“Sun Microsystems crossed the line from “troubled” to “doomed” yesterday. This is sad news for the open-source community, and we need to think about how we’re going to deal with it. The most pressing questions are, “What becomes of Java?” and, “What becomes of OpenOffice.org?” These are questions that matter.” Read the editorial at NewsForge by Eric S. Raymond.
After Sun Goes Out
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“The real question is twofold: can OpenOffice.org survive without Sun, and where will Java land? Probably not at Microsoft; with C# in the picture, it is unlikely that Microsoft even wants to own Java any more. I have to guess that IBM is the most likely to shoulder both technologies, simply because nobody else is really positioned to do it.”
Alternative Scenarios:
Microsoft purchases Sun to destroy StarOffice (and revoke OpenOffice.org from open source claiming intellectual property) and destroy java (offering services to port all your java systems to .net).
Or even worse – Microsoft purchases Sun and hands over all intellectual property to SCO. Imagine the lawsuite that SCO will start based on infringement to OpenOffice.org and Java!
The only buyer I see for Sun [if it is to be purchased] is either Oracle or IBM, not MS.
… Sun GPLed the Java source and then died 😉
I didn’t read the SEC filing however I heard that SUN had 5 billion in retained profits, therefore they can ride through a drop in their stock. It seems that writing them off is premature. I also like SUN’s new licensing strategy, and I think that it is good for the customers.
They have 3 billion in cash and they have a debt of about 1,3 billion, AFAIK.
It sounds so much like Apple Bashing or Mandrake Bashing
I am sick and tired of it.
Phil
I’ve no idea on where they got the notions of that “editorial”, but… From it’s reading, it’s pure crap…
Get a life and do something for a change…
If sun goes down OO.o wll still survive. Its open source, and even though most of its current programmers will have employment problems, but will probably continue to work on it. (same thing happened with mozilla)
In a way, I hope sun goes down, and then java becomes an open source language (well not necceserally suns implementation, but the people who work with java will reimplement it like redhat said they are trying to do)
It will be good if JavaReborn will be Open source, since there is currently no ‘free’ language to deal with java and .net, mono is the closest thing.
It seems to me that back in ’99 or 2000 SGI started having some serious trouble as well. All the doom-sayers kept saying “the writing is on the wall” and “they’ll never survive,” etc, etc. SGI is no longer the mac-daddy of the film industry, but it seems to still exist. Last time I checked the website, it loaded. New releases of IRIX were put out this year. SCO is suing them – you don’t sue a non-existant company… so maybe SUN is falling on hard times, but I simply cannot believe that 6 months from now there will be no SUN. SUN is just going to change – a lot. It will be smaller, and less popular. But that might be a good thing for such a stodgy old company that hasn’t really innovated anything useful in quite a while (including JAVA).
SUN is going round to the dark side of the moon. Who knows what it’ll look like when it comes back around.
Hey Eric I have to take issue with what you said in this article:
You said, “Nobody should cheer the prospect of Sun’s demise” because you said “from wrecking Unix standardization efforts in the 1980s to throttling the dream of Java ubiquity by keeping the language proprietary”
I’ll bet you think MS does this all the time and they should be punished for it. Why is it okay for Sun to be closed and proprietary and not MS? Is it because MS has figured out a way to make money doing it and Sun hasn’t?
I smell a double standard. But then again this is typical of the open-source community.
They have 3 billion in cash and they have a debt of about 1,3 billion, AFAIK.
WOW! that is waaaaaay out of date stats. They have $5.7billion in cash, produced 35 straight quarters of profit. I haven’t had a look at the SEC filing but I’ll guarantee you that the $1billion was “paper money”, in other words, no real money was lost. Oh, here is the cut ‘n paste from the SEC filing:
Cash, cash equivalents and marketable debt securities $5,741
Total assets $12,985
Deferred income taxes and other non-current obligations $384
Their high end equipment will survive, however, it will not be as dominant as the x86. They’ve realised this and hence the reason they’re making a decent effort to get Solaris x86 on par with their SPARC offering, including all the server software that is available on SPARC.
http://www.edgar-online.com/bin/edgardoc/finSys_main.asp?dcn=000119…
Just having a look through their right now…
Funny, around 2 1/2 billion of the loss is accounted to asset right downs, cancelling leases, restructuring costs and the rest can be accounted for by the large R&D budget that exists; $1.8billion.
