On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 21:10 -0800, Erik Trimble wrote: > Ken Gunderson wrote: > > On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 13:27 -0500, Dennis Clarke wrote: > > > >>> Preferentially, I think a reasonable thing for Oracle to do with Solaris > >>> is the following: > >>> > >>> (1) Quit giving away Solaris 10. Instead, provide several different > >>> Support Contract levels for Solaris 10, with a very basic one providing > >>> /solely/ security patches for some nominal fee (<$100/yr/server). Other > >>> gradiations as desired, of course. > >>> > > > > Sun.COM types just don't get it - Sun _had_ to start giving away Solaris > > 10 because outside of Suna and old silver back Unix geeks in the > > financial service sector datacenters Solaris was becoming increasingly > > irrelevant. Those who didn't grow up on Unix in the 80's grew up on MS > > in the 90's and they're the ones running the show in much of the > > business world now. Some of this latter group discovered Linux and the > > *BSD's when they were in college. A subset of those started up what > > became the largest sites on the Internet; Yahoo (FreeBSD) and Google > > (Linux) using stacks of white box pc grade hardware. Later some big iron > > did find it's way into those shops but those aren't the stories you hear > > about. > > > And, from a software-vendor standpoint, does anyone make money on > Yahoo/Google/Hotmail/etc. using Linux or *BSD? Oops. Nope. They're a > huge boon to the end-user, but neither of them helped any outside vendor > to any extent. At best, you get a "reference customer" to say that X is > using a product of yours, but I hardly think that's Solaris' (or AIX, or > HPUX) problem at this point.
HP-UX what?? Anybody still using that anymore? Still even under development? When was the last time anyone saw a job posting for an HP-UX admin? I was, perhaps naively, optimistic Solaris wouldn't go down that path. Interesting aside, I am familiar with the case of foreign government that was HP-UX based shop for many, many years. They became concerned about HP's long term viability during Fiorina's reign of stupidity and put a big SuperDome order on hold whilst waiting for things to shake out in the wash a bit. The decision was made to transition to IBM/AIX and not invest further in HP. I was having discussion with the person responsible for the buy recommendation and suggested "Why not Solaris?". Response from this old unix greybeard was that Sun would be history inside of ten years as we bantered that one back and forth a bit. That was circa 2000 - 2002, iirc, and he's long since retired, but looks like his prediction wasn't too far off the mark. And speaking of AIX, more recently I am familiar, although less intimately, with a situation a bit closer to home where Solaris was under serious consideration for large deployment but similar to above the decision was put on the back burner for the past year whilst waiting to see what settled out. Interestingly IBM wins again. Hmm.... Perhaps I'd better learn AIX.... > > In order to regain much lost traction Solaris NEEDS mindshare. Where > > there are LOTS of other *nices available for free you'd better make > > your's away for free as well if you want to have a chance in hell in the > > competition for that mind share. It's like when Bill Gates tried to > > ignore the reality of the Internet and write it off as a "passing fad" > > because it was competing with internal proprietary network protocols > > that he was hoping would sway the day. Well.. that didn't work so he > > was smart enough to read the hand writing on the wall. > > > I agree - giving away Solaris 10 was a great way to gain market traction > again. > > That said, and seeing how Oracle seems to have a more > product/revenue-stream focus, I think the "try-it-to-get-hooked" version > is now OpenSolaris, NOT Solaris 10. > > I like to run the analogy between RedHat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora > project, as far as support goes. You can't get support for Fedora from > RedHat, but it's a fabulous way to get intro'd to the "RedHat"-way of > doing things. For commercial use, you go buy RHEL. > > What I'm saying is that I think the most likely scenario is that Solaris > 10 remains a commercially-supported and distributed product with likely > no unpaid/free support or distribution, while a freely-available but > unsupported OpenSolaris provides the introductory hook for the whole > set. Because, let's face it, introductory stuff had better have the > nicest, newest, neatest things in it to get people to try it. And that's > OpenSolaris, NOT Solaris 10. Nope. I emphatically disagree. It needs to