OpenSolaris is dead

http://blogs.everycity.co.uk/alasdair/2010/08/opensolaris-is-now-officially-dead-rip/

by mstevens • 16 years ago

129 107 16 years ago

blogs.everycity.co.uk

martinp2• 16 years ago

Since the slogan "don't be evil" is already in use, I'm guessing Oracle is going for "be evil" instead?

dpapathanasiou3• 16 years ago

Sometimes, I admire Oracle more than the supposed do-gooders at Google.

Oracle is a for-profit entity, they will take any legal or tactical advantage they can get (e.g., lawsuit over Java in Android), and they make no bones about it.

I don't like everything they do, but you know what you get with them.

Google says "don't be evil", yet they back off that principle when it's inconvenient (e.g., caving in to Chinese censorship demands, deal with Verizon over net neutrality, etc.).

bad_user• 16 years ago

So I should take away from this post that Oracle has given you more than Google did?

Because that's what it sounds like to me. Personally I admire companies that are giving me value.

> yet they back off that principle when it's inconvenient

Regarding both net neutrality and Chinese censorship, Google did what nobody else did.

So I really don't get this line of reasoning.

Personally I take away from this that my company shouldn't give a crap about anything other than money, because all you're achievements don't mean squat in the end apparently.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

I think what you're saying is "Google, Just Cut The BS And Give the Gordon Gekko Speech Already":

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/13/google-net-neutrality/

I am not exactly a starry-eyed admirer of the Gordon Gekkos of the world, but I tend to agree. It would be refreshing if people stopped pretending that these inter-corporate battles had anything to do with either morality or the public good.

martinp2• 16 years ago

Google isn't always non-evil, but they're consistently less evil than all of the other large companies in technology.

Also, Oracle has never created anything really significant (in my opinion) other than their overpriced "enterprise" databases. Now it seems that they're hell bent on taking everything good that came out of Sun and destroying it.

cookiecaper5• 16 years ago

The problem with "Don't be evil" is that it's subjective. Google isn't a hardcore idealist because people that refuse to cooperate unless all of their demands are met never really get anywhere (see RMS). Compromise is a fact of life for everyone. Principles shouldn't be compromised, and you have to draw the line, but you also have to cooperate with people who have a different perspective than yourself.

I don't see either censorship in China or the net neutrality proposal (which I don't know much about) as bonafide "evil". You may disagree, but it's hard to say that they are evil or done with evil intent.

Oracle, on the other hand, is pretty easy to call evil because they act out of cruel self-interest practically exclusively. Oracle is always taking cheap shots.

cturner• 16 years ago

Lack of shame is not a valid defence for evil. We all have a responsibility to be good citizens.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

So, if we make a Corporate entity as person analogy, you like someone who is unabashedly horrible and perfectly honest about it, rather than someone who tries to be good and is a dick sometimes.

If I were you, I think I would die from cynicism toxicity shock.

Well, either that or you think that all industry should be destroyed because all corporations should invariably end up being perfectly evil.

ergo98• 16 years ago

>Oracle is a for-profit entity, they will take any legal or tactical advantage they can get (e.g., lawsuit over Java in Android), and they make no bones about it.

This has become a bit of a meme lately, and it's pretty tenuous.

Google makes lots of money by not being evil. People have given Google tremendous data that no other could get because they have a general trust that it will be used responsibly. In all of the fawning over the just released voice recognition in Android, almost no one noted that it means that much more of your interactions with your device will be sent to Google, which is something that few companies could get away with.

So seriously, people need to shitcan the "they're a public company" or "they're out to make money therefore they are evil" noise. It's dumb. Oracle is essentially pissing on all of the Sun assets that they acquired for a short term game because there is no long game in it -- Solaris is on the way outs, and even Java is almost dead in the mobile space (not counting Android...), and in the Enterprise space despite all of the rhetoric on here, it's dying and is largely the domain of legacy projects. Oracle is cashing in while they can like a standard troll.

Google, however, is in for the long haul, and their entire strategy depends upon a lot of trust by consumers. In other words they MAKE MONEY, fulfilling their public mandate, by not being evil. Strange, isn't that?

This argument would be just as ridiculous saying "Sometimes I admire [some shitty brand] more than the supposed high quality Apple. [Some shitty brand] is a for-profit entity, they will take any cost cutting measure they can get (flimsy materials, shoddy electronics), and they make no bones about it. Apple is just faking making a good product because, you know, they're out to make a buck"

kelnos• 16 years ago

So wait, you're saying that you admire Oracle because they're evil and greedy and admit it, and that you admire Google much less because they have a "don't be evil" slogan but sometimes make missteps?