Their debt is stable, and if you take the R&D out of the equation, they made a decent profit this year.
Contra to the SUN doomsayers, it is going to survive and like Apple, people will continue to say in 20 years time that SUN is dying.
>> so maybe SUN is falling on hard times, but I simply cannot believe that 6 months from now there will be no SUN.
>>
No, SUN’s demise wouldn’t be that dramatic. I forsee a very slow death. In one form or the other, SUN will probably hang around for a really long time. But unless the current crop of SUN executives are replaced with completely new blood, SUN’s death is a given. As it is, its already getting to late for them to do a turn-around.
I smell a double standard. But then again this is typical of the open-source community.
Whoa! Hold it there buddy, that’s flame bait. You’ve just officially probably started a large chain of arguing that could’ve been avoided if you would’ve just exaggerated a little less and instead of accusing a community, accuse the bad apples of the community, the Zealots. There are a lot of pure dedicated Open Source followers out there who do not hold a double standard.
Your being just as stereotypical as all the rest of the “WINDOWS USERS”. See how unfair that is?
Enough said.
Linux crossed the line from “troubled” to “doomed” yesterday. This is sad news for the open-source community, and we need to think about how we’re going to deal with it. The most pressing questions are, “What becomes of Gnome?” and, “What becomes of Samba?” These are questions that matter…
Seriously, garbage like this should not be reported in a news piece. It has no facts to back it up.
>>It sounds so much like Apple Bashing or Mandrake Bashing
I am sick and tired of it. <<
If it’s reality, it’s not bashing. How much of the desktop does apple command? 3%? Less? How well is Mandrake doing financially? I like Apple, and mandrake, I also like SGI – but SGI is essentially dead also.
Okay, maybe IRIX, BeOS, OS/2, Apple, etc are not actually “dead” but when marketshare is very small and getting smaller, and when you can’t make a profit, let’s face it: you’re on the way out.
Lets hope that Sun doesn’t get bought out by some bottom feeder that just wants to make money licensing patents. I’m sure that Sun has a large patent portfolio. I hope that doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
when it comes to “said business is DOOMED!” crap. I often like his writings, and I enjoyed his book – but god sometimes I just wonder about the man. Remember a few years ago when he announced that Apple was dead? What happened Eric? Sun isn’t yet doomed, surely he knows that. Its obvious he doesn’t know crap about business, and what geek really does?, surely he realizes how little he knows and can just shut his yap. I’m a Linux user, hell I have Tux tattooed on my leg, yet I also love Sun, though often not what Scott has to say. I dunno what to say, but ugh.
From the guy who says that the word hacker has a wrong definition in the Oxford Dictionairy you can expect some biased views on reality.
I don’t think Sun is going to die, no way. Java is the defacto language in education environments today and will be tomorrow. He only depicts the lack of openess and the fact that Sun is not giving Java away to the opensource community as the #1 reason for Sun to die. Yah right. IBM cannot buy Sun, as this will not be approved by antitrust laws is my take. MS cannot for the same reason and Oracle is a database vendor in the first place. SUN did give away OO.o, NFS, NIS and all the other beautiful stuff. So what is he complaining about ? What did we get from IBM/Oracle/MS on linux ?
In these economic bad times it’s easy to bash a company if their results are a little less than they were on the top of the lunatic years (when everything was overrated anyway).
They make good products, banks all over the world use their stuff and the language Java has to many advantages to just fade away.
The language he uses in his ‘article’ seems more fuddish to me than the average MS marketing page, with the exception that ESR is always on the paranoid or at least negative side of things. It’s sooo easy to be negative. Be positive for a change Eric.
>>They have $5.7billion in cash, produced 35 straight quarters of profit.<<
Directly copied from sunw’s profile on yahoo:
EPS (ttm): -0.75
PERIOD ENDING 30-Mar-03 29-Dec-02 29-Sep-02 30-Jun-02
Net Income 4,000 (2,283,000) (111,000) 61,000
Profitability
Profit Margin (ttm): -29.99%
Operating Margin (ttm): -23.82%
Management Effectiveness
Return on Assets (ttm): -23.85%
Return on Equity (ttm): -42.61%
in terms of a takeover, are not technology. Every company thinking of taking over or buying out Sun is looking at purchasing the ownership of their client list, which is where any real money is. This list defines which technology gets continued, spun off, or dropped into oblivion. Some people need to stop thinking about what is ‘cool’ technology, and put on the accountant’s hat.
