Sun Closes Solaris Source Sales June 30 138
Vardamir writes: "
It appears that Sun is no longer interested
in distributing the source code to their Solaris Operating System, even for
a charge of $75.00. 'Thanks for your interest and welcome to the
Solaris[tm] 8 Foundation Source Program. Please note that the Solaris
8 Foundation Source Program will be canceled effective June 30, 2001. In
addition, both the secure chat and code-exchange sites will also be terminated
on this date.' Get it while you still can, bzip it, and upload to a gnutella
server!" Hasn't exactly been that long a ride since this idea was first floated, but it never seemed to be the roaring success that Sun perhaps thought it would.
Sun and GNOME (Score:1)
I have a feeling Sun will be the downfall of GNOME.
Re:Just a PARANOID thought... (Score:1)
I'm amazed at how highly many people in the Linux community think of themselves and their work. When you talk provately with people from all the big companies in this industry, they will tell you, without exception, that Linux is a toy built by kiddies compared to Solaris, HP/UX, and AIX.
Re:What next? Close StarOffice up? (Score:1)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
So, Arrogrance and Greed was DEC's problem, IMHO. Sun has this problem too, but not anywhere near as bad as DEC once did.
Is Timothy an idiot, or just stupid (Score:1)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
A PC is still just a PC. There are massive I/O considerations that the PC architecture(s) just do not yet properly address for this arena. Intel has led PC designers in the effort to enhance the PC with fancy northbridges and burstable, high-speed, special purpose busses, etc... This is still arranged around a core that is descended from the original PC-AT.
If your machine uses are centered around desktop console use, or the simple servicing of an IP stack (like a web-server), then a PC is usually the best dollar/performance machine in the world. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that these are the only significant areas of computer application. They are probably not even the most significant.
Jeremiah Cornelius
Are you nuts? Solaris servers start at $1k! (Score:2)
The IDE model is extremely inexpensive, and the dual processor 1U netra is under $5000, I think.
No, this is not an e10k, and you can't partition it, but it is a solaris machine nonetheless.
Also, solaris is available for FREE for intel and sparc, so there can't be any argument about accessibility for Solaris. The source effort must have failed for other reasons, which I guess to be lack of enthusiasm.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
> So get UltraSparc's score, double it, and you
> get
And you double it how? I'd be impressed if you could show me where you could buy an UltraSPARC that ran at 1.8GHz. I'm assuming the fastest Ultra you can buy is the 900MHz one, and the P4 kicks its butt. The key is that the P4 does run that fast, but nobody knows how to make an UltraSPARC run that fast, even if they wanted to.
Also note that you'd need to double the speed of the memory bus, and halve all latencies in everything, especially the RAM, to get double the SPECcpu score.
Sun's *SPARC cpus are way behind everyone else, but they keep selling them because they put them in very reliable machines and sell good support. Their good name helps, too. High processing speed is not their forte.
Read Silicon Insider: http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?Section=Col
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:Perhaps sun should follow Apple? (Score:2)
--
Upload to Gnutella? (Score:2)
"Get it while you still can, bzip it, and upload to a gnutella server!"
How can you upload anything to a gnutella server?
--
Fredrik Borg
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:1)
Re:Just a thought... (Score:1)
Oh, I don't know. I'd kind of like to see this [alsa-project.org] replace OSS as the UNIX standard.
Re:Just a thought... (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:5)
Szo
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:2)
Sun released their source code, under very specific guidelines. Which included not re-distributing it.
If you are going to insist, that companies like MS not hijack open source code, and repackage it as their own. Then you should allow them to use those same laws in the opposite manner. IP laws, are a two way street.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
Also I think the Solaris code licensing fialure is do to the fact it wasn't an open project which would have allowed a "community" to be built around improving and enhancing Solaris. With the media cost so high, no one other than companies who base much of their biiz on Solaris would have any interest in seriously looking at the source.
Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:5)
C'mon people, this is not open source, they were selling the source and are now cancelling the effort (who knows why). But by making little comments like that, you're making us look like a community of software pirates not open source advocates !
Re:Perhaps sun should follow Apple? (Score:1)
What happened to the innovative company that was once SGI? They became box movers... Except they thought they could compete with the likes of Dell, who're already accustomed to razor thin margins and no spending on R&D.
Yeah... Sun should forget all about developing an OS and great hardware, and switch immediately to shipping 1 to 2 processor Intel/Linux systems.... That's the ticket!
