Sun’s announcement this week that it plans to make Solaris an “open-source” operating system has been met with mixed reactions from users and scepticism from open-source advocates. “I’m totally nonplussed by the announcement,” said Dale Pickford, chief infrastructure officer at Ocwen Technology. Ocwen last year consolidated around 140 servers into several high-end Sun servers running Solaris – one with more than 100 processors. For smaller servers with four or fewer CPUs, Linux on Intel is suitable, Pickford said. But for systems larger than that, “the Sparc and Solaris environment really comes into its own,” he said. “And once you start playing at that level anyway, you don’t want to be messing with the OS.” LinuxWorld has an article as well on the open sourcing of Java and Solaris.
‘Open-source’ Solaris Draws Lukewarm Response
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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these people don’t even know what sun is going to do to solaris regarding open source. they are going to release an open source FLAVOR of the OS, like Darwin is to Mac OS X. They will probably allow forking, but im not certain.
“hese people don’t even know what sun is going to do to solaris regarding open source. they are going to release an open source FLAVOR of the OS, like Darwin is to Mac OS X.”
sun cant do that. solaris is a derivate of sysv. there is no way they could open up that
you are wrong, sun has the equivalent of the ownership of sys v. they have the complete right to do so. they paid alot of money to do this. If SCO files suit against them because of this it would help sun even more and open source advocates would praise sun as they have done to IBM… IBM server shipments went up and sun’s would too.
it’s a win-win situation.
“you are wrong, sun has the equivalent of the ownership of sys v. they have the complete right to do so”
hmm. i dont think this is correct. you have anything to back this claim. sysv contracts in sco means that you can do any kind of modifications but not relicense it under open source. thats basically sco’s dispute over ibm. so?
Tim, you’re the troll who was going around saying how FreeBSD is far more scalable than Linux.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=108490932700001&r=1&w=2&n=77
It can’t even scale to 2 CPUs here.
Why on earth can I run FreeBSD on Opteron CPUs here?
Check your facts.
“o I don’t have access to their ‘contracts’ but Scott McNealy and Johnathon Schwartz have publicaly said they have the equivalent of the ownership of UNIX. I do not think they are lying about this. ”
they have told that java is open source before and pretty inconsistent about solaris and java being open source or not
i dont want to trust them
Why on earth can I run FreeBSD on Opteron CPUs here?
Good on you.
Check your facts.
Learn to read.
Tell me, how is telling the truth a ‘troll’. Honestly, check your benchmarks and run the systems yourself properly.
I don’t want to hear your fanatic responses.
I guess only time will tell. If they don’t open source part of solaris it will hurt their creditability greatly. The open source java thing was what employees were saying vs. what execs were saying. McNealy was always “i dont think so” Schwartz was always “possibily”.
I suppose time will tell, but I don’t personally think the’d lie about it. Then again I’m a shareholder, so I’d probably be a little biased.
“The open source java thing was what employees were saying vs. what execs were saying. McNealy was always “i dont think so” Schwartz was always “possibily”. ”
i dont care. its still sun and sun should be consistent about what they are saying.
Please refer to the next generation SMP support for FreeBSD, this may answer your questions regarding scalability of freebsd on multiple processors:
http://www.freebsd.org/smp/index.html
Ofcourse, once this is complete it will likely scale past linux on multiple processors.
If they don’t open source part of solaris it will hurt their creditability greatly.
On it’s own, this comment is bullshit. Taken together with their constant flip-flopping on the matter, you might have a small point.
I am still not sure why SUN would do this? i guess they think that they can get the OS community to write hardware drivers for the OS so as to compete head to head with Linux. Which again makes no sense becasue linux doesn’t compete with Solaris is the high end server arena. Its like SUN is randomly thrashing ideas around to see which one might be profitable. They are desperate..i think its time to sell my shares of SUN before they become completely worthless.
like solaris can’t stand well enough on it’s own as a closed source product.
What he said was that they would build off of their success with Java by open-sourcing Solaris (sorry, can’t find the actual quote right now).
But here’s the thing: Java is not open source. Not even Sun claims that. Maybe they mean something like the Java Community Process and that abortion that is the Sun Community Source License applied to Solaris? Maybe the entire company is terminally f’ed? Who knows!
I am still not sure why SUN would do this? i guess they think that they can get the OS community to write hardware drivers for the OS so as to compete head to head with Linux.
Solaris doesn’t need to be open source for people to write drivers. Last I checked
This is just more bullshit talk from Sun. You can never tell which way they’re going because all they do is talk. First of all, they really can’t open source SysV code because they don’t hold the copyrights, and does anyone really believe that Novell does either? Before Caldera became SCO, it was common knowledge that they held the Unix copyrights, they even released the pre SysV versions under a BSD license. Where was Novell disputing the copyright claims back then?
We’ll see if Sun opens up Java, they might. But they can’t with Solaris.
according to employees, they claim that the big bag of cash that they paid SCO clears the final hurdle in open sourcing Solaris.
Those who really wanna use open source will go for Linux anyway and won’t look for Solaris.
IBM has already proven how the Linux business model is a complete joke by sending invoices higher than ever before to customers. It’s only a question of time before the market will realize the hypocrisy in this “Free but not free you fool” RMS talk.
please just continue with Solaris as is so that everything isn’t sent down the drain as it has been for so long now with GNU/Linux
Seems like someone has bet the farm on a Solaris career and has seen the job opportunities shrink?
Seems like someone can’t respnd with arguments, just personal attacks.
Answer the guy’s arguments Chakie, and if you can’t, then just shut your yapper.
Jorma, are you really saying that the blatant attack from {Anonymous (IP: —.cm-upc.chello.se)} on RMS and the GNU/Linux business model with nothing but unsubstantiated “high IBM pricing” is an argument?
If people don’t like GNU/Linux; fine. Just try to stay real. Trash without backup will not do as “evidence” against the business model.
“Jorma, are you really saying that the blatant attack from {Anonymous (IP: —.cm-upc.chello.se)} on RMS and the GNU/Linux business model with nothing but unsubstantiated “high IBM pricing” is an argument?”
Hmmm… So, the original poster’s attack on the GNU/Linux business model contained inaccuracies (according to you)? Well then, just say so. Say, for example “No, IBM does not charge even more, Linux is not more expensive in the end.” or something like that. It’s all opinions after all, and this is the Internet – no solid proofs can be given or found here, only a chance to do your own homework, offline. Heaven knows that I have read more bull on these fora than in the “Big Book o’ Bull”. But what you have to do is attack the issue, not the messenger. Who attacks the messenger is a weenie spineless coward lowlife hiding behind the holy GNU/Linux flag and I will look with contempt at him.
Remember when Sun and AT&T had a mini-merger through a stock swap? The ripples of this deal was what inspired OSF which brought us OSF/1 which nobody but DEC took seriously and Motif which unfortunately everyone took seriously.
Anyway, when Sun and AT&T were all cozy Sun got its super special UNIX license where they can distribute UNIX without paying a royalty to anyone. Sun is the only company with this sort of license. I personally don’t know if this license also gives Sun the right to distribute source.
Back when I first started to use FSF software the theory behind it was give the software away but charge for support. Red Hat et al seem to have gotten away from that idea though.
“Back when I first started to use FSF software the theory behind it was give the software away but charge for support. Red Hat et al seem to have gotten away from that idea though.”
redhat is doing exactly that. you want just the software?
use caos/taolinux/whitebox. you want support?
buy redhat enterprise
dont spread misinformation
dont spread misinformation
Ha!
Huh?
any arguments?
Huh? any arguments?
None at the moment. I just found it ammusing ;^)