoft? Hell no. If Sun were in Microsoft’s position, we’d all be paying out the nose for Sun Windows XP, and yes .. complete with product activation. Some of you treat Sun as the little guy trying to take out Golliath .. heh, f**k that .. Sun wants to BE Golliath! They all do; they’re exactly the same. There is no such thing as a ‘less greedy’ corporation. A corporation is a corporation is a corporation – they all do underhanded shit, just some of them get caught at it (Enron & Author Anderson anybody?) And some like MS are able to just do it all outright, or at least up until now anyway
That isn’t what is important, why would it be evil of sun to sell it’s product that it spent lots of money developing? Sun owe’s you nothing unless you’re a shareholder. Now if Sun were using it’s position to underhandedly make it harder for it’s compition that would be bad, but not really evil.
And if that’s not true you may call any criminal organisation “not evil”, because after all they do things for money, are they?Their actions define if they are evil and not what motivates them.
You Americans use the word evil far to much IMHO.
COM+ and IIS are bundled into Windows 2000. That seems to be the closest thing to what Sun is giving away from what I understand.
Sun wants to make software a commodity with this, they can’t make money by giving all this away. So where does the money come from? Their hardware, which *wops* is expensive and today not really that fast. And for webservers and similar technology, iNTEL and AMD based hardware works just as good, and goes much faster (want redundancy? Buy twice the number of machines). Or if you want big manly machines, go IBM.
So Sun, go think about what you really want.
What’s strange is that people completely forget about OpenOffice, a basic version of StarOffice that is completely free!
I think you have it wrong here. They are trying to finally make money on Java. They are giving away a scaled down version, in hopes, that once people start using it, since it’s free, they’ll consider buying the next version up from Sun, since they already know the archetecture. Sun does not sell Wintel machines, so, how would they make money on giving away a free app server that will run on windows? They’re just starting to sell Lintel machines, but, I doubt they’ll be charging anywhere close to the price of their SPARC machines for a dual-PIII, which is what they will be selling.
So, this is not a hardware push. This is them trying to get some money back for the work they put in on Java and their App server.