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Oh come on! Yes, Sun are probably getting nibbled away by GNU/Linux at the bottom end (The Netra's are cute 1U's, but out the box as a web box, they suck in comparison to a nice Redhat/VALinux box), but when it comes to large scale (ie >4 CPU) boxes running highly critical systems, with high demands on reliability, they're leagues ahead of the competition, and innovating with the Serengeti range (UltraSparcIII based systems).
Ok, so i'm a Sun admin in my day job, and it's not that there haven't been any problems with Sun, and their chips, but to say they're declining on the basis of x86 eating their market, is significantly exaggerating the state of affairs.
As far as revenue goes, they're suffering along with many other tech companies as demand declines as dot coms (a big part of their market the last few years) go under, but they're certainly not being eaten alive by X86 offerings in their core market.
Solaris 9 and GNOME? (Score:1)
Will Solaris 9 ship GNOME as the default desktop environment or do you expect Sun to back away from GNOME? When does Sun plan to release Solaris 9 anyways?
What I meant (Score:1)
Sun kills their old stuff (Score:3)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Two, Intel doesn't need Itanium to beat Sparc, cpu-wise. A P3 1 GHz beats most of the Ultra-Sparc II line, and the P4 series beats the Utlra-Sparc III, including the 900 MHz model. And all this is on FPU-intensive code, like SDRC I-DEAS and custom CAE software.
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:1)
The code doesn't need to be compiled: just read.
You're right, we shouldn't start distributing it on CDs or anything like that, but Sun also shouldn't mind if people continue to look at it. If Solaris is worth buying, then it must be worth studying. Any non-patented ideas in that code could be useful in Linux. Two examples come to mind:
Re:Sun kills their old stuff (Score:1)
They even document the Solaris lifecycle model on their site. (http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/2.6/lifecycle .html).
Re:Solaris 9 and GNOME? (Score:2)
Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:3)
I suppose the same applies to TCL? I believe one of the lead developers of TCL/Expect is in the full-time employ of Sun and has been for some time. Besides, GNOME spent a lot of time shouting at KDE for their proprietary library, so there is no way they will let anything proprietary into the GNOME source. So exactly HOW will Sun kill GNOME? If people don't like something Sun gets into GNOME, someone will put in a way to disable it, or more likely it won't get into the official version.
I see all sorts of negative comments against Sun, yet no-one seems to have any real facts. Yes, Sun still has proprietary code, these things take time to change (has IBM open-sourced AIX? HP HP-UX? Oracle? ). Yes, they still don't really support Linux, but the Cobalt range still runs it, and Sun owns them, again, it will take time to change. I think they'll get there, probably only on the low-end high-volume stuff for quite some time, but they'll get there when the really mission-critical (which is mostly where they sell) guys start to demand it. Don't forget in Sun's marketplace it's maximum uptime and speed that counts, not a pretty desktop. That and CONFIDENCE, try selling a Linux solution for a banks core systems.. won't work (yet).. but Solaris is a serious contender.
So, where does that leave us? Sun doesn't fit with "pure RMS tenants", well ok, show me an old-style computer firm that does! Those companies started with a pure open-source philosophy have a much easier time maintaining that philisophy than firms that grew up with the "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine" marketplace that M$ et al forged. Sun has open-sourced a lot of its stuff, StarOffice, lest you forget, Java, etc. StarOffice alone may do more good for Linux's success than anything else, and don't forget Sun actually laid out hard cash to buy that just to give away, who else can claim that? Personally I think Sun is helping Linux incredibly, and whilst it may not be pushing it or supporting it on its own hardware, yet, Linux is certainly not being hurt by Sun's contributions. Can you say the same about Microsoft, to which you compared them?
Just my two pence.
Re:Sun kills their old stuff (Score:1)
Re:JavaOne (Score:2)
I'm a Java developer and glad about every 1.2 / 1.3 JDK that is available, but why do you think that Apple needs Java? It seems to me that Apple's systems are very much end-user-driven, so that Java isn't really much of an issue. Java never really made it to the desktop (Swing speed issues etc.)
Sun isn't into vendor lock-in (Score:1)
This is a company that plays ball with the rest of the industry instead of following 70s-IBM and 90s-MS tactics. Sure, they have a good story on binary compatibility through a large range of hardware, better than anyone else's. But lock-in through binary compatibility is not where Sun is at.
