[OpenIndiana-discuss] [UNSUBSCRIBE]

[Dave McGuire]

On 06/06/2013 05:25 PM, Saso Kiselkov wrote:
>>> Let's get down to brass tax here: none of the Illumos developers (and
>>> that includes me) particularly care about SPARC, because that platform
>>> has little to no future. Hardware is only available from one or two
>>> vendors at tremendous markup, which means the only ones who are going to
>>> buy it are large enterprise customers who are buying as part of a
>>> solution package, rendering Illumos on SPARC no more than a small-time
>>> hobbyist's project running on phased-out old clunkers.
>>
>>    This is a pretty narrow view.  I respectfully submit that it doesn't
>> really reflect reality.  SOME of it, yes, but not exclusively.
>>
>>    But we've already established that the Illumos crowd thinks the whole
>> world should be running on PCs...therefore Illumos just isn't the answer
>> here.
>
> This is emphatically *not* the case. First of all, "the Illumos crowd"
> includes me (I would hope) and I don't think that all of the world
> should be running on PCs.

   Ok, I must have misinterpreted you.  If so, I apologize.

> I don't care about a particular ISA - run
> Illumos on whatever you want. What I do care about for *my* projects is
> that they are cost-effective. And sadly, SPARC just isn't suitable for
> me. Perhaps for some it is, and they are completely free to submit
> patches, have they reviewed, and integrated, same as everybody else.

   The Illumos community (not pointing at you specifically) has reacted 
with everything short of outright hostility to any mention of SPARC.  To 
state that there's nothing but "phased-out old clunkers" in the 
accessible SPARC community is complete bunk.  When I can spend $250 for 
a 1U rackmount machine that supports ~100 busy email accounts (plus 
their spam and virus filtering, etc), plus about twenty database-backed 
dynamic-content web sites, PLUS the database that's backing them, and 
all the monitoring and metrics tools...that's serious business, not a 
"clunker".  It's not CURRENT, but who cares?

   To dismiss all but the very latest stuff that the greazzzy salesmen 
try to sell us this week is bogus, and contrary to the work we do as 
professionals in just about every way.

   Again I wish to stress that I am not singling YOU out, here.  You 
have made an effort at sincere communication on this, and I appreciate 
it.  This is the view from someone who is just outside the OI/Illumos 
community, but who runs Solaris (primarily 10) on relatively recent (but 
not current) hardware, for myself and for clients, to great GREAT 
benefit.  I am here to say that real work DOES get done in 
other-than-Fortune-500 companies, and quite a bit gets done on last 
year's SPARC boxes.

               -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA