Well, Ian Murdock (the -ian in debian), has been Sun’s Chief Operating Platforms Officer for eight days (yesterday), and he got thrown into the SDForum event in Santa Clara, to talk about “Platform 2.0: The Next Generation”, in which he talked about how he wants to make Open Solaris more appealing to the linux developers.
He talked about how the Web has made the OS of less importance, since the newest/coolest/best apps are no longer OS-specific, but that the linux community can provide interesting lessons about how software has evolved with the changes in architecture, technologies and “monetization” (how I hate market-speak!).
The one thing, tho, that got my attention about this article is this Murdock quote:
You can make a real argument that Solaris innovated more than Linux in
the last few years—such as DTrace and ZFS—but usability stands in the
way of appreciating that,” Murdock said. “Part of what we are working
on is closing the usability gap so that it doesn’t stand in the way.”
Uhm…yes, DTrace and ZFS are pretty damn cool, but…are they really *that* revolutionary? Or is this just more market-speak? I haven’t touched Solaris in well over a decade, and haven’t even felt tempted, not even when Open Solaris became available, so I can’t really talk about it from experience; the one thing I *can* say, is that where linux has excelled is not so much in technical innovation, but in developmental and sociological appeal for developers…the Free Software/Open Source approach has changed what developers and even users have come to expect from their software, and that is, without a doubt in my mind, innovation.
What do you think? Does Solaris have a chance of leveraging the linux development model and becoming, again, an OS in widespread use?
Technorati Tags: open solaris, solaris, ian murdock
Tags: Tech
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