[OpenIndiana-discuss] is the newly released orac-sol 11 an advance compared to oi?

[James Carlson]

On 11/10/11 17:07, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> I have Solaris 11 Express still running on my SparcBlade 2000, because, to the
> best of my knowledge, there are no OI iso images for Sparc.
> 
> The fact that Solaris 11 Express runs fine on these systems, and Solaris 11 GA
> does not load tells me that support for these boxes were discontinued for some
> reason other than technical reasons, i.e. politics, financial, etc.

I think it's pretty unfair to charge the good folks still lingering at
Oracle in that way.  I was involved with a number of technical reviews
of support plans at Sun, and I strongly doubt that it's ever as simple
as calling it just a "business decision."

Often, the reason install has been disabled is that support for some key
component has become impossible due to a third party license issue.  Or
the component itself cannot support some key new kernel feature.  Or
spare parts have run out and it's no longer possible to maintain the
necessary test infrastructure.

For example, an all-too-common technical problem is the changing
landscape, such as the removal of Xsun and replacement with Xorg.
Xorg's certainly better for most people, and supports a lot more
hardware -- and is open source -- but there are old drivers that work
only with proprietary Xsun, and there is _nobody_ with the right
combination of money, talent, time, and motivation to do the rewrite.
So guess what?  Those systems end up in the dustbin.

Unless someone from Oracle speaks up and says that something nefarious
really happened, I suggest giving them the benefit of the doubt.  If
you're angry about it, and want to use brand new software on a 10 year
old computer, then contact Oracle and let them know what you think.  Or
just stop buying their products.  Whatever you feel is best.

But speculating here about their motives is probably pointless.

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj at workingcode.com>