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Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporware Claims

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri May 06, 2005 07:23 AM
from the long-time-coming dept.
Sun Microsystems Operating Systems Software Unix
daria42 writes "It looks like an anonymous post on OSNews.com claiming OpenSolaris is vaporware was the last straw for two frustrated Sun Microsystems developers. They have responded furiously on their official Sun blogs, saying that they are currently working 'feverishly' on the project, and that it was taking so long because of the need to get rid of legal encumbrances to releasing the code. 'OpenSolaris certainly exists,' Sun kernel developer Alan Hargreaves says on his Sun blog. 'You only have to speak to anyone involved in getting it out there. There are a lot of us out there who both do and do not work for Sun.'"
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Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporware Claims 50 Comments More /

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  • "Vaporwear"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by stealth.c (724419) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:25AM (#12450020)
    Is it clothing?

  • Stuff that matters (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fembots (753724) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:26AM (#12450026) Homepage
    Seriously who would need to refute claims like that? The sooner they get this thing out, the sooner the rumors will vaporize automatically. The rest is just a waste of time.

    Tell me which one would you believe more - Microsoft claiming that they're working on patches to fix some exploits "as we speak", or they're asking users to download the patches now?

    • Re:Stuff that matters (Score:5, Insightful)

      by liquidpele (663430) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:45AM (#12450144) Homepage Journal
      How the hell did you get Insightful? They are working on it, it's not exactly hello world...
      I can certainly believe they are having a tough time trying to scrap through and legalize their code for it after this whole SCO crap. Give them a break, if I was working on something and people kept annoying me about it, I'd be sure as hell tempted to quit and give them the finger.
      • "Give them a break, if I was working on something and people kept annoying me about it, I'd be sure as hell tempted to quit and give them the finger."

        If I was them, I'd *first* do all the legal stuff, then decide what to release, *then* announce and release it at the same time. Sun, instead, has opted to announce, and then announce again, and keep that up for a year or so, then announce again, then release some code that isn't really Open Solaris, and then get some devs to "respond furiously" about being b

        • Re:Stuff that matters (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2005, @08:00AM (#12450237)
          bugged for code that was promised over a year ago

          You are obviously not familiar with corporate marketing. Or, for that matter, with marketing in general. Do you get mad at George Lucas because he promised Episode III almost five years ago (when he started Episode I)? Do you get mad because they started marketing it a year ago? Do you get mad because they started to release teaser trailers a couple of months ago? Do you get mad because they started running real trailers a few weeks ago? Shouldn't they just keep quiet about the whole thing and just release the trailers when the movie is done and out?

          Of course not, they have to create buzz to let people know what is coming and to build an audience.

          Sun didn't promise to release the code a year ago, they announced they would be releasing it. They've been pretty consistent in saying that it would be end of Q2. There's not been any reason to doubt that it will happen when they say.

                • Re:Stuff that matters (Score:5, Informative)

                  by Spectra72 (13146) on Friday May 06 2005, @10:52AM (#12451643) Homepage
                  Why on earth would you think there is a lot of Veritas code in Solaris? Nevermind that Sun has (and has had for a long, long time) products that compete directly with Veritas. Solaris Volume Manager is a replacement for Vertias Volume Manager and why use VxFS when UFS is just as good? Why pay for the Veritas licenses as well?

                  UFS is a Non-journaled fileysytem?? Ever hear of mounting UFS with "-o logging"? It's only been around since, oh I don't know..SOLARIS 7, which was released in 1998.

                  Sun and Oracle are close too, is there a lot of Oracle code in Solaris?

      • On your wholly unrelated note:

        "Is it possible to take CDDL code and place it in a GPL'd project? I know GPL > CDDL 'no workie'."

        No. You don't have rights to release CDDL code under the GPL, so you can't release code from each together, because to release code together with GPL code, you need to be able to release it all as GPL.

        "they said in the article that a proprietary vendor could take their code... why would an open one not be able to?"

