[OpenIndiana-discuss] Oracle Solaris on x86 going to be killed?

[Nikola M.]

On 01/ 7/12 10:46 AM, Open Indiana wrote:
> So many pure SUN/Solaris/OpeninIndiana professionals and one rumour puts us
> back to "The Sun" gossip. ;-)
>
Its not rumor actually.
It does not mean what it is said (x86 kill) but it is close enough, 
regarding Openindiana.

> "I don't care if our commodity x86 business goes to zero," Oracle CEO 
> Larry Ellison said during the company's earnings call with analysts. 
> "We don't make any money selling those things. We have no interest in 
> selling other people's IP, and commodity x86 includes Intel IP and 
> Microsoft IP."

If Ellison says that he has no interest in making and selling "commodity 
hardware"
(Hardware that is not part of "systems" and software support contracts
- Software support contracts with proprietary software , that he wants 
to price relative to hardware price - 20% per year) then that is what he 
means.

Oracle is not competitive on x86 , it is competitive only as "systems".
It does no mean proprietary Oracle Solaris end on x86.
It means Oracle not willing to make x86 hardware to run non-Oracle 
software on it.
(Look how quickly they ditched Postgresql from their repositories - 
available in Openindiana SFE)

If someone actually want to put its business and future in the hands of 
proprietary software, bound to only one company and to go to bed with 
Oracle that would suck it's hardware upgrade money after 5 years of 
proprietary software use, instead of developing its' business, that is 
he's way.

Things were getting better for Solaris/Sparc with Opensolaris. Even 
possible x86->Sparc transition for some new customers. But with closing 
down Solaris11 source and also developing SPARC in closed source outside 
Opensparc T1/T2 GPL track, alienating with future customer base in 
Opensolaris community, there is no path for Oracle's business in the 
future, unless he wants to have next HP-UX or something.
Due to volume, Sparc is targeted at data center high-end, and that is 
what Ellison also said.
Question for oracle would be - how to push Sparc hardware sales? And 
that is not done witl Less potential user base but more.

If Oracle is smart, he would look at the Openindiana and other Illumos 
based distribution and ecosystem of companies around, as valid marketing 
place to recruit new customers from.
There is tons of mid-size companies that Oracle could sell it's hardware 
(and software support) to, providing they start by using Open software 
distribution like Openindiana first and possibly upgrade later.

But Oracle put himself out of track with Solaris for that.
Companies are not smart - companies are just greedy.
Oracle is targeting high-end and upper-scale priced contract market - 
Large systems.

I was at clear path of recommending Sun hardware and now Oracle hardware,
providing that on same hardware I can run open source Linux,BSD and 
Illumos based systems,
being able to update to supported Nexenta/Joyent/Oracle/Other OS on same 
system.
But now, with Ellison saying so, probably not.

It is why Oracle removed Opensolaris 134b and Solaris11express IPS 
software repositories, to stop people from upgrading to Solaris11 from 
opensolairs and have Openindiana on same hardware at the same time.
- But to enforce it's incompatible ZFS that eliminates open competition. 
(Do not install from Oracle S11 CD but from aether Opensolaris 134 or 
Openindiana one)

Oracle does not want it's customers to have a choice of OS and software 
on Oracle hardware.
Oracle wants long-term strangulation-license-fees per year and multiyear 
software contracts on something called "IP"...

I TCP/IP, but mostly, IP.