Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

What's different about sun....

Author:Jamie Scheinblum
Posted:10/2/1999; 10:35:08 AM
Topic:What's different about sun....
Msg #:11689
Prev/Next:11688 / 11690

Developers like Raymond may not feel like partners with sun's community agreement, but what about users?

The announcement yesterday was Sun being committed to it's *users*, not it's developers. I think the difference between Sun and Redhat isn't their core products, because their operating systems are essentially the same. The difference is that Sun is a partner with their users/administrators. Sun listens. When their users need something, sun invests the r&d money to make it happen. Redhat is starting to do that, but they mostly wait for the community. That's why you see solaris on 64 processors, with real high availability software, with a true journalling filesystem, with its own set of development tools, its own everything.

Sun is where it is because they make products that work with the data center. A lot of what they do *is* smoke an mirrors. Case in point the network computer. But this just shows that Sun is trying, and you can hardly fault them for doing that.

Sorry, as much as I like linux and redhat and think they're great, the fact is they're developer oriented. And by that I just mean that the GPL treats the developer as a peer. That also means that RedHat's greatest strength is its weakness. The GPL turns a LOT of people off. It's the ultimate kool-aid. Once you drink it, your commited, your software is out there.

Imagine what a jam userland would be in if they released Frontier under the GPL in 1995? They would never have been able to return to selling it, the source would have to remain free, and they would be stuck under the licence. (They could, but I'm thinking practically, not legally)

Can you fault Sun for the same thing? Is that really helpful to the users? Oh well, I agree with Dave... the open-source defence mechanism is in high gear, and it's really makes me feel unwanted.

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