I'm going to avoid partisan issues, or at least attempt to do so :-) but some corrections on Sun-specific stuff:
On 3/25/09 2:07 PM, David Boyes wrote:
In their defense, much of this is not technical in origin, but in licensing agreements. The reason there is no OpenSolaris for SPARC is that Sun is not permitted to distribute some of the closed-source pieces on any other platform than Intel. There are pieces where only they can be the distributor, and only in a commercial product. That's the main reason for Opensolaris distributions from Sun -- they can't legally distribute some things if they are not the actual distributor and they charge something for it.
The first part of that is correct, but not some of the other parts, including the bit about OpenSolaris on SPARC. The reason is that OpenSolaris emphasis is on the developer community, which runs mostly on Intel, and on creating a user experience consistent with other operating systems. such as providing recent GNU userland, Xorg for support of many graphics adapters, adding support for power management and wireless. Also, in recent years Sun has added an Intel/AMD product line - a completely new revenue stream - and that has put a lot of emphasis on supporting Solaris on Intel and AMD. That, plus the OEM agreements with IBM, Dell, and HP make the increased emphasis on Intel and AMD support in Solaris very important. Solaris runs on millions of Intel systems now, and that's been an area of focus and investment (and should NOT be interpreted as disinvestment in SPARC). In fact, OpenSolaris for SPARC is certainly coming. You can see a bit of discussion of that at: http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=78357&tstart=0 So, stay tuned. Speculation on this sort of thing is fun :-) but no need to speculate as we've been describing our plans in public.
They have been trying rather diligently to clean up the mess around these issues, but basically the incentive to do the clean up necessary to make this open-source-clean is not something they are prioritizing if they're struggling to survive. I can't really argue with that, much as I would like them to get on with it so I can do more to help them.
Sun is indeed working diligently on this, and this is a priority, but not necessarily in areas that are important to David. Part of the reason for introducing new software in OpenSolaris, such as the replacement of the existing Solaris patch, package, and boot environment is to move to unencumbered replacements, as well as the reasons cited above.
Dtrace is just too cool to be without -- I hope that if IBM does buy Sun that they contribute the dtrace code to open-source. It'd save a lot of time. ZFS, too.
DTrace is indeed cool, but the rest is simply wrong. DTrace and ZFS have been open-source since Day 1. ZFS exists on BSD and Mac OS X, and of course the issue with Linux is the incompatible license terms not the lack of source code. DTrace also runs on FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
As cool as it is, dtrace syntax is fugly.
No it ain't. :-) Oh, well, that's in the category of "degustibus non est disputandem". I find it a natural expression of the "too cool to be without" functionality, and in any case there's many pre-cooked scripts out there, and a GUI tool too. Like any other language it requires some study and application of effort, and until then it may look odd to the casual observer.
And we could finally upgrade the Solaris userspace apps to something resembling usefulness, and flush the whole IPS packaging system, and maybe get rid of RPM too...8-) (The Nexenta guys did a super job with adapting APT to Solaris.)
Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian distro and now at Sun, has helped move us very much in that direction. And that's a big part of what OpenSolaris is about. We deliberately don't break compatibility in the long-term-support version of the OS, as that would be a Bad Thing for our customers who count on tools to work the way they did even if a newer and even better (but not strictly compatible) replacement is available. In OpenSolaris we have much more latitude for change, and you'll find the userland apps much more familar. I suggest you have a closer look at IPS before you dismiss it out of hand, too. It's not just the packaging, it's also the ability to build a boot environment based on a snapshot that can be rolled back, and only consumes disk space relative to the previous version. Very nice, IMO. cheers, Jeff -- Jeff Savit Principal Field Technologist Sun Microsystems, Inc. Phone: 732-537-3451 (x63451) 2398 E Camelback Rd Email: [email protected] Phoenix, AZ 85016 http://blogs.sun.com/jsavit/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
