I don’t get it. Sun is still trying to go against market trends and push
Solaris on SPARC when many customers want Linux. Sun has a wonderful volume
server business with Solaris on SPARC. In fact, Sun has lowered its
SPARC-based volume server prices so much that it can compete on price with
some of Dell’s offerings. And some of Sun’s middleware products are
included.
But many users want Linux. Linux server sales are growing by at least 30%-35%
per year. Users are interested in Linux for a number of reasons: they don’t
want to be locked in to proprietary hardware; they know that it is just a
matter of time until Linux (or Windows) replaces Unix in the data center;
ISVs are moving more and more of their applications to Linux, etc.
It may be the case that Sun is able to compete from a price perspective with
some Linux offerings, but for a company to succeed it has to gi... (more)
In the past two days, Novell has made two important Linux-related
announcements - the release of its Connector for Microsoft Exchange Server
to open source and expansion of its Premium Service support for Linux.
The release of Connector makes the entire Evolution product available as open
source under the GPL license. This is a good move for Novell because it is
important to provide a product that allows Linux users to collaborate with
Windows users with respect to e-mail, scheduling meetings, etc. without
having to spend an additional $69 for the Connector. The Connector may have... (more)
On Monday, Linus Torvalds announced that software developers making
contributions to Linux would have to “sign their work” and “vouch for
its origin” via a Developer’s Certificate of Origin. Linus claims that
the Developer’s Certification of Origin is needed primarily as a trail of
documentation that makes developers accountable for the code that they write
for Linux. In other words, there is a need to associate code with a
contributor.
This announcement is driven primarily by the SCO lawsuit against IBM.
However, it is my view that corporate enterprise users would have eventuall... (more)
In the past day or two, a Sun executive - president and COO Jonathan Schwartz
- announced again Sun’s intent to open source the Solaris operating system.
This is not the first time that this topic has been recently aired.
I also heard this from a couple of Sun executives at the Sun analyst summit
in San Francisco in February 2004. In January 2000, Sun began publicly
speaking about making Solaris 8 source code available to developers/users. At
that time, Sun decided to distribute source code over the Internet or on CD.
Developers/hardware vendors that used the code to commercially d... (more)
Microsoft just doesn't seem to "get the facts." The company, according to
news reports, is at it again - paying companies to produce FUD for it. The
company is doing a disservice to some really top-notch products it produces
by continuing to try to discredit Linux and other open source
projects. Microsoft should just let its products speak for themselves.
The Get the Facts program Microsoft initiated a couple of years ago that
consists of hiring various organizations to produce studies that make
Microsoft Windows a big winner over Linux in just about any way that two
operating sy... (more)
Bill Claybrook is President of New River Marketing Research, a marketing research firm that focuses on Linux, open source software, and commercial grid computing. He performs primary research and helps marketing organizations plan for new product offerings and develop go-to-market strategies, as well as develop marketing analysis content. Prior to entering commercial computing and marketing research, he was Associate Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech and the University of Connecticut, as well as Professor of Software Engineering at the Wang Institute of Software Engineering.
Hans van de Koppel
Chris Rommel
Andreas Sundquist
Soumya Ranjan Das
Joel Murach
Adam Wilson
David Hurwitz
Subrahmanya SV
Piram Manickam