If SUN has 5 billion in retained earnings than that money is (or should be) invested, and it is turning a huge profit. Perhaps they had a poor year, but you can’t just go by that. Well, I have not done the research but I think it is FUD. Why would Raymond write this garbage.
SUN’s new liscence is a threat to Linux in the business sector, it’s also a threat to IBM. Maybe that motivate this article. I on the other hand believe that SUN would be able to cut out a lot of the fat in the IT industry with their new plan, and it would ultimately benefit the customer…and it would not hurt Linux…but might save the industry because I think the industry is headed for the dump.
The IT industry is inflated, and the IT industry is going out of business, not SUN. That is what is happening. Vendors, especially Microsoft have saturated all of the goodwill in the industry because of their lock-in and rediculous profitability margins on office and other tools. People see through them and there is backlach because customers are being robbed.
I’m not sure if it is Microsofts fault, however it’s over now, and SUN is going to make information technology affordable (if they can). I hope that SUN can deliver.
Every company thinking of taking over or buying out Sun is looking at purchasing the ownership of their client list, which is where any real money is.
Yah, this is the real money is. Sun is hugely entrenched in the government sector. I seriously doubt the government would like to all of a sudden lose support or upgrade potential for probably thousands of mission critical servers that area deployed.
Very likely you’ll see something similar like what happened when Compaq acquired Digital/HP acquired Compaq. That was also a huge clientel acquisition. Too bad they killed off the Alpha (bastards).
Maybe IBM and HP should merge and than they should beat SUN to the punch. This is the only thing that is happening, it’s all about whether or not SUN can deliver on it’s strategy (race) to undercut the monopoly. Maybe IBM + HP can deliver before SUN can.
Add Novel to the list. Linux + business is over. Realize it and move fast….because business is not in the interst of Linux…it’s not true to open source.
I bet 100$ that the guy who wrote that article actually meant “Linux will take over the world and crush all opposition”.
Sun has been around, Sun is around and Sun will be around. As everyone knows, when the Sun stops glowing, mankind will die ^^.
Frankly though, Sun is doing just fine and will continue doing just fine. Stock market has allways acted odd. What if they’d have a look on companies in need of heavy security products? they left out or something? Last figures I show showed that Sun was pretty far much better than any Linux or Windows solution on the market, so what’s this article about really?
“What if…Sun GPLed the Java source and then died ;-)”
This would destroy Java faster than selling it to MS.
Tell all the business that use Java, they must open source all their applications….C# would become ubiquitous in the server side language market. I know for a fact in my companies business(health care), our code is based on standards which you must pay for, thereore open sourcing isnt an option.
—
60s Hippie:”What if everything was free maaan..yeaaa that would be cool”
60s Realist:”If those people dont get paid, why should they build anything?”
Why would a company that has interests in the x86 platform and manufactures its own processor embrace linux? SUN customers are so confused what should they buy? Linux on intel, Solaris on intel? Solaris on Sparc? its insane! SUN has a pretty good processor arcitechture and frankly its the hardware that makes them the cash. They need to think of new and inovative ways to make the Sparc platform less expensive and more atractive to businesses running solaris for sparc.
If it’s reality, it’s not bashing. How much of the desktop does apple command? 3%? Less?
Apple’s installed base is approximately 10% of all desktop computer systems, and about 3% of all Internet accessable systems. Apple’s market share for new systems is approximately 3.5%.
So, no, not less…
There is no suitable response to the article that I can come up with, except to say that those responsible for Linux are some of the most out-of-touch and immature individuals driving the computer industry today (with the exception of Theo de Raadt, whose maturity level matches that of a 3 year old who throws a temper tantrum whenever he doesn’t get his way)
But inside Sun, I hear that talent is bailing out of the company because they just don’t believe the Solaris-will-prevail story management is peddling. Most of Sun’s techies are running Linux on their PCs at home. They can see the handwriting on the wall.