That sounds a bit shortsighted to me. I suppose it's ok to find Oracle's forthright greed refreshing, but... admirable? I find it awful.

I never thought of "don't be evil" as an end-all be-all promise to always do the right thing, no matter what. It's a guiding principle, one that has to take the back seat in the face of more practical considerations sometimes. We may not agree with all of those "sometimes," but that doesn't make those decisions automatically wrong. Google isn't perfect, but at least it seems like they try to have a social conscience.

Or maybe they've just done a good job of brainwashing me into thinking they do.

protomyth2• 16 years ago

"You can trust we will always be honest about our profit motives"

tptacek• 16 years ago

One thing you have to say for Oracle that you couldn't really automatically say for Sun: they're not chickenshit.

mhd• 16 years ago

No, they definitely leave out the chicken part.

houseabsolute2• 16 years ago

Because they don't want to spend/waste money maintaining certain features of a product that are less profitable? Or …?

scaleordie• 16 years ago

If at least ZFS can be salvaged from the wreck...

ww520• 16 years ago

Why is that? Isn't ZFS part of Solaris? Or at least has the same licensing restriction as OpenSolaris?

nroach• 16 years ago

ZFS is licensed separately and apart from Solaris, but it's still under the CDDL

nailer6• 16 years ago

It won't be. Oracle will keep the CDDL, and use ZFS to market Solaris as a USP over Linux, until (and probably after) btrfs becomes mainstream on Linux.

strlen• 16 years ago

The btfs developer works at Oracle (and also works on OCFS).

wazoox4• 16 years ago

No way. NetApp will rabidly chase and kill whoever dares trying building commercial ZFS applications based upon OpenSolaris or *BSD (CDDL doesn't cover you against patents infringements, remember?).

I know a well-known privately-held extremely-high-end storage company who just canned its OpenSolaris/ZFS projects because they won't take the risk to be sued by NetApp.

ZFS as open-source is cold dead. Sad, but true.

lsc6• 16 years ago

I've read about NetApp /filing/ the lawsuits, but I haven't read about any results... Until it's over, it's just scary paper. have any of the lawsuits gone to court?

ghshephard• 16 years ago

The only exposure that ZFS has is Patent Based. Some of the interesting ones are expiring in the next four to five years:

http://www.google.com/patents?as_q&num=10&btnG=Googl...

They'll all expire eventually. ZFS (like) file systems will eventually be very succesful.

moondowner2• 16 years ago

OpenSolaris was dead long ago, this only opened the eyes to the people optimistic that things will change and there will be a future OpenSolaris release.

"We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express." -- Says enough.

"We will continue to grow a vibrant developer and system administrator community for Solaris." -- I really wonder how.

spudlyo2• 16 years ago

"We will continue to grow a vibrant developer and system administrator community for Solaris." -- I really wonder how.

They really killed the wrong Solaris. If they embraced the GNU userland (as OpenSolaris did) they would have had a much better shot at getting more raised-on-Linux admins and developers to embrace their OS. As it is, the current BSD flavored Solaris tools are so crufty and incompatible it leaves many Linux users with a distinct loathing for the OS.

wipt3• 16 years ago

Did OpenSolaris use GNU userland? Or are you confusing the official branch with on of the forks? BSD isn't dead, and is different but not in bad ways. Don't bad mouth something (BSD) because you don't use it.

Companies are much less likely to embrace GNU anything, GNU just doesn't fly that way. BSD license is much more permissive, and therefore much more attractive to companies.

wmf3• 16 years ago

Last I heard, Solaris 11 was based on OpenSolaris Indiana with the "new" userland and IPS rather than the "crufty" stuff. I guess we'll find out when 11 Express comes out (and no sooner, thanks to the new "no peeking" policy).

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

There is nothing BSDish about Solaris. Solaris is as SysV as it gets.

motters• 16 years ago

Having never used OpenSolaris this is no hardship for me. However, it's looking like Oracle is a company that is quite hostile to open source, so this also raises concerns for what will happen to the likes of OpenOffice and VirtualBox. In general it also raises questions about the wisdom of open source developers assigning their copyrights over to a particular company, who may subsequently choose to betray their generosity. If I'd made significant contributions to OpenSolaris I'd probably be feeling as sick as a parrot right now.

moondowner2• 16 years ago

Don't forget NetBeans, the Rich Client Platform. Lots of applications are built on it (Light Analysis, Energy Consumption Management, Petroleum Engineering App, Swedish Trading Client & Swedish Defense Research App, Open Source Stock Trading Platform, Jewelry Customer Manager -- these are news only from the last 3-4 months), even NASA uses it. It's crucial for Oracle to sustain NetBeans development and not to favour their JDeveloper IDE (cause the latter isn't a platform).