Sun is Linux enemy #2 (Score:1)
They have ALWAYS been an enemy of Linux. Sun exists to sell Sparc boxes and Solaris. They wanted to sort-of help Linux to keep it as a buffer against MS. They didn't perceive Linux as a threat and that was their mistake.
Keep in mind that only a few days ago Compaq announced two items of great importance to Sun.
1. The transfer of the Alpha to Intel. Not just the chip, but the entire development group. This will give Intel so badly-needed expertese in the 64-bit arena. While the UltraSPARC isn't a match for the Alpha, they had Intel beated hands-down. This also kills the Alpha -- leaving only the Sparc and PPC as competitors for Intel (AMD, etc.) Sun is feeling the heat.
2. The impending release of their Sun migration [linuxgram.com] tools. These allow much easier conversion of Solaris programs using the Solaris threading model to the Linux threading model.
IBM has been going great guns for Sun -- remember the Telestra announcement? Replacing how many Sun servers with a single IBM Mainframe running Linux S/370?
Sun is in everyone's sights. Their problem is McNealy's ego only allows him to perceive Microsoft (Bill Gates, actually) as the only possible enemy. The rest are unworthy of his attention.
That cute little penguin is going to cause a serious eclipse in the near future. World Domination doesn't mean just Microsoft.
--
Charles E. Hill
Re:Sun is OS-agnostic, they sell hardware. (Score:1)
I'm quite familiar with their stock, as I work for their major competitor (Lucent). Out stock has done its own nose-dive as well.
Neither stock price has any bearing on the fact that they both still do about $5-6 Billion each per QUARTER in gross business.
Both use Sparc/Solaris workstations/servers (dependingon capacity) to manage their switches and the switch networks. Both end up selling more than a few low- to mid-range ( If you ever have run a real server, you would know that Linux is just a toy.
Thanks, that is exactly the attitude I am talking about.
I originally received Sun SysAdmin and NetAdmin certification on 2.6 and then took the "upgrade" to 8. I work mostly on workstations, embeded manufacturing systems and low-end servers and have done so consistantly since 2.4. I currently run this stuff in mission-critical environments. I *DO* know what I am talking about.
You are right, on LARGE systems (8+ cpus) Solaris is one of the best OSes around. I've also worked with IRIX on some big boxes and it, too is quite nice.
HOWEVER, given the right hardware, a properly tweaked Linux system is quite capable of handling damn near anything Solaris can do on low- to mid-end ( = 4 cpus ) workstations and servers.
THIS is the market that Sun was taking for granted. If their attitude continues, Linux will sneak up on them in the big-box arena in the next few years and they will be wondering what hit them.
--
Charles E. Hill
Re:Sun is OS-agnostic, they sell hardware. (Score:2)
Sun *DOES* care about the OS, because with Solaris they have a better lock on selling the hardware.
With Linux you can put it on your existing Sparc systems then migrate to (cheaper) Intel systems whenever the need arises. As long as they are low-end ( =4 cpus ) workstations, you won't have a problem. The software should run with just a recompile. Linux is a foot in the door and a nail in the coffin for Sun.
Look at Red Hat's latest PR -- about their quarterly results. Notice the bullet point about Nortel contracting for support to switch from "proprietary Unix" (that is Sun Solaris, BTW) on their Network Management Systems to Red Hat Linux 7.1.
Remember IBM's announcement about Telestra -- the Scandanavian ISP that replaced a room full of Sun Servers with a single S/390 running Linux?
McNealy is so focused on Bill Gates he doesn't realize that the cute little penguin he was so generously helping out is about to rip his leg off.
IBM jumped on the bandwagon; Sun seems to have an "oh, isn't that cute -- a little OS" opinion of Linux.
Sun had it's moment but it is gone. An eclipse is coming.
Linux. Join us or die.
--
Charles E. Hill
Re:Of course... (Score:1)
Re:Chicken and the egg? (Score:2)
Low spec PC for single user, Blade 1000 workstation, $1000.
Medium spec PC, eg small website, Ultra 5 or 10, under $10,000.
Higher spec PC, eg Database, Enterprise 220, under $30,000.
Yes, the high end stuff is very expensive, but then there are no PC generic equivilants for the E10K.
Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:2)
Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:2)
Here [scriptics.com] is a page which docuements TCL moving into, and out of, Sun's sphere.