As a friend of several high-level SAs at Sun’s office in Broomfield, CO, I can assure you they are all running Solaris at home…
In retrospect, the recent pronunciamento that Sun has no Linux strategy was their final admission of failure. Sun can’t run at the lean profit margins that are all a commoditized Linux server market will support, their cost structure is all wrong for it. They got trapped in a classic innovator’s dilemma and didn’t cannibalize their own business while they had the investor confidence and maneuvering room to do so. Cuddling up to SCO didn’t help, either.
I can’t believe ESR is failing to grasp Sun’s attempt to move to a service-based business model, a similar move to what IBM has done, except that Sun is attempting to sell Linux desktops as opposed to servers (why is ESR even mentioning the “lean profit margins a commoditized Linux server market will support”? Sun isn’t in the Linux server market) In such a model, the up front cost to your customers is just to offset your own losses for the initial equipment outlay, and then money is made off service contracts for the enterprise system as a whole.
Really, who does ESR think he is commenting on business matters, as they are clearly outside his domain of comprehension. (Although he is yet to write something worse than this: http://catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/)
ash.. you can’t really be serious. Open sourcing the technology to compile java sources into java bytecode doesn’t force the various developers around the world to open their java sources.
It only means that the compiler and technology can be acquired without fee and further developed at your own will (as well as someone else’s).
Open sourcing Java wouldn’t kill it. I think it would give it a rather important boost.
Open sourcing Java wouldn’t kill it. I think it would give it a rather important boost.
*ahem* Java’s source code is open…
http://wwws.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/java2/download.ht…
*ahem* Java’s source code is open…
http://wwws.sun.com/software/communitysource/j2se/java2/download.ht…
Gee. Guess this explains why FreeBSD had to negotiate with Sun just to be allowed to distribute Java 1.3.1 binaries for FreeBSD, and why porting Java 1.4.x to FreeBSD is hamstrung by requiring each potential developer to download the Java source from Sun, then separately download and apply the patchset needed to make the source run on FreeBSD.
Yup, Sun’s source code policy sure helps make the “write once, run everywhere” dream come true, doesn’t it?
A friend of mine who is a sysadmin for a large telecommunications company here in Canada, told me just the other day, that their primary platform is Sun; about 85% of the machine park and the rest is mostly IBM. He also told me that they have no plans to divert to something else.
The licence isn’t open source, from what I remember. They allow you to view the source, but there are restrictions for what you can do. Somewhere between GPL and Microsoft’s Shared Source probably 🙂
From what I know, the Java source license has a few non-open-source clauses such as the prohibiting of re-engineering Java.
>>Apple’s installed base is approximately 10% of all desktop computer systems, and about 3% of all Internet accessable systems. Apple’s market share for new systems is approximately 3.5%. <<
Whoa! Where did you get that? I think, according to netcraft, apple’s market share is way under 3%. 10% seems very high. Can you cite a source?
It is official; ESR confirms: Sun is dying. One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Sun community when IDC confirmed that Sun market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent ESR survey which plainly states that Sun has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we’ve known all along. Sun is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don’t need to be Merrill Lynch(http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3086651) to predict Sun’s future. The hand writing is on the wall: Sun faces a bleak future. In fact there won’t be any future at all for Sun because Sun is dying. Things are looking very bad for Sun. As many of us are already aware, Sun continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Solaris is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Solaris developer Bill Joy only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Solaris is dying.
Sources:
Apple’s current installed base:
http://www.spymac.com/more.php?id=215_0_5_0_M
Apple’s installed base of Internet accessable computers:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/aug03_pie.gif
Apple’s market share:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2002/07/03/marketshare/
Eric S. Raymond’s comments stand in stark contrast with recent SEC filings that make it pretty clear that SUN continues to be profitable, has excellent cash supplies, and continues to innovate. Recent new product announcments can put a full office productivity suite on a desktop computer for $100/year. Killer! Secure and worm/virus free to boot.
Just because a company’s stock is in the toilet does not mean it is dying. Look at CarlyCo – I mean Hewlett-Packard. They make money hand over fist. The stock seems nailed at $20 a share. So what? It’s still a good company even if it does value its partnership with BillGatusOfBorg.
A recend quote comes to mind: “Innovation is the making something out of nothing” and that is what SUN is good at. So I Apple. So is Oracle. And of course Scott McNealy hates Microsoft, so he MUST be a good guy, right? Same for Larry Ellison. Rumor has it that All Oracle employees use Macs.