be Solaris 10 + security patches. Running Solaris in production and successfully growing one's business is what's going to lead to the NEED and CAPABILITY to buy SPARC hardware and support contracts. And even in instances where it does not, it still increases Solaris exposure to more jr. sysadmins, etc. and thereby increases likelihood of future deployments elsewhere as they advance in their careers. Once again, mindshare. > >> Here I agree. The Sparc systems can have an RTU on the hostid again. Just > >> like the old days. I have no idea how you would track x86 systems given > >> that the iso images are in the wild and you just can not stop people from > >> passing torrents. > >> > > > > The old days are gone. We can't return. Solaris needs to move forward > > or die. x86 is here to stay. Embrace that and use it as a pathway to > > big iron SPARC machines for businesses that grow to need them. > > > There is no indication that x64 is being abandoned, or even slighted. I > think his comment was solely about the inability to hardware-tie an RTU > to a x64 system, as is possible in a SPARC system. I don't see this as > a big issue - support contract numbers have always had a bit of "fudge" > and "honor-system" leeway in them, and I'd really not like to see this > try to be eliminated. > > >>> (2) Continue to do (most) development work out in the open in > >>> OpenSolaris, and provide FREE access to everything in the OpenSolaris > >>> repos. Use this as the "first-one's-free" hook to get people > >>> introduced to Solaris as an OS. And, of course, get all of us to do > >>> beta-testing for it. :-) Honestly, I think it's entirely reasonable > >>> for Oracle to declare that There Shall Be No Support Contract for > >>> OpenSolaris - it's a development platform, and I think efforts are > >>> better spent in moving along the development effort as a whole than > >>> having to dedicate some folks to support services. > >>> > >> I have a problem with software where there is no support contract of any > >> kind. There are too many IT environments that will simply not accept > >> software which does not have a paper trial and a support contract. That is > >> still firm policy in some places regardless of the noises made by the > >> masses with their hands out. > >> > > > > Uhm... apparently big corporate marketing types didn't notice but we're > > in the midst of the worst depression we've seen since the BIG > > Depression? Moreover, I don't see it as a matter of standing with my > > hand out. I see it as objectively evaluating the options. On one side > > we have a LOT of freely available *nix like offerings, a subset of which > > offers commercial support. So I can hone expertise in one such OS and > > opt for commercial support as suits individual client needs. > > > Once again, see above about the a good way to get mindshare and revenue > at the same time, using different policies for OpenSolaris vs Solaris 10. > > In an ideal world, maybe Solaris 10 would remain free with free security > patches. Then again, maybe the lost revenue stream from that model > doesn't make up for the "mindshare" gain. I can't judge (and to my > knowledge, everyone else is just guessing, too). > > > > In my opinion Sun was on the right path towards regaining lost mindshare > > with 1) porting Solaris to x86, 2) making it free to use, and 3) > > providing security patches. If they'd only done it 5 years sooner then > > I suspect they'd still be Sun and not Oracle. > > > Nah. I've used Solaris x86 since way back (it was available since at > least 1995 in Solaris 2.4, IIRC), and frankly, thinking that Linux would > explode the way it did in the late 90s is ex-post-facto logic - it was > plainly on the road to be a player, but its complete explosion was due > to a lot of different harmonious factors, and not really predictable. > Solaris 10 hit just at the right time (introduction of > mass-consumer-level 64-bit computing with the Opteron) and the two fed > off eachother. You can argue that maybe right then was when it would > have been smart to open the development project (that is, start > OpenSolaris 5 years earlier), but making Solaris 9 or before available > openly really is just wild-ass speculation as to efficacy. Yeah, I tied some of those old i386 versions as well. Buggy as hell so never stayed installed for more than a few days, at best. At least on the hardware I had available at the time. Just checked and I still have some old discs from Java One though so might be amusing blast from the past to see if I can bring Solaris 8 up on a more modern box. > And, frankly, Sun being bought had everything to do with things other > than the Solaris ecosystem. Such as? I'll