Whatever pleasantries once existed between Sun and Red Hat have vanished. This won’t come as a shock to many of you. The companies have been jawing in the press for some time. The extent, however, of Sun’s loathing for Red Hat is more profound than many imagine, with Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy largely confirming a shared attack with Microsoft against the Linux vendor.
McNealy: Microsoft needs Sun to beat IBM and Red Hat
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This little soap opera is getting tired. McNealy needs to pick a side, and then shut the heck up. Less talk, and more work, otherwise Microsoft will eat all three of them for lunch.
You don’t really think Microsoft can take IBM for lunch, do you?
McNealy:”They [Microsoft] at least respect us.”
Bill Gates: “fast forward 10 years, the two leading OS technologies will be Linux and Windows.
[…]
The problem with Unix is that the OS companies involved (SGI, Sun, IBM, HP, SCO) never managed to get together and adhere to common standards and direction”
Um yeah sure, respect.
Sun is playing the OSS community and MS is playing SUN.
Sun will be one of the next SCO’s MSFT throws at F/OSS.
Sun has a decent product today. Solaris 10 isn’t bad for what it is limited to. But sun had better wake up and realize every company that went to bed wit MSFT got shafted, and stolen from in the morning.
MSFT couldn’t buy out Java, or Open Office, so it will buy out Sun.
That is why the GPL is a good thing. No one can buy out the product. java may be used all over the place today, but MSFT will shove .NET at people real hard, and when Java stops shoving back, .NET wins.
The plot is products to a market. Forget about bickering. Only us powerless geeks read about it and we are getting tired.
Mcneally steps on it yet again. When will this egomaniac start running his trap and put out something people can use besides java? REally, its enough for me to drop java and start using mono..
The article did make some good points:
“Linux zealots need to realize that this is no longer the case. Red Hat is a money-grubbing business just like Sun, Microsoft and IBM. It’s out for blood – not peace and love.”
Very true, and something that a lot of us have been trying to point out to many of the Linux zealots who defend Red Hat as if they were the holy vatican of the software world.
It’s also true that Sun has contributed more open source then anyone else except Berkeley. IBM, on the other hand, has contributed very little, and is also one of the largest holder of software patents in the world. IBM is no friend of open source. It’s amazing that folks can’t see that.
It wouldn’t really matter if Sun picks side. They would only change it with the wind afterwards.
Better solution would be that people take stance and go away from company without stance. I was waiting for Solaris 10, but latest PR news from Sun made me realize that S10 would mean very unstable future. So, no Solaris for me.
Ofcourse Red Hat is commerical oriented. Heck without Red Hat it is quite possible that Linux today would’t be as popular.
The difference between Sun and Red Hat is that RH competes with their superior products, unlike Sun who has the need to launch a FUD attack 5 days a week.
Great to put the the only agressive paragraph of the TheRegister article in the overview of the story… reading the story (both pages) shows no signs that Sun is in any way teaming up with Microsoft in any specific way…
Nevertheless, some of Suns execs have always pissed me off… I think it must be frustrating for the many great Sun engineers to be represented by such loudmouths who can’t control their egos and constantly sprout off like that…
If you want a view into the minds of the people at Sun, http://planetsun.org/ is a page that collects the blogs of many Sun employees (Sun encourages their employees to blog).
whatever they do with java, i use openoffice and i say thanks a lot, sun.
I found this to be a great article/interview. Of course you have to look through he marketing language, but still then, the points were valid.
– Yes, Red Hat is more expensive than Solaris;
– Yes, Solaris has NSA-level security which Linux doesn’t have;
– Solaris’ legality isn’t in question (even though I don’t think Linux is any more illegal than Solaris, companies will still take notion of the whole SCO-crap);
– Yes, Sun has contributed much, much more to the OSS community then others. Just look at OpenOffice.org;
– Yes, RedHat is a company just like Microsoft.
Well, let the fight begin
.
… does sun think they can beat MS at their own game.
“The difference between Sun and Red Hat is that RH competes with their superior products, unlike Sun who has the need to launch a FUD attack 5 days a week.”
I disagree. I will still argue that Solaris is superior to Red Hat any day of the week. It is easier to maintain, and it scales better.
Red Hat, on the other hand, competes by leaching of volunteer developers and thus reducing their R&D cost. Sun is just trying to compete with that.. Which I’m sure is why they are open sourcing Solaris. They want to get a bunch of hackers working on the code.
>>- Yes, RedHat is a company just like Microsoft.
How is RH anything like MS?
Curse you Thom, next time there is a SkyOS thread, I’ll troll it to death! j/k
“You don’t really think Microsoft can take IBM for lunch, do you?”
To tell ya the truth: I think MS can have them sunny side up, sunny side down, face up, or face down. Anytime they damn well want.
They already have…. and more than once. IBM knows all about Vaseline…..
Sun and RH, are not structurally the same type of organization because Sun is into hardware and R&D, where as IBM handles hardward and R&D indirectly for RH. Sun does not have the muscle to keep their hands in all of these cookie jars and it is not a good alliance (MS + Sun) for anybody!
I do agree about the execs causing trouble. And it seems Scott McNealy is starting to go a little off his rocker with some of his comments and off the wall statements. He should probably get some counseling. And Sun should probably start thinking about getting him to step down as CEO. The guy really does seem to have lost it a bit when it comes to leading a multi-billion dollar corporation.
>> I disagree. I will still argue that Solaris is superior to Red Hat any day of the week. It is easier to maintain, and it scales better.
