A Sun engineer on Linux [LWN.net]

A Sun engineer on Linux

Posted Sep 24, 2004 0:10 UTC (Fri) by xtifr (subscriber, #143)
In reply to: A Sun engineer on Linux by philips
Parent article: A Sun engineer on Linux

I've been in the business for over two decades, and I strongly disagree. I agree that it's not the hardware, but it's not Solaris either. The thing that has kept Sun "floating around" for so long is the same thing that keeps MS where they are: the apps. And when you're discussing server apps, there's one that stands out like a 600 pound gorilla in a room full of tree shrews: ORACLE!

When Solaris was Oracle's primary recommended platform, Sun was flying high. They could literally do no wrong. Then, a few years ago, Oracle announces that now Linux is their primary recommended platform. And suddenly Sun is floundering, lost and aimless, and desperate to find a way back into the limelight. Anyone who thinks this is a coincidence is invited to invest in some interesting real estate deals I have going down Florida way.

The idea that it's all about the OS is something that only a geek could possibly believe. Nobody in the real world gives two hoots about the OS. Of course, the Sun fanatics want to believe that it's about the OS, because they don't want to admit that Sun was NEVER in control of their own destiny, and the Free/OSS geeks go along because they want to believe that it *should* be about the OS (they want to promote Linux or BSD on their own merits), and because they (at least some misguided subset of them) want to believe that nobody should care about Oracle, since you can just use MySQL for all your database needs (yeah, right).

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A Sun engineer on Linux

Posted Sep 24, 2004 1:17 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

I agree with a big part of what you say. I do think, however, that Linux enthusiasts have one big, shining reason to be very vocal about the merits of Linux, other than the technical ones. It is the GPL. Companies, governments and universities all over the world are switching to Linux because of the freedom it provides, that leads not only to an excellent operating system, but also to a system that gives the user every possibility to make it even better.