
Oracle schmoracle
Oracle's plan to f**k up Solaris:
1. Kill Solaris as a free/low-cost entity - no hobbyist is (a) going to pay the prices that Oracle want for "support" for Solaris (support - ha!); (b) want to deal with the clueless airheads that pass for Oracle sales;
Tick!
2. Make OpenSolaris (the only alternative to 'proper' Solaris) more difficult to get.
Doing it!
3. Kill OpenSolaris - probably the easiest way to do this is via some IP/license chicanery.
4. Make sure that proper Solaris can only be bought as a part of some overpriced, overblown "suite" comprising of a load of extra baggage that you don't want.
Nice to see that Oracle have totally failed to understand why Sun "gave away" Solaris in the first place.
Give it to hobbyists and you get people talking about it, and more importantly - using it. The users then encourage developers to get on board.
The developers make products, and in doing so, buy stuff like servers, support and software tools. All without you having to advertise.
Then businesses see the developers "products", want them, and then buy the servers and support to use that product. Again, sales without much need to advertise.
Best of all, you get a reputation as being a "good guy", which helps with sales, and also gives you some "wiggle room" for when you make a faux-pas (e.g. security hole) - people still point at you, but at least they also say "but they're open with it, so hey we'll cut 'em some slack".
What annoys me most is that Solaris _is_ actually quite a nice OS, not the easiest to admin, but pretty solid and predictable. Be a long time before I think of Oracle (and their products) with any degree of affection.