Bleh I suppose its subjective, since many people believe the opposite is true. Im not qualified to compare(studying comp engineering ATM and have little Admin experince).
>> Red Hat, on the other hand, competes by leaching of volunteer developers and thus reducing their R&D cost.
Exactly!!! This is how a relativly small company (RH) can compete against the likes of Sun. OSS adds a new dimension to this industry. Either utilize it or prepare to get your ass kicked!
Also how about all the projects RH has contributed to? http://sources.redhat.com/projects.html .That page neglects things like Gnome/GTK+ which RH has hired full time developers (Havoc P. for example).
Before Sun gets too touchy-feelie with Microsoft, they should read the top story on The Register’s site this week:
Ballmer Calls For Horse-Based Attack On Star Office
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/06/ballmer_staroffice_charge/
When Sun has friends like this, who needs enemies?
I keep hearing that SUN has contributed more to open source than Redhat. What are people talking of exactly. Redhat has kernel hackers and employs Gnome hackers. A lot of the direction Gnome is taking is because Gnome has leaders who work for Redhat. Havoc and Owen come to mind.
Redhat has given us Cygwin, soon we will get Netscape Directory Server and Netscape Certificate Management System. They have given us the biggest distro (Redhat/Fedora) and they acquired and open sourced many other projects. Sun has given us one big open source piece, openoffice.org, and we have given it exposure because it is the default on most if not all distros. But I daresay Redhat has made it their business to depend on open source software. Sun will drop us if Microsoft asks them too, the way they are getting comfortable with them of late. Ever since they go t2billion dollars, their allegiances shifted. Not that it is surprising. I daresay mine would probably shift too for that amount. They have not much credibilty anymore in open source circles. I think they fear that Solaris is being overtaken by Linux. truthfully, they know they cannot compete with the ecosystem that Linux is becoming.
“Linux zealots need to realize that this is no longer the case. Red Hat is a money-grubbing business just like Sun, Microsoft and IBM. It’s out for blood – not peace and love.”
You actualy don’t know much don’t you? RH has contributed more than Sun, way more.
Very true, and something that a lot of us have been trying to point out to many of the Linux zealots who defend Red Hat as if they were the holy vatican of the software world.
They aren’t Vatican, but they opensource and GPL everything. You know that is the reason why for example Redhat enterprise linux clones
http://lwn.net/Articles/69534/
Sistina GFS and others.
Netscape Directory was not mentioned yet, but if I’m correct they will Open source it in few months. Same time was needed for them to opensource sistina gfs too.
btw. They also have a lot of hackers on payroll, you know the ones that make free software.
If that isn’t enough for you, I suspect that nothing will be. RH workers should probably take care of elderly and give blood after their workhours.
It’s also true that Sun has contributed more open source then anyone else except Berkeley. IBM, on the other hand, has contributed very little, and is also one of the largest holder of software patents in the world. IBM is no friend of open source. It’s amazing that folks can’t see that.
Except OpenOffice.org (StarOffice was almost dead until they open sourced it, it was either that or nothing). What Sun really contributed to Open Source?
Solaris? Read the license and wheap. No free alternative clone here
Looking Glass? That’s the reason why they are it patenting now
Java? No way
All that Sun has is a muddy history and nothing else. I was actualy waiting for S10, but I suspect that testing it would be just a waste of time.
IBM has contributed very little? You don’t walk my planet don’t you. And you say that in the time when IBM and Redhat (ok, Novell a little too), took the only initiative to care about Linux legal standpoint.
What did Sun do? Went in bed with Microsoft?
“Bleh I suppose its subjective, since many people believe the opposite is true. Im not qualified to compare(studying comp engineering ATM and have little Admin experince).”
Well, having admin experience on both systems, I would argue that it is much easier to install patches on Solaris than on Red Hat, for example. (And even easier to remove those patches if they break something then it is on Red Hat.)
“Also how about all the projects RH has contributed to? http://sources.redhat.com/projects.html .That page neglects things like Gnome/GTK+ which RH has hired full time developers (Havoc P. for example).”
True. But lets not forget how some of those developers are being paid either. Sun is among the large companies that is a financial supporter of Gnome. So some of the money that supports Gnome development is coming from Sun.
“Sun has given us one big open source piece, openoffice.org, and we have given it exposure because it is the default on most if not all distros.”
NFS and NIS come to mind as open source software that Sun has contributed. Both obviously very important networking technologies in Linux and other open source operating systems.
NFS and NIS
Now both dying and not really suggested:)
“You actualy don’t know much don’t you? RH has contributed more than Sun, way more.”
You obviously aren’t aware of the amount of open source code that came from Sun are you? No way has RH contributed more. (By the way, crawl out of your Linuxcentric shell for a moment and consider the wider picture of open source. You will find that Sun has contributed a lot more, including NFS and NIS.)
“They aren’t Vatican, but they opensource and GPL everything.”
No, they don’t. A lot of stuff in Sun’s Enterprise server is not open source. Applixware Office (which was owned by Red Hat at one point. Not sure if they still are) was never open source either.
<<< I disagree. I will still argue that Solaris is superior to Red Hat any day of the week. It is easier to maintain, and it scales better.>>>
Heh. You go right on believing that. We’ve replaced dozens of Sun boxes with racks of linux blades which cost less, are easier to manage, and provide vastly better overall performance. There was lots of opposition to that move as we started, but even the diehard Sun guys are ethusiastic now.
