gpl solaris

[lars]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/...arisgpl_1.html

apparently sun is considering releasing solaris under the gpl.

this would be great because all the cool technologies in solaris would eventually wind up in linux. since linux has way better hardware support they could just beef up SPARC support and then suddenly linux vs solaris is irrelevant because they're the same thing.

i really hope this happens. sun using a proprietary operating system in this day and age is stupid. dell, hp, ibm, and sgi are all pushing linux into the enterprise.

[skroo]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/...arisgpl_1.html
apparently sun is considering releasing solaris under the gpl.

Bleh. It'll end up like Linux: some promise, but suffering from the 'too many cooks' syndrome. One thing I like about Solaris right now is that there is someone at Sun accountable for every line of code in it. This is also true in the Linux world, but since most Linux developers aren't getting a paycheck for their efforts I can't call them up and bitch them out when something eats the big green weenie.

i really hope this happens. sun using a proprietary operating system in this day and age is stupid.

Why?

dell, hp, ibm, and sgi are all pushing linux into the enterprise.

WRT HP, IBM, and SGI: note that they're pushing Linux into the workstation to midrange enterprise market, while keeping offerings such as HP/UX, AIX, and Irix for their Big Iron environments. Linux for them is a purely business investment: most small- to medium-scale businesses can't afford the hardware (or support for it) that's associated with OSes such as AIX, HP/UX, and Solaris (on Sparc) - nor do they need it.

Linux gives these people a 'good enough' platform that they can deploy with minimal packaging effort on commodity hardware. It's not about warm fuzzies, but rather cold hard cash. I see where they're coming from, but GPLing Solaris would be a retrograde step for that OS.

[skroo]

"good enough" WTF? Its more than good enough. The reason why Solaris is so good is because it is on Hardware created by Sun? IBM's flavor of Unix works well on *gasp* IBM hardware? Solaris and other Unix Flavors have home court advantage so to speak, Linux does not, in some categories it is not fair to compare the two.

I think you may have missed my point somewhat. I wasn't saying that AIX runs better on the RS/6000 architecture (or Solaris on Sparc, or HP/UX on PA-RISC) than Linux does on x86 - but in a sense, they do in certain circumstances because those architectures aren't inheriting a lot of x86's fundamental design shortcomings, and the OSes are tailored to the architectures they run on.

Personally, I agree that it's like comparing apples and oranges in some cases - which is why I referred to Linux as a "good enough" platform for small- to medium-sized businesses. But it's not an OS that's ready to start replacing, say, Solaris on Sun Fire servers - some of what those devices do can't be replicated on an x86 architecture, and a lot of the functionality Linux would need to support that type of processing just doesn't exist in it at present. Nor is it likely to as long as x86 remains its primary target platform.

Linux is not the answer, it's just an answer. The problem is making sure it's being applied to the right question.

[bascule]

Solaris will not be released under the GPL. Jonathan Schwartz is a douche, and Sun's negative PR image can largely be attributed to him. He's responsible for virtually all of the idiotic comments to come out of Sun of late, most notably during his interview following the launch of the Java Desktop System, his response when asked about Sun's Linux strategy was "Also, let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don't have one. We don't at all."

Jonathan Schwartz is a modern day Ken Olsen. He's out of touch with reality and adrift in the fantasy world of management, completely unaware of the underlying problems in statements that he makes. Let's just hope Sun's board of directors makes managerial changes soon enough to prevent them from repeating DEC's fate.