Re:Chicken and the egg? (Score:2)
Re:Of course... (Score:1)
Non sequitor. What does M$ have to do with a stable platform maintained by a competent company?
Get thee to an auto parts store. See that big rack of maintenance manuals?
Now that I make good money as a software geek, I pay other people to do my vehicle maintence; but when I was in grad school, rolling nickles to come up with lunch money, I checked the maintenance manual (and its diagrams) pretty often in order to keep my clunker running.
And engine blueprints are several orders of magnitude less useful than source code; you can't modify an engine with just the blueprints, and the blueprints don't give you full documentation of the engine's behavior.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Re:Of course... (Score:1)
How does a platform that requires weekly rebooting when simply used as a light duty client (I only run Exceed, Netscape, and Bloated Notes on my Win2k box at work) qualify as "stable"? (Perhaps when compared to Windows 95, when I had to reboot daily (at least)?)
I also thouroughly enjoy the way that a slow DNS lookup will cause the entire machine to lock up - leaving me unable to even move a window on the screen - until it resolves, or times out.
I won't even discuss the hideousness of the user interfaces.
Competent in marketing, yes. Competent in the crafting of a decent computer operating system, no.Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Maybe because (Score:1)
Re:Of course... (Score:1)
Sure, it's easy to fix, but MS aren't the only ones who do it..
My $75 Was A Waste of Money (Score:2)
To be honest, compared to Debian it sucks. I have been told that Solaris is better than Linux for some things, but for everything I do, Debian is/was clearly superior.
Re:Why would we need it? (Score:2)
*cough* *cough*
Sorry, Solaris doesn't even come close to having the most scalable SMP code. That honor belongs to SGI's IRIX (currently 512P on Origin 2000 and Origin 3000) and Cray's Unicos/mk (approximately 1800P on the largest T3E I'm aware of). A measly little 64P Solaris UE10000 system cannot come anywhere making that claim.
Note: Yes, there may technically be some larger SMP systems in existence running one-off operating systems; I am limiting my discussion to commercially available (at some point) systems.
I will agree, however, that there is a lot to be gained from reading Solaris code. However, I wouldn't advise doing so and then bringing ideas into your operating system kernel of choice. Sun lawyers may very well have a heyday with you if that happens.
Re:What next? Close StarOffice up? (Score:1)
GPL/LGPL and SISSL
In part, their site states:
Dual licensing of the OpenOffice.org source code provides open and free access to the technology both for the GPL community and for other developers or companies that cannot use the GPL. Dual license is common practice in open source projects like Perl and Mozilla. Through the combined use of GPL/LGPL and SISSL, developers will have a high degree of freedom yet compatibility and interoperability will be preserved. You can freely modify, extend, and improve the OpenOffice.org source code. The only question is whether or not you must provide the source code and contribute modifications to the community. The GPL and SISSL licenses allow different ranges of flexibility in this regard, but in the end, regardless of the license used, any and all incompatible changes must be published openly.
Re:Of course... (Score:2)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It's called Windows 2000. MS might not be the "nicest" company in the world, but nobody looking at the success of Windows would argue that the are not "competent."
Re:Of course... (Score:2)
As for MS's operating systems, Linux could learn somethings from Win2K (just as Win2K could learn things from Linux) Win2K sheduler gives much better response to GUI apps than Linux's does, its GUI is much smoother, and some of the internals (look in an OS case study) are much more suited to a desktop OS. On the other hand, Win2K could stand to dump the Win32 environment subsystem paradigm, and pick up XFS and UVM while it was at it.
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:1)
C'mon people, this is not open source, they were selling the source and are now cancelling the effort (who knows why). But by making little comments like that, you're making us look like a community of software pirates not open source advocates !
I'd have to agree. If Sun has decided to close up shop on Solaris 8 source then we should respect it.We should not act like a bunch of kids and post it up where ever we can just because we are upset with Sun.
We are blind to the Worlds within us
Why would we need it? (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:1)
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:2)
I get a kick out of how quickly most of the group here will pounce on a company that violates the GPL, but at the same time the majority of the group here has no problem with violating other licenses themselves such as passing around code that is not supposed to be redistributed, or passing around CDs and calling it "fair use".
And doing so only gives companies like Microsoft more ammo to use against the open source community.
Re:Abandonware (Score:1)
Shame on you for smoking such wonderful stuff and not sharing.
