Tom Adelstein recently did write an
article on LXer Linux News with the title
Linux Threat Posed by Microsoft and Sun: In Your Dreams
He claims that Linux keeps building momentum and claims that companies like
Sun spread disinformation about Linux. As he is well informed, I would tend to
believe him if his article would contain less disinformation.
Let us discuss the main disinformation he tries to spread, note that he
tries to show us his disinformation as questions so he could later tell you
that it was you who did give answers. Querying in a suggestive way however
is just a clever way to hide the fact of spreading disinformation.
"What percent of the Opensolaris.org project is actually made up of members of
the Solaris team? And, does that constitute a community of developers or has Sun
simply populated their so called community with Sun paid employees so that it
looks like the broader open-source developers have embraced the project? "
I am a member of the OpenSolaris Pilot and I know the people who are in
the Pilot. There are a lot of highly skilled people from all over the world.
We have people from USA: 70, India: 10, UK: 8, Germany: 7, France: 7, China: 5
Australia: 5, Canada: 3, Poland: 2, Israel: 1, Belgium: 1, New Zealand: 1.
"What percent of Sun's infrastructure actually runs Linux internally?"
From what I've seen, it seems to be a negligible amount (much less than 1%).
Did Sun roll out JDS Linux internally as described or did Sun only offer
it to Laptop users? Which version does Sun use?
The Java Desktop system is not a Linux distribution but a GUI with better
multi media support. JDS is part of Solaris 10 and may be selected as
the default Solaris 10 desktop.
What do you use on your desktop and laptop, Jonathan Schwartz?
From the "cultural" experiences I got from looking inside Sun, I would
expect him to run Solaris 10 on a Ferrari amd64 notebook.
Sun does not run a major risk when competing with Linux, going back to Solaris
brings Sun back to the roots; back to the ideas of a company that has been very
successful with Operating system design, implementation and support.
Linux is currently suffering from lack of competition in the OpenSource OS
market. There are other OS operating systems but they do not have a good
marketing. When OpenSolaris will be ready for everyone, this will change
dramatically and it seems that the Linux bigots are in fear of this date.
More and more people who work on the Linux kernel get tired from the way
development is managed. Even people like Alan Cox now warn that there is
a need for a change.
People don't like Linux to be a "Kingdom" where a monarch or a small number
courtiers govern the future. People with hacking skills rather like to make
sure decisions are technology driven. Everybody who has the needed skill/knowledge
for a specific subject should get the chance to be listned to.
After OpenSolaris is available to everyone in Q2-2005, Solaris will not be governed
by Sun anymore but by the CAB, a group of 5 people, 3 of them being not from Sun.
The election period ends today and the names will be shown soon...
My impression is that the fact that Sun does not like to dominate Solaris
Like Linus Torvalds dominates Linux is the real fear of the Linux bigots.
