Re: Re[2]: [cobalt-users] RE: No Solaris Petition

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 10/2/00 2:38 PM, Florian Effenberger at florian.effenberger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:

> Hi,
> 
>> I'm in too as well.
> If I don't hear any good arguments PRO Solaris and CONTRA (GNU)
> Linux... I'm in as well!

Honestly I am not hearing a lot of arguments as to why NOT Solaris.  I have
always been very impressed by the performance of Solaris.

I am a OpenSource software fan, but honestly Cobalt is has done very little
to kick back to the OS community.  ChiliSoft ASP is still closed source, as
is the special suace, etc.  So essentially, besides market share, the Linux
community gains very little from Cobalt, while Cobalt gains a lot.  Now that
Cobalt is essentially Sun, I have a hard time believing that it is not in
their advantage to use Solaris.  Additionally the Cobalt profit margin is
high enough to easily cover perhaps a 'special' Solaris license.  Sun may
even make a Cobalt Solaris distro for use on these things that will be much
less expensive than a normal Solaris license.

That being said, I wouldn't actually mind that much running Solaris on a
machine.  It is not really all that different than Linux--especially on a
server vs. a workstation--a skilled administrator shouldn't have too many
issues with the learning curve.  Advantages (playing the Devils advocate
here a bit) is you can go to Sun for support, 'improved' security,
accountability, etc.

Disadvantages include
* Closed Source
* License Cost -- which would be included in the cost of the machine so they
would probably not increase in price
* Slow to respond to security -- again, a net effect of zero
* More Stable

Most of the worlds 100 largest/highest traffic web sites use Solaris as
their OS.  A few use BSD, NT and Linux.  But Solaris has more than all
others added together.

So.  I guess I am saying that I don't have a problem with Solaris.  It is a
quality product.  I would have a problem, perhaps, if it became much more
expensive, or if they limited functionality.  But a straight across swap I
would not have a whole lot of problems with.

Cheers,
-k