It seems Dennis and Jonathan would like IBM to support the Solaris platform on our x86 and Opteron systems. I agree. Yet, Big Blue seems a bit reluctant. Imagine that. They'll come around, though. Look, if Solaris is as hot as we say it is, and if the OpenSolaris community is as excited as we think it is, then customers will demand the platform. Then IBM will port their best apps and everyone wins. Eventually. But this is a challenge I think we can meet, and I think a thriving OpenSolaris community will help IBM make up its mind. The pressure on IBM, though, is building and will only increase:
From the eWeek article:

Some large enterprise customers, such as General Motors Corp., which has a $3 billion annual IT budget, agree with Singer. Tony Scott, chief technology officer of GM's information systems and services group in Detroit, said IBM is wrong and that the company is looking backward in the mirror on this issue rather than forward. GM was one of the customers pushing Sun to get onto the x86 platform. "We really like [Solaris on x86] from a competitive standpoint," Scott said.

"The pressure is going to mount on IBM and others to support their applications on that platform, which is going to have significant market share and has all the marks of a successful, viable, competitive platform," Scott said. "For companies such as GM, which already has an installed Sun base, this is attractive. In this particular case, I think IBM is being a little shortsighted," he said.

Comments:

Hey, lots of people would like to run Sun software in linux. Is sun going to port all its software to linux, like it's asking IBM to do?

Posted by - on January 22, 2005 at 09:44 PM JST #

I'm sorry minus but, I don't think you're being fair. Sun has ported most of it's software (and pricing scheme) to Linux, Java Studio and JES are the two main examples. If you're talking about some delays in the roadmap that sometime happen, porting things from Solaris to linux requires (some) recoding (even in portable code, some errors are bound to happen), porting things from Solaris SPARC to Solaris X86 requires recompiling (OK, and some funcionality testing). I'n not aware of any software (or Hardware) from Sun that isn't available on Linux (or, at least, in the short term roadmap)

Posted by Jaime Cardoso on January 22, 2005 at 10:02 PM JST #

Win-to-win partnership:
- IBM support Solaris
and
- Sun opensourced Java and change the OpenSolaris (when available) license to a really free (as a speech) licence: GPL or LGPL.

Posted by x on January 23, 2005 at 09:14 AM JST #

Jim: Sorry to bo monopolysing your Weblog comments. I'm not an anonymous so, if you think I'm pushing what is proper, please let me know.
X I think it's kind of unfair of you to claim that Apache and Mozilla aren't "really free". I wonder when the Linux community will start hammering at those awfull guys that limit choice and inovation in the Mozilla Foundation

Posted by Jaime Cardoso on January 23, 2005 at 12:32 PM JST #

Jaime ... not a problem at all. :) Post away. And minus, yes, we're already done it. Sun does Linux, too, you know. Somehow I think you already knew that, though. And x ... I'd love to see an open Java, but that's not my project. :) There are many community development models, and we need to let each one make up its own mind and not judge. Back at JavaOne last year, Tim O'Reilly asked the crowd during a keynote debate who wanted open source Java, and the reaction was tepid at best. And several years ago the reaction to the announcement that the JCP was going to enable open source implementations also drew a tepid response in front of thousands and thousands of developers. I'm not at all convinced the Java community wants an open source Java. Now, the open source community does, and I certainly get that. My point is that these communities do have some overlap, but in many ways they have their own distinct personalities.

Posted by JIm G. on January 23, 2005 at 12:51 PM JST #

Personally, I would like Sun to support Solaris x86 properly. The support is still not universal - Sun Ray Server is an example where Sun prefer Linux over Solaris x86 and, quite frankly, this sucks.

Posted by Peter Tribble on January 24, 2005 at 12:41 AM JST #

I agree with Peter. Sun is right for chastising IBM's lack of x86 support, but they also ought look at their own SW too. I know, I know: limited resources, but people in glass houses...

Posted by Rich Teer on January 24, 2005 at 01:42 PM JST #

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