barlo• 16 years ago

Oracle uses NetBeans internally for the development of several applications (mostly from acquisitions), I don't believe you'll see that phased out anytime soon.

rbanffy3• 16 years ago

I can assure you the GPL parts of NetBeans will survive. I cannot say the same about the CDDL parts. I assume people will still contribute to it, but I guess it's a question of time before Oracle decides to turn a quick buck out of NB and close down the CDDL stuff.

alec• 16 years ago

I thought it was interesting that Linux was completely absent from all of the market position talk.

nailer6• 16 years ago

I think everyone who read 'Solaris is the #1 Enterprise Operating System', raised an eyebrow, then read 'We have more than twice the application base of AIX and HP-UX combined' and chuckled.

rikthevik• 16 years ago

I read that to say 'Solaris is the #1 (SysV-based) Enterprise Operating System'

neild• 16 years ago

Note that this is not the end of source code releases of Solaris:

We will continue to use the CDDL license statement in nearly all Solaris source code files. We will not remove the CDDL from any files in Solaris to which it already applies, and new source code files that are created will follow the current policy regarding applying the CDDL (simply, that usr/src files will have the CDDL, and the very small minority of files in usr/closed might not have it). Use of other open licenses in non-ON consolidations (e.g. GPL in the Desktop area) will also continue. As before, requests to change the license associated with source code are case-by-case decisions.

We will distribute updates to approved CDDL or other open source- licensed code following full releases of our enterprise Solaris operating system. In this manner, new technology innovations will show up in our releases before anywhere else. We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time while it is developed, on a nightly basis.

In other words, the Solaris development process is becoming more closed, but you'll still be able to see the source code for any given release. Or at least, that's how I interpret the above.

I'm not in touch enough with Solaris development to know how much of a practical impact this will have--how many non-Sun/Oracle people work on OpenSolaris?

NonIdentifiable2• 16 years ago

It was the nightly basis that allowed a lot of other products (Nexenta) to work well, and get updates faster. It was out of these nightly code drops that OpenSolaris was created ...

caf• 16 years ago

Note though that there won't be any more binary releases of OpenSolaris - so you'll have to build the whole ball of wax from the code drop yourself. And of course you won't be able to build the /usr/closed components.

pclark8• 16 years ago

Everyone seems to have missed - or be ignoring - the fundamentals of Oracle. They aren't in this game to change the world (ala Sun), or improve the lives of developers, they're in this to make bucket loads of cash if products they acquire will not make them money - they will ruthlessly cut it.

They aren't hackers. They aren't designers. They aren't entrepreneurs. They're business men.

Similarly if you dare compete with Oracle, you're going up against a company similar to Microsoft 10 years ago: rich and mean. Look at someone like Google, you think they're evil? Oracle could literally wipe them off the planet if they were inclined. The fact people hate upon Apple or Google, or even Microsoft when Oracle is the towering nemesis is hilarious. At least Oracle doesn't bullshit you. Google? Do no evil? You're a public company.

Vision, for the greater good, wanting to change the world are all well and great, but when the chips are down, you know what counts? Revenues. As Larry Ellison once said about Sun: "Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales"

and you know what? I admire them for that. I respect that they walk that line. They're a public company, and god dammit, they're going to win. I would rather spend a year working with Larry than Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or the Google guys.

mcantelon2• 16 years ago

If money matters and innovation doesn't the oil industry is likely a better place to be than tech.

pclark8• 16 years ago

It depends how you get said money - by being innovative perhaps.

cookiecaper5• 16 years ago

The thing is, as someone stated below, Oracle is all about short-term wins. If Oracle wins this patent suit against Google and gets lots and lots of damages from it, that's nice, but it'll scare everyone away from Java. That's not good for Oracle or anyone else. If they'd just cool their jets and let things like this slide while focusing on creating great Java-based products and improving the Java ecosystem, they'd have much better long-term prospects. Even Ellison stated that Java is the most important product Oracle has ever acquired, and he's going to kill it in desperation to milk every last cent of licenses that he can get today.

If Oracle continues with this kind of ruthlessness, they may squeeze several million out of Google et al, but Java is done for. Nobody will want to use that platform anymore because it will be too risky legally. It'd be a huge opening for .NET and other competitors. Java would go the way of COBOL, only running in the darkest abysses of megacorporations that never modernize.

