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Java Oracle Software Sun Microsystems

Post-Oracle Purchase, How Is Sun's Software Doing? 235

Posted by timothy from the first-the-pro-side dept.
GMGruman writes "Oracle has steadily provoked the open source community since its acquisition of Sun, raising the question of whether the move will simply destroy Sun. But as Paul Krill observes, Oracle has been steadfast in upgrading Sun-derived technologies — and making them profitable, which should mean they will stick around a long time."
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Post-Oracle Purchase, How Is Sun's Software Doing? More

Post-Oracle Purchase, How Is Sun's Software Doing?

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  • It's been Rocky (Score:3)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:46PM (#35165428)

    Overall it's been good for Oracle, not so much for Sun's existing customers. The HP/Oracle feud has also affected product directions like the Oracle Database Machine which was released on HP gear, and now is on Sun Opeterons. Products like OpenSSO have been left in a confusing mess and Oracle going after Java partners (Google) isn't a good thing.

    • I'm working with a client still trying to get their Sun Software Support agreement recognised by Oracle. The Product support contract was not recognised in Oracle's support system when we migrated off Sunsolve and after waiting on hold for over 4 hours the other day we are still no closer to fixing it.

      Actually getting a hold of someone at Oracle is difficult, compared to Sun where they would work really hard to maintain relationships.

  • VirtualBox seems alive & well (Score:5, Informative)

    by Just_Say_Duhhh ( 1318603 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:54PM (#35165508)

    VirtualBox wasn't mentioned in the article, but when the acquisition was announced, I was really worried about that project. However, the release of VirtualBox 4.0 [virtualbox.org] seems to show that they're still hard at work - not just fixing bugs, but developing new ideas.

    I can only hope other Sun projects are doing as well as VirtualBox.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Capt.DrumkenBum ( 1173011 )
      MySQL, Dead.
      Open Solaris, Dead.
      OpenOffice, Dead.
      Hudson, Dead.

      It seems to me that Oracle bought Java, and maybe VirtualBox. The rest of it they threw away.
      Note: I do not know, or care what they are doing with the hardware business.
      • Wormer, he's a dead man!
        Marmalard, dead!
        Niedermeyer... DEAD!!

        Or, my personal favorite:

        "I want you to get this fuck where he breathes! I want you to find this nancy-boy Eliot Ness, I want him DEAD! I want his family DEAD! I want his house burned to the GROUND! I wanna go there in the middle of the night and I wanna PISS ON HIS ASHES!"

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Hudson, Dead.

        Game over, man!

      • OpenOffice is not dead. It might not be moving very quickly, but it is certainly not dead.

        • Most of the developers left to form the Document Foundation and release LibreOffice.
          Close enough to dead for me.

          • I don't think that is accurate either. SOME of the developers left for the horribly-named LibreOffice project. It is unfortunate that this is probably what it will take for OO to move forward again. The pace at which problems have been solved over the last several years has been glacial.

      • MySQL, Dead.

        Nope.

        OpenOffice, Dead.

        Nope.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by afabbro ( 33948 )

        MySQL, Dead.

        Version 5.5 was released in December 2010. You're completely wrong.

    • I notice that they killed xVM Server and that they bought & killed Virtual Iron. They seem to be making an effort to avoid competition in hardware assisted virtualization products that install to bare metal.

  • I would say sun is done (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:56PM (#35165538)

    For example, we have a brand new fileserver with 2 hour or so support that is not in production yet. We've needed support on the order of like getting a part and the new Oracle/Sun could not provide the part in a timely fashion. Took like a week. We are now looking at delegating this box to non-critical storage and buying something supported from a reliable vendor. We have also had a number of issues with solaris/zfs file servers hanging. Personally, I'm going to suggest to management that we not buy any more sun equipment. Its simply less reliable and more costly than the same product from Dell or HP running linux.

    I don't believe any of the lead developers are still at Oracle/Sun. The java head left, the XML guy left, the lustre people were told to leave and most have. When you are in a service economy, you have to provide service. Hardware is a dime a dozen today. Software is mostly free. And nobody will pay for support when there is no support to be had.

    • I concur, it took us over two months to get parts for some 6440 and 6240 blades that are only about two years old, but now EOLed. A 6240 died in production a few weeks ago, it took them several days to get a replacement.

      And the online store is down this week, and no one knows when it will be back up. They are changing all the part numbers, as far as I can tell. FFS!!

