The Future of OpenSolaris Revealed 342
ywlke writes "A few hours ago, an internal Oracle memo was leaked to the osol-discuss mailing list at opensolaris.org. It details Oracle's plans for Solaris and OpenSolaris; namely that OpenSolaris, the distribution, is dead. Solaris Express has come back from the grave, and source code will still be CDDL, but won't be released to the public until some time after it is incorporated into a binary release. What happens to the community now is anybody's guess."
The full text of the memo is available on the mailing list, as well as apparent confirmation from an Oracle employee. That said, no official announcement has yet been made.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
There certainly wasn't a "community" for it. The vast majority were Sun employees doing their job. Linux trounced Solaris because everyone could play, Sun took way too long to realize this. No one is surprised Oracle is doing this, they make money from being an expensive closed shop. It'll be interesting to see what happens with InnoDB and MySQL in the coming months/years. Oracle are suing Google over JAVA, making people in that environment rather nervous too.
I'm glad they're so good at math! (Score:5, Insightful)
From the memo:
That's wrong in so many ways it makes my brain hurt.
Maybe there's a secret footnote showing that 40% of the enterprise customers which are not currently running Solaris are willing to try it -- that'd work out nicely to 60% growth.
But somehow I doubt it.
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
And in the same vein, Btrfs isn't going anywhere, either. Its incompatible license means that it won't ever appear in any Open Source BSD or commercial operating system. Until we get a comparable filesystem under a BSD-style license, no new filesystem is can truly take off. That's the only license that everyone can accept without reservation.
Re:And... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's very good, on an UltraSparc. On an x86, it's a mixed bag depending on your hardware. On anything else, forget it.
Re:Why would I even consider using OpenSolaris? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of OpenSolaris was under the CDDL, which provides protection from patent claims from Sun (now Oracle). So if you used OpenSolaris, they wouldn't have a case through copyright infringement -- it's an approved open-source license -- or through patents they hold. Reality is complicated, so it's always a good idea to read the license code is released under: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cddl1.php [opensource.org]
In other words: your concern about OpenSolaris specifically is unfounded. DalvikVM wasn't make by Sun and released under the CDDL, so there was no patent protection. This will still have a chilling effect on the Java ecosystem, of course.
In practice I would use Solaris for databases and storing other critical data. Linux has a long way to go before it has something as mature as ZFS, and I wouldn't trust important data on anything less. DTrace adds introspection that is wonderful on a live database as well. Operating systems are tools, so use them for what they're good at.
Re:The Future of OpenSolaris Revealed (Score:3, Insightful)
O'Reily uses the image of a gypsy looking into a crystal ball on the cover of an Oracle book? TACKY!
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Augh! Posts like this make my BRAIN HURT!!
MySQL is in for a long, slow, drawn out slide into obscurity.
I agree, but not for the reasons you state. Brand recognition? Seriously? You think 30 seconds with a google search isn't going to turn up the forks?
It has been forked already, and I'm sure more will sprout up.
Except that *all* these forks have a consistent problem: there is no commercial license available. The owners of MySQL could dual-license their works, and people are free to fork the MySQL GPL edition, but they can't then turn around and offer commercial licenses to those who need them. The GPL is a bit "too free" (or too restrictive, depending on your definition of free) to be palatable.
In a strange sort of way, if Oracle doesn't develop MySQL enough, more projects will start with PostgreSQL and will never even consider Oracle. The fact that MySQL sucks as bad as it does works for Oracle, and if they actually kill it, they risk losing revenue!
That said, for better or for worse (worse IMHO, but that's just my opinion) "no-SQL" databases like CouchDB and MongoDB seem to be gaining a lot of traction.
No-SQL is not a database, it's a file store. Calling them a database is an insult to databasses the world over. Yes, there are times when a "no-sql" solution is better than SQL, and the vector is pretty much that point where you realize that storing files in databases makes sense like hauling bales of hay in sports cars does.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Btrfs might catch up eventually
Btrfs is a product of Oracle. Oracle now owns ZFS outright and controls the fate of Btrfs in terms of developer resources. One guess as to whether Oracle will remain motivated to complete Btrfs.
Oracle controls the fate of the best open source advanced file systems.
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, Oracle controls btrfs as well, and its future doesn't exactly look so great at this point, either
Why exactly does Oracle need btrfs now, anyway? ZFS is more mature, and the CDDL is more restrictive than the GPL, so it seems like that would be Oracle's product of choice. I guess Oracle can still sue btrfs users for patent infringement, even though the code itself is under the GPL, but why bother at all? Making Linux a more attractive competitor to their own Solaris doesn't seem like it makes much sense.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:2, Insightful)
no execuse for a company to allow someething like OpenSolaris to exist
Be nice now... there's a community of programmers out there.
