Newsmaker: Sun's open-source gamble

(continued from previous page)

actually leverage Salesforce.com or Hewlett or even eBay--have figured out that the network affords them an opportunity to stop having to own and operate everything that they use. But how many consumers run their own e-mail server versus (those who) just use Yahoo Mail or Gmail? Very few. Should (companies) be using their $50 million infrastructure budget along with their management personnel, their data centers, their real estate, their power, or should they just go out and see if a buck an hour is a cheaper way of acquiring the same computer capacity?

Scott McNealy said to "stay tuned" about the Sun database. Is it fair to say that at some point Sun expects to be supplying database software?

Related story
Sun floats open-source
database idea

A Sun database could anger partner Oracle, but it could curry favor with advocates of open-source software.

I think it's clear the market has spoken that open source is the path that the developer community and the customer community wants to drive down, and we're going to do what we can to try to give customers as big a set of options as we can...we take the open-source developer community very seriously. It's an authentic commitment. What else can we do to continue to evolve that relationship? I don't think it's going to be limited to simply operating systems. Maybe it will extend to file systems, maybe it will extend to databases, maybe it will extend to middleware.

You've been a software guy, but as president, you're now more than that. It appears to me that software is increasingly important in Sun's constellation of products. To what extent is that because you're now No. 2?
That's a hard question for me to answer. I'm interested right now in creating new relationships with customers, and I believe those new relationships will be dominantly driven by the software platforms at Sun and then secondarily by the systems platforms.

How has your relationship with Scott McNealy changed in the last year since you became president? For example, are you in agreement or in disagreement more often than you used to be?
There are some environments in which I can complete the guy's sentences. There are other environments where we just disagree--and by the way, it's about 50-50. It's always been that way. It's never going to change...it's a highly communicative relationship. Plus, I send e-mail to the guy at 12:30 at night and I get a response at 12:31. That's an unusual boss relationship.

Clearly you're confident that you'll be able to build a vibrant community around OpenSolaris.
I just find it laughable that Red Hat and (CEO) Matthew (Szulik) can no longer claim we're proprietary. He's reduced to saying, "Yeah, but they'll never build a community because they don't know how." Sorry guys, we've been building communities for 20 years.

In Sun's perfect OpenSolaris world, what will the balance of power be between Sun and non-Sun folks?
In the advisory board (governing OpenSolaris) the majority will not be Sun. (In comparison), Red Hat makes proprietary decisions (such as) whether or not they put Jonas (Java server software) into Red Hat. They made that decision exclusively, without input from the community.

I just find it laughable that Red Hat and (CEO) Matthew (Szulik) can no longer claim we're proprietary.

We expect that the governance model and the community model we build around Solaris will be as big a competitive weapon against Red Hat as the innovation within Solaris. We know that they have frustrated such a broad portion of their customer base that there is opportunity for us to really excel in ways that aren't necessarily technology-related. The governance model we use will be more open source and transparent. We'll be really meaning free when we talk about free and open-source software. Red Hat binaries aren't free. It will have genuine protection from a patent portfolio and indemnity against all intellectual-property claims, which for our customers will be something, I think, that's a real differentiator. Red Hat doesn't provide that.

One thing that I think enabled HP, Dell, IBM and even Sun to adopt Linux is its comparative neutrality. IBM's OS/2 by comparison was definitely not a neutral product. Do you think that Solaris is going to achieve the same level of neutrality as Linux?
First of all, it seems incongruous to call Linux one thing. (In market share charts) we've now broken Unix out into Solaris and HP-UX and AIX. That hasn't happened in Linux yet, even though that's already happened in the marketplace because there is a dominant player, Red Hat. You have to look at how many users Red Hat has, not how many Linux has. So when you assert that Linux is neutral, Red Hat is not neutral.

I agree that Red Hat is not neutral, but I take some issue with that. There are a lot of Linux developments by Oracle or Cisco Systems or Topspin or Dell or IBM. Red Hat packages them up and sells that package and has a relationship with some customer, but it is not the sole company to benefit from it. There is certainly still a cooperative development model that is neutral, even if the process of delivering that package of bits to the customer is not neutral. I think the overall project of Linux still is a valid entity to talk about. It might not be what I get on a CD-ROM and install in my computer, but given where the bits in that CD-ROM come from, I think it is legitimate still to talk about Linux as an entity.
So, number one, Solaris is now officially platform-neutral. There is an open-source license under which you will be managed. Gentoo OpenSolaris will be available. My belief is that there'll be another 10 or so (non-Sun OpenSolaris) distributions that will emerge.

And I suspect the company that will benefit the most from OpenSolaris will probably be not IBM or Dell, but Sun, which perhaps is why I think it's not considered a neutral product.
And I think when IBM acquires either Red Hat or Novell, I think the scales will fall from peoples' eyes and they'll also realize that neither of them are neutral. I believe that Solaris will be a platform-neutral operating system. I think it is up to us to prove that neutrality with the governance model. But a lot of the contributions that Cisco and Dell and Topspin are making (to Linux) are drivers. They'll also make them available for open-source Solaris.

I think the dominant beneficiary right now of Linux is Red Hat. Does that mean Linux is neutral? Red Hat has the branded relationship with the customer, so Red Hat is more in charge right now of Linux in North America than Linus is.  

More Newsmakers

Omigawd

I never thought an ego larger than Scott's would surface at Sun. I was wrong. Not only a larger ego but one in complete denial of the marketplace.

The further the ship sinks, the louder the cries...

[bill-tb]

Why is it

What I find most interesting is why the Linux crowd thinks they invented open source. They didn't -- time to get over it, and just move on. Open source is not Linux.

Sun has protected their IP while at the same time allowing others to make use of it. I await Linux to do the same -- else Linux will hit the patent wall RSN.

Of course the Linux crowd could just dump the Linux kernel and use the Sun kernel -- after all it's unencumbered.

[rdean]

Unencumbered...

Depends on what you mean by unencumbered. Read the CDDL if you want to see what kinds of encumberance Sun imposes on those who wish to contribute to OpenSolaris.

[rdean]

Schwartz shows his stripes in the last 3 questions...

I give the interviewer credit, he challenged him on trying to play spindoctor.

First, Schwartz is trying to equate Linux with RedHat. According to the IDC, RedHat had a 60% marketshare through early 2004, and this is considering that they hadn't end of life'd RH8 yet. That hardly sounds like a monopoly.

Second, after saying that RedHat defines Linux, he claims that the fact that there will be a Gentoo OpenSolaris will make OpenSolaris more platform neutral and will help them defeat RedHat. Okay, so two questions: 1) if Gentoo OpenSolaris is relevent, then Gentoo Linux is just as relevent, and 2) RedHat OpenSolaris could also happen.

However, if the open source community actually did gravitate towards RedHat Linux, then it would be asinine to assume that OpenSolaris would resist the tendency of markets to consolidate on a version. Sun will be to OpenSolaris what they claim RedHat is to Linux.

[iqula]

This is real and happening now here.

See what sites like http://www.cosmopod.com are already offering in this space.