> Sparc, and x86 are no-brainers. Other platforms???
>
> Why would Sun be so keen to pay people to port
> Solaris (which has a price tag = FREE) and help HP,
> IBM etc to sell their hardware? It would end up being
> Sun paying to port the code. HP and IBM selling the
> hardware, and HP and IBM getting support contracts
> for maintaining Solaris on HP and IBM hardware. x86
> on the other hand is different as Sun now has some
> very nice x86 hardware which has the potential to
> lure support contracts back towards Sun.
Ah, but one must think like a politican here. Why do you believe Solaris, tools
and the whole middleware stack is gratis? What could be the motivation?
Engineering work? Sun has some of the top-notch, best engineers Computer
Science and the IT industry has ever seen; and there are very few individuals
outside of Sun capable of that kind of expertise. So the motivation is
somewhere else.
What *could* the motivation be then? It's simple: give the people a clearly
superior OS gratis; and give them the middleware stack and the necessary tools
-- the OE -- to develop and port applications to Solaris.
Because if Solaris gains even more momentum and increases his software library,
it will automatically generate revenue for Sun. How? Well, which hardware
does Solaris run best on? And which hardware has the best support for Solaris?
It might or might not be apparent, but it's a very effective way to sell more
hardware, and Solaris running on other platforms will boost that even more, as
paradoxical as that might seem.
Because Sun has pioneered so much in the area of software, people often tend to
forget Sun is actually a hardware company.
The way to success is in this case non-linear.
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