> From: opensolaris-discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org [mailto:opensolaris- > discuss-boun...@opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Edward Ned Harvey > > Possibility #1 > Oracle is discontinuing opensolaris.
IMHO, this is unlikely, for many reasons. First of all, it's the opposite of what oracle has announced publicly, but maybe that's not important. Here's what is important: How does Oracle benefit from opensolaris: First and foremost, it's a marketing tool. Admins and enthusiasts want to use a free product with cool features at home. You become used to it. You love it. And at work, you are likely to promote or compare osol vs linux, and solaris vs netapp. I know that I personally was so impressed with ZFS, that I recommended at work we sell the netapp, and buy a sun server to replace it. We did, and we're all extremely happy for it. Our snapshots are just as good or better than they ever were. Our backup window is a fraction of what it used to be. Our reliability has gained tremendously. Our performance is *far* noticeably better. All the users, admins, and management, are all extremely pleased with that change. And now I've become a ZFS activist. I went through all of that, because another ZFS activist just like me, convinced me to give it a try, 2 years ago. I'm not the first or the last. Second, opensolaris provides a channel for community involvement and contribution, although these might be minimal. Third, you don't want to commit experimental changes into your commercial OS. (Thank you, Vista, for the learning experience. Er ... No thank you.) Let those experimental changes happen in an unsupported free community full of enthusiasts. And if something was a bad idea, you're not committed to it. You can leave that part out of your commercial OS, and you can back it out of the free OS. It is free. So people should not be expecting supportability or perfection. It's very agile to development and change. _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
