A reader wrote today wondering why my entries have slowed down and there isn’t a lot of news coming. Quite simply there isn’t much to say. I’ve felt a need to return to blogging various smaller technical posts just to keep the blog on life support until something happens at Oracle.
Larry ranted about Sun’s problems to Reuters recently. Perhaps the only surprise was this: “More infuriating, says Ellison, is that Sun routinely sold equipment at a loss because it was more focused on boosting revenue than generating profits.” I think we all knew Sun was taking it in the shins to push sales, but apparently it was more widespread than I was aware. Larry added that Sun spent a fortune on airfaire the last days of a quarter to pack it in.
But I, like many of you, am focused on where we are now. Right now Oracle isn’t saying squat about the future of Solaris… just “its not dead, please wait.”
Regarding Solaris 11. There is no word. I personally believe with complete confidence that Oracle will announce Solaris 11(g?) at OpenWorld this September. I have no proof or evidence, I just personal believe it to be consistent with how Oracle operates and the development pace in Solaris Engineering. I think they’ll stay quiet until that release and then push Solaris forward with great gusto.
Regarding OpenSolaris 2010.03. It’s now 2.5 months late. It could come this week, it could come in 3 months… there is no way to tell. OpenSolaris dev updates on pkg.opensolaris.org have stalled at snv_134, so we know that snv_134 is the target build for 2010.03, but thats about it. I know they are working hard toward it, but I don’t know why or how or what precisely they are doing. Maybe they are vetting out all the compatability issues or fixing AI so it can get real adoption, but whats clear is that they are putting a lot of effort into something a lot of people think will be killed or sidelined.
A theory that just pops into my head is that Solaris 11 itself may be based on snv_134 as well and they are working on both to align them. Maybe that’s possible. I don’t know, its just a thought that comes to mind.
In the meantime, there is an increased exodus to Linux and other platforms. Particularly from customers who were unsatisfied with Solaris 10 and embraced SX:CE as an interim solution.
Some of you will recall my OPEN LETTER TO ORACLE. It got no response. None. Nothing.
Some of you will have noticed my push to explore the OpenSolaris delays through “proper channels”, that is through the OGB. The idea was this… OpenSolaris is developed in several OpenSolaris.org Community Groups (CGs), such as pkg (for IPS), Indiana, Distribution, ON (the kernel itself), SFW, etc. Therefore, if we wish to get answers, perhaps the OGB should simply formally request a status report from the appropriate CGs! That makes sense right? But the board members can’t seem to think this way… they insist that “OpenSolaris” the distro is an Oracle controlled thing and therefore won’t even try. The OGB has no interest in governing their own community or even making attempts, vain as they may be, to make progress. This is precisely why I declined nomination this year, the OGB is completely useless. The press that resulted from my proding turned into a useless circus with OGB members suggesting a fork is imminent…. and that’s simply madness.
But… is hope lost? NO! Is Solaris dead? NO! I still believe that things will be made right and that a new era is opening up for Solaris. We’re simply in a very scary transition period which will pass with time. Once Solaris 11 is released we’ll look back and wonder why we all made such a big fuss…. but it would sure be easier if we got a little love from Oracle or Solaris Engineering.
Keep the faith. Try to keep your organizations from flee’ing a great platform and just stick it out as long as you can. Lets all hope that Oracle gives us a little support here and lets all just keep taking it in the crotch until that time.
Here’s hoping. I dearly need some of the NFS interoperability bugfixes that were supposed to be in 2010.03.
thanks ben, good to see not everyone lost the faith.
Well said.
Really the only thing that concerns me coming out of Oracle is the discontinuation of Academic Purchasing programs and is related to what Ellison said about how cheap Sun was selling hardware. With out those incentives my data center won’t be spending money on Sun hardware for future upgrades. Where Sun was seeing a couple server hardware purchases from us a year, Oracle will probably only see support renewals and the occasional Sunray.
2010.03 is not “late”. Despite the name, only one actual release date was ever announced, and that was “first half of 2010″.
Oracle should detach OpenSolaris from being “Solaris Next” and let it live on its own. It should out make ALL processes related to OpenSolaris open, no exceptions. They can use Solaris for their closed/proprietary development. They have to start communicating as a true open source project and make ALL processes open. Solaris can be as closed as they want but it’s not the way to run OpenSolaris with all this secrecy and internal processes that people keep saying they aren’t allow to talk about because management has said so. For people only worried about Oracle’s OpenSolaris binary distribution version 2010.x all I can say is this: you couldn’t be less selfish (getting something for free and behaving like a “customer”).
