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Neil Knox Vice President, Edge Computing Sun Microsystems, Inc. 901 San Antonio Road Palo Alto, CA 94303
Dear Mr. Knox,
On February 7th, Ed Zander announced that Sun will expand its Cobalt line and ship new x86-based, entry level servers. The statement appears to be part of Sun's efforts to capitalize on the significant mind share won by Eric Raymond and other Linux/opensource advocates. We write to you today because of your leadership position in Sun's hardware unit. With the understanding that the fortunes of Sun's workstations, servers, and UltraSPARC processor businesses are tied to the success of Sun's software solutions, we ask that you consider whether this new Linux effort complements and enhances Sun's current Solaris-based enterprise offerings. Specifically, we propose that Sun deploy its existing Solaris Operating Environment as the foundation of the next generation Cobalt appliances and on the recently announced entry level systems.
As Sun customers, stockholders, and advocates, we are alarmed by the Linux initiative. Embracing Linux and multiple operating environments has proven to be very resource intensive. For example, Silicon Graphics, at one time a strong Sun workstation and server competitor, has been marginalized into obscurity. Other companies are in a stronger competitive position to deliver Linux based solutions, such as Dell Computers, a maker of commodity based desktop and workgroup servers. And IBM is already positioned to provide Linux across its product line: Thinkpad laptops, NetVista desktops, RS/6000 servers, and zSeries mainframes.
Sun's highly public entry into the Linux market was ill-advised as it only lends credibility to the efforts of the established vendors like Redhat or Suse. Because of the Linux kernel's inability to scale, its advocates promote its deployment in clusters, in much the same way that Microsoft advocates Windows based clusters. Clustering fits very well within IBM's mainframe based business model as customers can migrate their racks of individual Linux servers to virtual machines running on a single "big iron" box. Sun has yet to define a scalable deployment strategy for the newly announced Linux platforms.
Sun appears to have fallen prey to the media's incorrect use of Linux as the catchall term for the entire opensource movement. As Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, is fond of saying, Linux is only a kernel. In fact, Linux is one of several UNIX and UNIX-like kernels, commercial and free. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and GNU's upcoming HURD all compete well with Linux in the opensource space. The real value of Linux-based software distribution such as Redhat, Suse, or Debian is in the countless GNU and other opensource software packages which are bundled with it. None of these opensource packages are inherently Linux kernel specific. Nearly all build and run under Solaris and the other UNIX kernels. Many of these packages are shipped today either as part of the standard Solaris Operating Environment or on the Solaris Software Companion CD.
We applaud Sun's continued efforts to make the Solaris Operating Environment work well with opensource software and we are committed to partner with Sun to help guarantee that the enormous library of opensource applications are built, tested, and packaged under Solaris. Solaris x86 is a means to that end. By dropping support for x86 and reducing the number of Solaris systems used by independent developers, Sun only takes on more of the burden to port these applications and puts itself at an even greater disadvantage.
It is frustrating for Sun's longtime users that the company does not more vocally celebrate its long tradition as a supporter of the Internet community. It is ironic that Sun has seemingly chosen to jump on the Linux bandwagon: Sun was the leader of open standards and free software movements long before Linus Torvald's kernel emerged in the 1990s. By authoring and advocating open standards such as NFS, NIS, and others and supporting countless opensource projects, Sun has helped create the environment which allows free and commercial software to interoperate and flourish. By adopting Linux, Sun demeans its own contributions to Internet standards and opensource software and wrongly implies that its own software does not perform well with those technologies.
Rather than adopting Linux and the accompanying costs of supporting another operating environment, Sun should take advantage of its ongoing investment in Solaris. For over ten years, Sun has successfully made available a single Solaris Operating Environment for both SPARC and x86 architectures. Over 90% of the Solaris Operating Environment is common to both architectures, thus reducing the costs of bug fixes and enhancements. Significant long term savings could be gained by making the Solaris Operating Environment the basis of Sun's new x86 systems. Sun would be able make use of the same hardware drivers on systems of either architecture, thus reducing engineering costs and increasing the availability of hardware on both platforms. Independent software vendors would be assured that software written for Sun's entry level systems would only require a recompile to run across the entire Sun product line.
While Sun should never give up its commitment to open standards and always strive to work well in a mixed vendor, heterogeneous, computing environment, Sun should also understand that customers find a single technological solution very compelling. Developers appreciate having a single and mature set of open standard APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and development tools. System administrators value having to master a single set of management tools. We continue to urge Sun to make use of Solaris x86 in its campaign to migrate customers from Microsoft Windows, to resell laptops manufactured by a Toshiba, Fujitsu, or similar partner, and to leverage more Solaris based solutions.
We cannot understand why, after years of touting its single Sun Solaris based solution across the enterprise and just weeks before releasing its best Solaris Operating Environment ever, Sun would adopt a multi-operating system strategy. Solaris based entry level systems, running on commodity hardware such as AMD, would be much more successful in the crowded and highly competitive x86 market. Linux based systems do not complement Sun's current Solaris based product line and we urge you to reconsider expanding into that market
Thank you.
www.save-solaris-x86.org |