Everyone seems to have missed - or be ignoring - the fundamentals of Oracle. They aren't in this game to change the world (ala Sun), or improve the lives of developers, they're in this to make <i>bucket loads of cash</i> if products they acquire will not make them money - they will ruthlessly cut it.<p>They aren't hackers. They aren't designers. They aren't entrepreneurs. They're business men.<p>Similarly if you <i>dare</i> compete with Oracle, you're going up against a company similar to Microsoft 10 years ago: rich and mean. Look at someone like Google, you think they're evil? Oracle could literally wipe them off the planet if they were inclined. The fact people hate upon Apple or Google, or even Microsoft when Oracle is the towering nemesis is hilarious. At least Oracle doesn't bullshit you. Google? Do no evil? You're a public company.<p>Vision, for the greater good, wanting to change the world are all well and great, but when the chips are down, you know what counts? Revenues. As Larry Ellison once said about Sun: "Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales"<p>and you know what? I <i>admire</i> them for that. I respect that they walk <i>that</i> line. They're a public company, and god dammit, they're going to win. I would rather spend a year working with Larry than Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or the Google guys.
Having never used OpenSolaris this is no hardship for me. However, it's looking like Oracle is a company that is quite hostile to open source, so this also raises concerns for what will happen to the likes of OpenOffice and VirtualBox. In general it also raises questions about the wisdom of open source developers assigning their copyrights over to a particular company, who may subsequently choose to betray their generosity. If I'd made significant contributions to OpenSolaris I'd probably be feeling as sick as a parrot right now.
OpenSolaris was dead long ago, this only opened the eyes to the people optimistic that things will change and there will be a future OpenSolaris release.<p>"We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express." -- Says enough.<p>"We will continue to grow a vibrant developer and system administrator community for Solaris." -- I really wonder how.
Note that this is <i>not</i> the end of source code releases of Solaris:<p><i>We will continue to use the CDDL license statement in nearly all Solaris source code files. We will not remove the CDDL from any files in Solaris to which it already applies, and new source code files that are created will follow the current policy regarding applying the CDDL (simply, that usr/src files will have the CDDL, and the very small minority of files in usr/closed might not have it). Use of other open licenses in non-ON consolidations (e.g. GPL in the Desktop area) will also continue. As before, requests to change the license associated with source code are case-by-case decisions.</i><p><i>We will distribute updates to approved CDDL or other open source- licensed code following full releases of our enterprise Solaris operating system. In this manner, new technology innovations will
show up in our releases before anywhere else. We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time while it is developed, on a nightly basis.</i><p>In other words, the Solaris development process is becoming more closed, but you'll still be able to see the source code for any given release. Or at least, that's how I interpret the above.<p>I'm not in touch enough with Solaris development to know how much of a practical impact this will have--how many non-Sun/Oracle people work on OpenSolaris?
Oracle will become the most hated company in the world (after mircosoft) when they kill java (because of ineptitude), kill mysql (because they can) and kill opensolaris (oops, they just did it)
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Hi, I'm a beginner programmer. I'm interested in learning to program Java and MySQL on Solaris, where should I begin to learn this free and open platform?
</sarcasm>
hmm...
The world is moving to be a more open society. It's not the place where evil can survive. Previously, dictatorship[corp] were allow to live peacefully because they control the media, and pretty much had control of their images. The landscape has changed and everybody is the media. I think it's to google's competitive advantage to be seen as good. I don't think a lot of companies have notice the landscape has changed, so they conduct business as normal.<p>The game still is survival of the fittest, but for this landscape, the fittest are good.<p>Without a doubt Google has the popular vote. I constantly hear people compare SUN to Google. Sun died, when? lol<p>Conceive a scenario where Google died tomorrow; now compare that to when Sun passed[it really did?]. It's not the same thing. "Google" is the most frequently used noun on HN, with almost 3 times the frequency of "Apple" [<a href="http://chegra.posterous.com/word-frequencies-in-front-page-hn-titles" rel="nofollow">http://chegra.posterous.com/word-frequencies-in-front-page-h...</a>]<p>Sun might be good for hackers, but Google takes it to a further extent and brought it to everybody.<p>Certain companies, besides their shareholders nobody cares if they live or die; nobody is super excited about their product. Nobody is saying they want to go work for them.
The only reason why they exist is because they were best of the first movers.<p>It's common practice when a company gets big in order to innovate it purchases smaller companies. You don't innovate you die. All the big companies employ this strategy(really, when last Apple bought somebody-NeXT?).
As an entrepreneur or a Hacker and being aware of the current situation, I think if you were going to sell your company you will stay away from Oracle; they will kill your culture. Also, given their business nature, they might even undercut you; it's more to your advantage to do business with someone who is good. And this is where I think Oracle has lost its advantage, it wouldn't be able to innovate.
Isn't the good part of being open-source, that you can fork it at any point?<p>If there is any interest in OpenSolaris, someone will fork it and continue the development.