        Because the open developer would need to redistribute the co

  • Advice to developers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday May 06 2005, @07:27AM (#12450037) Homepage Journal
    The more time you spend "responding furiously" to "anonymous posts on OSNews.com", the less time you're spending actually being productive.

    You'd be better of ignoring the cynics, the nay-sayers, and the anonymous blowhards, and continuing doing something productive.

    Arguing on the internet is like ... yadda, yadda, yadda.
    • which is different of what you are doing now? You're arguing how they should do it..

      It's not like they are in a big flame war, they are just stating what the status is currently.

    • Re:Advice to developers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MrMickS (568778) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:45AM (#12450148) Homepage Journal
      Move along, nothing to see above. The parent rather than being informative is merely making a cheap shot.

      There are many examples wherein an oft repeated untruth is more widely accepted than the reality. What is so bad about people putting their comments into their blogs? Oh, I get it.. if they were real open sores developers then they would only have time for the project. The rest of life would be as nothing to the all encompassing goal of making it work.

  • osnews... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Freggy (825249)
    Hey, give these guys a bit of time, will you? Sun developers, don't take it too personally, osnews is known for being the trolling site bu excellence in free software land.

  • For Now, It's Still Vaporware (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zeromemory (742402) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:31AM (#12450061) Homepage
    While I'm inclined to believe that Sun is really try to open up the source to Solaris, the fact that they've only been able to put up a website (which notably has more links to press releases and news articles than source code) and the source for DTrace in the months since they've stated their Great Plan to open-source Solaris, it's no wonder that members of the community are calling an open-source Solaris vaporware.

    • Re:For Now, It's Still Vaporware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by owlstead (636356) on Friday May 06 2005, @10:56AM (#12451727)
      Knowing Sun, they are not going for a "it barely works" first release. These guys are quite serious about maintaining correct code. This is one of the things that OSS does *not* excel in particularly.

      People are always screaming at Sun to open source things (e.g. Java) but I wonder if the software quality would remain at the same high level as it is now. The good thing of Open Solaris is that drivers will be hacked, and Sun could take advantage of that. Let's hope it won't screw up their version management.

      From what I've seen, solaris is a very high quality, stable operating system. The only crash I ever saw from Solaris machines at the university was related to the floppy drive cable, which messed up communications inside the sparcstation.
      • You say this as if Java were of exceptionally high quality, but having used Java, Python and Ruby I would rate Python and Ruby fairly high, and Java somewhat below.

        I'm noy claiming that Java doesn't have it's advantages. It has a several year head start, so if it didn't have ANY advantages, that would speak quite poorly of it. But haveing used all three my preferences are Ruby, Python, Java in that order.

        OTOH, Ruby needs to work on diagnostic error messages, and needs more work on it's libraries, so for some projects I'd prefer Python (or Python + Pyrex). I've never done anything for which I would find Java a better choice, though I'm sure such projects exist. (And I'm also sure that some would place Perl up in this selection, but I've never used it, and so can't speak to its virtues and vices.)

        There are people who scream for Sun to "Open Source" Java, but having seen the licenses that they chose, I'm just as happy for them to leave it closed, so that others can develope various different Java compilers. (And that also says how anxious I am for OpenSolaris. Yes, I consider it vaproware, but this doesn't bother me at all. It fits the definition of vaporware. Sometime, after its release, then it won't fit that definition any more, but for now it does.)

      • Knowing Sun, they are not going for a "it barely works" first release. These guys are quite serious about maintaining correct code. This is one of the things that OSS does *not* excel in particularly.

        You're right: a perfect first release isn't the way most Libre projects proceed. They put together something that shows how good it could be, if only it were complete, and worked, then release it as version 0.0.1, and get some help.

        Sun seems to be trying to release a completed masterpiece. No help wante

  • In other news.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by asterix_2k1 (781702) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:32AM (#12450065)
    twelve thousand monkeys furiously coding for 3DRealms posted that Duke Nukem Forever should be out anytime soon...