@Tardis: not actually communicating a proper release engineering schedule is actually pretty bad. 2010.3 being late is the least of our problems.
Agree with Cody on the academic purchasing programs. I actually wrote a blog post about it too, but I think the last time I mentioned that here I got marked as a spammer or something. In fact if I list my blog as the URL above, it marks it as spam too.
@Giovanni: I agree that closed and secretive development approach without clearly specified policies is totally out of place for an open source project.
@Tardis: Come on. Ian Murdock’s plan for OpenSolaris was regular, on time, 6 month release cycles. The name reflects that commitment (even though they pushed those 6 month points slightly to better align with the market). 2010.03 is, regardless of how you want to look at it, late. Don’t confuse OpenSolaris naming with Solaris naming.
@William: I’m sorry about my spam filter. Pivot (my blog software) sucks… the filter is completely stupid and I myself get the same pain. I haven’t had the time to swap it over to WordPress so I can actually get a solid solution.
Please know that the filter is autonomous and based on an auto-updating keyword list. Its not personal or moderated by me in any way.
@benr:
Any way to override?
From been a OS that was a real alternative with great innovative sollutions, this silence is making people/customers to look for alternatives.
I was planning on using OpenSolaris in a University Course I give, but now I am consider other sollutions. Why? Because the things that makes OpenSolaris great are happening in Linux world (not that great implementations, but still). It’s not like delays doesn’t happen there (I am I Debian fan since 2002, so you should know I have got lots of good practice in waiting
). There I / customers at least get to know what happens, what is the cause of the delay.
I CAN take a delay, IF I know WHY and WHAT I’m waitning for!
Oracle is earning lots and lots of badwill right now, with people reconsidering there previous choises and preferences.
I started a new startup, and plan to deploy our first product in June. Right now, I started hedging my bets by requalifying my software on a FreeBSD 8.0 environment. The main issue is the lack of SMF, but ZFS and DTrace are there.
I agree with your thoughts on Solaris 11. I’ve had the same exact thoughts. With Oracle known for being a revenue generating company, what better way then to release Opensolaris as Solaris 11. This is why it’s taking an extensively long time to release, they need to debug it completely, and they need to keep quiet about it. Opensolaris will continue after Solaris 11, the same as it was proceeding previously. When will this happen? Probably around the end of June. Then everything will go back to normal but with Solaris 11 for sale and supported. The only thing I haven’t completely thought about yet is if they will release it on different hardware, such as an Oracle branded Laptop or Workstation (not an Ultra 27). Any way, I agree something big will occur and we’ll all be glad when it does.
I agree with your thoughts on Solaris 11.
@Paul: I think you can scratch out laptops and workstations in general. Those days are over. There isn’t revinue in it. The days of the $4,000 workstation market are long long past.
What I would really like to see from Oracle is an equal citizen adoption much like Sun did, of x64. We’ve got a lot of investments in that platform and believe it works very well. So far I see release trains where Linux is first, Solaris SPARC next, then HP-UX and AIX. Last if at any time at all, comes Solaris x64. It’s incredibly sad if they equate x64 with Linux and SPARC with Solaris. But if that happens, we will jump ship and never look back this time. Linux is not what we want but we are committed to the x64 platform.
@Fazal Majid: FreeBSD 8.0 is a good platform (and would also be a good teaching-platfom…), but 8.1 will hopefully weed out a lot of bugs.
At least, it has much less insanities than Linux….but increasingly, new software is released on Linux only (or Windows, but that doesn’t count anyway). Best example: Zend. Required us to introduce some more Ubuntu-servers, even though we thought we could get rid of that stuff at some point…. Not so.
And currently, no sane ISV will spend a thought over whether to port to Solaris or not…
Totally keeping the faith here, Ben!
thank you for your post!
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When the delays caused by the EU were ongoing Larry was saying how much money this was going to cost. I doubt as much as is being lost as people give up on ex-Sun stuff. People will only hang on in there for a short while before moving on. Assuming they havn’t already.
I still remember 2002 when Sun announced removing support for intel solaris ( after I had spent three months convincing a client that intel Solaris would assist reducing costs). the de-support was announced one month after servers deployed. Oracle stopped oracle9 on intel solaris.
I still don’t trust them.
