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“Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

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Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#391

Post by eganist »

soloracle wrote: post #194
xenadu02 wrote: post #190

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if Oracle acquires your company GET OUT. Do not wait, bail out immediately. Oracle is expert at slowly bleeding teams while suppressing pay to milk products for all they’re worth. They are developer-hostile (including to employees). It is career death. If Oracle acquires a partner you depend on, you have 12-24 months to find an alternative before they cut your legs out from…

I call FUD. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 - that's seven years, and it wasn't until this past January and August that major project changes were made and large number of staff laid off. "Get out now" seems unnecessarily alarming. Also, this may vary from org to org, but our (sparc/solaris dev) laptop replacement was every three years. I'll admit that the way they've handled the recent layoffs is atrocious, with most em…

Oracle kept Sun alive in a vegetative state to sustain the Java lawsuit against Google. That's pretty much it.

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#392

Post by ece »

belorn wrote: post #390
ece wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And failing. A patent troll is a patent troll. There is nothing stopping Linux from mainlining ZFS at the source level apart from kernel developers reluctance to give into "layering violations." Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. To wit: I am not sure if linking and terms of binary distribution matter after sources have merged for open source projects. If you have the source code and have right to modify, merge an…

I doubt (given what I heard from lawyers on the topic) that the legal system cares if a work has static or dynamic linking technology. What matters are the legal concepts which previous legal cases have been settled on. Intent by everyone involved such as the author, the accused and the law writer. If the author intended that the work is used in one way, and the accused knew this but decided to go against it, then th…

I think we know what Sun wanted, they wanted to make money from Opensolaris and ZFS by building a community around it and selling services and products around it. After a decade, all that's left now is the source code, and if Oracle wants to wait until ZFS becomes bigger to sue Canonical or Netgear, well, that shows their intentions as well.

As this timeline and some Googling shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenZFS#History Sun did work in good faith with Apple, and the Linux community to get them to adopt ZFS, unsuccessfully (successfully with FreeBSD). Additionally, the fact that Sun did successfully open source quite a few things (virtualbox, jenkins, openam, solaris, staroffice, netbeans, etc..) and relicense Java from SCSL to GPL, makes their intentions towards the open source community pretty clear. Yes, they wanted to make money, but they probably open sourced and created more open source communities than any other company in SV history.

Now, about modification, any open source license listed by the FSF will grant modification rights to users. I don't think compiling is making a derivative work. It's like unfolding a chair to sit on it. It's just a part of normal usage of software, you can decompile a binary and learn from it, also normal usage. The compiler is a tool, like a screw driver or paint gun that will let you assemble a chair or paint your car. Reading and learning from source code is usage too. Modifying the actual source code would be a real modification and could be making ZFS work on an Raspberry Pi, which is allowed by open source. Given that Sun wanted ZFS to be widely adopted in open source, they adopted the CDDL to let people modify ZFS so it could be used by OSes other than Solaris. This is what the OpenZFS community enables, and is completely compatible with GNU/Linux or Apache open source norms. Oracle might come knocking for money, but that's not the history of Sun or current ZFS contributors, who are just out to make better software using the open source process. They would probably not disagree with what Netgear or Canonical did, and if they did, it would be on the OpenZFS mailing list and in a news story or two. It's not.

You can't copy books and sell them, and I can understand you can't modify an original artwork and not affect the copyright owner's rights. You can correct an error in a book or claim inspiration from a painting to make another. You can't claim copyright if someone uses a binary in a VM when you didn't intend it. You can give others the right to modify source code, and ask that others do the same. That is open source and the GPL. OpenZFS, FreeBSD, have as much standing as Oracle, which is really none, to actually stop someone from porting ZFS to anything they would like and distribute it along side proprietary or open source software.

https://youtu.be/6F9bscdqRpo?t=5m40s

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#393

Post by surge »

ternaryoperator wrote: post #270
boubiyeah wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood why they loved it. Is it just so they can say "not my fault, our project is only using big name frameworks, DBs, etc so I did all I could?" Or is it because they don't even begin to understand what's going on in the tech scene and just buy what appears to be the most shiny, expensive solutions?

Support is one reason. If your database goes down, they'll send a team of engineers to figure out what's wrong. If they have to, they'll bring in hardware to duplicate your systems, and have engineers working on it 7x24 until they find out what's wrong. Not many vendors can provide that level of service, and if your business requires it, you're willing to pay for it.

The funny part is IME, their support sucks, at least compared to another big vendor like IBM.

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#394

Post by belorn »

ece wrote: post #392
belorn wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt (given what I heard from lawyers on the topic) that the legal system cares if a work has static or dynamic linking technology. What matters are the legal concepts which previous legal cases have been settled on. Intent by everyone involved such as the author, the accused and the law writer. If the author intended that the work is used in one way, and the accused knew this but decided to go against it, then th…

I think we know what Sun wanted, they wanted to make money from Opensolaris and ZFS by building a community around it and selling services and products around it. After a decade, all that's left now is the source code, and if Oracle wants to wait until ZFS becomes bigger to sue Canonical or Netgear, well, that shows their intentions as well. As this timeline and some Googling shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open…

I have heard a few different version of the intention behind ZFS license, through I can't say that for a legal case I have enough information to have a definitive opinion. Some people say that ZFS license was created with the explicit purpose to be incompatible with linux in order to not compete with solaris, but I would agree that Oracle has a thought case in court if they want to wait only to sue later. That is a practice that the legal systems tend to strongly dislike.