  • What about a sample? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Vo0k (760020) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:32AM (#12450069) Journal
    Following the standard FOSS policy "release often", release some parts of the system that are ready - some demon, some apps, and keep adding. Linux wasn't built in a day, and the first versions required Minix to compile it, it was a long process of creating it. Why not release OpenSolaris piece-by-piece, so people interested in it could start working on the non-encumbered parts?

    Imagine this: I'm running commercial Solaris. I have some app provided by the system, that does the work in a realy kludgy way, with some of my custom wrapper scripts to let it work at all. I know I can fix it and make it work as it should with a few simple changes to the source of the app. I don't need whole OS. I need sources of this one single component. And they lay there on the harddrives of SUN employees, ready to release, waiting till some completely different parts are finished, and in the meantime I lose $1000 a day because the kludge doesn't do its job well enough. So why won't they release it?

    • Re:What about a sample? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      and in the meantime I lose $1000 a day because the kludge doesn't do its job well enough. So why won't they release it?

      Then you pay for a support contract - you'll save your money in no time.

      They don't *owe* you OpenSolaris. Let them do it in their own time.

    • Re:What about a sample? (Score:5, Informative)

      by blastwave (757518) on Friday May 06 2005, @08:23AM (#12450364)

      It will get released when everything is ready.

      I don't work for Sun but I have been in the OpenSolaris [opensolaris.org] pilot from Day One and I can tell you that I have been working like mad with it as have others. Myself [blastwave.org] and James Dickens [blogspot.com] worked night and day over the past weekend to build the OS on an E4000 as well as a LX50 machine for both enterprise class implementations and server room work. You can see the results of the workstation build at Blastwave.org [blastwave.org] and you need to watch James Dickens [blogspot.com] blog as well as mine [blastwave.org] to see progress that happens OUTSIDE of Sun. Not to mention the PowerPC port project at BlastWare [blastware.org] which will also make progress when some other bits are in place. There are partnerships in place to work on the PowerPC port and GENESI [pegasosppc.com] is behind this as well as others.

      Power is a big deal folks. Think of OpenSolaris on your IBM big iron also.

      So go make a coffee and relax. Its coming real soon now.

      Dennis Clarke
      Director Blastwave.org
      http://www.blastwave.org/ [blastwave.org]

  • what month is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daniel Ellard (799842) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:34AM (#12450077)
    OpenSolaris is supposed to appear in July. Did I oversleep today, or isn't it still May?

    It's a bit unfair to start calling something vaporware two months before the scheduled release.

    (I don't work on Solaris/OpenSolaris, so I have no special knowledge about the project, except that I know people are working are working on it.)

    • Slashdot as a community seems to have the opinion that if the announcement of something isnt accompanied by that something straight away, then its classed as vapourware, purely because slashdot bases its opinions on the workings of the opensource community, and that is completely unfair. If I announce an opensource project, I can immediately give anon read cvs access to the tree, regardless of whether theres anything in there. Sun cant do this tho, they have announced OpenSolaris to essentially placate
          • Sure, they should get the benefit of the doubt, but the more they push the OpenSolaris RealSoonNow(TM) advertisements we'll push back with *cough*vaporware*cough*.

            Don't let it hurt your feelings, just focus on getting the code out and the rumors will go away.

            Right now OpenSolaris is almost as stable and secure and revolutionary as Longhorn.

            You don't hear us touting the awesome new features that will be available in Linux 3.0 kernel or KDE 5.0 or X.org 6.9, do you? They will be out in a year or two. But

    • Until it's released it's vaporware. Vaporware is something announced, with no real stuff available. Open source Solaris fits this description nicely right now.

      If it takes until July to get ready, what was the point announcing it so early ?

      Markus

    • It's a bit unfair to start calling something vaporware two months before the scheduled release.


