Linux criticisms probably won't win Solaris converts

I think Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation (LF), is doing a fantastic job. His ability to reach beyond the vendor community to attract participants like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) to the LF is useful, important, and game-changing.

His smacking Solaris around, however, is not. In a recent InfoWorld article Zemlin takes on Solaris and argues that it's irrelevant and wasteful, and that Sun should simply join together with the Linux community.

While I'm sympathetic to this view-- Linux plus Sun engineering would be even stronger--I'm not sure this is the way to go about it. I doubt he spent much time browbeating CME into joining the Linux Foundation, or that such a strategy would have worked. The same is true with Sun. Carrots, not sticks, might work, but it will take time.

On the other hand, it's instructive to consider what Sun would lose in joining up with Linux. Sun is master of its own destiny on Solaris. With Linux? Well, let's just say that it's unlikely to displace Red Hat's dominant position anytime soon.

Some might cite Novell and NetWare as an illustrative example for Sun to follow. I don't think Sun's Solaris is yet analogous to NetWare, though of course there's always the chance of Solaris becoming a performance legend rather than a performance leader. In the meantime, Sun is probably right to keep forging ahead with its restructuring plan around open source, one that is at times distracting from industry open-source standards, but one that also keeps the open-source product market competitive.

By joining forces with Linux, then, Sun would not only be losing its Solaris performance strength and control, but also its marketing differentiation. Yes, Linux would likely benefit, but not Sun. Given that Sun sells systems, not operating systems, is it any wonder that it's not champing at the bit to abandon Solaris for Linux?

[benjaminstraight]

Good story.

[fazalmajid]

OpenSolaris is a far superior OS to Linux, with features like ZFS, Dtrace or Zones that just aren't matched. It is also much more stable under load and does not indulge in gratuitous change for change's sake as often occurs in Linux, leading to masive configuration management headaches. I burned out of Linux in 1993 after having to recompile my kernel and libc three times in a week just to keep things running.
If anything, it's the Linux community's not-invented-here complex that is holding it back, and Zemlin's arrogant comments are just an illustration of that. OS X and FreeBSD had no problems incorporating ZFS and Dtrace.

[tymiles]

OpenSolaris is not as fast on x86 as linux, it also does not have the hardware support that Linux does. So while Open Solaris is great at the core it's much more easy to run Linux.

Also support of Open Solaris doesn't exist. It's not Solaris proper vendors do not certify apps on OS as they Linux. So when you look to set up your environment you are going to look at something like Suse or Redhat, Windows or Solaris proper. Open Solaris is prob not gonna be in the mix.

Also Linux would have no problem adding ZFS and DTrace. It's the licenses that are keeping them apart. (And I am SURE Sun is happy about that!)

OSX and FreeBSD have no market share on the server. Linux does. Sun sort of does. But Linux is growing fast. Yes Solaris is better then Windows and Linux but as with Netware and Banyan, better does not mean most popular.

[Waam]

Here is the problem, as I'm sure many people have the same problem. Our IT/Graphics programs staff here (I will give no names and round off staff numbers) across 2 states number just under 15 people. We moved from IBM maybe 5-6 years ago, and have found Solaris actually very flexible for our needs. All their training have come straight from universities and Sun training and expertise.

I don't see the head of our department throwing away all this Sun knowledge to do something else, that won't save us at least hundreds of thousands a year. In fact, I don't see how it will save us at all. I agree companies that are moving up into this kind of ballpark computing may want to pick something like Linux, Sun Solaris or even Windows Server, but an established company like us isn't about to change anything because somebody said so.

So if the customer isn't compelled to switch, why would Sun ever switch at all?

[brill256]

I am really disappointed in Zemlin, and the Linux community as a whole. When I first joined the community, we were for positive change, innovation, choice. Everyone else spent their time saying how much we sucked. We just laughed, kept on innovating.

Since then, we've gotten big, arrogant, and we're taking potshots at Sun. Zemlin's turning into the Ballmer of the Linux community. What's he going to do, threaten to sue Sun for ZFS because he thinks ext3 is better? I'm done, I just bought a Mac, I'm loving ZFS (and DTrace), and if that makes Zemlin and the Linux Foundation unhappy perhaps they should look in a mirror.

Zemlin should publicly apologize, he's just an embarassment to us all.

[EmbSysPro]

I have a small prod development biz and when I needed to setup a real world environment to do sw/hw dev, accounting, inventory, crm and ecommerce, Solaris and the J2EE environment on my 8 quad core AMD CPU white box server has worked flawlessly.

As a developer I'm a fan. As a business owner I have piece of mind.