<<<IBM is no friend of open source.>>>
Sun funds SCO’s legal wars against open source, and IBM fights SCO. Sun keeps Java under tight propriatary control, and IBM donates several of their patented high-value kernel technologies to Linux. Anybody without an agenda can see who’s a bigger friend of open source now.
>>Sun is among the large companies that is a financial supporter of Gnome. So some of the money that supports Gnome development is coming from Sun.
/me confused
I never said Sun didn’t contribute to OSS. I was just pointing out that Red Hat has always been an excellent OSS member.
Everything RH develops/buys(Netscape server for instance) becomes GPLed.
IMO in terms of amount of code, Sun may be the leader but thinking of it in terms of proportion (amount of s/w : amount of OSS contributed), RH wins hands down, no doubt!!11
“Heh. You go right on believing that. We’ve replaced dozens of Sun boxes with racks of linux blades which cost less, are easier to manage, and provide vastly better overall performance.”
Let me know when you can get Linux to deliver acceptable performance on a 64 processor box, and then we will talk about this. And no, don’t tell me Beowulf. Because a beowulf cluster is not nearly as easy to manage as a single Sun E10k
Just a question in regards to this comment:
NFS and NIS come to mind as open source software that Sun has contributed. Both obviously very important networking technologies in Linux and other open source operating systems.
Did SUN donate the code itself to NFS/NIS or did it just disclose the protocol. (big difference between the two).
“Now both dying and not really suggested:)”
Lets not forget though that when Sun open sourced NIS and NFS, they were very important networking technologies still. So it’s not like they just open sourced EOL code.
IBM won’t even do that… They still won’t let go of OS/2, which is deader then a door nail. They won’t open source AIX either. Sun is open sourcing Solaris. Why doesn’t IBM follow and open source AIX and OS/2?
gee guys, what do you need, Sun to stick a knife in you and make it totally *obvious*? NFS/NIS are practically dead and unused by the *vast* majority. If you talk about open sourcing something that’s dying, why did they wait till the technology was dying? mmm? Hint, hint, maybe cos it was worth too much to them whilst it was valid technology? Sun doesn’t give squat about open source, FSF, gpl etc. It’s just a pr stunt for those bastards.
I’m sure the easiest way would be for IBM to do a hostile takeover of Sun. Let’s see…if IBM owned Sun & Redhat…couple that to Novell. HP is sitting on the fence but at least it’s not screwing everyone over like Sun is at the moment…Microsoft wouldn’t stand a chance. Nada. IBM has a shitload of patents and if a patent war Microsoft wants, IBM will eventually give it to them. That will make Mr. Billy Gates jr. behave himself.
Dave
“gee guys, what do you need, Sun to stick a knife in you and make it totally *obvious*? NFS/NIS are practically dead and unused by the *vast* majority.”
Tell that to Fortune 500 companies. All the ones I have worked at have both NFS and NIS in very prominant use.
There is no incentive for IBM to buy Sun. They don’t need the hardware, or the software. And they don’t need Sun’s customer base. They are competing against Sun very sucessfully and winning. Buying Sun would be a waste of money for them.
Um I don’t think you can even begin to compare IBM to Sun.
-IBM has contributed $3 Billion+ worth of code to the Linux kernel
-they have more than 200 engineers working full time on the Linux kernel and other OSS projects
– Eclipse, Cloudscape, etc opensourced
-IBM has acted as a canopy against the attacks of SCO (which were partly funded by SUN!)
– in 1999, gave Linux the break it needed to get into the mainstream
Everyone(RH, Sun, IBM, etc) are finically motivated. Some are just *MUCH* more ethical in manner that they accomplish this.
You obviously aren’t aware of the amount of open source code that came from Sun are you? No way has RH contributed more. (By the way, crawl out of your Linuxcentric shell for a moment and consider the wider picture of open source. You will find that Sun has contributed a lot more, including NFS and NIS.)
NFS, NIS read my previous answer. Now, what else?
And no, I’m not linuxcentric. Actualy I started *X with SGI.
<ApplixWare Office[/i]
And how big was RH in that time? Do you really think that RH could afford that step then? Applixware Office was one of RH major incomes.
>Did SUN donate the code itself to NFS/NIS or did it just
>disclose the protocol. (big difference between the two).
They disclosed the protocol and the .x files afaik.
They did provide the sun/onc-rpc code that these builds on though, the rpmc code resides in most modern OS’s today, including windows.
As for other things, Sun is doing a lot of Gnome development,
involved in various projects at apache.org(including the apache web server), and numerous opensource java projecta …
“Um I don’t think you can even begin to compare IBM to Sun.”
Do some historical research, and you will find that Sun has contributed much more open source code than IBM has.
And also, lets not forget that IBM has a history of changing directions faster than the wind, so I would question whether they do it in an ethical manner either.
Remember OS/2?
“OS/2 is intended for business customers”
“OS/2 is a great multimedia platform for home users, and we are running demos at Best Buy and other such retailers to support it.”
“We don’t want home users using OS/2, and we don’t want to support them. We only want to support our corporate clients.”
“We are very happy about selling OS/2 to Stardock Systems and letting them enhance and bring it back to life.”
“We have decided not to sell OS/2 to Stardock, and we believe that a new version of OS/2 is not in our customers’ best interest.” (tell that to the customers who haven’t seen a new version since 1994.)
