Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle • Hacker News Board

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#21

Post by lzw » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:08 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #19

melling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle is a consistently profitable company. They know how to run a business. They know what they're doing. If the old Sun and their culture wanted to survive, they needed to run a better business.

Of that I have no doubt, but what I originally thought they would do; use their business resources mixed with Sun's engineering resources, does not appear to be their plan at all. They seem to be losing all of the best Sun engineering talent and do not seem at all concerned about about that fact. That leads me not to conclude they are failing at what I originally thought they were doing, but succeeding at something e…

They bought suns business. They will probably replace engineers and continue projects they like, they will lose engineers focused in products that are cut.

I think part of suns problem was engineering that was going in for engineering sake, not business sake, and oracle is going to lose those engineers.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#22

Post by Nate75Sanders » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:09 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #9

etherael wrote: post #5

Did Oracle buy Sun to strip it and liquidate the intellectual assets? What's their plan here? It seems like they have zero interest in building the products.

Oracle is a consistently profitable company. They know how to run a business. They know what they're doing. If the old Sun and their culture wanted to survive, they needed to run a better business.

Simply profiting does not mean that you're playing the game optimally.

While small organizations can't afford a research division, Oracle certainly can. You'd think a company in the business of storing data might want to keep the guy who created ZFS, especially given how lively the database world is right now with NoSQL implementations, etc.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#23

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:12 PM UTC

krschultz wrote: post #13

sgt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. To Oracle, these are just pawns in a game. The winner of the game (which is always Oracle) gets to fund Larry's next yacht.

The alternative option was that Sun just went bankrupt and everyone lost their job, so choose between some leaving and all losing.

Actually, I think that properly managing the company and preventing the bankruptcy would be a better third option.

I know, I know... It's easy to say it now, that hindsight is always 20-20, but come on, who outside Sun thought their market strategy was sane? Who really believed they were on the right track? And, as much as I like McNeally (he was really fun), it's as much his fault as Schwartz's that Sun had a problem with "financial reality" (as Gosling so mildly said).

It was painful to watch because we knew how cool technologies they had were, what they could accomplish while, at the same time, knowing it wouldn't last.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#24

Post by azakus » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:13 PM UTC

alphabeat wrote: post #8

I'm really uncertain now of the future of Illumos and ZFS. I hope there's more push behind these projects as well as BTRFS. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

Since btrfs is an Oracle funded project, I'm real interested to see what happens to both of these filesystems going forward.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#25

Post by hga » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:16 PM UTC

lsc wrote: post #7

rbanffy wrote: post #4

That's too bad. ZFS (along with crossbow) is one of the best things in Solaris/OpenSolaris. I was about to say Oracle has a serious human resources problem, but I noticed that, maybe, the problem is in calling humans "resources".

I don't think that's it. Every corporation thinks of its employees in a dollars and cents kind of way. The operative problem here seems to be that Oracle doesn't value senior technical resources as much as some other companies might, or as much as those resources are used to being valued (and really, few people react well to a cut in autonomy, pay or respect.) They aren't willing to invest what is required, probably…

Based on what James Gosling has said, as a Sun Fellow Jeff Bonwick would have experienced a significant compensation cut and loss of autonomy (near total of the latter for Gosling). Which most people will interpret as a lack of respect.

As many others have wondered in this set of comments and others, just what is Oracle's cunning plan to make their purchase of Sun worth the investment???

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#26

Post by hga » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:17 PM UTC

mhd wrote: post #17

melling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle is a consistently profitable company. They know how to run a business. They know what they're doing. If the old Sun and their culture wanted to survive, they needed to run a better business.

They certainly know how to sell their database. Whether this translates into an equal success with their Sun IP has to be shown. The good thing for them is that they acquired pretty mature products, so they can probably "coast" along and still make a reasonable profit. It's still open whether they can foster enough innovation to keep things going with Java, Solaris… Their track record isn't very good in that respect.…

ZFS, however, is not in that category, and everything I've heard says that it needs more work and a lot more polish.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#27

Post by gizmomagico » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:21 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #11

lsc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's it. Every corporation thinks of its employees in a dollars and cents kind of way. The operative problem here seems to be that Oracle doesn't value senior technical resources as much as some other companies might, or as much as those resources are used to being valued (and really, few people react well to a cut in autonomy, pay or respect.) They aren't willing to invest what is required, probably…

Every corporation thinks of its employees in a dollars and cents kind of way. Reminds me of my brother’s old company ( http://www.freud.com/ ). Their website says: We employ humans, not resources. Job opportunities, contact the HR manager.

Was the fun part that they suggested contacting the Human Resources manager?

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#28

Post by hga » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:23 PM UTC

Nate75Sanders wrote: post #22

melling wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle is a consistently profitable company. They know how to run a business. They know what they're doing. If the old Sun and their culture wanted to survive, they needed to run a better business.

Simply profiting does not mean that you're playing the game optimally. While small organizations can't afford a research division, Oracle certainly can. You'd think a company in the business of storing data might want to keep the guy who created ZFS, especially given how lively the database world is right now with NoSQL implementations, etc.

Based on what James Gosling has said, perhaps Oracle's general HR policies just aren't compatible with retaining people at Jeff Bonwick's level.

There could also be bureaucratic turf wars going on, i.e. the total loss of autonomy/decision making power that Gosling reported suggests that those already in Oracle are happy with how they run things and have no intention of sharing those responsibilities. One can also imagine Oracle having a culture where those acquired from a money losing company don't get much respect for that alone.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#29

Post by bhiggins » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:32 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #9

etherael wrote: post #5

Did Oracle buy Sun to strip it and liquidate the intellectual assets? What's their plan here? It seems like they have zero interest in building the products.

Oracle is a consistently profitable company. They know how to run a business. They know what they're doing. If the old Sun and their culture wanted to survive, they needed to run a better business.

They know how to run one kind of business, that much is clear.

Re: Creator of ZFS, Jeff Bonwick, leaves Oracle

#30

Post by rbranson » Tue, Sep 28, 2010, 2:45 PM UTC

etherael wrote: post #5

Did Oracle buy Sun to strip it and liquidate the intellectual assets? What's their plan here? It seems like they have zero interest in building the products.

Oracle is technically irrelevant because they aren't technically focused. They aren't even close. Their core product hasn't been gaining any steam for years and they're riding out that gravy train. They have to keep purchasing other companies to remain relevant.