Re: Why is SUN falling so far behind IBM?

From: peder (ulander_at_gmail.com)
Date: 08/06/04 

Date: 5 Aug 2004 20:36:50 -0700

> Was that "false" impression Desktop Software Marketing's or Curtis
> Sasaki's [1] bug?

Before my time, so I can't tell you if it was Curtis's or Marketing.
Besides, it is irrelevant at this point as the product is there and
shipping in 7 today. On top of that, a Sol x86 version has been part
of the OpenOffice community through the 1.1, so baseline development
and testing was done by the Sun team (with help from the community).
 
>
> Did Geoff Baysinger mis-speak when at SunNetwork 2003 in San Francisco
> he explained that the lack of support for StarOffice for Solaris x86
> was the "principle problem" in getting JDS for Solaris x86?

Yes he mis-spoke. If StarOffice x86 was the key factor causing delay,
don't you think that you would see JDS on Sol x86 today? There is
still a lot of work happening on the OSS applications and HCL. At
this point, I would suggest you focus your efforts on getting a Sol
x86 port of Evolution, Mozilla, etc. as well as get the necessary
drivers in place as that would go a long way in shortening the
development cycle

>
> How did John Loiacono get the "false" impression [2] that the ELC product
> that Desktop Solutions was hawking was actually Enterprise Linux Client?

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you are saying. We launched a
desktop client that was based on Linux, specifically targeted at the
enterprises that we looking/commited to Linux. We had, even at this
time, GNOME, Mozilla, Star running on Solaris. What is the point that
you are trying to make? We had a Linux version and a Solaris version.

The article you refer to specifically is discussing Sun's decision to
abandon Sun Linux.

>
> If the client stack has long been available for Solaris (SPARC)
> why did Jonathan Schwartz fail to mention that it ran at the time
> on Sun's SunRay systems when he demo'd the client stack on that
> Linux white box at the Project MadHatter unveiling at SunNetwork 2002?

You are talking about a launch message. At the MadHatter launch,
JIS's speech was specifically in place to launch a turnkey, blackbox
enterprise client that would extend Sun into the emerging
"Linux-preferred" market. At the same keynote, JIS did demonstrate
the Sun Ray in that demo (with the enterprise client) as the Java Card
was a core feature for security that was also launched at SNC 2002.

>
> Why does Dan Baigent's December 11th SJDS 2003 Technical Overview
> presentation list Sun Ray Server for Linux as higher confidence for
> CY2004 than Project Wells: "Solaris SPARC Only!" ?

Similar to my earlier statement, your help in getting the latest
versions of GNOME, Mozilla, Evolution, etc to Solaris (SPARC and Sol
x86) would go a long way in getting these products to market a lot
faster.

>
> Why is JDS for Solaris (SPARC) and the Sun Ray still not available
> for purchase from SunStore [3]?

The full productization is still under development because of lack of
OSS application support (GNOME 2.x, Evolution 2.x, rDesktop, GIMP,
etc.) The other components they come for free for Solaris. They also
ship with the workstations and the Sun Ray's, so there is no need to
purchase separately on the store.

http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/get/index.html
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/browser/

Ximian is available through Novell:

http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ximian/ximian-evolution/solaris-8-sun4/

And StarOffice for Solaris x86 is available through the store and from
OpenOffice.org

-peder

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