These are just a few of the about-faces that IBM has a history of.
you mean like this machine.
singel system image over 256cpus.
dont know about performance but it should be able to do something
hehe forgot the link
http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/configs.html
“dont know about performance but it should be able to do something”
It’s probably a cluster though. If it is not, and you really have a box with 256 CPUs running Linux, then I am very interested in seeing you do a write up of it because I have never heard of anyone trying to do this.
Ah. Ok. Thanks.
Scratch my last message then. I will take a look at the link.
IBM was once the microsoft of the PC world but all the little kiddies on osnews and slashdot can only remember “peace love linux”.
IBM may have contributed to the linux kernel but the $3 billion price tag is a tad subjective. Oh and the code does what exactly? Help Linux run on IBM hardware? Seems self werving to me.
IBM is a friend of no one. The day you forget that is the day it’s time to get the vaseline and touch your toes.
Doesn’t the 256 proc sgi machine run a custom kernel rather than the default?
>> Do some historical research, and you will find that Sun has contributed much more open source code than IBM has.
The point I’m trying to make is that OSS contributions go only so far. IBM is a more ethical company than Sun. They have a commitment to Linux/OSS and havent swayed.
>>Remember OS/2?
Yes I remember OS/2. And yes, IBM is still supporting OS/2 customers!
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/os/warp/support/
Why not opensource OS/2 and AIX.
You don’t need THEM open sourced. The only thing that matters is only the parts that could be usable in Linux. And IBM is slowly doing just that with all their contributions.
Their payed hackers mainly work on enterprise kernel (just as you wished, more scaling to bigger computers) functions. JFS. etc.
p.s. NFS/NIS is dying. Netbeans is dead. Staroffice would be dead if it wouldn’t be contributed (Sun could even treat OO.o as one of their saviors, good publicity and almost free development). Just as most of Suns contributions that went GPL.
Before you mention NFS again, so what? IBM contributed AFS. Redhat GFS. Both projects mixed and combined together with LDAP (or soon to e Netscape Directory) go way deeper than NFS/NIS, but you fail to mention them. You can actualy smell real enterprise level here.
“Doesn’t the 256 proc sgi machine run a custom kernel rather than the default?”
Yes. And if you notice the fine print, the Linux version only supports up to 64 LUNs. The non-Linux version supports 1,000. This is one of the reasons that Linux doesn’t scale well to massively large systems.
“You don’t need THEM open sourced. The only thing that matters is only the parts that could be usable in Linux.”
I see… So the only thing that matters now is Linux? So much for your claim that you do not have a Linuxcentric view.
Nevermind the fact that there is still a dedicated following of OS/2 users out there who would love to be able to get the source code and enhance the OS. Because according to you, the source code doesn’t matter unless it is usable in Linux. But on the other hand, you don’t have a Linuxcentric view right?
Everything Red Hat does, everything they buy, they GPL. They give everything they do back to the community that has also given to them.
Red Hat is simply the best current test case for how to form a business around Open Source and be profitable.
If Red Hat goes out of business tomorrow though, their entire software spread survives in the community, just the way Copyleft is supposed to work.
People who hate Red Hat only hate that they are successful. In all truth, every modern distro sets its sights on what Red Hat is doing, everyone tries to emulate the success and everyone fails.
If it wasn’t for Red Hat, most of the purple spurting “Red Hat is evil” wouldn’t even know what Linux was, and most would still define it wrong even today more then likely!
“Everything Red Hat does, everything they buy, they GPL. They give everything they do back to the community that has also given to them.”
Once again, this is simply not true. There are component of Enterprise server that are NOT GPL. If Enterprise Server were entirely GPL, then Red Hat is violating the GPL by charging a per-server license for Red Hat Enterprise. The fact that they can do this means that there are components that are NOT GPL.
“If it wasn’t for Red Hat, most of the purple spurting “Red Hat is evil” wouldn’t even know what Linux was, and most would still define it wrong even today more then likely!”
heh… Red Hat didn’t know what Linux was when I started using it. There was no Red Hat at the time.
Correction accepted. Public was what I was meaning to say, but since I was writing about IBM and RH contribution to Linux I made this mistake.
And yes I’m not linuxcentric. But, it is the fact that most of my machines runs Linux.
OS/2 + Open Watcom (once Open Watcom is brought up to modern enough standards to support namespaces and the standard C++ library) would make an awesome platform for open source development. Plus, open source OS/2 brought up to date probably has a better chance then Linux of making it on the average desktop.
There are very few people buying the Sun sales jive anymore (as their financial results reveal). I guess you’re one of them.
I used to love Sun stuff; our lab was full of their boxes and they were bulletproof. But that was then, and now they aren’t even a real player.
<<<Let me know when you can get Linux to deliver acceptable performance on a 64 processor box, and then we will talk about this.>>>
As others have pointed out, SGI (and some IBM mainframes I believe) though I’m not too familiar with their systems.
<<<And no, don’t tell me Beowulf. Because a beowulf cluster is not nearly as easy to manage as a single Sun E10k>>>
You’re either joking or don’t have any experience with a well-configured beowulf.
<<<These are just a few of the about-faces that IBM has a history of.>>>
Sun has discontinued the x86 Solaris product twice that I can think of. And now they’re trying to get suckers (excuse me, customers) to believe they really really really mean it this time? Heh.
Sun has also been a massive contributor to the Gnome project. If they hadn’t been picked as one of Sun’s standard desktop projects the Gnome DE really wouldn’t have developed (good or bad) as it has.
All major companies have one interest out there, themselves (break that down how you will) and to say otherwise is to lie. Sun, IBM, Microsoft, they’ve all done unethical things and will continue to do so. None of them are saints and neither is Red Hat.