      I guess that is why it was called "vaporwear" instead.

  • Why doesn't Sun just post some chunks of it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:39AM (#12450105) Homepage
    So what's the big deal?

    Why not take some substantial CHUNK of partly-finished code, some chunk for which the licensing issues HAVE been resolved, slap on a disclaimer about it being pre-alpha, buggy, etc, and post it somewhere?

    If it's open source, there shouldn't be Apple-Steve-Jobs-like issues about maintaining secrecy until the actual moment of release.

  • Not "Official Sun Blogs" (Score:3)

    by scarhill (140669) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:39AM (#12450109) Homepage
    From the site [sun.com]:
    The individuals who post here work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are their own, are not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the individual authors, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.

    Sounds about as official as a Slashdot post to me.

    We all benefit when companies allow and encouragew their employees to blog. Calling blog posts "official" may sex up a /. article, but isn't really accurate.

  • Anonymous comments (Score:4, Funny)

    by bigtallmofo (695287) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:40AM (#12450110)
    "There is no OpenSolaris," read an anonymous post on operating systems news Web site OSNews.com. "Show us the code or quit mentioning it."

    Who gets infuriated by anonymous comments with no substance at all?

    You shouldn't spend too much brain power responding. The proper response is to respond anonymously with some stock comebacks:

    "Says you!"
    "Your mom!"

    That'll learn'em.

  • both do and do not work for Sun (Score:5, Funny)

    by Threni (635302) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:41AM (#12450123)
    > There are a lot of us out there who both do and do not work for Sun

    Wow! Quantum programmers!
    • Wow! Quantum programmers! So, may if we put them in a box hooked up to a poisonous gas tank...
    • Well, Sun pays them, but doesn't actually get any work out of them.
      Kinda like around here :-) It's a variant of the Heisenberg principle. You can know exactly what we're doing, but we'll spend all our time preparing status reports and PowerPoint (oops, OpenOffice) presentations and defending our decisions. Or we can actually do productive work, but you'll have no idea what it is until it is done.

  • vaporware actually means something (Score:5, Informative)

    by justins (80659) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:43AM (#12450131) Homepage Journal
    "Vaporware" refers to software which the publisher never intended to release, news of which was intended to have an effect on the market.

    Slipping on your release date would make just about every software product "vaporware", you retards.
  • There are a lot of us out there who both do and do not work for Sun.

    Well obviously they have been working hard, since their brain cells have been overworked, causing them to produce Zen sentences like this.

  • Correct English (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Morosoph (693565) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:50AM (#12450169) Homepage Journal
    Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporwear Claims
    'Refute' here should really read 'Deny': the proof is yet to come.

    • Re:Correct English (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eviltypeguy (521224) on Friday May 06 2005, @09:31AM (#12450874)
      No, part of the proof is already here in DTrace, since it is is an almost inseperable part of Solaris.

      Additionally, part of the proof is already here in that over 30 some pilot teams already have OpenSolaris such as blastwave.org, and so on.

      Finally, their announcement said it was to be released in Q2 of this year. Q2 isn't over yet...

      Really, the trolls are getting tiring.

  • If you're a regular reader of OSNews ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by nemaispuke (624303) on Friday May 06 2005, @07:50AM (#12450175)
    then you would know that that the guy who posted is a known troll and despite the efforts of Alan and other Sun employees who monitor OSNews this guy was still "foaming at the mouth". In fact one of the trolls posted his "parting shot" was to call Solaris users "nazis"! I think all of the posts in question have been pulled, because I could not find them.

    The problem with OSNews is that it seems to attract the "bottom feeder" users who have little real experience and tend to bitch and whine like children rather than to respond with well thought out arguments and present facts. I have caught people using FUD and outright lies to support their "positions" that Linux is better than Solaris. Well see ...

  • But it is vaporware (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DrXym (126579) on Friday May 06 2005, @08:00AM (#12450234)
    Being that vaporware is a term for long announced but unseen software projects. I wouldn't be too put out by someone making such a statement. As soon as the thing is released, such remarks will no longer be required.