So, Eric S. Raymond, your little piece about SUN’s demise is a great exageration, and deserves to be dismissed as flame bait.
“Today we are one day closer to a Microsoft free existance.”
RE: J. J. Ramsey (IP: —.pool.brightdsl.net) – Posted on 2003-10-02 18:34:28
Gee. Guess this explains why FreeBSD had to negotiate with Sun just to be allowed to distribute Java 1.3.1 binaries for FreeBSD, and why porting Java 1.4.x to FreeBSD is hamstrung by requiring each potential developer to download the Java source from Sun, then separately download and apply the patchset needed to make the source run on FreeBSD.
Yup, Sun’s source code policy sure helps make the “write once, run everywhere” dream come true, doesn’t it?
There is a perfectly good reason why they don’t allow binary redistribution of J2SE. J2SE has SUN’s name on it, if Cheese Blogs Software Incorporated created a port for FreeBSD, and something goes wrong, who will get the blame? of course, SUN will, there is their name all of the software and they will cop the flak even though they had nothing to do with the port.
Same reason why Microsoft is apprehensive about Office running on Linux under Crossover Office. If something happens, and the end user is running Linux and a high profile customer, who is going to take the flak? Linux? Codeweavers? Microsoft? it is a liability and PR nightmare just waiting to happen.
If you want to redistribute the binaries, then get a license. FreeBSD moaned about not being able to get one due to the costs. Question, how come in the time I used FreeBSD I never saw one concerted effort to rally the “community” behind fundraising the money to cover the cost? if I knew that they needed money, I would have been quite happy to donate $100 to it.
RE: Bascule (IP: —.atmos.colostate.edu) – Posted on 2003-10-02 23:41:59
There is no use trying to rebute walterbyrd. He is a troll and fails to see the obvious. SUN has over 100 organisations waiting in line for their Linux Desktop, they’ve finally taken my advice and jumped on the road to demonstrate the capabilities of their hardware and software to customers, and their hardware is dropping in price, no wonder their hardware revenues are lowering!
Sure, I am a spectator in this market, however, I’d say give SUN atleast 2-3 years to prove them selves. I have a feeling that next year things will turn around once their Solaris Opteron Edition is release, the new UltraSparc “Niagra” chip is released, and high profile customers start talking about the positive aspects of moving to SUN’s solutions. Teltra, for example will be the biggest chairleader for this.
>> Apple’s installed base is approximately 10% of all desktop computer
>> systems, and about 3% of all Internet accessable systems. Apple’s
>> market share for new systems is approximately 3.5%.
>
> Whoa! Where did you get that? I think, according to netcraft, apple’s
> market share is way under 3%. 10% seems very high. Can you cite a
> source?
There is a big difference between market share and installed base that you are failing to recognise. Installed base refers to the percentage of computers actually in use. In apple’s case, this is roughly 10%. Market share on the other hand is the percentage of systems sold in a year where apple has closer to 2%. What this means is that on average, apple owners keep their computers for longer than wintel owners.
Make sure you understand the terminology before replying in future.
The single thing that disturbs me about that article the most is that there is almost a sense of glee from Eric S Raymond in “reporting” that Sun is “doomed”.
Personally I don’t think that the opensource community should be in any shape or form keen in the demise of an organisation that is partially funding the single biggest hope (imo) for an OSS office suite and is raising the profile of Linux even if it doesn’t really seem outright keen on it. Think about it, every corporate desktop sale they get of Linux is a larger market for the entire Linux world to sell or produce to/for.
I’m not sure why Sun is even interested in GNU/Linux at all. Their core competency is Solaris on SPARC. As far as I can tell, they do that very well. Where I used to work, our dev desktops were Solaris8 + CDE and it worked fine.
Seems to me, if Sun customers are asking for Linux, Sun should simply be making the Solaris user experience closer to that of something like Redhat. IIRC, Solaris 9 comes with Gnome as its default desktop, right?
This whole business with Solaris on x86 is just silly. If you want Solaris so bad, just buy a SunBlade for Pete’s sake. [shrug]
If Linux supported SUN right now, than the open source community would accomplish a great deal because the information technology industry would serve the customer and the platform (Java) is accessible (it’s accessible but not open because it is a vendor technology) to students on Linux.