“You’re either joking or don’t have any experience with a well-configured beowulf.”
Or you don’t have any E10k experience. Beowulf is not failsafe. E10k is. A beowulf node going down cause lots of problems. An E10k will automatically compensate if any one of its daughter cards fails. It will even do error checking on the masterboard by comparing it with the daughtercards. If the daughtercards agree and the masterboard is different, than majority rules and Sun will go with the daughtercards instead. These daughtercards are also hot swappable.
Beowulf is designed for flat out performance. It is not designed for mission critical work. It has virtually no error checking buit into it and it is not at all failsafe.
Granted, we are talking about the difference here between a 2 million dollar E10k, and a $200,000 beowulf. So the beowulf might be a more economical option for many. But when it comes to ease of maintenace and failsafe operation, the E10k is far more reliable than the beowulf.
Red Hat didn’t know what Linux was when I started using it.
Just wondering how much have you contributed to opensource, I mean being in linux before RH (that’s 94 or 95 if I remember correctly) and most of users in that time were also developing on it (if I remember stats of that time almost 95% of users were OSS developers working on linux).
I’m asking you that because if someone starts bussines he ussualy knows why and what, so that would be in 93 or 94. ut since they didn’t know what Linux is here’s my conclusion: Your name is Linus Torvalds, isn’t it?
I haven’t done that a lot (and I started in 97), few apps nothing more. But at least I know that I’m not just leeching and bitchin’.
>> There are component of Enterprise server that are NOT GPL.
Buddy the source RPMs are avaliable.
RHEL w/o the support.
http://whiteboxlinux.org/index.html
http://taolinux.org/
“I’m asking you that because if someone starts bussines he ussualy knows why and what, so that would be in 93 or 94.”
I started in 1992 I think it was. Not many home users had Internet access then (including me), but Linux kernel .9 something or another was making the rounds on the BBSes, and you could also do ftp over some of the commercial BBSes. I downloaded kernel .9x over a BBS and then downloaded individual packages of GNU utilities (also from the BBS). There were no disributions yes, with the possible exception of SLS. But it was not very well known. The most common way for hobbiests to start using Linux then was to just download the kernel and individual packages of GNU utilities from a BBS.
I didn’t really contribute code back then because A: My programming skills weren’t good enough yet, and B: I didn’t have Internet access so I couldn’t really communicate effectively with the developers. (Although Fidonet did have a Usenet gateway at one point. But you had to pay to use it.)
“Buddy the source RPMs are avaliable.”
The sources for the CORE OS are available. The sources for the enterprise applications that ship with it are not available.
“But Red Hat is still very committed to Open Source software and therefore distributes source RPMS for all components of RHEL – including the installer. Because of this it is possible to rebuild a server system based on the RHEL SRPMS.”
http://www2.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/rhel-rebuild.htm
Whats missing?
“Because of this it is possible to rebuild a server system based on the RHEL SRPMS.””
Going on past memory (and I have admitedly not checked for awhile), one example of what is missing is that Red Hat Enterprise ships with a commercial version of Apache designed for ecommerce (I think it was called Stronhold). Stronghold, AFAIK, is not open source, and cannot be downloaded as part of the RHEL SRPMS.
<<<Or you don’t have any E10k experience>>>
I’m not denying they are nice if you’re into an old monolithic view of high performance. But their advantages aren’t worth the cost unless you’re stuck with some stovepipe technical approach that can’t be factored elegantly.
<<<A beowulf node going down cause lots of problems…. It has virtually no error checking buit into it and it is not at all failsafe.>>>
Uh, no. Most node failures result in a few hiccups as the failure is detected and the node kicked out. Properly designed performance clusters are inherently reliable; I know of one split over two physical plants – try that with a E10k!
A: My programming skills weren’t good enough yet, and
B: I didn’t have Internet access so I couldn’t really communicate effectively with the developers.
So taking these facts in view:
A. Since your coding skills weren’t good enough that means that they are now
B. You have internet access, otherwise you wouldn’t be here
C. Your name isn’t Linus Torvalds
You only answered your begining with linux not how much did you contributed. I’m asking this question because you take RH and IBM in such agressive mode. Having contributed some apps (and owning company which 60% of income is Linux) I learned that there is a distinct line where you have to draw what will be your FoodOnATable and what can you take as expendable or commercialy acceptable. Same way as any company looks these points.
btw. You still haven’t named one Suns contribution that isn’t either dead, dying, extinct or salvaged by opensourcing (Yeah, again, I think that SOffice would die without that move). You see Sun is looking these points ts just as me. But, since Sun and RH are practically same size, you see distinction, RH and IBM contributions aren’t dying projects.
“Uh, no. Most node failures result in a few hiccups as the failure is detected and the node kicked out. Properly designed performance clusters are inherently reliable;”
This is not part of the beowulf specification. To do this with beowulf, you need to be running a load balancer which basically intercepts trafic and determines which node should run it. Yes, the load balancer can detect failures and then cut off the failed node by simply not sending requests to it. However, the the load balancer is NOT so good at detecting non-fatal errors which might not cause a downright failure, but which might cause more subtle problems. The E10k does a better job at handling things like this becuause of its error checking.
>>one example of what is missing is that Red Hat Enterprise ships with a commercial version of Apache designed for ecommerce (I think it was called Stronhold).
