Re: More foolish from people who don't know

Mommycalled: "Solaris is SysVr4 based. Sun changed from a BSD based OS to SysVr4

around 1988, that's 20 years ago."

I wouldn't call Linux a BSD derivative (more like SysV), but it still owes a lot to BSD. Thanks for the heritage tip (I stand corrected), but my point is that Sun don't have to write everything to be famous. And that's what you think commercial companies can do exclusively. No, Sun are standing on the shoulders of giants. That doesn't mean their contributions aren't valuable or that they don't have great engineers, but many FOSS developers are very good (including those in BSD land who aimed for quality).

FTR: I use Linux on my server for various reasons (primarily, accessibility in textmode). NetBSD's hardware support still has a bit to be desired, but it works on my playboxes, both textmode and GUI, network or no. But OpenSolaris really *was* a mess the last time I looked, and I'm going to take special care not to look at it again until it runs on enough everyday desktop hardware. Like, you know, RTL8169 cards embedded on mainboards (yes, I know, but that doesn't change anything - it still didn't work). And all that aside, I have issue with Sun's oily friendliness towards the OSS world. I'll wait and see just how "Open" they mean by Open Source, and maybe then I'll reconsider. If Sun run OpenSolaris on opensolaris.org, for instance.

Mommycalled: "What's different between NetBSD kernel development team being an email away and the

Solaris Kernel development team being an email away. Bzzt NOTHING. Besides I don't

have to deal with Theo de Raadt"

Theo is OpenBSD, not NetBSD. And yes, while he does froth at the mouth a bit, his contributions can hardly be considered valueless.

There is *no* difference between the reachability of the kernel teams, silly! That was the point - one's free OSS and one's commercial OSS; both provide a complete core system and neither is a packager of outside stuff, at least not exclusively and in the sense that RedHat are. Don't you know how much NetBSD is putting into standards-conformance in their shiny new base system and tools? Don't you know that NetBSD tools are now in Apple userland? Silly, silly, silly!

"I guess releasing the Solaris

source into the wild is nothing."

The licenses have to be agreeable and Sun has to *mean* what it says. Giving bits away gradually, keeping back premium features while exploiting the community, etc, etc, are not how you show your openness. It's like MySQL - the source is certainly there, but no commitment. It's not FOSS - not really. I know that's sort of nebulous, but Sun want to undo the hurt they've done others before they can be trusted. And as long as Linux has the real market leader, you'd be silly to deny that Sun craves a piece of the spotlight. OTOH, they're certainly doing their best, especially recently. But it's not always easy to say it's been about mutual benefit.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/13/schwartz_v_torvalds/

Cheers,

Sabahattin

Sun controls their kernel - Redhat does not.

Redhat is a packaging company in that they are re-releasing freely available components, some of which are extended or provided by Redhat.

Trouble is, of the packages listed on the Fedora contributions list, not all are applicable to the rest of the Linux companies. Novell/Suse suffer from the same lack of *complete* compatibility.

This point is moot when you think about the interoperability of Solaris packages or apps as applied to Linux, however.

Take a look at some of the videos of round table meetings of Sun engineers. It's immediately clear (to me) that the disconnects that exist in the Linux world wrt problem solving, best practice, and road maps are of a completely different nature, if they can even be compared directly.

Looking at Sun's hardware business, the width and breadth of that hardware, the services that run on them (it's still a Sun, IBM, and HP world within the Fortune 500), and this effieciency in communication and execution within Sun's OS division, it appears that Redhat is truly little more than a "packaging company" (with crummy package management)

Inflammatory, to be sure, but this is the big time.