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I think that Solaris and SPARC had different fates in this regard: Solaris was dead the moment they (re)closed it in 2010 -- there was simply no way that Solar

I think that Solaris and SPARC had different fates in this regard: Solaris was dead the moment they (re)closed it in 2010 -- there was simply no way that Solaris was going to survive as a proprietary operating system (the era for which had passed half a decade before). As for SPARC, Oracle does seem to have invested heavily, in part because of the elaborate self-delusion that Ellison seemed to have that he could develop magical database hardware that would somehow repeal the laws of physics. As for the warning, it is indeed apt; Oracle is a mechanized and myopic profit-maximizer -- a remorseless and shameless corporate sociopath that lacks the ability to feel anything at all for its customers. Yes, your products will die of asphyxiation and incompetence and so on, but the much more acute damage will be to one's sense of purpose in the world: working for Oracle is a nonstop trip to either an existential crisis or a mercenary's existence (or both). And as many discovered on Friday, working for such an entity out of a noble (if misplaced) sense of duty or loyalty is pointless; Oracle feels nothing for you, its employees, for the same reason it feels nothing for its customers or its partners or the domain or the industry or society writ large: because it feels nothing at all.

alexvoda 9y ago
"Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison [or Oracle] " - Bryan Cantrill
- pgeorgi 9y ago
  > ... - Bryan Cantrill Guess who that "bcantrill" person is that you replied to :-)
davidgerard 9y ago
The moment Oracle acquired Sun, early 2010, I called a meeting with my boss and boss's boss and said "Speaking as a Solaris admin, with several years' Solaris on my CV, we need to get off Solaris immediately and move to Linux." Took us a couple of years for most of it, and the last went when we finally got rid of Oracle and hence its SPARC box. Stack was substantially internally-developed Java.
twoodfin 9y ago
As for SPARC, Oracle does seem to have invested heavily, in part because of the elaborate self-delusion that Ellison seemed to have that he could develop magical database hardware that would somehow repeal the laws of physics. Any idea what (if any) the academic or other foundations of this delusion were & how far Oracle got before cutting their losses? Rock seems to have been suffocated before the ink on the acquisition was dry so I'm assuming that's not it. I love reading about the dead-end roads of computer engineering, especially those that had a few gigadollars driven down them.

alexvoda 9y ago

"Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison [or Oracle] " - Bryan Cantrill

pgeorgi 9y ago
> ... - Bryan Cantrill Guess who that "bcantrill" person is that you replied to :-)

davidgerard 9y ago

The moment Oracle acquired Sun, early 2010, I called a meeting with my boss and boss's boss and said "Speaking as a Solaris admin, with several years' Solaris on my CV, we need to get off Solaris immediately and move to Linux." Took us a couple of years for most of it, and the last went when we finally got rid of Oracle and hence its SPARC box. Stack was substantially internally-developed Java.

twoodfin 9y ago

As for SPARC, Oracle does seem to have invested heavily, in part because of the elaborate self-delusion that Ellison seemed to have that he could develop magical database hardware that would somehow repeal the laws of physics. Any idea what (if any) the academic or other foundations of this delusion were & how far Oracle got before cutting their losses? Rock seems to have been suffocated before the ink on the acquisition was dry so I'm assuming that's not it. I love reading about the dead-end roads of computer engineering, especially those that had a few gigadollars driven down them.