Found in mailing list:
—-
Hello,
First, I’d like to say thanks for the great documentation on building 2.1AS
from SRPMS as I was able to successfully build the SRPMS using RH 7.2.
Now, on to my question.
Is Stronghold 4 normally bundled with RHEL 2.1?
I was able to rebuild Stronghold from SRPM…
—-
Beowulf has another problem. Software that works with it needs to be beowulf aware. That’s not true with E10k.
There is another clustering solution for Linux called Mosix, which although not as high performance as beowulf, does not require special software since it will run threads on different nodes transparently to the application. Beowulf cannot do this.
“First, I’d like to say thanks for the great documentation on building 2.1AS from SRPMS as I was able to successfully build the SRPMS using RH 7.2.”
Ah yes. My error. I forgot that the patent on the SSL encryption algorithms has expired. I think those patents are why Stronhold was originally commercial closed source software.
I have contributed code under the LGPL because most of the major software I write either cannot be GPLd, or doesn’t make sense to GPL since it is so specialized that it cannot be used outside special environments anyway.
However, sometimes for the software I write, I might have to write a library routine that performs some common operation, etc. I have sometimes released those routines under the LGPL
“Once again, this is simply not true. There are component of Enterprise server that are NOT GPL. If Enterprise Server were entirely GPL, then Red Hat is violating the GPL by charging a per-server license for Red Hat Enterprise. The fact that they can do this means that there are components that are NOT GPL.”
They charge for services based on needs of the customer. How is this in violation of the GPL? There are projects that compile the packages from each RHEL product, take out the graphics etc, and release it. These products are _exactly_ like their RHEL products (at least cAos/centos is).
Red Hat doesn’t charge for software, it charges for services based on a customers deployment.
“heh… Red Hat didn’t know what Linux was when I started using it. There was no Red Hat at the time.”
While I respect this view point, it also clearly depicts why you dislike Linux. Linux to you was a hobby, and you likely see it the same way. Novell, Sun’s Linux products, and all other simular companies that are just jumping on the bandwagon and not truly behind the movement, these are the companies you need to fear.
Too few users care about the ethical reasons for OSS, and stand a good chance of making it hard for companies like Red Hat to coexist.
I started out with Red Hat 7.3, so I am relatively new to the community. I have been steered by Debians philosophies though. I would not be here defending Red Hat if I didn’t know for a fact that everything they do is open source. Some choices (such as inclusion of valgrind) confuse me, but even that is Open Source (just has features covered by patents that are being enforced).
I have contributed code under the LGPL because most of the major software I write either cannot be GPLd
I buy the other reason but the first is a complete nonsense. Application can’t be LGPLed if it can’t be GPLed. Reason why people invented LGPL is that others can incorporate their code in commercial apps.
LGPL = GPL + (allowed to be included in binary only commercial application or to include some binary only part)
Which means every LGPL is automatically GPL too.
It is common that libraries are released under GPL/LGPL. But that means that LGPL is only extra feature.
btw. Any non-dead-dying-extinct-salvaged Suns contributions come to your mind?
“Let me know when you can get Linux to deliver acceptable performance on a 64 processor box, and then we will talk about this.”
SGI’s Altix features up to 128 processors last I checked… they provide pretty acceptable performance….
It would appear years used doesn’t really directly relate to knowledge gained as I had previously thought…
This guy needs to pick a side….you’re either with us or agaisnt us Catiline mcNEaly
Yes, RedHat is a company just like Microsoft.
Not it is not. RedHat is a company, but it is not just like Microsoft. Microsoft, however, is a tried and convicted monopolist, and RedHat is not.
“While I respect this view point, it also clearly depicts why you dislike Linux.”
Plese don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I don’t like Linux. It’s that I don’t like Red Hat. I don’t like Red Hat because I don’t like the commercialization that has taken place with Linux. It takes away from the “Hacker on the frontier” spirit that Linux used to have.
But I don’t want to have this discussion again about why I don’t like the commercialization of Linux, and the companies like Red Hat that engage in it. I just had a big debate about that on another thread, so if you look through the archives, you an read the whole thing (it was about two weeks ago).
sounds to me like we’re discussing two things here.
one is clusters where one is arguing about beowulf (being less efficient since it needs apps that take care of routing) and solaris.
and the other is wether or not linux outperforms solaris on numa archs.
but the specific discussion started with wether or not, solaris is technically better than linux on smp machines.
Linux uses smp kernels w. numa on such architectures, meaning (generically) no need for specific apps to take care of the payload.
both IBM and SGI use linux, that can’t be something motivated by cost i.e choosing the inferior product, too much at stake if anything happens.
Sorry, but I forgot one. About RH not being able to sell RHEL if it would be completely GPLed
GPL doesn’t mean that you can’t charge for your product. If you find a buyer you can sell it, the only thing that GPL demands is that product is available in source form too. Which is what makes all RHEL clones possible.
Maybe that you know about e10k, but you obviously don’t know shit about licenses and why Suns contributions like opensourcing Solaris suck.
“I buy the other reason but the first is a complete nonsense. Application can’t be LGPLed if it can’t be GPLed.”
No. I can’t GPL the entire application. Which is why I release some of the libraries under the LGPL and not the GPL. Because if I released those libraries under the GPL, I would then have to GPL my own entire application that linked to those libraries. Releasing my libraries I write in support of the application under the LGPL means that I don’t have to GPL my application that I originally wrote those libraries for.
This was a typing error… I meant to say “it also clearly depicts why you dislike Red Hat”, which you have further confirmed….