Re Mike
)
Yes I remember that, replaced the bulk of the Schools old Sparc boxes and put Solaris x86 on a bunch of Tiny PCs The Linux fans had a bit of a laugh at me over that! (Still that’s one I just got away with
It’s hard to “keep faith” when I read in ONNV logs and the source code all the changes going in because of IPS.
IPS seriously concerns me, and it worries me, because things which are possible with SVR4 packaging are simply not possible with IPS.
Or, if they are possible, there is no documentation that states what all *is* possible to do with IPS.
What little documentation is out there in .txt files and Wiki entries has not been written for general consumption, and by that, I compare the essays on IPS to “Application packaging developer’s guide”, which is a complete book that details how a SVR4 package works, what is, and what is not possible to do with the packaging system.
For example, the “self assembly” in IPS — what IS that? How is it supposed to work? Are there any examples, and if there are, where are they? No idea, and I’m the guy keeping tabs on the changesets in ONNV!
Another big and grave concern of mine is, all the essays and nuggets of information on IPS convey the stance that the only thing which will ever need scripting is adding drivers. Configuration files, my favorite topic, get mentioned inasmuch as configuration fragments, which are then “self assembled” by SMF. Well, that might work for Sun produced bits, but what about the world of all that other external software, which has no concept of SMF, this “self assembly”, or include directives?
I got my start on SunOS in the early 90′s and have logged 1000′s of admin hours on Solaris 8, 9 and 10, but I have lost faith in both Solaris and Sun hardware. I now have only 4 Sparc servers to look after and as much as I enjoy working on them, they really are not a match with either commodity servers and Linux, or P Series LPARs and AIX. They do have some finer points (zfs and dtrace) and I do feel at home working on them, but they don’t seem to fit into the price/performance/flexibility destinations I need.
Ben you’re spot on as usual. Frankly, customers don’t really care if you temporarily fail or change your mind, they just want to know you’re working on it. Silence is death to a product. Customers look for certainty and either you fill that vacuum for them with your running explanation, or they’ll fill it themselves by picking a new direction.
Ben, there is still a thriving market for $4000+ workstations. They just all happen to have Apple logos slathered on the side. My Ultra 40M2 feels geriatric when compared to my octo-core Mac Pro with SSD boot drive, but Sun doesn’t make a single workstation that I’d care for. The HP Z600 and Z800 look good, but I am not sure whether they run Solaris or not.
Ive been following Ben’s blog for a long time
, and I have got Ben’s help on lots of solaris issues, I would even go as far as saying I got my SCSA because of Ben’s help/education & blog 
.
However I gave up on Sun a few years ago. I personally dont think Oracle will produce anything great. I think Oracle is going to sell Solaris as the Enterprise OS which costs mega bucks etc..
I cant see anything amazing happening. Opensolaris is the only light which currently is about to go out unless something is done. I would have thought it would have continued regardless of what happend to Sun, but it seems they’ve given up.
Fazal,
You raise a good point, but the thing about Apple’s $4000 workstations is they’re actually reasonably good deals compared to commodity PCs with the same specs. If you spec out a high-end Mac Pro tower, then try to spec out something from, say, Dell with the same level of performance, it’s hard to make it come out cheaper than Apple’s pricing. I’m not as up to date on Sun’s offerings, but I’ve never gotten the impression that they were comparable to commodity PCs in terms of performance for the dollar.
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@Cody: Our research department misses the Sun EDU hardware discounts, too. And, the X64 hardware warranty dropped from 3 years to 1 year, and since you can only get Oracle Premium support, that really raises the cost. So, we’re buying Dell servers now. Goodbye, Sun.
My opinions, not my employer.
Meeting with the (current) Sun Resellers tomorrow. It’s probably going to be a bloodbath.
I think Oracle will get things worked out. Eventually. If there’s anybody left. By this time next year, we should have moved most of all our production from Sparc to Linux x86 on Dells. We’ll have our main Oracle DB on Sparc – for now. I suspect by next year that’ll be moved as well.
Right now our resellers can’t quote us State Contract pricing without a week wait for a special dispensation. (And sometimes they get rejected despite being _Contract_ pricing.) We can’t even get a straight answer if EBS is still available.
Add to that the Dell and IBM sales guys are homing like sharks, stretching the truth rather heavily and sometimes pushing real whoppers. But they’re _almost_ true enough that it’s plausible.
Management’s lost all confidence in the Sun line. Most of my contemporaries report identical problems in their shops.
By the time they get it straight, it will be far too late in many datacenters.
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