      Software seems to be in a little bit better shape, if you know the right people to call. But I expect they will shed the hardware business at s

    • Agree, plus the abortion that replaced SunSolve is clunky, buggy and quite horrible. There's a few decades of sunsolve and docs links that are now borked, which makes life a bit less pleasant.

      Thanks, Larry...

      • I don't like it, but SunSolve was clunkier, buggier and worse. Having your links borked, especially your documentation links, is most definitely not fun, though.

  • Solaris (Score:5, Interesting)

    by codepunk ( 167897 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:58PM (#35165548)

    I have been making a killing doing Solaris to Linux migrations since the Sun purchase. My wallet cannot thank Oracle enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by durdur ( 252098 )

      Yeah, and Solaris (+Java) are the success stories of Sun software. What about all the other stuff (mostly acquired) they have been trying to market over the years? Anyone remember SeeBeyond (enterprise integration vendor)? Sun historically could not market any of this - it just sank because they were never a top vendor and didn't even get onto evaluation lists, much less close deals. Now, Oracle does know how to sell software. So maybe they can make a go of some of these products. But Oracle mostly had some

    • After spending 3 months just trying to get a software support contract for our servers so I could do what their support told me to do, we said screw it and started the process as well.

      We are moving 12 servers to HP and linux. If only we could get rid of the Oracle database it's self I'd be in heaven.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by afabbro ( 33948 )

      Everyone's been making a killing doing that, well before the Oracle purchase. I can't think anyone has bought Sun gear as their go-forward standard for many years.

  • Documentation died with Sun (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BestNicksRTaken ( 582194 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:59PM (#35165560)

    I noticed today that there's a shedload of bad links left in google's cache.

    try searching for just about anything to do with solaris and you get links to sun pages that now just redirect you to oracle's completely useless "Oracle Documentation" page which seems to be almost entirely about the database.

    virtualbox seems to be able the only software now owned by oracle that it doesn't seem intent on killing off.

    • Re:Documentation died with Sun (Score:4, Informative)

      by FranTaylor ( 164577 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:44PM (#35166180)

      oracle's completely useless "Oracle Documentation" page which seems to be almost entirely about the database.

      That's funny I see these links along the right edge of the page:

      Berkeley DB
      Enterprise Manager
      Database EE and XE
      Enterprise Pack for Eclipse
      Fusion Middleware
      Java EE & GlassFish
      Java SE
      JDeveloper and ADF
      MySQL
      NetBeans IDE
      Pre-built Developer VMs
      Solaris 10 & 11 Express
      SQL Developer
      VM VirtualBox
      Zend Server for PHP

      I can still find and download the manuals for ALL of my old Sun gear (well except for my old 3/60)

    • They have changed every link on the site. You will need to authenticate, but most of the pages that were not total cruft are still there. Don't expect to find any 4.1.3 documentation. nd I am not sure Googlewill be able to spider the new site.

    • Most of the documentation is available within the Oracle Support interface, available to paying customers.

  • They've done a good job ticking off the FLOSS guys (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Arch_Android ( 1989386 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:03PM (#35165602)
    I speak only for myself, but considering they've killed OpenSolaris, done next to nothing with OpenOffice.org, and are suing Google for Java in Android, I hope they die a terrible, prolonged death!! But, that's just me.
    • It was basically an in-house project with the (failed) goal of attracting Linux developers. Did you ever visit the OpenSolaris forums? The place was dead.

      They may be hated at places like Slashdot but they have contributed far more to the kernel than Canonical.

    • I'd be fine with them killing off OO.org, I think most people are migrating over to LibreOffice [libreoffice.org], anyways.

    • I don't recall OpenOffice.org development being exactly speedy prior to the acquisition, and Gosling mentioned that the Google/Android issue was already well in the minds of executives before the acquisition, so I wouldn't exactly be quick to blame Oracle for ticking off the FLOSS guys.

  • Around with no customers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Iphtashu Fitz ( 263795 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:09PM (#35165658)

    I work at a university which has historically been a huge Solaris shop as far as infrastructure goes. Hundreds of web servers, mail systems, LDAP servers, etc. have all been based on Solaris for many years. But Oracle has started trying to nickle & dime us to death, so with a new push to virtualize as much of our infrastructure as we can we're also migrating as much as we can off of Solaris and onto linux. We feel like Oracle is giving us very little alternative given how much more expensive they're making things. They may keep Sun/Solaris around for a long time but from here it looks like they may not have many customers actually using it...