“SGI’s Altix features up to 128 processors last I checked… they provide pretty acceptable performance….”
Find me an Intel board period that can scale to 128 processor. I bet you can’t do it. The Altix uses clustering, NOT 128 processors in a single machine like the E10k does.
“both IBM and SGI use linux, that can’t be something motivated by cost i.e choosing the inferior product, too much at stake if anything happens.”
But it can be motivated by cost when you are talking about the difference between 2 million dollars and $200,000 dollars. If you don’t need full failsafe technology, then it may be a cost decision. Example, video rendering does not need full failsafe technology because a failure in a single bit, for example, will not be noticed. The frames move too fast and there is too much information in a frame for anyone to notice or care that a single bit was transfered wrong. However, a single bit transfered wrong in a large financial appliation can make a huge difference.
See, most of the evolution of products you use every day is because of that commercialization. Very few people can afford to dedicate such time without pay and still pay bills.
The Open Source world would be years behind where it is today if the primary contributers were not being paid to work full time on the products.
I don’t know about you, but I am not a patient person, if – for things to get done faster – people must recieve money, I am all for that. In most cases, only the people doing worthwhile things are recieving the money anyways.
Richard Stallman said there should be a place for making money. He charges over $5,000 for an operating system not nearly on par with what you are likely using right now. People have been making money off of BSD’s code for years and not giving it back to the people that deserve it!
“GPL doesn’t mean that you can’t charge for your product. If you find a buyer you can sell it, the only thing that GPL demands is that product is available in source form too.”
I never claimed that you couldn’t sell GPL software. So stop insulting my intelligence based on claims I never even made.
What I said was that I can’t GPL the app I write. Therefore, I can’t release the libraries that support that app under the GPL. I can release them under the LGPL however, because then I do not have to GPL my entire application.
“Find me an Intel board period that can scale to 128 processor. I bet you can’t do it. The Altix uses clustering, NOT 128 processors in a single machine like the E10k does.”
Please compare prices of the two products and get back to me, k?
“Yo, man. After this comment I actualy wished to go trough archives, but on the other hand you’ve shown enough stupidity here too. So, it’s not worth trouble. Thanks for these laughs before I’m going to sleep.”
Nice to see you have been reduced to insults and personal attacks. But that is typical of Linux zealots. When they can’t support their arguments any longer, they resort to crying and whining and baseless attacks against peoples inteligence. Grow up. Stop acting like an immature teenager. It doesn’t help your precious movement at all when people like you act like children.
“I don’t know about you, but I am not a patient person, if – for things to get done faster – people must recieve money, I am all for that. In most cases, only the people doing worthwhile things are recieving the money anyways.”
Well, I’m a programmer. And you have to be a patient person to be a programmer. You also have to like solving problems, and enjoy the chalenge of fixing something that doesn’t work.
So that I guess is where the difference is. Lots of people get frustrated when something doesn’t work (one only has to look at any Linux mailing list to find irate messages from users about something not working). I’m not one of those people. If it doesn’t work, I like the challenge of making it work
“that is typical of Linux zealots. When they can’t support their arguments any longer, they resort to crying and whining and baseless attacks against peoples inteligence.”
I resent this comment. He is the type of user that I do not like Red Hat/Mandrake etc attracting. Some users today only use the product because it was free. They do not care to learn, and they are not usually peticularly mature in their actions.
Please do not call him a zealot, then base an entire generalization of his actions though. That is belittling to those of us that actually attempt to avoid personal attacks consciously.
You should have refrained from response, and simply left it as a reported post…
<<<This is not part of the beowulf specification.>>>
Ah – here you reveal you don’t know much about beowulfs. There is no “specification”. There is no single beowulf product. You can mix and match ideas from the range of high performance clustering techniques to achieve whatever end result you want.
<<<There are component of Enterprise server that are NOT GPL>>
Now I’m starting to think you’re a Sun astroturfer because this is *pure* FUD. Name the components you can’t download source for.
“Please do not call him a zealot, then base an entire generalization of his actions though.”
Well, I would hope that most Linux users do not classify themselves as zealots, and I don’t classify most as zealots either. The zealots are the extremests. The ones who can’t see past the end of their own nose. They are the ones who think that Linux is the magic bullet for every single computing need and that everything else is just garbage. And they are the ones who can’t stand any form of critisicm against their precious OS. I don’t think most Linux users fall into this category.
“You can mix and match ideas from the range of high performance clustering techniques to achieve whatever end result you want.”
Beowulf is a specfic type of clustering technology though. And it is differnt from something like Mosix.
“Name the components you can’t download source for.”
Please explain to me how Sun can charge a per server licensing fee if there are not proprietary components in Enterprise. They can’t. It’s that simple. Because I can install it on as many systems as I want if everything is GPL. I can even resell the damn thing if I want.
Your ignoring somebody(IP: 213.143.66.—)’s comment.
—
On one side singing grace to Sun and their open source contributions (which is currently personal bitch of Microsoft, and completely commercialized), and on the other hating commercialization. And all that in the same sentence.
—
:
Why are you being a hypocrite Simba?
“Well, I’m a programmer. And you have to be a patient person to be a programmer. You also have to like solving problems, and enjoy the chalenge of fixing something that doesn’t work.”
This is one thing I think Red Hat does right actually. I was reading some things people working there have said about the environment. They state that there are often disagreements as you would expect, but that this is encouraged. It stated that rank within company is second to technical merit.
Many software companies allocate people to tasks, sure Red Hat has this at its base, but its basically as a resolving measure if nothing else can be settled on.
