It seems odd that
strident objections are being directed at the very
best, most complete, and thoroughly integrated GNU/Linux distro on the
market.
It's a comprehensive article, though, so give it a try. Lots of honest
and pithy statements, and lots of thoughtful explanations about what
JDS is and why it's important. It's by Sam Hiser, coauthor of Exploring the JDS Linux Desktop.
I run JDS on the Solaris platform on my laptop. We're getting JDS on
our Sun Ray systems internally this month. And I bet that JDS will be
one of the critical applications that helps drive community involvement
in OpenSolaris.Thursday Oct 07, 2004
No big deal. Just take a quick tour of a Navy
ship. You don't get to see these things up close very often, so what
the heck. However, it turned out to be a very big deal, indeed.After exploring all the features of the ship, the tour guide took our small group into a narrow hallway known as the "Hall of Heroes." Basically, it was old photographs on the walls and a time line of the historic battle in the Pacific during World War II that the ship had been named after -- The Battle of Tarawa.
According to the Navy, the Battle of Tarawa begin November 19, 1943, and lasted 76 hours. The US Marines lost 1,020 men. An additional 2,296 were wounded. The Japanese lost 4,240. Only 146 survived. That's in 76 hours. Devastating. Although the American Navy won this battle, the young sailors who explained all this to us had the deepest respect for what happened. They were clearly humbled and deeply moved as they described the battle. All of us could not help but feel the change in mood even though most of us probably could not even imagine such a horror. What was in store for us next, though, brought some of us to tears and attracted sailors from all across the ship. They all came to the Hall of Heroes.
You see, there was a distinguished old gentleman who had been limping along with us on the tour. He was just as interested in the features of the ship as we were. But he was quiet. And he was alone. And apparently, he didn't need any explanation of the battle 60 years after the fact. As we walked further into the Hall of Heroes, he began to look more and more serious. He then perked up and walked up to a photograph on the wall. He then said, softly, "That's me. I was there. I was 18." Dead silence. He was there and he survived. My God. There was about 20 of us who simply looked at him as he examined the photographs closely (see lower right photo). He told stories of all his buddies. He knew names. Faces. Dates. Times. Situations. Strategies. Weather. Geographies. Weapons. Absolutely everything. The detail was stunning. Most of the guys he pointed to died during those 76 hours, and he explained the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Many of them died right next to him.
Within minutes
sailors from all across the ship were filling the narrow hall. Most of them in their 20s. Then some officers came
down. More stories. I
have a dozen pictures of everyone greeting this old warrior and asking
questions. Some were tearing up. And I have a lovely picture of him
proudly standing next to his photo on the wall (which I sent to him).
But somehow it doesn't seem appropriate to show them here without
permission. Although it was certainly public moment, it seemed quite
private at the time. And it wasn't my moment. It was their moment. I introduced myself, but I didn't know what to say.
I introduced my
wife, too. She's
Japanese. Her uncle was killed in a battle not far from there. It is a
small world, indeed.
But I particularly like the last two paragraphs:
There simply isn't a conspiracy between Sun, Microsoft and SCO to kill Linux. There is a business plan to thwart Red Hat. This should not shock anyone. It should be expected.
Red Hat has warm,
fuzzy feelings behind it, but it is not the open
source community as a whole. It's a company every bit as aggressive as
the next. Sun and Microsoft are trying to make this point painfully
clear. They're not in love with each other as Red Hat's Michael Tiemann
has suggested. They simply have a common enemy.
Oh, and in this article, Scott refers to OpenSolaris again:
McNealy continued to
say the only thing Red Hat has that Sun doesn't is
the open source label on its operating system, which Sun plans to
change in the coming months. He also reiterated points about Sun long
giving its Solaris code to customers and about Sun's position behind
Berkeley as the second leading contributor of open source code on the
planet.
This blog copyright 2009 by jimgris