    • Re:Around with no customers... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:24PM (#35165844)

      Same here. Also work at a major university that is abandoning a substantial installed Sun/Solaris environment en-masse in favor of Redhat/centos linux.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bigbutt ( 65939 )

      We're the same. Oracle prices for the replacements for the Sun T2000's were too high so we stuck with the T2000's well after they were due for an upgrade. With the new nickle and diming we've been virtualizing app servers and new hardware is coming in as Dell R710's vs Sun systems. Sucks for me as I've been a Sun admin for 14 years with linux (while longer at 18 years) in second and moving up fast and hp-ux coming up from behind. Company's even paying for an out of state training class for Red Hat cluster s

  • Java been dead, Its not portable. Its fractured to many people have to many incompatible versions.

    Here is a quote from the down load Linux / other part of the page on Mindcraft.

    " Download Minecraft.jar, an executable jar file. It might work as-is."

    Its just not reassuring. I tried some tutorials From Sun on a RedHat box and the first baby ones worked. But when I loaded the Sun libs for the graphics tutorials nothing worked.

    • Java on the desktop has NEVER been there, but Java on the server is seeing more usage than ever (up over 1% since 2010), far more than any other language by a considerable distance. Only "C" is even close (not C++ or Obj-C)

      Sorry to spoil the "bash Java" party.

    • Java been dead, Its not portable. Its fractured to many people have to many incompatible versions.

      ever heard of android? pretty big boost for java i'd say.

    • Meh, you're just like Miguel from the Mono project. What you and him fail to see is that if you let .NET/Mono grow enough, it will simply inherit all the problems that you mention that Java supposedly has. I have only seen more and more adoption on the server side and with fat clients.

    • Seems to be portable, even on the desktop. I have always thought Java Desktop apps looked crappy until I came across this game. [madskillsmotocross.com] I had no idea it was running Java until I started looking at the files in order to make a Debian package for my website.

      Here is the startup script for Linux:

      #!/bin/sh
      cd "${0%/*}/data"
      if [ -n "$JAVA_HOME" ]; then
      $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -Djava.library.path=lib -jar
      ./launcher.jar ./game.sh
      else
      java -Djava.library.path=lib -jar ./launcher.jar ./game.sh
      fi cd "$OLDPWD"

  • Wish Sun had been bought by Apple (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aclarke ( 307017 ) <spam AT clarke DOT ca> on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:26PM (#35165892) Homepage
    It still makes me sad that Apple didn't buy Sun instead of Oracle. It would have taken less than 20% of Apple's cash reserves, so in one sense wouldn't have even been a particularly big purchase.

    Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise. Apple could have merged its own chip fabrication division with Sun's, and picked up significant engineering talent along with it. Apple would control Java, which would have put it in just as strong of a position against Google as Oracle now has, which would have made sense strategically, as far as I can see.

    Sure, there would have been some Java vs. Objective C questions, as well as Mac OS X Server vs. Solaris, but I think overall it would have been a healthier relationship for everyone than Oracle's purchase. Oh well, what do I know. I'm not a billionaire CEO.

    • Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise.

      Apple excel at enduser-friendliness, fashion and platform control (be it the whole ecosystem or software+hardware tying). And those don't really apply to the enterprise market.

    • Apple has no significant enterprise division, and Sun was almost 100% enterprise.

      And that's why they didn't buy Sun. Apple has no significant enterprise division because Apple doesn't *want* a significant enterprise division. They had, and have, about as much interest in owning Sun as they do in owning the Bolshoi Ballet (after all, they have no significant ballet division, either).

  • I think the JavaOne experience sums up the current state of Sun and Oracle nicely.

    This year's JavaOne was pretty disappointing compared to previous years and many of us Java enthusiasts felt a little unwanted. Most of the focus was on hardware, which we didn't care about at all. Little of the content was geared towards a technical audience. The tech demos of past years were hushed into side rooms, replaced by celebrity meet-and-greets with Lance Armstrong, Apolo Ohno, the Black Eyed Peas, and a yacht raci

  • Still happy with Solaris and Oracle gear BUT... (Score:4, Informative)

    by assantisz ( 881107 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @03:44PM (#35166190)
    we did move our hardware support to a third party company. Oracle's pricing is ridiculous compared to what we were used to with Sun. In addition Oracle was just unable to get us renewal quotes for equipment we have installed overseas in time. We still have to keep some support contract with Oracle, though, in order to have software support for Solaris. If you do the math we probably still pay about the same for annual support but at least we don't have to deal with Oracle anymore to get a drive replaced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jerk ( 38494 )

      What company did you go with and how do you like them? My employer is looking for a good 3rd party service provider.