The other side is of course each one of the linux developers, each holding the full power of copyright. To cite SFLC, no free software developers have ever sued an other free software developer over license incompatibility, so its very unlikely to happen with ZFS. Such court cases really on happen between companies.

So to sum up, a case over ZFS is very unlikely, but I would not bet on what would happen if android suddenly started to use ZFS.

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#396

Post by jsiepkes »

rodgerd wrote: post #235
peoplewindow wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "properly" open sourced you mean no proprietary builds at all? Because virtually all of Java is available in OpenJDK and Oracle has continued to fund and open source major new Java upgrades.

By properly open sourced I mean that the various testing and validation suites for Java and key Java tech (like J2EE) would be available, that proprietary bits (like the Windows installer) wouldn't be silently parachuted into the JDK install, as two examples.

You do know that J2EE has been called JEE for ages now right?

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#397

Post by sergers »

handsomechad wrote: post #315
sergers wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company was using big machines cpq... While I personally think there are better options, the support under now "Oracle CPQ" has been considerably better, and have seen some improvements under Oracle. We are planning to move to another CPQ in the next few months, but that's not cause oracle at all or the product got worse under Oracle. But then we also use oracle DBMS part of our product, and we are moving away cau…

Which CPQ are you guys moving to? We are also looking to move off of Oracle in the next FY but have not come to a consensus.

Apptus CPQ.

we merged with another company and they used apptus already and have a good process with using it.

i havent seen it live, nor seen anything on the configuration,implementation, support side yet.

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#398

Post by yuhong »

I have been thinking of a server vendor for startups company like Sun was trying to do with Schwartz as CEO. Ideally it would use local server manufacturing instead of Chinese ODMs. Of course, not every startup is interested, but 1TB+ RAM and fast SSDs might be attractive to some of them like GitLab.

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#399

Post by ece »

belorn wrote: post #394
ece wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we know what Sun wanted, they wanted to make money from Opensolaris and ZFS by building a community around it and selling services and products around it. After a decade, all that's left now is the source code, and if Oracle wants to wait until ZFS becomes bigger to sue Canonical or Netgear, well, that shows their intentions as well. As this timeline and some Googling shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open…

I have heard a few different version of the intention behind ZFS license, through I can't say that for a legal case I have enough information to have a definitive opinion. Some people say that ZFS license was created with the explicit purpose to be incompatible with linux in order to not compete with solaris, but I would agree that Oracle has a thought case in court if they want to wait only to sue later. That is a p…

I think the Sun leadership at the time wanted ZFS to be on Linux up to the point of licensing it under the GPL. The employees wanted a more BSD-like license[1], so that's the correct context under which you can look at how Solaris was licenced. It's not about being in Linux or not, it's do we want Solaris to be under a more BSD like or GPL license. I think this conversation was bigger a decade or more ago, and frankly the GPL has had more commercial success since then. If Solaris had been GPL'd is an interesting thought experiment, and too bad it's just that. Netbeans was GPL and CDDL dual licensed.

I wonder what Linux Torvalds thinks about merging ZFS into Linux now, he wasn't too keen a decade ago. Sun is no longer around, someone worse like Oracle has taken their place. A couple of lessons for the open source community here, I think. And Brian Cantrill nails in on the head in the youtube video link.

ZFS will need to be on Linux first before it can show up on Android or media centers or gaming consoles, and I don't doubt Oracle's ability to find a way to patent troll anything. But it will be just that: patent or copyright trolling.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distrib...

Re: “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

#400

Post by ece »

ece wrote: post #399
belorn wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard a few different version of the intention behind ZFS license, through I can't say that for a legal case I have enough information to have a definitive opinion. Some people say that ZFS license was created with the explicit purpose to be incompatible with linux in order to not compete with solaris, but I would agree that Oracle has a thought case in court if they want to wait only to sue later. That is a p…

I think the Sun leadership at the time wanted ZFS to be on Linux up to the point of licensing it under the GPL. The employees wanted a more BSD-like license[1], so that's the correct context under which you can look at how Solaris was licenced. It's not about being in Linux or not, it's do we want Solaris to be under a more BSD like or GPL license. I think this conversation was bigger a decade or more ago, and frankl…

To add a couple more things: Oracle has been developing ZFS sans open source for the past few years as well, which means they've stopping caring about OpenZFS and/or have lost the right to.

Canonical, Debian and SFLC have really done with right thing by distributing ZFS on Linux, using AFS as a precedence. I hope more merging like this can happen in open source in the future.

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