alanc @ sun.com

Maybe they're not so different from us...

It's all too easy to think of Microsoft as a faceless, inhuman "Evil Empire" when reading sites like Slashdot and Groklaw or even listening to some of the comments made in the past by people in Sun from the executives down to the rank-and-file. And even though I know how often we in Sun are amused by some of the wacky theories out there about what Sun is up to ("It's impossible to have a conspiracy of 30,000 people" is a response I've heard quoted a few times), it's not always easy to remember that Microsoft is in the same boat. So while a lot of people recently were pointing to the story of Sun Opteron servers being installed in Microsoft's Enterprise Engineering Center as "proof they're not all bad", I've found that hasn't changed my opinion of Microsoft as much as their increasing openness via blogs and other forums.

Of course, the most visible of these and the person I'd say is most responsible for putting a human face to Microsoft is Robert Scoble, whose blog output I can barely keep up with reading, much less trying to match in writing (I'm lucky to get a few entries a month out - he almost always has several per day). But it's also being able to see conversations between a MS Word developer and an Abiword developer, or seeing a former member of Microsoft's Shared Source team explain their challenges in a way that resounds with the experiences Sun's OpenSolaris team are having facing many of the same challenges, that show maybe the walls between Microsoft and the rest of the world are starting to come down. And when you read stories like John Porcaro's of the difference in how Microsoft treats it's employees vs. some other companies more deserving of the "evil" moniker, it's hard not to think that we're more like Microsoft than we realized. I've known several Sun employees who have unfortunately been in similar situations, and the response from their managers has always been along the lines of "I hope your [son|daughter|father|mother|etc.] will be okay - go be with them and let me know if there's anything we can do to help." Perhaps it's our business - as developers there's rarely anything so pressing that only one person can do, so things can be reassigned or postponed a few days when emergencies come up, and letting the engineers be with their families when they need them benefits everyone in the end - the engineer is less stressed and while Sun may lose a few days of work up front (though probably at much lower productivity since the employee will be distracted and trying to keep in touch with their family), they end up with better morale overall, and an employee more likely to be willing to put in the long hours when really needed in return.

That's not to say they're not still the competition, or that either Sun or I agrees with many of the things they do. On the other hand, HP, Novell/SuSE, and Red Hat are also clearly competitors (and partners, given the wonderfully tangled webs often woven in the technology industry), but I have excellent, friendly, productive working relationships with my counterparts from those companies when we work together in X.Org to the benefit of all our companies and the community in general. We have to be careful about respecting the boundaries in place - not sharing corporate secrets or discussing any business matters that would make anti-trust lawyers upset - but that doesn't stop us from going out together, having dinner and a beer, or from getting the work done we need to. While I doubt we'll see Microsoft in X.Org any time soon, I wouldn't be surprised to see people from other parts of our companies establishing similar relationships to the benefit of everyone involved.

(And since I've probably gotten the attention here of "he who pubsubs" [1], and who also loves extolling the virtues of the Tablet PC, I had a recent thought - perhaps it's just coincidence, but as a TiVo addict I've noticed over the years many mentions of TiVo's being included in things such as gift packages for Oscar presenters and other entertainment industry insider giveaways, and that while other competitors such as ReplayTV and even Microsoft's own UltimateTV have come and gone, it's always TiVo you hear mentions of or see in the background on TV shows. I would think that if you wanted to spread the Tablet PC word, perhaps seeding some to a few people in the right places would do a world of good - for instance, if the writers for a show like Law & Order were sitting around their conference table pitching story ideas with a tablet PC in front of them, but not blocking their view of the other people at the table, how long before one ends up in front of the camera - after all, a courtroom would seem an ideal place for the tablet form factor - laying flat it won't block the lawyers view of the courtroom, nor will it expose their notes as easily to the spectators sitting behind them. And if only a few of the millions of viewers pick up on it, maybe you won't have to wait quite as long before you can post another note about selling a million Tablet PC's. Of course, if anyone else is still reading, I would point out that just because it's a tablet, doesn't mean you have to run Windows on it - for instance, there's tips on running Linux on a Fujitsu Stylistic ST5010 tablet here and I've gotten e-mail from a Solaris x86 user who used some of the same tips to load Solaris 10 on his - using the Wacom driver we provide with Xorg in Solaris for the stylus for instance.)

[1] Bonus points to any readers who recognized the obscure ancient Usenet cultural reference to he who greps

Posted at 09:52AM Mar 31, 2005 by Alan Coopersmith in General  |  Comments[4]

Responding to another Alan's blog comments

Just noticed the discussion and questions in the comments Alan Hargreave's blog about Solaris Express 2/05 - I started typing this in as a response there, but it got so long, I figured I'd just put it here and leave a trackback link there.

Does the SPARC version of Solaris 10 get X.Org or does it still use XSun?

Yes, SPARC is still on Xsun, since Xorg includes no driver modules for SPARC graphics cards. We're looking into various ways to solve this, but it will take some time.

Sun is lagging behind several X.org releases...

Our Xorg server is completely up to date with the latest Xorg release (well, this Solaris Express is X11R6.8.2 Release Candidate 2 - the final release of X11R6.8.2 is out now, and has been integrated to a later build of Solaris so it should be in future Solaris Express releases). The rest of the X Window System in Solaris is mostly from X11R6.6 and we're working over time to bring it up to newer versions, but for most of it outside the X server, there's little user noticable changes.

again no Xprint server with OpenGL capabilities in Solaris Express

No, we don't have OpenGL support in Xprint, because as far as I can tell, not one single customer has ever suggested it's something they'd even be remotely interested in us supporting, and it's not something we've thought is likely to be useful to many people. Your posts on this is the first I knew anyone had any use for it.

Eventually we'll move to Xprint based from the latest Xorg tree, and perhaps we'll get it then - if you need it earlier, get your sales rep, tech support contact, ISV relations contact, etc. to submit an RFE or just explain to me why this is so useful to enough customers that we should prioritize it over all the other things we need to work on in the X Window System on Solaris. Like most people, there's a lot more things we could do than the number of hours in the day allow us to do, and we're still working through the ones that will be useful to thousands more people than OpenGL in Xprint - like OpenGL in Xorg itself and better Xorg configuration tools. This is what OpenSolaris should help with in the future, as users with special needs will be able to make the changes they want and work with Sun to get them into future Solaris releases.

Posted at 11:16PM Mar 17, 2005 by Alan Coopersmith in Solaris  |  Comments[6]

Solaris community blogs growing

It's nice to see the Solaris blog community growing outside of Sun. It's even gotten to the point where analysts are paying attention to them. And while Planet Solaris has a nice collection of them, there's also interesting new ones popping up, like the new binarycrusader blog with tips for Solaris 10 users.

[Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris]

Posted at 11:20AM Mar 09, 2005 by Alan Coopersmith in Solaris  |  Comments[2]

X.Org booth photo in The Inquirer

Catching up on RSS feeds on bloglines, I followed a link from amdzone.com to The Inquirer's LinuxWorld Boston photos, and was surprised to see a very familiar face staring back at me from a photo of the X.Org booth! I don't think this many people have been tortured by images of me since I appeared in the background of some clips used a couple of years ago in the KGO news feature piece on Isamu Shimegori, a Sun engineer with cerebal palsy. (They filmed parts of the piece in our old lab in San Jose while we were doing testing of the Solaris accessibility support with Isamu and Earl Johnson from Sun's Accessibility office.)

Posted at 06:24PM Mar 07, 2005 by Alan Coopersmith in General  |