You can be happy that Ellison doesn't play this "good for developers" thing, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander. By promoting software development and Java development specifically, Oracle would be ensuring generations of Java programmers, and lots of Java-related services and licenses from enterprises. If someone without any programming experience learns Java to write code for Dalvik/Android, as they may because Android is a "cool" platform that would attract young programmers, they can and likely will go on to big corporate environments and continue to work in Java.

pclark8• 16 years ago

I think Oracle will have considered this, no idea what their long term strat is. I sometimes wonder if Larry cares about long term gains or once he retires he's done.

avar• 16 years ago

I think they've actually got the long term covered. Everyone in The Enterprise (which is all Oracle cares about anyway) is already using Java. Those people want to buy official looking software with support contracts from someone.

They're going to be doing so for decades to come, either from Oracle itself, or someone who's paying Oracle truckloads of licensing fees to be allowed to publish their own Java implementation.

The only thing that could upset their subscription to money would be some inconvenient little company that decides to make a clean-room Java implementation that could target the same customers. This is what Google has done.

If they can win this in court or force a settlement that pretty much guarantees that anyone thinking of building that business model won't even bother to get off the ground, and Oracle can keep printing money.

It's funny that you should mention COBOL. Java turning into the next COBOL would be awesome for Oracle. IBM still makes billions selling systems to run COBOL[1], that's more than Sun ever made off Java.

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1567595

mikedouglas• 16 years ago

Isn't that the exact strategy followed by Sun? Being open and fostering a community sure didn't translate into sales for them.

The message Oracle wants to send is pretty clear: if you want to use Java in the mobile and enterprise space, you're going to have to buy one of our very nice support contracts. Considering that this is par for the course for most enterprise platforms and mobile (until Google wrote Dalvik), why would previous licensees make the costly decision to switch?

rbanffy3• 16 years ago

> Oracle is all about short-term wins

That's the result of their bonus policies. If your bonuses reflect short-term earnings, that's the kind of earning your company will generate.

OTOH, this and the Google lawsuit are so completely boneheaded, I would not be surprised the people responsible for it end up like Rick Belluzzo or Sandeep Gupta - in nice positions at Microsoft properties. Even the lawyers are the straight out of the SCO lawsuit...

noonespecial• 16 years ago

Except Oracle doesn't do this. They don't focus on creating, promoting, or even maintaining. They're like the Borg. They assimilate and they rent seek. That's it.

rafaelferreira• 16 years ago

I don't think the other players on the Java "ecosystem" will be much affected by the lawsuit. Pretty much every other Java implementation passed the JCP TCK, and so is indemnified against patent lawsuits. There might be some impact in developers mindshare, but I doubt it will be significant (most devs in the enterprise world - the only market Oracle cares about - won't even know about the lawsuit).

pclark8• 16 years ago

btw, I hope I don't sound like some kind of -- Oracle fanboy (which would be quite ironic considering my comments yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1598533)

just trying to state that (IMHO) Oracle is a very different beast to Google, MSFT, et all.

barrkel2• 16 years ago

People generally aren't remembered for "winning"; and Google is quite a bit bigger company than Oracle.

loumf• 16 years ago

By what metric? Revenue, profit, cash on hand are all pretty much the same. Market cap is perception and even that isn't quite a bit bigger. Oracle has the advantage of many different revenue streams and long-term contracts. Google has advantages, but head to head -- it's pretty close.

pclark8• 16 years ago

I think these kinds of hypothetical battles are less about literal resources (eg: money) and more about leadership and perception.

Google: we're nice guys, don't censor china!

Oracle: we've been around since 1977. we've been to war before, and we'll win again.

Also the fallout could hurt Google far more than Oracle regarding market cap from public perception. I think people entrench enterprise stuff like Oracle as brutal, and Google as fluffy. IMHO.

lsc6• 16 years ago

>Oracle could literally wipe them off the planet if they were inclined.

Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numbers are large, but Google's is significantly larger.

how many google Engineers do you think it would take to build a rdbms that is significantly better than Oracle's product? It's well within Google's capabilities. And yeah, it'd be a patent shitstorm, but it's not like google lacks patents or lawyers.

I mean, granted, oracle is primarily a sales company, so simply coming out with something better, for free, won't kill them overnight. But it would significantly hurt them.

Could Oracle write a search engine? No. the idea is just silly. so Oracle would be limited to legal maneuvering in their attempt to overcome google. I just don't see it happening.

pclark8• 16 years ago

I think you've missed a large factor.

The leadership. And who they are.

