NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

leam leam-at-reuel.net |nyphp 04/2004| wrote:

> Tim Gales wrote:
>
>> $100 bucks for commercial support seems like a pretty good value to me.
>> I think that is less money than Red Hat (Linux) charges.
>
>
> Of course, a year or so ago they turned off x86 development and 
> support and only recently restarted it. I think mostly because they 
> need Microsoft's support so they are trying to compete with Linux as a 
> sop to Bill Gates.
>
> That is, of course, my highly biased opinion.  :)


Yeah, that sounds reasonable. It is strong M$ marketing style to lead 
actual work with grand announcements of "framework" and endpoints, in 
order to halt comittments, deter competitors, and seed emerging markets 
with doubt. Plus Sun doesn't have a stellar tech support history for 
other non-mainframe products (as highlighted here where they turned x86 
support on and off, then on again, and of course I can't forgive them 
for the Cobalt fiasco).

There's little doubt BSD is here to stay, and not much doubt about Linux 
either. Let's see Sun produce x86 support, offer paid support 
consistently over 5 years or so, and commit to OS past a 
point-of-no-return.... then maybe I'd consider it a factor in the OS 
development areas not currently flocking to Solaris.