On 3/19/07, Dale Ghent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mar 19, 2007, at 11:53 AM, Ian Murdock wrote:
> Hi all,
Hi, Ian, welcome to the community!
Thanks! (SOrry for the delay weighing in--it's been a bit hectic these
past few days..)
You laid out a general outline of what you'll be doing at Sun,
however as a matter of curiosity, I'm wondering what really compelled
you to take this position at Sun given that your background is
decidedly light-weight vis-à-vis Solaris. In your blog entry, you
talk about hoping to impart more usability in Solaris, but that is a
broad subject and can mean anything (or everything, as the case might
be.)
I'm confused by the continued balancing act Sun is playing regarding
its stance towards Linux in relation to its own Solaris product. For
example, IBM make comparatively more sense regarding its positioning
of Linux and its own AIX - Linux being defined as IBM's small/
commodity platform OS and AIX having a defined role on IBM's mid-to-
high end POWER-based platforms which are not commodity. There's a
decently defined role for each.
Sun and Solaris are different, though, where Solaris is at home at
virtually all price points. This is where my confusion lays. Why is
Sun still trying to play the Linux benefactor role (outside of
certifying its hardware for, eg: RHEL and the like) when Solaris has
become able to play consistently from the low-end fields all the way
up to the top?
I'm not trying to be combative... just genuinely curious. Good luck
settling in to your new digs!
Great questions. As I said in my blog, I cut my teeth first on SunOS,
then Solaris, so while I haven't done much with Solaris *recently*, I
do have some history here.
I'm here because I think very highly of Sun, and because I enjoy a good
challenge too. In addition, Sun is in a great position. If you
ask me, Solaris has outinnovated Linux in the last few years (with DTrace,
ZFS, ...) and also has a great story around more mundane but critical
things like backward compatibility, an area where Linux is notably very
weak. When I say I'm hoping to help "close the usability gap", I'm
primarily talking about improving the things that make Solaris look like
it's technologically where Linux was 10 years ago, which of course
isn't true at all, but many potential users will never get past
"When I hit backspace, I get ^H--Linux hasn't done that since 1995!"
There are some interesting connections to Linux here as well. If you
think about it, what do people want when they say they want "Linux"?
The Linux kernel? Or the Linux distribution (i.e., GNU)? Could Solaris
become a "better Linux than Linux" by following that line of thinking?
And if you following that line of thinking, where does that lead the
company in terms of Linux strategy? Some interesting parallels
open up with the way Sun masterfully embraced x86 a few years ago...
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I don't arrive with any shortage of
ideas--indeed, I've developed a lot of these ideas in full view on my
blog over the past few years. However, as I said before, I'm planning
to spend the next few months learning as much as I can and listening to
as many people as possible. I AM a newcomer here, which means I come with
fresh ideas and a lot of experience (both in what to do and what not to
do), but which also means I need to earn my voice. Let the earning begin!
:-)
-ian
--
Ian Murdock
650-331-9324
http://ianmurdock.com/
"Don't look back--something might be gaining on you." --Satchel Paige
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
