[nycbug-talk] Fwd: Re: OpenSolaris dead

[Jason Dixon]

> On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:48 PM, George Rosamond
> <george at ceetonetechnology.com <mailto:george at ceetonetechnology.com>>
wrote:
> 
>      I have not read the whole document, but certainly there's open
>      questions about ZFS (which I have heard is a full, irrevocable
>      fork), dtrace, etc.
> 
> If its a full fork, and non Sun/Oracle employees have been porting it to
> FreeBSD, whats the big deal there?
> 
>      I'd assume that there's a wide audience of developers and users who
>      will be looking for a new home. . .
> 
> Solaris was only open source for a few years. Other than those that
> jumped on the Solaris band wagon after the open sourcing, I'm not sure
> who feels they are in need of a new home. Also, thats only a big deal
> for kernel and some core userland developers.

You're vastly underestimating the number of Solaris/OpenSolaris users and 
companies looking for an exit path.  They were enticed into OpenSolaris
and 
SXCE thanks to exciting projects like Crossbow and bleeding-edge features
in
ZFS.  Now many of their systems are backwards-compatible with anything
that
Oracle will support now or in the future.

> Don't get me wrong, things are getting interesting from here, but I
> don't think its going to be that big of a deal in retrospect. The only
> big deal outcome is if Oracle ends up re open sourcing it. If Oracle
> increases Solaris's popularity after close sourcing it, it proves Oracle
> is a better business than Sun, not that Close source is a better
> business model than Open Source. You have Linux and the BSDs proving the
> viability of Open Source OS development.

This is not a closed-versus-open source issue.  For OpenSolaris users,
it's
having a predictable support path and roadmap.  For the BSD community (in
particular, FreeBSD), it's an opportunity to a) embrace new users and b)
show
off the capabilities and innovation available within BSD.

I've had countless discussions with other Solaris users over the last few
months.  FreeBSD is a popular topic of discussion, particularly as a
favored
alternative to Linux.  But there are still a lot of questions these folks
have,
and I think this is a good time to reach out and demonstrate why BSD
software
(and the associated communities) are a great option to wayward Solaris
users.

-- 
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net