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Saturday May 07, 2005

Beyond My Wildest Expectations: The Butterfly Effect

You never know what reactions a simple action might produce. On April 25, 2005, I wrote a 'blog entry entitled What's New in Solaris Express 4/05 (Nevada Build 10). As is my custom, I posted a reference to said entry to OSNews, since I believe that it's the sort of content generally of interest to readers interested in operating systems... news.

A full on flame-war erupted in the comments of the OSNews article, mostly centered around OpenSolaris. Fintan wrote one response (and another). And so did Alan, on his 'blog. Ok, so far, a big yawn. The thread continued on at more or less the same level of hostility. But things get a little strange from here on out. Several days later Renai LeMay, a journalist for ZDNet Australia, produced an article entitled OpenSolaris developers defend their baby, documenting the debate. Next, slashdot stepped in with a story entitled Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporware Claims. Taking a further turn for the bizarre, OSNews yesterday posted an article entitled OSNews Troll Succeeds Beyond Wildest Expectations, which rehashes the entire thing! So the butterfly effect is that my one post to OSNews generated 57 comments, which generated a news story (10 comments), at least one 'blog entry (18 comments), a slashdot story (279 comments), and another OSNews story (62 comments as of this writing). And all of that led to me writing this 'blog entry.

Careful reading of the posts also reveals a tendency of the media to inflate the emotions involved in the story. Alan and Fintan's strongly but carefully worded statements became "furious" and "angry" in subsequent stories. I wonder what will happen when I post news about Solaris Express 5/05? To be honest, I find it tough to stay positive under the barrage of negativity coming at us. Well, back to my Saturday-- working on the web pages for the OpenSolaris.org launch.
(2005-05-07 17:05:01.0) Permalink Comments [9]
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[Trackback] Wenn deine "Gegner" Angst vor Dir haben, hast Du etwas richtig gemacht. Und so heftige Reaktionen bekommt man normalerweise nur von Menschen die Angst haben. Auf jeden Fall eine intersannte Anekdote, wie Opensolaris Fahrt aufnimmt: The View from the Mo...

Posted by www.c0t0d0s0.org on May 08, 2005 at 12:42 AM PDT #

Some positivity: I'm really looking forward to open solaris, know its not vaporware (after all, Apache is already running it on our new "helios" machine) an so far (as long-time linux user) Solaris 10 has already managed to impress me. Just stick your head in the sand, keep working and get the baby into the world :-)

Posted by Leo Simons on May 08, 2005 at 05:32 AM PDT #

"You never know what reactions a simple action might produce."

True. But that doesn't mean that the reactions were arbitrary or unexpected. Sun has a problem with the open source community, and no amount of talking or arguing by Sun employees is going to change that. And I don't think the problem is going to go away until Sun Java is not perceived as a threat by the open source community anymore (either because Sun loses control of it or because it gets replaced). And if you think that Sun's problems with the open source community aren't due to Java, you haven't been paying attention.

Posted by 70.85.114.26 on May 08, 2005 at 08:29 AM PDT #

The media is not used to having blogs as their source yet. They use it, and treat it like any other source, but it is not. Blogentries are news sometimes, but the comments are not (99% of the time). One would have guessed Slashdot would know that by now.

Posted by SwitchBL8 on May 08, 2005 at 01:40 PM PDT #

It seems to me that 70.85.114.26 has it backwards - it is the 'open source community' (to use an unfairly broad generalisation) that has a problem with Sun. Sadly, I do agree that "no amount of talking or arguing...is going to change that". Fortunately, the open source community is a wonderfully diverse set. Not all are xenophobic or rabidly anti-corporate. I daresay the silent majority looks forward to the OpenSolaris release, even if they have no plans to actively participate in the developer community. I'm firmly placed in the latter camp, but from there you (and the rest of the Solaris team) have my thanks and support!

Posted by Zac Stevens on May 08, 2005 at 05:34 PM PDT #

and of course the whole thing blows up when I'm travelling home from the other side of the globe :(. Ah well.

Posted by fintanr on May 09, 2005 at 11:52 PM PDT #

It looks like a lot of people that flood slashdot don't know (or care) about managing critical systems.
Sun (and solaris) isn't the number one Unix system because it pleases the kids, it is #1 because it solves real customer issues.
Because you take the time to make sure you put quality in Solaris, Solaris 10 broke a new record, how much time solaris FCS went with no recommended patches; that is why solaris 10 was one of the few systems where sys admins migrated production systems before 6 monthes after the launch (much less one year). that is why companies like J.P. Morgan stated to use Solaris 10 that early in it's release date.
>I find it tough to stay positive under the barrage of negativity coming at us
I can believe that but, look at what customers are saying (and doing) about Solaris 10, forget those kids, they don't matter, they're just noise

Posted by Jaime Cardoso on May 11, 2005 at 10:11 AM PDT #

OK, this comment is somewhat late (i just stumbled over the blog), nevertheless i'd like to add my two (euro)cents regarding

#1: The "Vaporware" Thing
Last september, our local linux users group had a talk about ZFS. The speaker (whom many of us know and respect from our time at the University) painted a bright picture about all the interesting features ZFS would offer .. Real Soon Now(TM). And even we -linux users- would be able use it because it would be published with a sufficiently "free" license as a part of Open Solaris. Well, suffice to say: we are still waiting for anything definite to happen on that front. Which is why I (as a slashdot member) modded several of the "OpenSolaris is Vaporware" posts as insightful; especially those comparing sun's actions with the well-known microsoft strategy of "announce, delay, retract".
Note that i am not dissing Solaris 10 (the OS) but "Open Solaris" (the publicity stunt). Which leads me to:

#2: Sun's lack of credibility with the OSS community:
In all fairness, Sun (the company) can't expect a friendly reception with the OSS community. For all their talk about "OpenThis" and "OpenThat", their actions speak quite a different language:

buying licenses and even shares from SCO,
reaffirming partnership with Microsoft,
active pursuit of software patents, including
poisoned offer of patents "under the CDDL",
... (the list goes on).

Unfortuantely, none of these actions touches the real problem: the IT market has been commoditized, and sun has missed the boat. Sun hardware is really nice, but many (most?) customers can (and will) settle for less costly alternatives. And even the few remaining "big iron" accounts should have contigency plans by now, just in case something happens..)

Just imagine Sun as making "unsinkable" ocean liners .. even after air travel has become cheap, fast and reliable.

Posted by Savage650 on May 16, 2005 at 04:12 AM PDT #

Thanks for all of the comments, folks. What I'll say about OpenSolaris is that it's coming soon. Hell, I'm spending all day every day on it. While it won't be all things to all people, I think it will help both Sun and the larger Solaris community to thrive. Will we get everything right on day 1? No, surely that's impossible. And I'm sure that people will be quick to yell loudly about what we did wrong, and ignore whatever parts we manage to get right. Such is life at Sun.

Posted by Dan Price on May 16, 2005 at 11:11 PM PDT #

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