agree there were probably many other factors, but "everything to do with other things" is a pretty strong statement. > > Give Solaris 10, 11, etc. away for free. Provide free security patches. > > The important thing is to get Solaris back out there. Make your money > > elsewhere. > > > We'll just have to agree to disagree. > > >> We really do need to realize that this is 2010. Not 1994. There are vast > >> talented organizations that have a business objective to crack and hack > >> and attack networks and information access points. Internally also. All > >> operating systems today and forever in the future must give serious > >> thought to security and quality engineering. That can not be done without > >> an established revenue stream. Simply put, any business minded individual > >> in a customer IT division would ( and should ) look away from software > >> which does not have a support contract. The absence of that support and > >> revenue stream is a clear indication of lack of quality. Right or wrong, > >> true or false, people make decisions on purchases and IT policy with > >> arguments like this. I am sure you have experienced the "real world" and > >> it is very far from the ivory tower. It it simply full of politics, > >> baseless opinion and fighting middle management attempting to establish > >> their own world view within some corporation somewhere. Its amazing to me > >> that some places ( half of Fortune 100 and ALL of government agencies ) > >> create a product or service and can function at all. > >> > > > > +100! (Had to clone a bunch of me years ago to keep up with the ever > > increasing work load...;) > > > Once again, I think it's fallacious to argue that a piece of software in > ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT should be used in production. You're seriously > negligent as an IT professional to do so. OpenSolaris is in active > development. No support contract is going to change that. I'm simply > pointing out that any (relatively small) revenue stream that Oracle > /might/ make from selling OpenSolaris support contract will hurt the > timetable for delivery of the PRODUCTION-level Solaris Next. > > If you are interested in OpenSolaris for production use, then you'd be > also interested in Fedora 12, Debian Squeeze, or similar products. None > of which have commercial support available from their developer > organization(s). To clarify, who ever said I was using OpenSolaris in production? Hence my argument that Solaris 10 plus patches needs to remain free to increase Solaris mindshare. Playing around with OpenSolaris on the home/hobbyist machines isn't going to provide the breadth of exposure necessary to get Solaris back into the game. Furthermore, for production I'd be using Lenny, not Squeeze. And I'd be able to get both free security patches and paid support via 3rd parties if desired. That said, why would I want to use Debian when, allother things being equal, Solaris 10 is superior. And therein lies the rub. When you add expensive support contract as prerequisite for security patches, you've just tipped the scales for many SMB's and SME's strongly in Debian's favor. But it's my assertion that Oracle doesn't care about this market anyhow and is more than happy to write them off as not worth their while. A subset of these, however, will grow to become larger operations. And instead of having a natural path to SPARC you instead have a transition hurdle from the legacy systems. Ooops!! There goes more mind/market share.... > >> Sorry for the digression but the point I am trying to make is that > >> software without a support contract is simply unacceptable and the RFP > >> gets pushed onto the floor before you get past the table of contents. > >> That is the "real world". Want a good product with a future? Ensure it > >> makes money as its first feature and everything else is secondary. > >> > Which is exactly my point with OpenSolaris. It's /not/ production-ready > yet for the vast majority of users, so naturally, why on earth would you > sell a support contract with it? Production-ready code is in Solaris > 10, which will likely /require/ a service contract for support. QED. Q.E.D., eh? I rather think that's a bit premature as we'll have to see what the next 10 years brings. The feedback I'm getting thus far is to "go back to MS" and I fail to see how Larry's going to monetize that. Might be a good time to buy stock in MS though... I typically eschew titles, etc. but will use one on this post's sig for amusement value ;-P Peace-- Ken Gunderson HP Certified IT Professional HP-UX Systems Administration HP Who?? What?? -- Ken Gunderson <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
