[geeks] [rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Wednesday 28 April 2010, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 09:47:00PM -0400, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> >On Tuesday 27 April 2010, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
> >> Mendelson's law (number 1): Microcomputer people consider it their
> >>  g-d given right to make the same mistakes that mainframe people
> >> did 30 years earlier.
> >
> >Such as?
> 
> I assume you are joking.

Yes, the first few are facetious.  They're other things that the PC 
world has copied from the mainframe world.
 
> However the bottom line is that Oracle is in business to make money,
>  and if they don't charge, they will end up like SUN.

I think that just like a lot of tech companies that have disappeared in 
the past 2 years, at least part of Sun's problem may have been the 
failing economy.  Every company I have dealt with for the past two 
clusters we built at work made it very obvious that they were desperate 
for our money.
 
> >Oh, maybe you mean Open Source software.  Yeah, true, IBM is really
> >screwing the pooch by adopting that one... ??  At least for those
> > who are uncomfortable with not paying money for software, companies
> > like RedHat and Novell/SuSE have managed to productize it. (also
> > Apple with Darwin/OS X)
> 
> Look at my previous posting. VM/SP was a combination of open source
> mods, proprietary code and a free OS. Circa 1977.

Right. I'm saying that I don't see how this is a "mistake".  RHEL and 
SuSE (the for-pay versions) are similarly a combination of OSS and 
proprietary software.  RedHat doesn't seem to be in any financial 
trouble, and IBM isn't failing because they're pushing Linux (and doing 
huge amounts of the kernel development).

Also, I'm noting the irony of IBM's return to Open Source, if it's such 
a mistake. :)

Pat
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