Unix and the absorption of Sun [LWN.net]

Unix and the absorption of Sun

Posted Jan 28, 2010 23:17 UTC (Thu) by eparis123 (guest, #59739)
In reply to: Oracle will boost MySQL, release Cloud Office suite (Computerworld) by nix
Parent article: Oracle will boost MySQL, release Cloud Office suite (Computerworld)

Yes, http://www.sun.com/ is gone. The end of an era.

Sun technologically advanced Unix to new levels in that era (memory management, security, file systems, etc). Let's see what's going to happen in the current new era from a Unix perspective (if any).

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Unix and the absorption of Sun

Posted Jan 29, 2010 10:31 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

Maybe they'll apply the same expertise in user-interface design, robust software testing, and performance optimization to Sun's products that we've seen in the Oracle database.

(oh dear)

(apologies for snark, but not very many)

In the proprietary domain

Posted Jan 30, 2010 2:27 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

You are not being fair. Just compare with the proprietary competition (Ingres, SQL Server, DB2) and you will start loving Oracle disproportionately.

In the proprietary domain

Posted Jan 30, 2010 17:58 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Yeah, but it's the thing you've got to work with day to day that you
really hate. My workplace is moving off suns even faster than we already
were, simply because it is not healthy to have one giant supplier that you
get everything from.

Funny

Posted Jan 30, 2010 18:03 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (2 responses)

So the "full software stack" strategy is not working for you? Nor the new "full hardware + software stack" strategy? :D

Funny

Posted Jan 30, 2010 18:59 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

It's great! It means that if your supplier wants to change anything all
you can say is 'yes master, can we have some more?' because you can't
migrate off their stuff because you rely on them for these *other* things
as well... the real problem here is that Oracle is proprietary, of course.
You don't get this sort of lockin with PostgreSQL.

Funny

Posted Jan 30, 2010 20:10 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

the real problem here is that Oracle is proprietary, of course.

It's not the only problem, I think. Lock-in is inevitable when you rely on some piece of equipment and it is not standard. For example, you can rely on a J2EE server but the transition to another will be mostly painless. Same with standard SQL (if standard SQL was used by anyone). But if you use the proprietary extensions of your DB (be it open source or not) then it will be very hard to migrate any large software system. So for instance, migrating from MySQL to Oracle or viceversa can be near impossible even if they (now) come from the same vendor.

This situation is quite bad for the customer and the industry in general, but very profitable to the vendor. I had never thought of the implications of having just one provider for everything, but you are right, it sounds scary. In fact it's back to the Apollo workstations of the 80s before Sun started building standard Unix machines. What irony, Sun's history ends just as it started.

Unix and the absorption of Sun

Posted Jan 29, 2010 11:59 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Oh noes, now all the Java code using the 'com.sun' namespace will need to be changed!

Unix and the absorption of Sun

Posted Jan 29, 2010 13:09 UTC (Fri) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link]

Mission accomplished: "the network is the computer"