Open source

OpenSolaris released in time to die?

Sun has never been buddies with IBM and since I still bleed blue and like the company named IBM, most days, I have a bit of disdain for SUN and it’s not just because they are who they are I have tons of reasons not to like them. Sun has spent the past 8 years fumbling the ball and failing all over the place and even while they have poor financial performance and what I would consider average. It’s sad that the stock holders do call it quits and let them be purchased by someone who might pay half of what they think that are worth. Not sure who would touch them now that they are all over the place.

With that said I am an open source advocate, and I think Linux is doing pretty good, I do however have questions about OpenSolaris and the lack of WOW wrapped around it. I read daily the blog put out there by Jim Grisanzio and while it is the most popular blog at Sun’s site he reveals some of the problems with OpenSolaris and is always willing to air their dirty laundry to make a point.

I also have trouble with the Sun Open Source model, where some things are open and others are not. While I can’t keep track of any of it, the whole idea just seems very stupid to me. Plus the fact that the hardware they are selling on the “cheap” side of things is just that, cheap. It’s utter rubbish and should be avoided at all costs. Any IT person woth their salt would avoid Sun equipment until they get their act together. I have seen some if it and it’s not worth what they are charging.

While I would love to see some hearty competition between Linux and OpenSolaris I think the fact that OpenSolaris is out there supporting a company that makes a profit on the backs of the free help is a bit of an odd model to me.

Here are some interesting points:

“OpenSolaris has been released under an Open Source license,” it doesn’t have “an Open Source development community.”

“OpenSolaris’ biggest trouble is that while it’s taken three years for OpenSolaris to reach a point where general techie sorts will get it a try, the Linux distributors, especially Red Hat, Novell/SUSE and Ubuntu, has been moving in strength both to the public and to enterprise customers.”

While I wish the project luck I don’t see much future for it, the teams inside OpenSolaris fight constantly and there are some unsavory IT has beens on the board as well who have not done well in IT much less helping OpenSolaris.

I also think Sun and Jonathan Schwartz are really hanging on, and in the next four or five years unless they make something truly remarkable will be sunk. He is a pony tailed silicon valley chatter mouth and if we were to shake his head you could hear his brain rattle around in it. Sadly everyone at Sun likes his goofy know nothing smile and puts up with his poor performances and his blathering blog where he rambles on and on about nothing of significance.

This post is not an attack on Jim at all. I point out that Jim is one of the most well spoken and articulate people in the OpenSolaris community. I respect the work he does and know at the end of the day if OpenSolaris fails it would have more to do with Sun doing to much and developers arguing and belittling each other inside the project vs. anything Jim did. I just recently saw a video with Johathan on it talking about how Sun is going to make a comeback here in the next few years with their new server strategy. I still think Solaris is flawed in that it is not easy to deploy or use for the average business. It does not make computing easy at any point like the i does. I also read this which is just like to males getting out the yard stick. More does not always mean better, and in this case with all that hardware they still have run out of capacity?

Two things from IBM today. UC² and Lotus Symphony

While I don’t see anyone covering this, I figured I would so that IBM gets some fair play on the old blogs.

IBM has launched a pretty funny little movie about UC² that is about Unified Communications. Using Sametime and other Lotus based products to collaborate. I can assure you Lotus does this much better than any Microsoft product.

Lotus Symphony is being shrugged off as another Lotus product meant to deliver nothing and complicate the Lotus offering. I have found since I have started using it to be neither of the two. Lotus Symphony gives you an office product in your Lotus Notes 8 client. It’s well done and can only get better over time. If your a Word or Excel power user I think it’s going to take time before it’s that fancy but then again Excel didn’t get there overnight either. I can remember when people were complaining about Excel not being as full featured as Lotus 1-2-3? Link to article

Do you want more OS/2?

My first moments with OS/2 came in 1992 when I started to work with IBM PS/2 that came with Windows 3.1 or OS/2 v2. Of course being the rebel I picked OS/2. I also ran PC Support for OS/2 conecting to my AS/400 at the time. A very large E95. I was then later exposed to more OS/2 fun when I worked at IBM in Atlanta. On our production desktops we ran OS/2 V3 and before I left IBM I was running Warp4.  Warp4 was in fact the best OS/2 ever. I was a huge fan of OS/2. I had found Linux but it was so hard to install.

So still being a fan of OS/2 it made me kind of sad to think IBM won’t OPEN SOURCE OS/2 for the rest of the world to use. We need Warp5 so bad. Linux is really making end roads but an new version of OS/2 would have made me happy. Let’s all hope IBM does the right thing and let the community have the source code for OS/2 and sooner rather than later.

Do you have any OS/2 stories and what do you think about IBM not making OS/2 open source?