> Common usage is insuffucuently precise to convey technical meaning. > Every GNU/Linux distribution has a different goal, different values, > different technologies, and different means of deploying those > technologies. Even if one took "Linux" to mean "the collective set of > GNU/Linux distributions, their contents, and the surrounding > ecosystem" that would not provide any information about the work under > consideration here.
AGAIN, SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME. > "Linux-like." It's hard to be excited about and supportive of a > project with a nauseating name. It's happening. Linux is here to stay. What is being proposed by the top brass at Sun, is exactly what I have been saying. (Personally I don't like the fact that we have an operating system named after the kernel project leader). This is the new market reality. Do what you have to do to get over it, and move on. I finally have. The same arguments about running Samba on Solaris used to be there. Microsoft's CIFS protocol is awful, and their OSes are too, why do we want to include this in Solaris. Because CIFS is the standard bearer, in network filesystems. Just as CIFS is the standard for network filesystems, Linux is the standard for OS research, networking research, HPC, clustering, developing new applications, appliance building, and opensource desktops. Everything is happening over on the Linux side. IT is even starting to encroach the enterprise space. If we continued to push forward on the same path, we'd continue to lose momentum and marketshare, and Solaris would become ever more and more a niche market. (Embracing Opteron was the first step in regaining relevence. Embracing Linux methodologies will be the next.) Analogy alert:: Think about the cold war. On one side you have the West w/ their capitalism, where there all these competing forces all moving in their own directions, yet somehow manage to do some pretty amazing things. On the other side you have the Soviet command economy, where everything is controlled by a central authority. Who won? Truth be told, the best long term approach is a hybrid approach like China's, where the government controls certain important things, but basically let people do their own thing outside of those bounds. Anyway enough with the analogies. If Sun can attract even a relatively small percentage of the Linux community to develop and use OpenSolaris, this push will have been more than worth it. -Brian
