Comment Re:Blame the summary (Score 1) 408
Of course I know what Solaris and Java are. If you don't know how to open the source of an OS, then port it to a new language, that can be compiled to a portable binary running on an embedded VM, then you evidently don't know any more about computers than you do about business.
I've written professionally in Java (amoung many other languages) for more than a decade. If you think that A) re-writting a OS written in C in Java or B) ANY OS should ever be written in Java; then you clearly have no idea about either.
For starters, the strength of Java is that you don't need to compile it to native machine code. This is almost 100% true. Conversely for an OS to function it MUST be compiled and assembled into machine code. If you are going to do that why use Java? There are many other languages better suited. C for example, which is what the vast majority of Solaris is written in.
Next, do you have any idea how much time, how many developers it takes to write an OS. Even re-writing verbatim? That does not even count testers. We are talking about more than the total yearly cost of running Sun. It is in the hundreds of millions if not billions or tens of billions.
All for what? A product that runs on a few more machines? Not to mention Solaris runs on 90+% of all machines out there now anyways. Your suggesting they add a insanely huge workload for almost zero return!?
Lastly on that subject, if you wanted Solaris running on an embedded device, why not just INSTALL IT. That is it, you don't need any VM, you don't need any third part intermediary. Just have the device run Solaris natively. It is how it is done now. You can order such things from Sun/Oricle now and have been able to for some time.
As for your suggestion that open sourcing was to late/to little. I disagree. It was done wrong. There were no income streams tied to open sourcing most of the projects. They simply said, "ok, this is open source now". What they should have done (as suggested in other posts) is offer to help customize their systems to specific clients. Or offer consultation work. Anything really. But just shouting "hey, its free now" is never going to do anything to bring in income for a company.