Seriously, they are not abandoning Solaris which is where the label abandonware comes into play. They are just not offering the source to Solaris any longer. They still support Solaris.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
Yea, I'm waiting for the California-style [ariannaonline.com] blame shift. You know, the press release with McNeally saying:
"Oh yes, we tried open source. It failed miserably, because open source just doesn't work." (soundbite inserted for easy PHB digestion; open, read and repeat 500 times)
Then the UNIXland PHBs have their ammo to say no to open source in their companies. (Hopefully, this will lead to more tech PHBs living in homeless shelters, and more 1950s culture companies going over the brink.)
*scoove*
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
Re:Sun and GNOME (Score:2)
Solaris is ten times the OS as Linux as much as I love linux. While I personally hope (because I am cheap) that the linux 2.5 and 2.6 kernels get us closer to a Solaris like OS, that day hasn't arrived.
Sun Doesn't need PR, good or bad. The reality is that engineers know that Solaris is dependable for large scale 24/7 operations. Otherwise they wouldn't fork out the rediculous prices for Sparcs. So whatever these RMS pricks say is irrelevant. I don't know why Sun even bothers courting them in the first place.
Solaris 9? But prolly just a failure... (Score:1)
The Solaris 8 source code forums weren't a great success. I'd have appreciated some notice about this though, this is the first that I've heard about this.
It's be a pity for Sun to completely pull out of making the source code available, but I did hear recently that they're suspending projects so as to make people available to work on projects that actually make money, what with no recruitment going on in SUNW at all, I guess some projects have to fall by the wayside.
Re:My $75 Was A Waste of Money (Score:1)
Why on earth did you buy the Solaris source code if Solaris didn't even meet your requirements for an OS to run? Solaris isn't a great home OS anyway, but nothing'd run my Oracle DBs better...
Anybody with a clue'd download the source code anyway, and not pay Sun $75
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
http://www.sun.com/solaris/source/
See, underneath the announcement that we're discussing it says "Get Solaris 8 Foundation Source"? Then underneath that it gives two methods - Option 1, downloading, or option 2, purchasing for $75 a media kit. Sheesh.
Re:Just a thought... (Score:1)
Don't get me wrong, I didn't mean that there's nothing in Linux/BSD/whatever that shouldn't be in Solaris, but do you actually think Sun would copy and paste GPL'd code into the SunOS 5.9 source tree, compile and forget? Highly highly unlikely.
Re:Just a thought... (Score:2)
What a joke. Firstly, check out http://www.sunsource.net. Secondly, check out Sun's contribution to the internet and Unix in general over the last 20 years. Thirdly, Solaris source code may not even be pulled from the publics eyes, good presumption there. Fourthly, Solaris source code will presumably still be available to third level institutions and Sun customers. And finally, Sun have got so many good engineers that the idea of Sun taking any of, say, Linux and integrating it into the Solaris kernel is a joke.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
No benchmark is perfect, but the spec benchmarks come the closest to an general workload that can be considered comparable across systems.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
What implementations are you talking about? I know of only the sun and IBM jdks, and I can't tell if you mean free or Free because of the word position.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Oh boodely boo. Different architectures. You're comparing snails and slugs.
And your numbers are all up the wazoo too.
An UltraSparc III @ 900MHz that you cite above has a little over half the MHz of a P4 1.7GHz. So get UltraSparc's score, double it, and you get ... 876, which is more than the shoddy 573 the P4 gets.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
The parent to my post was saying that the superior numbers the P4 manages to pump through its CPU make it better than the Sparc.
I was comparing the MHz:benchmark ratio of the processors, rather than the raw numbers.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
With a calculator. It was a ratio 1800MHz:876 for the Sparc against 1700MHz:573 for the P4.
Architecture is a big deal here. I believe the benchmark those figures came from only benchmarks the CPU speed, and doesn't take into account other parts. Sparc is more than a CPU, which was all the benchmark is a commentary on.
If the test took into account overall systems performance, how much could be pumped through the bus, yay my north bridge runs at 100MHz, I can transfer twice as many bits per cycle, nyah nyah, my EISA card supports buffer writeback, bla bla bla, (eh?), rather than just seeing how many times it could divide 16 by 5, then it would be a more useful commentary on the state of the Sparc.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:1)
Sorry, I seem to have created some confusion. My mistake.
There are so many other factors which go into performance than clock speed.
Yes, I agree. The numbers (see the parent of my first post in this thread) were from someone's test which I understands just does a bit of maths through the processor.
