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Sun full of open source and skepticism
Jay Lyman, July 17, 2008 @ 12:05 am ETSun continues to take a performance pounding, and the rumors of replacements, layoffs and revamps are beyond swirling and now perpetuating skepticism of the company. 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. 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.
However, Sun has a longstanding, solid history with open source. OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, OpenSparc, Java, etc. While the company has generally benefited from its move to make Java open source under the GPL, its OpenSolaris and Solaris OS under the CDDL have been a somewhat different story. 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. When Jonathan Schwartz and co. were on the conference call for the acquisition in January, there were many references to Sun’s belief in the LAMP stack (along with the expected reference to the possibility of a SAMP stack that includes Solaris). And therein lies the dichotomy again.
Does Sun want to support and see success from Linux? Or does it want to see success from Solaris (and OpenSolaris)? The company may want to have it both ways and while it’s certainly possible and practical to support multiple operating systems in this day and age, Sun needs to make it clear whether it wants to fan the flames or fight the fire that is Linux. Let’s consider Novell. Is it putting much investment or roadmapping into Netware? No, the company is focused on Linux and integration of NetWare and Linux in Open Enterprise Server since it acquired SUSE in 2003. While an acquisition spurred the Linux embrace in Novell’s case, Sun does not necessarily need to buy a Linux vendor (there are fewer of those, too with Xandros’ recent purchase of Linspire).
The bottom line is that many if not most enterprise Linux wins come at the expense of Solaris and other Unix software. Sun would be wise to recognize this and it could go a long way toward clarifying its achievements and objectives with open source and getting its house in order.
Comments (20) Categories: Software
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?
Thanks for posting Shaun,
You make good points, particularly about execution. That is a big part of Sun’s struggle. However, I think a big part of its struggle for credibility and to fully capitalize on open source is hindered by this Linux-Solaris dichotomy.
JL
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 don’t doubt that many customers large and small are considering and doing things with OpenSolaris and Solaris similar to you. However, when looking at the overall picture, this is the exception to the rule. Also, that quality, stability and value you refer to is part of why we increasing significance in community Linux distros, particularly CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu. These factors will surely drive folks to OpenSolaris and Solaris as well. My point was simply a reflection of what I hear from customers, users other vendors and the current buzz. It’s hard to argue that Sun isn’t suffering from some performance and image issues. I think both have something to do with its precarious position with Linux and Solaris. Thanks for posting.
JL
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
Speaking as a business customer, unlike a laptop developer, there is no company on earth that has only one operating system – we all have multiple OS’s in the server room. So Sun’s better positioned because they offer Windows, Linux and Solaris/OpenSolaris – than trying to be religious. No one else is religious, either (HP, Dell, or IBM) – and if they are, they’re religious about Windows, because that’s where they make the most money.
Saying Sun’s supporting OpenSolaris is bad for their hardware business is like telling Red Hat that their support of Red Hat is bad for those customers that want SuSe.
Modern customers make the decisions separately – and want to know that neither side is religious about the other. Sun’s doing all the right things from where I sit – they’re getting more of my business.
Thanks for weighing in Alice,
I would never advocate mixing OS religion with business. My sense, though, is that Sun lacks clear direction and strategy on Linux, and that more effectively leveraging both Solaris and Linux — perhaps with more separation rather than a more Linux-like Solaris — would help it execute better. Sun may be doing all the right things from where you sit, but based on its share price in the last couple of weeks, there is certainly a contrary view.
JL
In the business world, there’s only one Linux that matters, Red Hat. They are, in essence, a monopoly, given the list of 3rd party ISV’s that qualify to them exclusively. So it doesn’t matter if Debian’s cheaper, I can only use Red Hat if I want vendor supported hardware and software. So asking Sun to embrace Red Hat seems a bit far fetched.
when I look at what Sun has done to support Linux, I’m amazed – OpenOffice, OpenJDK, Gnome, Mozilla, MySQL, you name it. They’ve done as much as anyone. Have they evangelized Red Hat? Why would they, that doesn’t make business sense. Especially when Red Hat’s starting to frustrate customers with pricing/support.
To me, their share price is a derivative of bad decisions made a decade ago (and the fact their revenues are so concentrated in the US and banking) – not whether they’re paying lip service to Linux like HP or Dell.
I have strong objections to describing the Linux market as a Red Hat monopoly. It may be the most significant Linux in North America, but there is a lot more market out there in the world.
I’m not asking Sun to embrace Red Hat, either. I’m saying it would benefit from going beyond lip service to more aggressively embrace, promote and profit from LAMP (BTW it now owns the ‘M’).
Back to Red Hat as the only Linux choice for supported hw and sw? I think HP (which supports CentOS and Debian on its hardware) and IBM (which supports its AIX but not as broadly and aggressively as Linux) are good examples of alternatives.
Lastly, bad decisions from a decade ago do not account for lowered margins the company indicated it could maintain despite economic roughness. Those are a reflection of recent decision making and execution.
JL
But you don’t work in my environment (or within a Fortune 500 company) – Oracle is not supported on CentOS or Debian, so I am effectively precluded from using it. I don’t have a choice. Even my Red Hat rep recognizes their lock on ISV’s as the primary driver of their pricing. So if Sun is evangelizing LAMP, what would they be evangelizing? If it’s to me, they better bring Red Hat, but that would be dumb – if they brought CentOS I’d laugh.
Among the developer community, I don’t see anyone else embracing LAMP better than Sun -they just put like 10 billion behind MySQL, right? And they lead or support almost every major community I care about.
You sound like you’re a bit religious on Sun. From where I sit, Sun’s very pragmatic – and most of all, they’re incredibly important to the ecosystem. Perhaps you could find a way to recognize their contributions instead of chopping them down.
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.
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