SUN’s new strategy is a winner for business customers and for the open source community. It accomplishes many goals set forward by open source developers who dreamed of the destination…and will realize that the destination is a new beginning however on a leveled playing field, with the freedom to lead Linux toward non vendor (scientific), value based quality software that is organically produced ( decentralized, open, accessible, timeless) free knowledge.
The key is cooperation. We met our goals if this industry serves the business customer with value at a fair price. If the industry is made uncomplicated by cutting red tape. If the vendors can find profit through volume sales, than that is the solution.
Think about cooperation because you don’t understand that you just won.
It’s an editorial for chrissakes. It’s SUPPOSED to be full of hyperbole and over exageration.
Sun does have alot of money in the bank. That doesn’t mean they enjoy watching their profit margins dissolve. The high margin dotcom days are gone forever. Sun will have to do something to adjust to the real world economy now.
Sun crossed the line? how did it cross? What happened? Why doesn’t the article even tell ME what happened? Maybe include a link so I can click on “Crossed the line” or “from doomed to troubled”. As it is, the article means nothing cause I have no idea wtf ESR is talking about. Oh well. Not that it matters anyway…
….although osnews is making these type of stories for two years the sun is still shining.
eugenia, you should try something else to help your friends developing mono. as you can see, one cannot cover sun with dirt.
Re: walterbyrd
By Bascule (IP: —.atmos.colostate.edu) – Posted on 2003-10-02 23:41:59
Thank you for the links. However . . .
Apple’s current installed base:
http://www.spymac.com/more.php?id=215_0_5_0_M
– obviously biased source, not very current.
Apple’s installed base of Internet accessable computers:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/aug03_pie.gif
– 3%, just like I said.
Apple’s market share:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2002/07/03/marketshare/ – obviously biased source, not very current.
I don’t believe strongly msft biased sources, such as zdnet or gartner, and – to be fair – I don’t believe strongly Apple biased sources.
According to this, apple’s installed base is about 3%.
Apple’s installed base of Internet accessable computers:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/aug03_pie.gif
>>There is no use trying to rebute walterbyrd. He is a troll and fails to see the obvious. <<
Who is failing to see the obvious? I have posted sunw’s numbers, what hard evidence have you provided?
It hard for me to understand why hard irrefutable facts are considered bashing or trolling. Maybe you can explain that?
BTW: do you still support scox as strongly as you used to?
>>Where I used to work, our dev desktops were Solaris8 + CDE and it worked fine. <<
Working fine is one thing. Being the best price/preformance solution is something else. BeOS, OS/2, VMS, all “worked fine”
>>Seems to me, if Sun customers are asking for Linux, Sun should simply be making the Solaris user experience closer to that of something like Redhat. IIRC, Solaris 9 comes with Gnome as its default desktop, right? <<
Sun customers aren’t looking for an OS that just looks like Linux. There is also matters of cost, supported hardware, available software, etc.
>>This whole business with Solaris on x86 is just silly. If you want Solaris so bad, just buy a SunBlade for Pete’s sake. [shrug] <<
Sure, if you have money to burn. If a $300 PC will do the job, why by a sunblade?
>>There is no use trying to rebute walterbyrd. He is a troll and fails to see the obvious. <<
Who is failing to see the obvious? I have posted sunw’s numbers, what hard evidence have you provided?
And you have completely ignored the SEC filing I posted before.
It hard for me to understand why hard irrefutable facts are considered bashing or trolling. Maybe you can explain that?
They aren’t facts, they’re opinions. If I say that McDonalds food is crap, is that a fact or an opinion? If I said, however, that Solaris x86 is cheaper than Linux, then that is a fact.
A48-PDA2-2-1GGG5 – Sun Fire V65x General Purpose Rack Mount Linux/Solaris x86 Server: 2 * 3.06 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Xeon CPU, 1 GB Memory (2 * 512 MB DIMMs), 1 * 36 GB 10Krpm SCSI Hard Disk, 2 * 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 3 * Full Height/Full-Length 64 bit / 100 MHz PCI-X slots, 3 * Half Height / Half Length 64 bit / 100 MHz PCI-X slots, CD / floppy, 1 * Internal AC Power Supply, North American / Asia Power Cord AUD$6,990.00
In comparision to a server from our old friends at IBM Australia: