Tuesday December 21, 2004

I just came over from C/Net news and read a Linus Torvalds interview. I am sure there is quite a bit of context missing out of this interview, but Linus is taking a wait-and-see attitude on open source Solaris. Many of you out there don't see the wheels churning and conversations occuring inside of Sun around open sourcing Solaris. The wait-and-see stance is a fair stance to take.

Linus is quoted as saying "Last I heard, Solaris X86 is a joke." There is quite a bit of irony in that statement. Linux started out as a "joke". I started out with Linux in the .99 kernel days (it's been so long ago, I don't recall the exact version number). In fact, some of my co-workers and management thought I was joking when I suggested turning Windows PC's into X-terminals using Linux (with a Solaris server) to simplify a branch office environment. 500+ branch offices running a canned application. That was in the mid 1990's.

Just to provide some data points, I have some customers replacing their Linux installations with Solaris on X86. And more are interested in doing so as they work with Solaris Express builds. I don't expect a mass movement to Solaris on X86 from Linux. Some of my customers are fine staying with Linux, and Sun can help with that (and we do). However, Solaris solves some customer problems (like service consolidation) better than Linux does. And customers do recognize this. That my friends, is no joke.