Busted!

Friday May 18, 2007

It is with regret that I read Sam Varghese's critical report of Sun this week, Solaris can never be Linux.  This wasn't just any old nonsense from a blogger posing as a jornalist after all, but the man, the Varg.  Is there a better writer out there?

An elegant wordsmith,
The latest bit of spiel which juxtaposes these words,

but always to the point,
If anything, trying to morph one in order to make it like the other will result in something that is neither fish nor fowl. And we all know what happens when things turn out that way.

with a fabulous command of literary references,
Statistics are often the refuge of scoundrels

and quick to forgive the failings of others,
To put it in his own words:"This paper emphasizes [sic] quantitative measures"

while maintaining his own high standards,
There is no hyberbole, no escessive putdown.

and, as always, in consummate good taste.
Microsoft: shades of Saddam Hussein.




So, when I read that whenever Mr Vaghese hears "the words Sun Microsystems and open source mentioned together [he] can't help but laugh", well, naturally, I'm concerned.  And Mr Vaghese deals out a proper savaging with his irresistable combination of astute observation,

Sun keeps talking about its dedication to the open source ideal and holding on to its code.

quality prose,
Last year, Sun was literally dragged kicking and screaming to the table to release Java under the GPL.

razor-sharp reason,
For years there have been calls to do this but Sun resisted. The act was finally done but who is interested any more?

And industry-insider prescience,
It isn't going to happen. Solaris isn't Linux and will never be anything like it.


No, few survive a mauling from the pen of Mr. Sam Vaghese and laugh it off.


ps. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of my employer

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Posted at 12:12PM May 18, 2007 by Patrick Finch in OpenSource
Tags: opensource samvarghese sunmicrosystems