Re: GPL'ing Solaris won't save SUN

[Christopher Browne]

Clinging to sanity, mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com (Mike Cox) mumbled into her beard:
> Alan Coopersmith <alanc@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote in message 
> news:<cgdlup$g73$1@agate.berkeley.edu>...
>> mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com (Mike Cox) writes in comp.unix.solaris:
>> |Then why the hell should a linux advocate even care if SUN is going to
>> |Open Source Solaris?  
>> 
>> Perhaps they shouldn't.
>
> They don't.  And CEOs don't either. If you talk to people in IT, SUN
> is becoming the definition of clueless. Most Unix shops are now run
> by Linux advocates, look how quickly Linux is replacing Unix.  If
> Linux advocates don't guide the PHB to SUN (and they won't if it
> doesn't have a TRUE Linux strategy), then IBM will get all SUN's
> business.  Funny how quickly the tables turn.  Throughout the 90's
> SUN was eating IBM's mainframe business, and now SUN is totally
> clueless.

The shop I'm in is actively migrating to AIX, not becase they have a
"better Linux strategy," but because we trust IBM's hardware a bit
more than we trust Sun's hardware.

We've had "cheapo Linux systems" with better uptimes than we've been
getting on the Sun hardware, and we _need_ much better uptimes than
Sun has given us.

That's not about licensing; the only _possible_ merit of "open
sourcing Solaris" would be if that allowed us to self-diagnose some of
the problems, and that would likely merely demonstrate that our people
are more competent at diagnosis than Sun's people, and further, that
the hardware is faulty.  Which would be an eminently Pyhrric victory.

>> |If a person who is not a SUN engineer/employee cannot make changes
>> |to the CVS or take code and put it in another OS (aka BSD
>> |license), then it has no value.
>> 
>> Maybe no value to you, but it still has lots of value to lots of other
>> people, even with those restrictions.

> I really don't care what SUN does or what Linux advocates do.  I'm a
> Windows user, and my company is a successful windows shop.  I'm just
> pointing out that SUN is more delusional then the Linux camp.  Linux
> will never win the desktop, and open-sourcing Solaris will fail. If
> I were running SUN, I'd keep Solaris closed source, add Linux
> affinity, rebrand Solaris 10 to show that linux affinity, and then
> get Linux to run on every single SUN box.  Those are the things that
> will stop SUN's hemoraging of customers.

Selling reliable scalable hardware at not-too-outrageous prices is
what will stop the loss of customers.

We're dropping two Sun E4500 servers from service next month that we'd
quite like to "drop" from 40,000 feet.  THAT is the sort of thing
that's hurting Sun, not the lack of "open source strategy."
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