    Of course the cynic in me might suggest that Sun preannounced the effort far too early, hoping it would sabotage enterprise adoption of Linux. And encourage more people to try out Solaris 10, even if Solaris 10 & Open Solaris are not the same things.

  • OpenSolaris will come out in stages (Score:4, Informative)

    by bout (128020) on Friday May 06 2005, @09:09AM (#12450695) Homepage
    Please note that OpenSolaris code will come out in stages.
    For details: Click here [tinyurl.com]
    And here [tinyurl.com]

    --Eric Boutilier [sun.com]

  • evidently it's June 30 (Score:3, Informative)

    by justins (80659) on Friday May 06 2005, @10:40AM (#12451475) Homepage Journal
    I actually didn't know the official release date until I saw this, I guess I don't obsess about release dates as much as some:
    http://www.oetrends.com/news.php?action=view_recor d&idnum=425 [oetrends.com]

    So, don't hold your breath but fairly soon, you will all be able to start bitching about the existence of an abhorrent competitor to Linux which you will never even consider using, rather than bitching about the nonexistence of an abhorrent competitor to Linux which you will never even consider using.
    • Nobody's accused Sun of not giving their OS away for free. They've been doing that since Solaris 8 (well, there's the cost of the media, but you could always obtain more licenses for free anyway.)

      The issue here is about Sun making an open source version of Solaris, a version Sun can sell at any price, we don't care, as long as people who obtain it aren't saddled with restrictions that prevent them from being able to make changes and distribute those changes in an open source fashion.

    • It's not like Sun has actually released anything. That's because it IS VAPORWARE.

      No. That's because it's not released yet. You didn't read the article, right? Or even the postings in the blog(s)?

      So according to you everything that is announced to be released, but not released quickly enough, is vaporware.

      Who needs to chill out? The people of Sun defending their product, or some kid yelling at a forum for the code to be released because he/she is getting impatient.

      *sigh* indeed ...
    • I wouldn't say "Open source sucks."

      It's more of a case where the open source way of life has turned many people into self-centered brats who refuse to understand any situation outside of what they personally desire.

    • Re:I know it exists. I'm in the pilot. (Score:5, Informative)

      by turgid (580780) on Friday May 06 2005, @08:45AM (#12450510) Journal
      Yes, well, I know it exists because I worked for Sun until I was RIF'd in February. This place is full of anti-Sun bigotry, hatred and lies. It's kind of ironic, because despite Jonathan Schwartz's mouth, Sun is very Open Source and Free Software freindly. It's just been getting a bit pointy-haired recently.

      Anyway, it's not my problem any more, thank goodness.

        • Re:I know it exists. I'm in the pilot. (Score:4, Informative)

          by turgid (580780) on Friday May 06 2005, @09:09AM (#12450693) Journal
          McNealy's a fool to himself - rather than embracing the open source community as an ally instead of an enemy five years ago, Solaris might well have been taken seriously as an OS on non-Sun hardware.

          He never said that, well, not five years ago. It's RedHat he views as an enemy. Schwartz is the real fool. The engineers at Sun are far more clued-up and many of them are contributors to high-profile projects on a personal level, besides official projects like GNOME and OpenOffice.org.

          I'm afraid the Pointy-Hairs don't see the value of community. To them it's all Wall Street, Java and "Kill RedHat." They very nearly missed Opteron.

          Opteron could save Sun.

          Let's face it, would Sun even consider making Solaris open source if Linux didn't exist?

          I doubt it. But then the competition would only be Windows, not RedHat.

          People forget that "Solaris 1.x" was BSD Unix. Sun was behind all the major innovations and standards.

          Like I said, I couldn't care less any more, my only concern is for the great friends and colleagues still at Sun forced to toil under the pointy-haired regieme that still doesn't quite get it.

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