Nickname: Mikesch

Review: Other than pointing to Jim Grisanzio's excellent corrections (see http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jimgris?entry=correcting_cohen ) of Cohen's misrepresentations and half-truths, maybe the oh-so-informed author can explain where and when Sun "acquired" Solaris and/or Java .... Sheesh!

Date reviewed: May 31, 2006 8:45 AM

Nickname: BinaryCrusader

Review: The article's author has the facts wrong. They need to read this post: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jimgris?entry=correcting_cohen

Date reviewed: May 30, 2006 11:35 PM

Nickname: mtacca

Review: It will be interesting to see how that affects Sun's business. It's possible that they have some sort of profitable revenue from current licensors of Java. And with such wide Java adoption in the world, its probably hard to walk away from their strong influence in the development future of Java. See spellchecked.blogspot.com for a more detailed theory

Date reviewed: May 18, 2006 6:58 PM

Nickname: JJ

Review: I am always amazed by people who cite numbers with such confidence and yet have it so completely wrong. Like the person who described open Solaris as "half being open" and the "other half" being closed and furthermore being absolutely sure that without the closed half the open will not work. Bullocks! Considering that open Solaris has existed for barely a year, there are now three distros, including one that is Debian based--Nexenta. The author of the article too needs to understand how CDDL works. The code does not come back to Sun. It comes back to all the members of the community. The idea that everyone is jumping to Linux is not quite true. While Linux is definitely a fav in the universities, a number of appliance developers are shying away from Linux and using *BSD because of better stability and non-viral licenses.

Date reviewed: May 12, 2006 6:12 AM

Nickname: Q

Review: "Unlike with Linux, all the rights to any changes to the source code for Solaris go back to Sun. So any developers contributing to Solaris are literally working for Sun for free." From what language are you basing the above statement? It's a pretty strong allegation and I don't think you have the grounds to support it. It's not in the CDDL license or in the contributor agreement for open Solaris. The closest thing I saw was in the contributor agreement, which says that both Sun and the contributor are joint owners of the contribution. So the contributor can do whatever it wants to do with it and Sun can incorporate it into Solaris as it clearly intends to do by opening up Solaris -- i.e., no big surprise there. I think they earned it by opening up Solaris so that it's free and could be changed for users in the community.

Date reviewed: May 11, 2006 11:00 PM

Nickname: doogie

Review: The author has one key fact wrong. OpenOffice already is set free. It is currently available under the GPL.

Date reviewed: May 11, 2006 5:17 AM

Nickname: Jon

Review: DEC, Wang, Honeywell, Ahmdal, Burrows, Univac, NCR, Compaq, Silicon Graphics, Cray. I would bet many readers never heard of at least some of these companies as important I/T players. Many of these companies are either gone, become niche players, or been absorbed into other companies. So, history suggests, Sun better find a good niche as Honeywell has done or merge with another company as Compaq has done.

Date reviewed: May 10, 2006 3:29 PM

Nickname: boolebabbage

Review: I think repoman is reading from Sun boilerplate and not addressing the column's arguments. Sun is a great company in trouble that can be great again. "If" it gets real. It faces genuine challenges now that don't disappear through sophistry. Management needs to tell a simple, clear story that everyone can understand about how Sun will shine again. Trying to shout down someone presenting a perhaps controversial, but understandable, argument is not a substitute for a real business plan to change Sun's fortunes for the better. Perhaps Doug Hurd at HP could offer advice?

Date reviewed: May 10, 2006 4:07 AM

Nickname: System Control

Review: Sun doesn't need the advice of Cohen and OSDL - who only provide the UNIX O/S clone Linux - since Sun is in a completely different category of vendor. Sun has Solaris, a better O/S than Linux to begin with, but also they have Java, they have Star/Open Office, and they have the SPARC hardware platform that is used by some of the largest businesses and governments in the world. Sun is too smart to release all their software under the GPL license, and instead use other licenses that are more business friendly, despite the pleas from those who wish they could freely transfer Sun technology into competing products like Linux without having to pay Sun appropriate royalty. Sun will continue to earn profit off "open source", without giving in to "free software", since there is infinitely more profit opportunity in "open source". "Free software" might be great for those who want something for free, but it is no way to run a business.

Date reviewed: May 10, 2006 2:03 AM

Nickname: Dude

Review: Whoever this guy is, he needs a good thrashing. Sun hardware is still some of the best in the world. And, it should continue to be. Don't bet the farm on open-source. It would be a sad day when Sun quit making some of the best hardware in the world.

Date reviewed: May 9, 2006 5:51 PM