A couple of days ago, Techbert noted that Sun firmware downloads were no longer available from Oracle. This is just one more way that Oracle has been withdrawing from Sun’s traditional open stance.
Oracle already has stated it would not be putting all new technologies into OpenSolaris, and that it would provide support for all Sun servers in the (customer’s) data center or none at all.
The entire character of Sun’s offerings has changed, and for the customer, not for the better.
HP announced that the HP ITRC is to undergo maintenance late in May, during which time the ITRC will be read-only.
Maintenance will start on May 19 at 6:30 am GMT, and end on May 22 at 3:00 pm GMT. During the time that ITRC is read-only, no new forum messages can be posted, and no changes to user profiles, favorites, or notifications will be possible.
All of those that use HP support should be using HP ITRC as much as possible; I’ve found that the HP-UX and OpenVMS support is fantastic. There is quite a lot of expertise behind the readers and responders of the forums.
Recently, Oracle has made several changes in Solaris support that have people wondering if Solaris just got too expensive to run.
The first change was to move to a pay-for-security model which some have already compared to extortion. Patches for Solaris would only be available to paying support customers, leaving others to be insecure and without recourse.
The other change that Oracle has made is to force its paying support customers into an “all or nothing” support model: either all Solaris systems are under a support contract or Oracle will not enter into a support agreement. This means that in any environment that all Solaris systems must be accounted for and under Oracle support.
With this latter change, it may be that this pay-for-security model, while still unseemly, will have less of an effect than previously suggested. It may also convince many smaller businesses to scale back their Solaris installations and to get rid of older machines instead of holding on to them.
At its worst, it may mean that support for software on older Sun machines may wither faster, and that older machines will become obsolete – and useless – faster, increasing “churn” in the data center and (perhaps) making the data center more energy-efficient, while costing companies more and making Oracle more money.
However, one thing Oracle has not done is to clarify the future of OpenSolaris. The community is waiting for a definitive statement from Oracle; even former Sun employees working with OpenSolaris have no signs from Oracle in any direction.
UPDATE: Ben Rockwood over at the Cuddletech blog has excellent coverage, with detailed analysis of the relevant licenses and what it means for Solaris end-users. On the 26th he discusses the “all-or-nothing” support model, and on the 28th he writes about Oracle’s choice to remove the ability to use Solaris for free.
Recently there was a big flap over the future of OpenSolaris. Oracle posted the support lifecycle for Solaris and other technologies, and future support for OpenSolaris was missing.
Indeed, customers who talked to their Oracle sales representatives about paid support for OpenSolaris in the enterprise were told that it is currently unavailable.
This combination led some to theorize that OpenSolaris would cease to exist; this is not at all the case, according to Oracle. eWeek went to the source to get a coherent and complete explanation.
Datamation looked at Oracle’s plans for OpenSolaris and found that OpenSolaris will remain viable and active. However, one sad note: Oracle may not open source technologies currently being developed by Sun.
I seem to find myself attempting to find good, quality answers to questions that usually invite flamewars. I usually manage to do alright.
I’ve discussed the merits of Linux and BSD in recent days. Why does it matter? Who cares if Linux is better than BSD – or if Solaris is better than Linux?
It is important, especially in the corporate data center, because we must justify the use and support of whatever system we want to use. It is not enough to say it’s better – we must justify our choices to people who don’t care which one looks better or which has the better development model.
What do executives care about? Stability and reliability. Twenty-four hour phone support. On-call support. Security against hacks. User base. These are some of the things that executives (like CIOs and CEOs) want to know about. Even for open source desktops, these same qualities are of importance to them.
If you know the ins and outs of all of the systems that are available, then you can better judge which may be good and can explain your choices (or prefered choices!) to your CIO or other management. Better still – can you back it up with examples and details? If you’re going to pitch FreeBSD (or a FreeBSD-based desktop) you’ll have to.
This is also why many times the systems that are installed are not the most reliable (they are the most well-supported) or the most technologically capable (they are the most widely known). This is truly unfortunate – it is the oft-reported “barrier to entry” (in this case, it is the network effect) – but it’s the way it is until you find management willing to take a chance.
In a Windows environment, people have gotten used to just picking up any device (whether it is a CDROM, PCMCIA card, printer, or modem) and expecting it to work. While the concept of “plug and play” is not yet here, the fact is that when installed everything should work with Windows.
And it isn’t just Windows – other large commercial vendors have access that you and I do not. Apple comes to mind – MacOS X has much better support than Linux or FreeBSD, for example.
Open source operating systems rely on hardware manufacturers to make the details of their hardware available for free or low cost – and then for someone to come and craft the software drivers needed. Usually, the latter is not a big problem; the former is.
The problem can be deeper than that as well, since the label on the product is not the same as the label on the internal devices: so it is not possible to simply look for a brand and use it. Worse, manufacturers can change hardware vendors on the same model, so that discerning which model is which can occasionally be difficult – the revision becomes the determining factor as to which hardware was used.
First thing is to determine which devices are supported. Start with the release documents for the operating system and look for supported hardware. Another place to look is the man pages (or other documentation) for the drivers. Keep the list of specific hardware handy, on another screen or printed out.
Then, look for the device (or devices) at your chosen store. Write down what you find, even if it isn’t listed (and even if it is). Then look up the device on the Internet using your desired search engine. Pay attention to mailing list threads and watch what sort of trouble people had (or didn’t have). The mailing list threads should also help you identify the hardware sources used in otherwise unidentified products, and also will keep you up to date on people’s experiences.
Once you have a product chosen, given few problems on mailing lists and a well-supported and identified hardware chip set, then buy it. However, for best results, make sure there is a good return policy in case it doesn’t work – otherwise, you are taking a chance (albeit a very small one if you’ve done your homework).
I’ve gone through this with several wireless cards under FreeBSD. The first was the Netgear MA401 (researched as given here) – worked flawlessly until it was smushed. The second I received as a bonus with my laptop purchase was a Zonet 1502 (definitely a mistake, but it came with the laptop). I’m sure the Zonet works fine under Windows (and probably OpenBSD: they reverse engineered the driver). Currently, I’ve added a TP-Link TL-WN610G (again researched as described here) – also working flawlessly.
This isn’t just good practice for wireless cards, though – networking cards, mice, video – all benefit from this research. Even laptops: when I bought my laptop, I researched the two brands that were available (for sale used at my favorite local used computer store) and found that one had lots of difficulties and the other did not. Guess which one I bought?
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