  • No Solaris patches without a service contract (Score:3)

    by erice ( 13380 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @04:24PM (#35166832) Homepage

    Not even security patches. That means that Solaris is essentially dead for a non-commercial use. There isn't even OpenSolaris to keep those admins in the fold. There won't be any supporters to bring Solaris into new environments. I've been running Solaris machines at home for 15 years. I have been happy having a slightly non-mainstream server even if it was a little less convenient than a Linux box. Now I have no choice. I have to replace the Solaris machine with something I keep secure.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by afabbro ( 33948 )

      Not even security patches. That means that Solaris is essentially dead for a non-commercial use. There isn't even OpenSolaris to keep those admins in the fold.

      Yes, gosh, Solaris is just like HP-UX and AIX now.

      There won't be any supporters to bring Solaris into new environments. I've been running Solaris machines at home for 15 years. I have been happy having a slightly non-mainstream server even if it was a little less convenient than a Linux box. Now I have no choice. I have to replace the Solaris machine with something I keep secure.

      And honestly Oracle doesn't care. They don't make any money providing free patches so some guy can run old Sparc gear he bought on eBay at home.

      Turns out Sun couldn't make any money providing free Solaris patches either. Which is why...

      Oracle is just behaving like the other major commercial Unix vendors.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by t2t10 ( 1909766 )

        Why do you think Sun made it in the market in the first place? It was because a generation of graduate students grew up on cheap Sun hardware.

        And "behaving just like the other major commercial Unix vendors" is going to consign them to the same fate: irrelevancy. The world these days runs on Linux and Windows. Anything else is lost in the noise.

  • Simple answer: They're killing Sun utterly! (Score:5, Informative)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Thursday February 10, 2011 @05:03PM (#35167512) Journal

    We're officially a fairly big customer - somewhere north of 800 Sun servers, if I were to guess. Add another hundred workstations or so, and we're pushing about a thousand machines running Solaris, many of them running Sun apps of one sort or another.

    Oracle changed the terms of our software support to the tune of a 500% increase. That's right, they want us to pay SIX TIMES as much for support! We lost all of our training credits overnight (About $100k in training dollars). Our hardware support costs have gone up substantially as well, so we're getting rid of our full-time onsite tech. (with the money we're saving by getting rid of the onsite Sun guy, we're going to hire two hardware techs of our own who are qualified/allowed to work on ALL of our gear, and still have cash left over.)
    We are planning to migrate away from all Sun/Oracle applications by the end of the current support contract. Even the groups that were using Oracle Database before this are being strongly encouraged to look elsewhere for solutions.

    Ours isn't an isolated case. The general feeling in the Sun customer community is that they're standing on a sinking ship, flailing at the floorboards with an axe to make it go down even faster. Every Sun software product is now in the 'legacy' section of Oracle's (disastrous!!!) website. Contracts have gone from three pages to 500, due to the lack of blanket terms. Oracle is TRYING to piss off their "Sun" customers as much as possible, and are succeeding. Oracle Solaris is going to lose more than 70% of its purchase-time market share by the end of 2013. Separate products (iPlanet, Directory Server, StarOffice, etc.) will all be shot through the head.

  • But it is profitable. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2011 @11:33PM (#35170534)

    For obvious reasons I need to be AC, but while there are lots of comments above from people saying that they're turning away from Sun hardware and Solaris for any one of a number of reasons, the section of the company that is responsible for the hardware and Solaris is now profitable. It's actually doing better for Oracle than it was for Sun.. So whilst there may be scores of people here saying they're changing to Linux, etc, the obvious conclusion is that the people who are shunning Oracle were never actually profitable customers for Sun to have had. Oracle's customer base is significantly more than twice the size of Sun's and it would be a foolish person to bet that there won't be some amount of drag-along for sales from Oracle.

    So, no, Oracle isn't trying to piss off Sun customers, they're trying to make sure that in the business agreements that they have, that they make money out of them.

    Oracle is a company that makes money. It doesn't give much, if anything away for free. Sun was a company that did give away stuff for free and ultimately it failed. Larry Ellison is a smart business man, I'm pretty sure that their number crunching would have factored in customers dropping off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by t2t10 ( 1909766 )

      Sun was a company that did give away stuff for free and ultimately it failed.

      Sun didn't give away Java; they made it available under viral conditions (redistributable but heavily patented) in hopes of infecting the entire industry with it, and they succeeded. Without that, they'd have gone belly up even earlier and wouldn't have gotten bought by Oracle.

      Sun's failure wasn't due to supposedly giving things away free, it was due to technical and business incompetence: their software sucked, and so did their m

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