Hi Jay,

I’m not sure I agree with your assertion that “Sun needs to make it clear whether it wants to fan the flames or fight the fire that is Linux.”

Red Hat does a lot of business on Sun boxes, so they have a good partnership on that front. Yes, Sun has its own Open Source OS with OpenSolaris, but three of the top server OS’s are Windows, Linux, and Solaris; so Sun is serving the market. Also, your comparison to Novell does not work, since Novell bought into Linux (a la Suse) since Netware was severely sucking wind.

Finally, Open source does not equal Linux. Yes, Linux is a big business in open source, but it is not the only business. Sun has lots of open source assets that run cross platform (on their OS’s as well as Linux, Windows, etc.). If JBoss, for example, only served customers running on Linux, they would cut out well over half of their potential market opportunity.

Bottom-line: Sun has always presented a nice logical software portfolio to the market. As you point out, they have an impressive portfolio of open source offerings. Their problem, plain and simple, has been (and continues to be), execution.

As I pointed out in my blog from a while back, I’d like to see Sun execute well in order to keep the pressure on Red Hat:

Open Source Big Dog: red Hat or Sun?

So you’re saying that by not having a clear stance on Linux, Sun loses a lot of credibility with its customers and prospective customers? If so, which customers? Their server hardware customers? If so, then I can begin to see your point.

But maybe they have the same issue HP had when it bought Bluestone back in 2000 (I speak from experience); namely they’re mostly a hardware company. So selling software that is not directly bundled on a box (i.e. everything above the OS) takes a backseat from the sales team’s standpoint.

Selling server boxes and operating systems is a lot different than selling enterprise software that runs on those systems.

Yes, Shaun,

I am saying Sun loses credibility, but perhaps more importantly opportunity with customers and perhaps partners as well, when there are these persisting questions about Sun’s support for Linux versus its support for Solaris. Considering the Novell example again, NetWare customers were in limbo for some time until Novell more recently and more forcefully moved to SUSE Lniux as the direction forward.

Certainly Solaris is not in the same category as NetWare, but it may be increasingly closer and I think in some server segments, Sun should also move more forcefully and more prominently toward Linux.

JL

I am currently replacing a big Red Hat farm with OpenSolaris, to get ZFS, DTrace, etc. I do not view this as being anti-Linux, I view it as being pro-productivity and efficiency. Your article causes you to sound religious about something most customers aren’t religious about - quality, stability and value.

I apologize for my interest in the topic Jay.

But,as I recall, Red Hat does a lot of business on Sun x64 boxes. Looking at http://www.sun.com/software/linux/ shows a decent Linux story..especially the range of certified hardware. It by no means quells any Linux vs. [Open]Solaris questions though, as you point out.

My issue with the Novell Netware example is that it took Novell SO LONG to realize that Netware was dead and to actually do something about it. Solaris/OpenSolaris is in a different boat; granted it may be on decline when compared with Linux, but people like Mree above are still using it for certain high end, high capability use cases.

Thanks for writing your thoughts…it will be fascinating to see how this all plays out, especially in light of Sun’s recent challenges.

Good stuff.

Just bear in mind Sun’s software business is growing, as are their more future oriented products. What they are having to live down are the mistakes of the past. I doubt there’s much any one could do to remedy their past decisions, and I have to give credit to the new management team for making the right calls. Their approach to Linux has little/no bearing on how many big SPARC SMP systems they sell. From their last quarterly report, their x64 business is growing faster than the rest of the industry… and a TON of it is running Linux. Don’t impose causality on them.

Thanks for your comment, Paula,

I think it is the software business where they may be underperforming, and it shows they continue to struggle to transition from hw business to sw business. I also disagree that their approach to Linux does not have much bearing on SPARC, x64 or other systems they sell. Many, if not most, are destined for Linux. I believe that Sun’s connection to and promotion of Solaris and OpenSolaris may be costing them some customers who only want to talk Linux.

I do agree that Sun is also still paying from past mistakes, but it also has issues such as the Linux/Solaris question and its lowered outlook that are here and now.

JL

I think you should read the headline and original post (quoting myself here):

“Sun full of open source and skepticism”

“It strikes me as odd that Sun, which has embraced open source and is also the defacto leading corporate open source software contributor, is continually dogged by doubts about its transitions and tenures despite well-respected technology and participation in open source.”

“However, Sun has a longstanding, solid history with open source. OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, OpenSparc, Java, etc.”

“Nevertheless, Sun knows how to do open source right and continues to participate effectively in a variety of open source software communities, projects and enterprise products.”

“Let’s also not forget that it was Sun that started off this year with a billion dollar bet on open source, MySQL and its database software and business.”

I think I gave adequate credit where credit is due, and I agree that Sun suffers somewhat unjustly for its previously bad name in open source. However, I think its more immediate concerns should be the business and yes, image, of today.

I don’t feel this was “chopping them down” and I am not religious about it, not a bit (OK, OK, I like Linux a lot, but I rarely go to kernel services ;).

JL

“Part of this lies in the company’s continuing dichotomy in strategy — a reference to tepid support for Linux and continued preference for and focus on Solaris. This is a large part of Sun’s ‘handicap,’ IMHO when it comes to Linux and open source. Sun has its own OS, and therefore is in the same category as the dreaded Microsoft for many.”

From where I sit, that’s chopping them down. It’s being petty and naive.

Sun should kill of their stupid competing kernel and fully embrace Linux. Until they do, folks like me and Jay in the *real* open source community will continue to think Sun is an evil corporation. No idiot uses Solaris anymaore anyways. ZFS and Dtrace are just poorly engineered clones of SystemTap and ext3, where true innovators spend their time.

Michael (Benton): Calling ZFS a “poorly engineered clone of ext3″ suggests that you are either off your rocker or simply looking to pick a fight. Ext3 by itself simpl;y doesn’t anything like the feature set available from ZFS: various levels of RAID-style redunancy, snapshots, volumes, or replication. Even ext3 + LVM doesn’t get you close to the ZFS feature set, since the two don’t integrate particularly well (that is, many operations that are single steps in ZFS are multiple steps with ext3 + LVM). ZFS is much more resilient to device failures — even without an appropriate RAID level, damage is limited to specific files, rather than entire filesystems.

ZFS scales to significantly larger capacities than does ext3, and is much more resistant to on-disk data corruption.

I’m not familiar with either SystemTap or DTrace, but I based on your comment I suspect that your opinions here are equally vacuous and uninformed.

[...] vendors behind it and OpenSolaris only has Sun). Although Sun may still be struggling with some internal conflict over support for Linux alongside Solaris, the company deserves credit for successfully growing [...]

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