Red Hat employees report that the company is fun, and allows them to basically get paid for their hobby. This is Red Hat’s strongest suit above all other popular distro’s imo.
They also have to consider their business of course, so certain measures are taken to ensure that their product is of high standard. Projects like Debian certainly lake this same kind of polished feel.
I think the current balance is just right. There is enough people in high places that are not being directed by a boss, and enough people trying to implement their rolls for their companies. As long as all of that stays in the community, rather then bits and peices being given back + propriety alternatives being pushed over open source, I am happy.
The growth of Open Source is all that I think matters in the end. The freedoms that entails, and the power it gives consumers is what I support. If people happen to make money off of that process too, more power to them.
“Your ignoring somebody(IP: 213.143.66.—)’s comment.”
I’m ignoring the comment because it is childish, immature, and will be moderated down anyway. I don’t debate with children.
I would rather use Linux where it is a valid alternative, for this reason I have often considered myself a zealot.
I am not blind to other implementations however, I would just rather be assured that the knowledge I gain along my persuit for knowledge is useful forever.
If Microsoft went out of business tomorrow, after looking at several implementations in the enterprise of their servers, most of the MCSE’s administering them have no real knowledge, and would be out of a career. Although I don’t pity them for many reasons, they still need to put money on their plate each night like everyone else. Their learned abilities would be useless though…
OK then I’ll bring it up, since I think I’ve acted pretty mature like.
How can you condemn RH by saying that they take away from the spirit of OSS development by mucking up the waters with their commerical agenda but then praise Sun?
*confused*
“Please explain to me how Sun can charge a per server licensing fee if there are not proprietary components in Enterprise. They can’t. It’s that simple. Because I can install it on as many systems as I want if everything is GPL. I can even resell the damn thing if I want.”
You can install the software on as many systems as possible. You pay for support like I already stated.
Sun includes Java and many proprietary services such as Directory services, so by way of your prior statements, they would be able to change per seat either way though…
I suppose by per seat within Red Hat offerings, they are playing on the users naivety. Companies are used to being charged in this manor, so they don’t think anything of it. The licensing is for support however, not for the software itself.
Here’s what you wrote wrote
re: Trey
By Simba (IP: —.mn.client2.attbi.com) – Posted on 2004-10-06 22:03:31
“Everything Red Hat does, everything they buy, they GPL. They give everything they do back to the community that has also given to them.”
Once again, this is simply not true. There are component of Enterprise server that are NOT GPL. If Enterprise Server were entirely GPL, then Red Hat is violating the GPL by charging a per-server license for Red Hat Enterprise. The fact that they can do this means that there are components that are NOT GPL.
And here’s what I wrote at start of that answer:
Sorry, but I forgot one. About RH not being able to sell RHEL if it would be completely GPLed
About me getting down to insults, maybe right. I felt offended with all bullshit you’ve wrote today. Lets number them (but I agree that Solaris still outperforms Linux on big systems, while administration could be discussed to infinity)
1. Sun rocks! RH, IBM sucks – Your explanation: you hate commercialization
2. Sun giving away flowers! RH and IBM are just common profit organizations – NFS/NIS and StarOffice were the only projects you named
3. Sun costs less than RH, and you talk about 64way system! Do you actually know how much even month support costs for that
4. RHEL License nonsense – answered here again
5. Not reading comments fully and accusing people insulting you (:had to add this one:)
6. Not being able to specify one non dying-dead-extinct-salvaged open source contribution, after all your talk about them – That’s bullshiting if you ask me
But that’s maybe just my karma:) I suspect that both you and McNeally should decide what side of the river you’ll pick (Should be translated in: Pick what do you talk about and don’t run into everything on all sides). In the middle you can only get wet.
“How can you condemn RH by saying that they take away from the spirit of OSS development by mucking up the waters with their commerical agenda but then praise Sun?”
And my answer, without going into enormous detail. (If you want the detail, suggest you look for the thread I mentioned earlier)…
I don’t like the fact that Red Hat makes money by leaching off of volunteer developers. The vast majority of folks who make Red Hat what it is never see a dime for hundreds of hours of volunteer programming work they put in. That’s why I don’t like about Red Hat. I consider the company to be a parasitic leach on the open source community. But once again, I don’t want to have this debate again. So please look for the other thread (I don’t remember the title. But it was recent.)
>>I don’t like the fact that Red Hat makes money by leaching off of volunteer developers
*cough* OpenOffice? All the open source contributions that go into OOo are put into SOffice which Sun then sells.
“IBM sucks – Your explanation: you hate commercialization”
No, I didn’t say IBM sucks. I was just playing devil’s advocate with that. Why is it that Sun is the arch enemy of open source lately, and IBM is the golden child? IBM has done more then their fair share of backstabbing even their own users. They are one of the largest holders of software patents in the world, and they have tons of products that could be open sourced and they refuse to do it. Sun has open sourced their flagship products. IBM refuses to do so.
And as far as why I don’t like Red Hat, see my response to spank_da_monkey.
“Your ignoring somebody(IP: 213.143.66.—)’s comment.”
I’m ignoring the comment because it is childish, immature, and will be moderated down anyway. I don’t debate with children.
No, the reason why you ignored almost everything is because you didn’t have answer. Read my previous summary of your comments.
Actualy after posted most of the answers, you stated nothing, zip, zero. All you did was jusr trying to act smarter than you really are, and that is the reason why someone could be considered immature.