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Sun Microsystems Operating Systems Software Unix

Sun Developers Refute OpenSolaris Vaporware Claims 282

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

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  • by justins ( 80659 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @08:43AM (#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.
  • by nemaispuke ( 624303 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @08:50AM (#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 ...

  • by Zemplar ( 764598 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @08:52AM (#12450185) Journal
    Look at Blastwave's article http://www.blastwave.org/articles/BLS-0026/index.h tml [blastwave.org] for a good glimpse of OpenSolaris.
  • by blastwave ( 757518 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @09:23AM (#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]
  • by Zenophran ( 139656 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @09:28AM (#12450394)
    and they said that the reason it's taken so long was that they had to buy some IP that they'd previously licensed but couldn't release. They're in the process of finalising that now.
  • by turgid ( 580780 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @09:45AM (#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.

  • IPV4 shortages (Score:3, Informative)

    by stoborrobots ( 577882 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @10:06AM (#12450669)
    Sig Reply
    --
    Shortage of IPv4 addresses? lynx -dump http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space [iana.org] | grep "IANA - Reserved"


    Whoa - that's freaky... No wonder there's no real incentive to go to IPV6.... :-)

    Although to be fair, thats only 89 class A's (or should I say, "/8"s) which means that it represents only 35% of the total address space. We don't have enough room to double - and with the exponential growth in network-capable devices, the doubling time is steadily getting shorter...

    FWIW, a good read on the matter is at http://bgp.potaroo.net/ipv4/ [potaroo.net]. Geoff's analysis concludes that we run out of addresses somewhere between March 2014 and February 2022.

  • by turgid ( 580780 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @10:09AM (#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.

  • by bout ( 128020 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @10:09AM (#12450695)
    Please note that OpenSolaris code will come out in stages.
    For details: Click here [tinyurl.com]
    And here [tinyurl.com]

    --Eric Boutilier [sun.com]

  • I remember... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06, 2005 @10:11AM (#12450702)
    When NeverWinter Nights came out, it only had a Windows version. Originally it was slated to have versions for MacOS, Linux, and Windows, at the release, in the box. I bought it anyhow, but there were some (vocal) Linux people who pre-ordered it, and were very upset.

    Still, BioWare tried to make good on their promise to those people by at least eventually releasing a Linux port of the game (but not the toolset). However, this took them quite some time, and in the meantime, some people were very upset due to the lateness, the promises, the lack of the toolset, etc., etc....

    However: months before they had released anything, I was already playing the game on Linux, (thanks to wine!) and a fork of wine (NWWine) was created just to run the toolset. Some people will complain about anything; others manage to get things done instead.

    Now, on to Solaris. It has been available for free (as in beer) [sun.com] (WARNING: Scary sumo-wrestler-looking dork in pajama bottoms--I think they're trying to scare people away!) for some time now. So if you just want to run Solaris, (and why would you...) that is not a problem.

    Also, Sun distributes copious amounts of freeware, and there's a free alternative (with source) to just about anything you could want on Solaris. Except the kernel, which would necessitate running another OS on the same hardware (Linux? NetBSD? Still many choices here).

    So--given all this--what's the real market for OpenSolaris. Solaris kernel hackers? Gentoo Solaris? Honestly... not much. And: it isn't behind schedule, and it will be free--no one is pre-ordering it. So what's the big deal? Some people will complain about anything; others manage to get things done instead. And in the first category, I include both anonymous posters, and OpenSolaris developers. :)
  • by justins ( 80659 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:40AM (#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.
  • by Spectra72 ( 13146 ) on Friday May 06, 2005 @11:52AM (#12451643)
    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?

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