On Oct 27, 2009, at 2:58 PM, Bryan Cantrill wrote:
I can agree that the software is the one that really has the added
value, but to my opinion allowing a stack like Fishworks to run
outside
the Sun Unified Storage would lead to lower price per unit(Fishwork
license) but maybe increase revenue.
I'm afraid I don't see that argument at all; I think that the
economics
that you're advocating would be more than undermined by the
necessarily
higher costs of validating and supporting a broader range of
hardware and
firmware...
(Just playing Devil's Advocate here)
There could be no economics at all. A basic warranty would be
provided
but running a standalone product is a wholly on your own proposition
once one ventures outside a very small hardware support matrix.
Perhaps Fishworks/AK would have a OpenSolaris edition - leave the
bulk
of the actual hardware support up to a support infrastructure that's
already geared towards making wide ranges of hardware supportable -
OpenSolaris/Solaris, after all, does allow that.
Perhaps this could be a version of Fishworks that's not as integrated
with what you get on a SUS platform; if some of the Fishworks
functionality that depends on a precise hardware combo could be
reduced or generalized, perhaps it's worth consideration. Knowing the
little I do about what's going on under the hood of a SUS system, I
wouldn't expect the version of Fishworks uses on the SUS systems to
have 100% parity with a unbundled Fishworks edition - but the core
features, by and large, would convey.
Why would we do this? I'm all for zero-cost endeavors, but this isn't
zero-cost -- and I'm having a hard time seeing the business case here,
especially when we have so many paying customers for whom the business
case for our time and energy is crystal clear...
Hey, I was just offering food for thought from the technical end :)
Of course the cost in man hours to attain a reasonable, unbundled
version would have to be justifiable. If that aspect isn't currently
justifiable, then that's as far as the conversation needs to go.
However, times change and one day demand could very well justify the
business costs.
/dale
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