[rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 03:50:55PM -0400, Steve Sandau wrote:
>
>I would think that more people familiar with Solaris would lead to 
>more people buying support when support is required. If I knew 
>nothing about Solaris and a new project came along, I would not 
>recommend it. However, if I'd been using Solaris for free in 
>non-production projects, then I'd recommend it for a project that 
>required support.

Again, playing devil's advocate, if you knew nothing about Solaris, you would
not be in such a postion. Linux (is there any other choice these days?) 
sysadmins don't get hired by companies want Solaris admins except at the 
bottom. 

The one exception to the rule, as it were, would be if you were starting a
startup and were looking for a cheap way to go from zero to a working demo,
but I expect those would be done in LAMP anyway.

>In short, more people knowing Solaris should lead to more people 
>willing to pay for it.

It depends. If all you know is obsolete hardware, or obsolete versions
of Solaris it would not. It would just make them want to continue to use
obsolete things, or make decisions based upon bad information.

I think it is obivous that the focus here has shifted from being a viable
free alternative to Linux, to being a money making operation. Being a viable
alternative to Linux, with the free licenses, free support and free 
applications e.g. Open Office. did not make Sun rich. 

In fact, it brought them to the verge of bankruptcy.

Personally, I was surprised that Oracle bought them, but I think they had
undisclosed help to keep the technology in the US. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. 
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.