On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 7:54 AM, Guido Berhoerster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Shawn Walker wrote: >> >> I'm just going to have to disagree in general. >> >> Maintaining software is expensive, especially lots of software. >> >> Your belief seems to be that Sun should support the cost of the >> distribution by themselves, that if the community doesn't provide it, >> Sun has to, and that you should get all support short of a help-line >> for free. >> >> You also seem to believe that the burden of this cost should be placed >> on enterprise users and that individual users should not have to share >> in any of it. >> >> That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable. > > > I don't say what Sun *should* do, I am merely pointing out some > contradiction between the initially stated goal to create a distribution of > OpenSolaris attractive to Linux developers and the later implementation. I > think it is fair to measure Sun by this goal and to compare it to the > alternatives or "competition", that is a multitude of Linux distros > providing stable and supported releases (if through community or corporate > developers doesn't really matter) for free.
I don't believe its a contradiction. Mac OS X attracts many GNU/Linux developers, for example, but without providing anything for free. While I realise that Apple hasn't targeted them directly, I think it is fair to say that they have targeted users of "UNIX-like" platforms in general -- otherwise they wouldn't have sought UNIX certification. Not only that, when someone says they want to attract GNU/Linux developers, that doesn't mean they're going to copy exactly what GNU/Linux distributions do. I also disagree that OpenSolaris should be compared to Fedora. I believe that, in general, the stability and quality of OpenSolaris will be greater than that of the free GNU/Linux distributions, and directly comparable to the non-free (cost) en enterprise distributions. > So I don't see why the current model would lure Linux developers into using > OpenSolaris, there is a multitude of Linux distributions (run by communities > or corporations) that provide a supported and stable branch of their product > for free. It may have it's usefulness for OpenSolaris developers just as > development versions of Linux distributions have their usefulness to their > developers. It might also one day serve as a basis for community supported > derivatives, I'm just sceptical that this will happen any time soon (and I'd > be happy if I was proven wrong). This where you and I diverge. You seem to believe that attracting GNU/Linux developers will require giving everything away for free and being "just another GNU/Linux distribution." Attracting GNU/Linux developers does not mean copying the business model of those companies. In fact, I would like to point out that only RedHat and Novell is turning a noticeable profit out of the companies that produce GNU/Linux distributions. These are the same companies that *do not* release free updates for their enterprise level distributions. Meanwhile, the community run, and corporate-sponsored projects do produce distributions, but do not provide the same level of production stability, etc. I don't think that is the goal here. The goal is have a rich, compelling environment for development that is familiar enough to GNU/Linux users that they feel comfortable while using the platform. OpenSolaris has technologies that you will not find in any of the GNU/Linux distributions, such as ZFS, Containers, DTrace, and dlight. It has a stable ABI, APIs, and a wealth of language support and documentation. > My initial hopes raised by the stated objectives of Project Indiana have not > been fulfilled, no big deal. I'll just continue to use my community and > corporate sponsored linux distro that provides a released and supported > version for free. And if I have more time I'll play around with OpenSolaris > in a VM as I have before with SXDE. You should use what best fits your needs, but OpenSolaris will and does offer some superior technologies. Cheers, -- Shawn Walker "To err is human -- and to blame it on a computer is even more so." - Robert Orben _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
