Roger Bisson wrote:
Personally, I am of the view that Sun's original decision to release Solaris in
the form of OpenSolaris was absolutely the right decision to ensure Solaris'
maintenance and growth as a platform by making it available to developers and
technicians (thereby encouraging its application in commerce).
Do you have any evidence of this? SunOS and Solaris had a long history
of third party support (and use 'in commerce') before that.
I would have said that, by virtue of open sourcing, both individuals and
commercial enterprises have been significantly more likely to deploy
(Open)Solaris than they have been to deploy such operating systems as HP-UX,
AIX and SCO's OpenServer, all other things being equal.
While I can't see 'its open source' being a black mark for anyone, and
hence those people for who its a positive issue would make it a net win,
you say 'significantly more likely'. What evidence do you have of this?
There's a big danger we can all talk ourselves into believing that open
source is somehow necessary. If we can get to a point where companies
like Nexenta are able to fund significant development and its rolled
into the core, then that's some evidence in itself. But their resources
are still limited compared to Oracle.
Personally I've been using SunOS professionally since an IPX was a shiny
cool thing to have, and I even bought a twinhead sparc5 clone. I really
don't care whether Solaris is open source at all - just so long as
somebody (or somebodies, I don't mind) can make enough from it to
justify spending money on its development, and it doesn't bitrot to
oblivion.
I'm not convinced that having something open source actually helps that
justification (or at least, has helped) - but I do think we should avoid
assuming the answer when there is so little real numerical evidence
around, and we should support Oracle in doing anything and everything
the need to keep Solaris viable. And if that means we don't get things
we used to get from Sun, then so be it. I'd rather have a closed
Solaris, and a choice, than a runty abandoned Solaris that leaves me
using the usual suspects.
Let's see what Oracle do in the enxt 6 months, and lend our support to
Nexenta and hope they can make a go of it (ie one that outlasts the
venture exit points etc).
James
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