Comment Benefits both GNU Linux and Solaris (Score 2, Insightful) 720
Another Open Source 'contender'?
I think that we've been arguing from a fallacious standpoint. The purpose of being public domain is to make systems interoperable and to benefit from the intellectual efforts of other open source ventures.
A simple question: Why?
For anyone who has used the Solaris operating systems knows that there are many non-POSIX compliant and fairly obsolete programs packaged with the OS. To speak frankly, I have not used Solaris 9, but find it unlikely that they have been able to reproduce all of the GNU created features and improvements, nor would they want to.
Sure, they have a slew of Sun proprietary applications for such things as security management, their own filesystem with logging/journaling, and gobs of support from other vendors such as Oracle, but they are falling far behind the open source community in the areas of system useability and interoperability. Anyone who has tried to conduct simple administrative tasks and write some shell scripts finds annoying differences in basic commands. Those programs that are ported from the GNU community lag farther behind than needed.
Going open source has benefits. Sun is releasing this as an open source project so that their operating system can benefit by the incorporation of GNU licenced software. They will be able to concentrate development effort on their core technology while reaping the benefits of GNU technology.
Benefits for Linux
All of those great proprietary applications that I mentioned above are going to either be directly available for porting (a la Open Source), or much easier for Sun to port for other systems. This improves the number and potentially the quality of Linux management applications.
Solaris is a Unix. This cannot be bad for Linux. Interoperability is one of the key problems with Unix/Linux. Another Unix system joining the Open Source efforts will provide another choice for consumers and provide collaborative potential with existing Linux projects.
In brief
I think that we've been arguing from a fallacious standpoint. The purpose of being public domain is to make systems interoperable and to benefit from the intellectual efforts of other open source ventures.
A simple question: Why?
For anyone who has used the Solaris operating systems knows that there are many non-POSIX compliant and fairly obsolete programs packaged with the OS. To speak frankly, I have not used Solaris 9, but find it unlikely that they have been able to reproduce all of the GNU created features and improvements, nor would they want to.
Sure, they have a slew of Sun proprietary applications for such things as security management, their own filesystem with logging/journaling, and gobs of support from other vendors such as Oracle, but they are falling far behind the open source community in the areas of system useability and interoperability. Anyone who has tried to conduct simple administrative tasks and write some shell scripts finds annoying differences in basic commands. Those programs that are ported from the GNU community lag farther behind than needed.
Going open source has benefits. Sun is releasing this as an open source project so that their operating system can benefit by the incorporation of GNU licenced software. They will be able to concentrate development effort on their core technology while reaping the benefits of GNU technology.
Benefits for Linux
All of those great proprietary applications that I mentioned above are going to either be directly available for porting (a la Open Source), or much easier for Sun to port for other systems. This improves the number and potentially the quality of Linux management applications.
Solaris is a Unix. This cannot be bad for Linux. Interoperability is one of the key problems with Unix/Linux. Another Unix system joining the Open Source efforts will provide another choice for consumers and provide collaborative potential with existing Linux projects.
In brief
- Solaris technology can be ported to Linux
- Solaris problems can be fixed by open source community or existing open source software
- Increases the availability of Unix
- Solaris brings new hardware support to Open Source
- Broadens server support for Unix/Linux
- Allows Linux to be interoperable with Solaris systems
- Substantial number of developers and development can be shared between the Linux and Solaris
- Decreases the cost of Sun systems
Another significant open source operating system on the market is good for everybody!
