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Illumos's response to Oracle killing OpenSolaris

37 points by mapleoin 16y ago

makmanalp 16y ago
Oooh, this is going to improve Oracle's already brilliant public image.
- gaius 16y ago
  Oracle is used to a world where it sells products to people who don't care either way about things like this. Your head of HR decides they want to use Oracle HR; by the time IT even hears about it it's a done deal. Same with Oracle Financials or any other parts of their Applications suite. It remains to be seen however what the former customers of Sun decide. Certainly anyone running Sybase on Solaris will be urgently planning their next move...
js2 16y ago
“I once said I never intended for Illumos to compete with Solaris. That was true, but if Oracle forces the issue, then even despite their vast economic resources, I say, "Bring it!"” Insane.
- nochiel 16y ago
  Ambitious but perhaps slightly naive? If Oracle have decided that they want to build the best Solaris engineering team then it's only a matter of time before they actually do. The best engineers gravitate towards the hardest problems, the biggest paycheques and other brilliant hackers. Oracle easily provides the first and will quickly provide the last two. In fact, it won't surprise me to see people who've recently left going back to Oracle within a year or two. Either that, or people better than they are will fill the empty slots. Worse still, anyone working on OpenSolaris is simply doing R&D for Oracle.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    While I agree with the "free work" thing, Oracle doesn't necessarily have all the great hackers - lots of those have already left.
  - bcantrill 16y ago
    You are missing an important motivator of great engineers: we seek out hard, commercially-relevant problems of course, but these problems must also be societally relevant and responsible. While our actions may often reflect it only implicitly, many of us take this professional responsibility to society very seriously; we need to be engaged in enterprises that both understand and encourage this. Conversely, when an organization loses engineers over issues of principle, getting them back is essentially impossible.
po 16y ago
This is good to see, as it can be quite disheartening when something you worked on is effectively killed. That being said, this talk needs to be backed up with code quickly. People will be evaluating their options and they will wait only so long. There needs to be a credible effort.
- X-Istence 16y ago
  Not only that, but all of us who have, or were planning to run OpenSolaris based machines in datacenters are now having to once again re-consider and look for alternatives. If this new project can take the space that OpenSolaris was once in it would be absolutely fantastic.
signa11 16y ago
what happens to zfs and dtrace ? i know dtrace does exist on osx in some shape and form, but if zfs was lost, it would be kind of sad ;(
- bcantrill 16y ago
  DTrace is in fine shape -- Oracle has monopoly over neither DTrace talent nor implementation. (And the significant patent portfolio around DTrace is licensed to anyone who abides by the CDDL -- and the name itself is not trademarked.) ZFS is more complicated; most ZFS implementation expertise exists within Oracle's walls (for now), but the system is also much more done than it was even a year ago, and the system as it stands is suitable for much (if not most) enterprise use. So even at worst, ZFS will not be "lost" -- it will either be frozen in time or forked, depending on the fate of the ZFS team itself...
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
I'd really like this to succeed, but Oracle and NetApp´s legal wrangling is a serious problem (if Oracle is willing to assert patents against Google, why not against OpenSolaris? And NetApp is already fighting over ZFS...)

37 points by mapleoin 16y ago

makmanalp 16y ago

Oooh, this is going to improve Oracle's already brilliant public image.

gaius 16y ago
Oracle is used to a world where it sells products to people who don't care either way about things like this. Your head of HR decides they want to use Oracle HR; by the time IT even hears about it it's a done deal. Same with Oracle Financials or any other parts of their Applications suite. It remains to be seen however what the former customers of Sun decide. Certainly anyone running Sybase on Solaris will be urgently planning their next move...

js2 16y ago

“I once said I never intended for Illumos to compete with Solaris. That was true, but if Oracle forces the issue, then even despite their vast economic resources, I say, "Bring it!"” Insane.

nochiel 16y ago
Ambitious but perhaps slightly naive? If Oracle have decided that they want to build the best Solaris engineering team then it's only a matter of time before they actually do. The best engineers gravitate towards the hardest problems, the biggest paycheques and other brilliant hackers. Oracle easily provides the first and will quickly provide the last two. In fact, it won't surprise me to see people who've recently left going back to Oracle within a year or two. Either that, or people better than they are will fill the empty slots. Worse still, anyone working on OpenSolaris is simply doing R&D for Oracle.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  While I agree with the "free work" thing, Oracle doesn't necessarily have all the great hackers - lots of those have already left.
- bcantrill 16y ago
  You are missing an important motivator of great engineers: we seek out hard, commercially-relevant problems of course, but these problems must also be societally relevant and responsible. While our actions may often reflect it only implicitly, many of us take this professional responsibility to society very seriously; we need to be engaged in enterprises that both understand and encourage this. Conversely, when an organization loses engineers over issues of principle, getting them back is essentially impossible.

po 16y ago

This is good to see, as it can be quite disheartening when something you worked on is effectively killed. That being said, this talk needs to be backed up with code quickly. People will be evaluating their options and they will wait only so long. There needs to be a credible effort.

X-Istence 16y ago
Not only that, but all of us who have, or were planning to run OpenSolaris based machines in datacenters are now having to once again re-consider and look for alternatives. If this new project can take the space that OpenSolaris was once in it would be absolutely fantastic.

signa11 16y ago

what happens to zfs and dtrace ? i know dtrace does exist on osx in some shape and form, but if zfs was lost, it would be kind of sad ;(

bcantrill 16y ago
DTrace is in fine shape -- Oracle has monopoly over neither DTrace talent nor implementation. (And the significant patent portfolio around DTrace is licensed to anyone who abides by the CDDL -- and the name itself is not trademarked.) ZFS is more complicated; most ZFS implementation expertise exists within Oracle's walls (for now), but the system is also much more done than it was even a year ago, and the system as it stands is suitable for much (if not most) enterprise use. So even at worst, ZFS will not be "lost" -- it will either be frozen in time or forked, depending on the fate of the ZFS team itself...

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

I'd really like this to succeed, but Oracle and NetApp´s legal wrangling is a serious problem (if Oracle is willing to assert patents against Google, why not against OpenSolaris? And NetApp is already fighting over ZFS...)