For example, Eric Schmidt is apparently a super nice guy [1] Larry Ellison on the other hand, has cited (I believe, Ghengis Khan?) "It is not enough that I succeed, everyone else must fail"

So the leadership is drastically different in terms of how they work. Ellison is marine corp, Schmidt is peace corp.

Could Google make a rdbms that is significantly better than Oracle? On paper, sure. But Google isn't doing a great job (yet) at obliterating markets that are entrenched (Sharepoint, Outlook, Exchange, Facebook) so it's unlikely Google has the willing (due to leadership) or management (due to internal reasons, I guess) to crush Oracle.

I think if Oracle wanted to squeeze Google, they probably could actually. Google has made more and more enemies over the past few years, and I think if someone such as Ellison stepped in and decided to lead the blood hounds, it could be interesting.

Obviously this is all hilarious speculation, but it's pretty interesting.

[1] http://www.slate.com/id/2250704/

nkassis2• 16 years ago

But Oracle is more profitable and earns more revenues. Market Cap means nothing here. Oracle doesn't need to make a search engine, they have Oracle + Sun's patent, they could make it impossible for Google to build a computer and run software on it with enough lawsuits. Only IBM in my view could survive a patent attack like this.

tzs• 16 years ago

> Oracle has a $113B market cap. google has a 155b market cap. granted, both those numbers are large, but Google's is significantly larger

Market cap doesn't translate into assets that can be used in a fight. Some more relevant comparisons:

Oracle: 115000 employees, Google: 22000 employees.

Oracle: $27 billion revenue, Google $24 billion revenue.

Oracle: $9 billion operating income, Google $8 billion operating income.

Oracle: $60 billion total assets, Google $40 billion total assets.

> Could Oracle write a search engine? No. the idea is just silly.

Considering that a single determined programmer can make a great search engine (duckduckgo.com), I find it hard to believe that among all of those 115000 employees, Oracle would not be able to find a few who could make a good search engine.

volida• 16 years ago

The last time I said a business man is not always an entrepreneur I got downvoted to the abyss.

dstein• 16 years ago

<sarcasm> Hi, I'm a beginner programmer. I'm interested in learning to program Java and MySQL on Solaris, where should I begin to learn this free and open platform? </sarcasm>

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

Oracle will become the most hated company in the world (after mircosoft) when they kill java (because of ineptitude), kill mysql (because they can) and kill opensolaris (oops, they just did it)

pclark8• 16 years ago

and oracle will not care, and will continue to make billions of dollars.

(does Oracle have any fans presently?)

Keyframe• 16 years ago

IMO, Microsoft hate died out long time ago.

grandalf• 16 years ago

Uh, opensolaris has been dead ever since linux 1.4.x

mvalle2• 16 years ago

Isn't the good part of being open-source, that you can fork it at any point?

If there is any interest in OpenSolaris, someone will fork it and continue the development.

mvalle2• 16 years ago

the fork: http://www.illumos.org/

BenoitEssiambre• 16 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djZFHTa6TfA

tszming• 16 years ago

Honestly, it was the SUN who killed themselves, not ORACLE. ORACLE is just the catalyst.

chegra• 16 years ago

hmm... The world is moving to be a more open society. It's not the place where evil can survive. Previously, dictatorship[corp] were allow to live peacefully because they control the media, and pretty much had control of their images. The landscape has changed and everybody is the media. I think it's to google's competitive advantage to be seen as good. I don't think a lot of companies have notice the landscape has changed, so they conduct business as normal.

The game still is survival of the fittest, but for this landscape, the fittest are good.

Without a doubt Google has the popular vote. I constantly hear people compare SUN to Google. Sun died, when? lol

Conceive a scenario where Google died tomorrow; now compare that to when Sun passed[it really did?]. It's not the same thing. "Google" is the most frequently used noun on HN, with almost 3 times the frequency of "Apple" [http://chegra.posterous.com/word-frequencies-in-front-page-h...]

Sun might be good for hackers, but Google takes it to a further extent and brought it to everybody.

Certain companies, besides their shareholders nobody cares if they live or die; nobody is super excited about their product. Nobody is saying they want to go work for them. The only reason why they exist is because they were best of the first movers.

It's common practice when a company gets big in order to innovate it purchases smaller companies. You don't innovate you die. All the big companies employ this strategy(really, when last Apple bought somebody-NeXT?). As an entrepreneur or a Hacker and being aware of the current situation, I think if you were going to sell your company you will stay away from Oracle; they will kill your culture. Also, given their business nature, they might even undercut you; it's more to your advantage to do business with someone who is good. And this is where I think Oracle has lost its advantage, it wouldn't be able to innovate.

OpenSolaris is dead

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