Saying that 'my processor did N operations therefore my architecture is better' is, as you say, inaccurate. That's what the last paragraph was attempting to say. :-)
I'm not trying to disagree with your post, just to clarify mine. I agree with what you say.
Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:2)
Just Goes to Show (Score:2)
Sun is OS-agnostic, they sell hardware. (Score:2)
Sun offers the Solaris OS at basically zero cost, because more people will buy their hardware if they have an operating system to run on them.
If you want to run Linux on your Sparc, Sun is not going to try to stop you- anything that encourages you to buy their hardware is a good thing.
Sun is OS-agnostic, they sell hardware. (Score:2)
Sun offers the Solaris OS at basically zero cost, because more people will buy their hardware if they have an operating system to run on them.
If you want to run Linux on your Sparc, Sun is not going to try to stop you- anything that encourages you to buy their hardware is a good thing.
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
Are you new to computers?
What makes you think speed:clock is a meaningful benchmark?
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:3)
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:3)
Here's the respectve SPECint numbers (of which, GCC is a component):
P4 1.7 GHz - 573
UltraSparc II 450 MMhz - 225
UltraSparc III 750 MHz - 370
UltraSparc III 900 MHz - 438
And floating point:
P4 1.7 GHz - 598
UltraSparc II 450 MHz - 274
UltraSparc III 750 MHz - 373
UltraSparc III 900 MHz - 427
As you can see, Sun products are quite sluggish in comparison to commodity Intel products.
Re:Just a PARANOID thought... (Score:2)
Face it: if Sun were a software company selling Solaris, they'd be long since dead. They may have brilliant kernel hackers, but the userland feels unmaintained and obsolete.
Linux on commodity hardware offers vastly more bang for the buck than traditional Unix on high-end hardware. The only logical role for high end hardware is problems that do not lend to parallelization, such as databases. And yet Oracle is attacking this problem space via parallelization too.
There is an irrational attachment to 'big iron' which is not going to survive continued economic downturn and the increased visiblity of Linux solutions. Believe me, I know exactly the people you're talking about, and many are talented sysadmins. But they are a little isolated from the outside world - they still speak in terms of 'PC vs Unix' and merge the shortcomings of Windows with the shortcomings of the PC platform in their discussion.
Re:Perhaps sun should follow Apple? (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps sun should follow Apple? (Score:2)
What next? Close StarOffice up? (Score:1)
Interesting tidbit: Talked to a Linux distributor a couple of days ago that wanted to do a "demo" type Linux CD. They wanted permission from Sun to put a DEMO version of StarOffice onto the CD ROM as well.
Sun said "No". When asked why, they answered something along the line "because we want to make money again with it".
Weird.
-Martin
Re:Is Timothy an idiot, or just stupid (Score:2)
Not in scientific computing (Score:1)
Another thing to consider is code compatibility. I've been working for months to make a large government application work with GNU tools. It's taking worlds of effort, which I will share if no one beats me to it, but that just might be my fault. Most science users consider the usual day of install time under solaris painful. Sun has support to help these people out when all else fails. If it were not for hardware compatibility problems, I would have gotten a copy of this for my x86. NT? You must be kidding me!
They may loose some income from people who want to just run mail and web servers, but that will not kill them. At least, I hope not. I'd hate for their designs to get bought up by people who make blue man adverts.
Re:JavaOne (Score:1)
Currently Sun is one of the companies that doesn't know quite what to make of little free OS we know and love.
Ever hear of a little company called Cobalt? Or a little software venture called iPlanet?
Sun get's Linux. It has for quite some time. The pressure to adopt it isn't as great as other companies because Solaris is the #1 commercial Unix platform.
I'll bet a fair number of those JavaOne demo's also run on Solaris, NT, AIX, etc... That's sorta the point. Demo'ing them on Linux let's the marketing people leverage the hype. Sort of the marketing version of karma-whoring. Leveraging the hype is pretty much all they're after too, as most ISV's are having a difficult time figuring out how to make money selling software for Linux. Porting to Linux is easy, it performs well, and grabs attention. But the people on the other platforms are more likely to write big checks.
Temkin
Sun was just looking for free, high-quality code. (Score:2)
Re:JavaOne (Score:2)
-Pete
JavaOne (Score:5)
I thought it was interesting how people kept coming up on stage and telling the Sun reps that this that or the other thing ran with a Linux backend. Once or twice they had the comment "oh....it runs on Linux?"
