Symantec may go with Linux (MercuryNews.com) [LWN.net]

Symantec may go with Linux (MercuryNews.com)

Posted May 27, 2004 20:03 UTC (Thu) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

Maybe their IT dept has trouble get ting rid of the Norton Anti-Virus Virus, too.

Of course, that's as silly as thinking Sun engineers would revolt against using Java on Solaris.
Ha ha, only serious. (I know...old news...)

Symantec may go with Linux (MercuryNews.com)

Posted May 28, 2004 1:27 UTC (Fri) by leandro (subscriber, #1460) [Link]

> as silly as thinking Sun engineers would revolt against using Java on Solaris. Ha ha, only serious. (I know...old news...)

What do you mean?

OT: Sun engineers revolt against Java on Solaris

Posted May 28, 2004 1:57 UTC (Fri) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

I mean this:

The Java Problem Author: Julian S. Taylor Reviewed by: Steve Talley, Mark Carlson, Henry Knapp, Willy (Waikwan) Hui, Eugene Krivopaltsev, Peter Madany, Michael Boucher
...
This document details the difficulties that keep our Solaris Java implementation from being practical for the development of common software applications. It represents a consensus of several senior engineers within Sun Microsystems. We believe that our Java implementation is inappropriate for a large number of categories of software application. We do not believe these flaws are inherent in the Java platform but that they relate to difficulties in our Solaris implementation.
We all agree that the Java language offers many advantages over the alternatives. We would generally prefer to deploy our applications in Java but the implementation provided for Solaris is inadequate to the task of producing supportable and reliable products.
Our experience in filing bugs against Java has been to see them rapidly closed as "will not fix". 22% of accepted non-duplicate bugs against base Java are closed in this way as opposed to 7% for C++. Key examples include:
4246106 Large virtual memory consumption of JVM
4374713 Anonymous inner classes have incompatible serialization
4380663 Multiple bottlenecks in the JVM
4407856 RMI secure transport provider doesn't timeout SSL sessions
4460368 For jdk1.4, JTable.setCellSelectionEnabled() does not work
4460382 For Jdk1.4, the table editors for JTable do not work.
4433962 JDK1.3 HotSpot JVM crashes Sun Management Center Console
4463644 Calculation of JTable's height is different for jdk1.2 and jdk1.4
4475676 [under jdk1.3.1, new JFrame launch causes jumping]
In personal conversations with Java engineers and managers, it appears that Solaris is not a priority and the resource issues are not viewed as serious. Attempts to discuss this have not been productive and the message we hear routinely from Java engineering is that new features are key and improvements to the foundation are secondary. This is mentioned only to make it clear that other avenues for change have been explored but without success. Here we seek to briefly present the problem and recommend a solution.
....[snip]
NOTE: The response ... was to suggest moving to a different build of Java 1.2.2 since the indicated build on Solaris 8 had a known bug; it should be noted, however, that the 9GB memory footprint for Solaris7 is still unusually large.
[/snip]...

Like I said, old news. The executive summary blames the support process, not the technology: "A review of the problem indicates that these issues are not inherent to Java but instead represent implementation oversights and inconsistencies common to projects which do not communicate effectively with partners and users." It is common lore among Java folk that Java runs best on Windows -- not UNIX or Linux...this "InternalMemo" helped solidify that lore.

OT: Sun engineers revolt against Java on Solaris

Posted May 28, 2004 7:39 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Ah, the Sun Java bug resolution process. My experience was this:

1. Find bug, report to Sun.
2. Sun engineer looks at it. Not a bug. Blames the code.
3. Supply source code for the complete program to replicate the problem, including any data files used.
4. Sun engineer looks at it. Not a bug. Blames the platform.
5. Try the same thing on a different platform. Problem there too.
6. Sun engineer looks at it. Will have a look later.

As far as I know, these bugs are still there (implementation of ZIP). Now, this stuff is essential (JARs are ZIPs). Never mind.

Never mind Sun and their Java, all of the stuff they offer to solve with Java can be solved with free software, only better, faster and with less CPU and memory usage. Hopefully, in the next year or so, I'll be completely Java free when it comes to my own software.

Symantec may go with Linux (MercuryNews.com)

Posted May 27, 2004 20:22 UTC (Thu) by crow (guest, #96) [Link]

Seriously, viruses may be a major consideration here. This is a company that has to experiment with viruses in order to be certain that their software stops them. How many times do you think they've found a bug where a virus escapes from their lab?

If they move most of their non-test systems over to Linux, they don't have to worry about that. And for their test machines, they probably use something like VMWare to carefully examine what is going on during an infection and quickly roll back.

Symantec may go with Linux (MercuryNews.com)

Posted May 28, 2004 14:22 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (guest, #216) [Link]

When I worked at Peter Norton Computing (just after they were bought by Symantec) their virus lab was completely isolated from the rest of the company; no network connections or media taken in or out without explanation and logging.

I think they might just want to work on a better system. :-)

Window Shopping

Posted May 27, 2004 20:20 UTC (Thu) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

[donning Renyolds head gear]

The whole thing could be a "misunderstanding" in which the IT Purchasing agent for Symantec is negotiating a deal for a hugely discounted Windows licensing arragement from, oops, Lindows. And, at the last minute, the mistake will be "discovered" that Lindows is not the San Diego office of Microsoft's OS Division and the incident will be used as anecdotal evidence of the marketplace confusion caused by the single letter variation and less-than-distinct phoenetic difference between Lindows and Windows...

[removing Reynolds head gear]

Nah. What company would play the fool in order to help promote Microsoft's agenda? ;)

Seriously, though, your explanation would make good business sense for any large MS licensee to follow; especially one so integrally related to solving Windows deficiencies, at least in the eyes of the buying public.

On that note, it also may be a Symantec strategy exerting its existing influence to stave off being "Stac'ed" by the inclusion of a number of Symantec's value-added features into the base Windows product. Symantec may feel it has nothing to lose.