This was so predicable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing Oracle it was obvious from the day the acquisition was announced that:
1) Oracle will cripple, keep on life support or close-source all open source projects. Larry believes anything users want to use is worth making them pay for. Any open source projects that survive will be strategically useful (like letting a 'free' MySQL contaminate Microsoft's low-midrange database business revenue)
2) Java is what Oracle really wanted in Sun acquisition (see announcement today of lawsuit against Google re Android Java use) and Solaris is useful only insofar as it is part of the value prop for selling Sun, now Oracle, hardware. Solaris will only be pushed by Oracle on non-Oracle hardware if they can make a good license business out of it. Expect that all use of Java in open source implementations will dry up and any commercial implementations will be expected to start pushing license dollars back to Oracle (Which is why somebody at IBM should have been shot for blowing the Sun acquisition over the few measly millions they were fighting over before Oracle pulled the rug out form under IBM -it could have been Oracle kneeling in front of IBM instead of IBM watching the underlying architecture of Websphere and everything else Java based owned by their biggest competitor)
3) Open Solaris was a way to enable a user community (not really a dev community like Linux has) but since it can't be licensed (for money) and there's no really support/services business and it certainly doesn't help sell any Sun/Oracle hardware (which generally always runs the commercial Solaris) it has no place in an Oracle world.
I'm amazed that anybody is surprised.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Postgre is ok
I beg to differ. Postgres is not just "ok" - have you looked at its features and their completeness; standards compliance; scalability (clustering); RBAC; programming flexibility; reliability? If you are a developer - how about size and quality of code, optimizer, query execution flow? Postgres probably has one of the best maintained codebase for a complex piece of software you'll ever see.
In none of the categories above can you even start placing MySQL in the same ballpark as Postgres. It's not even the same league, it's not even the same sport. So, the other part of your sentence is right in a way - it's completely different in these and many other regards from MySQL.
Re:And... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Illumos Fork (Score:3, Insightful)
The last I checked Oracle still required non-CDDL code and drivers, and it certainly required a full Solaris for bootstrapping.
That's the part they're fixing that I mentioned in my post.
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that MySQL sucks as bad as it does works for Oracle, and if they actually kill it, they risk losing revenue!
IMOHO, the problem with MySQL+Oracle is that it doesn't make sense for anyone but Oracle. The skillset gap between MySQL and Oracle is MASSIVE! So when a project out grows MySQL, its not an automatic Oracle upgrade. Really, what's the incentive other than some very loose association via branding?
On the other hand, PostgreSQL completely encompasses MySQL (required skill sets and capability) and has a huge overlap with Oracle. To get your feet wet with PostgreSQL, the required skill set is only slightly larger than MySQL. And on the other end, the required knowledge is still less than is required for Oracle; despite PostgreSQL frequently providing superior performance. This means you can stick with PostgreSQL from entry to fairly high end. And, once you actually outgrow PostgreSQL, if you ever do, you have commercial offerings like EnterpriseDB. Which means, your PostgreSQL knowledge is fully protected.
Anyone not considering PostgreSQL must have money, time, and skills to burn.
Re:Already in Linux and FreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
However, no matter how great ZFS is, you still need full backups of your ZFS storage [...]
Is there storage for which this doesn't apply ?
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
you're joking, right? Check out how small the OpenSOlaris HCL is sometime. The disk controller list only has 75 entries! Plenty of Adaptec controllers won't work, plenty of fiber channel HBA won't work, plenty of HP and Compaq smart array won't work, etc. etc. etc.
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
For me the biggest reason for OpenSolaris is binary compatibility.
Whenever I update my Ubuntu I fear something will break. Quite often something (outside the distro) does break, especially when the kernel changes.
Sure those who are happy to use only those programs and hardware directly supported by Canonical may be happy, but I am not one of those.
Re:And... (Score:2, Insightful)
I beg to differ. I've never had the opportunity of working for Sun (been detached to Oracle back in 2000) but I've switched from Linux to OpenSolaris about a year ago and I will miss it dearly.
There is definitely an OpenSolaris community and those who want to continue building on OpenSolaris legacy will contribute (or, more modestly use) IllumOs.
I've been a Linux advocate myself for over 10 years. The truth is, OpenSolaris is much more of a professional OS.
Re:This was so predicable... (Score:1, Insightful)
Expect that all use of Java in open source implementations will dry up and any commercial implementations will be expected to start pushing license dollars back to Oracle
Sounds like there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth for Java folks. Betting the farm on a language that was as fucked up as Java to begin with pretty much spelled out what was going to happen, acquisition or not. By fucked up, I don't just mean how the language worked (which was kinda bent to begin with) but also how it was licensed.
Now I see and hear people pissing about with "Linux is old" and "BSD is dead". Next I suppose I'll hear about how OS X is the cat's meow (despite the horrid performance it has as a server OS - and yes, I have personal experience with that steaming mount of catshit). Solaris had a lot of nice features, features that are slowly being emulated or duplicated; somehow, I think we'll all survive.
In the meantime, I'm still trying to figure out why people are so willingly wanting to be someone else's bitch. It's like watching this girl you know getting the crap kicked out of her every night, but she keeps going back to him because "he's good to me". You shake your head and think "just stand up to him and leave!" but she won't, so it keeps getting worse and worse...so it goes with the tech industry over the last 3-4 years. People are just adoring such crappy treatment, and then they wonder why they keep getting "hurt" by it over and over. News to the wise: pack your shit and never go back. STOP ENABLING THESE ASSHOLES BY USING THEIR PRODUCTS.
Re:And... (Score:2, Insightful)
The real world is most users of MySQL don't care a damn about any of those. They care about which is easiest and cheapest to implement. So called MySQL experts are a dime a dozen. When you search Google for database software, you see MySQL on the first page of results, not Postgre, not MSSQL/SQL Server, and not Oracle. Lastly, other than standards zealots, who demands ACID compliance? In the real world, quality is often an afterthought.