If I worked for Sun, I would have taken that as a wakeup call. Currently Sun is one of the companies that doesn't know quite what to make of little free OS we know and love.
I personally never thought it really made sense to release the Solaris code. Maybe they are starting to come up with a real open source strategy...at least we can hope.
-Pete
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:2)
What are you talking about? try compiling a linux kernal on a P4 1.7 GHZ and an UltraSPARC-IIe 450 MHz and we'll see who has the stronger hardware. Hell, why not go all the way up to an UltraSPARC-III 700 MHz?
Why? (Score:2)
I think it's very useful for certain types of users to have access to the Solaris source -- not because they want to compile it, but because they want to be able to see how certain things work. When I was doing much more in-depth work with the TCP/IP stack (including TCP parameter tuning) and ATM on Solaris, it would have saved me trouble to be able to get a look at some of the source to better understand how certain things were behaving rather than having to tweak parameters semi-blindly and see what ended up working best. If had still been doing that work when Sun released the source code I would have been all over it. I'm sure I can't be alone, there must be other Solaris users out there with similar needs. These types of users also tend to be very proactive about helping Sun resolve bugs, and I would not be surprised if the speed of implementation of bug fixes has been improved with their help.
As a side note, I also know that Sun had distributed source to certain (usually educational) institutions over the years prior to this program, including UCLA.
Just a thought... (Score:2)
Sun means Solaris Forever (Score:2)
Sun's own Java people are very aware of how silly it is to pretend that Solaris and Java are tied together. But they have no say in the matter. When I worked there, everyone's favorite bitch was that they only had resources for three reference implementations of Java, and one of those three had to be Solaris/86 -- an OS almost nobody uses. It accounts for about 1% of JDK downloads.
Have you ever noticed that some of the installation instructions for the Windows JDK seem to be written by people who don't have access to Windows systems? That's because they don't. Never mind that 90% of JDK downloads are by Windows users....
__
Of course... (Score:2)
When was the last time you looked at the blueprints of your car's engine, anyway ?
Re:My $75 Was A Waste of Money (Score:2)
On the other hand, I still keep it around for when I can pick up good obsolete Sparc hardware cheap.
Could be... (Score:4)
Chicken and the egg? (Score:3)
Re:Why would we need it? (Score:2)
SMP, by definition, has all processors sharing a common memory (uniform memory), with memory contention/bandwidth typically becoming the limiting factor on scalability.
NUMA utilizes cache coherency strategies to add multiple memory pools, introducing the concepts of local (memory local to one or more processors, e.g. those on the same board) and far (non-local memory owned by other processors in the machine) memory accesses. NUMA reduces the contention for memory, thus achieves a higher scalability with the performance cost being in terms of memory latency on far accesses.
Lastly, MPP is essentially NUMA without cache coherency, which is why programming MPP machines requires additional effort on the part of application developers.
Certain types of applications favor different scalability models, so one machine does NOT fit all. For general purpose computing, SMP is typically the best bang for the buck, since the architectural complexity is typically less. However, with the right problem to solve, NUMA and MPP systems will fly past SMP, but typically cost way more $$$ to get there.
Solaris probably cannot improve scalability much further with SMP with today's hardware. They are utilizing crossbar memory backplanes in the highend already to get to 64 processors. Bottom-line, I believe they are doing a darned good job on the SMP hardware they produce.
Re:What next? Close StarOffice up? (Score:2)
"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"
Re:Death of Sun Predicted? (Score:3)
Is this yet another sign that Sun is weakening?
Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the Sun [sun.com]. I will do the next best thing -- read their source code!
Huh? (Score:2)
We should each mail the district attorney in the mitnick case a copy of the Solaris Source code. Or maybe we could send it to John Markoff...
sigh.
Re:Why would we need it? (Score:3)
First, there are still many boatloads of legacy Sun equipment out there with proprietary drivers for hardware that's poorly documented, if at all. Access to Sun's source is a leg-up for anyone who wants to understand how such hardware works.
Solaris still has the most scalable SMP tech. There's a lot to be learned by groveling through that code.
Now think about people who have to support large Solaris networks - bugs and all. When you run up against a problem and can't get Sun to admit that it is a problem, your only recourse is to fix it yourself. Try that without source.
OT:Re:Isn't it a bit irresponsible of slashdot ... (Score:2)
Carl G. Jung
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