Re: flash 9 released :)


"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4697C9E8.6010203@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
jimp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Jeffery Small <jeff@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Alan Coopersmith <alanc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:


You see versions for Windows 95 or RedHat 7.2 out there? All old OS'es
get cut off eventually.


Alan:


I agree in principle, but Sun is still supporting Solaris 8 and 9. I
personally think it is short-sighted of Sun to have done this and believe
it has negative ramifications for customer loyalty to the product line. As
a member of the blastwave.org community, this group goes to great pains to
make sure that all distributed software is available for all Sun-supported
versions of Solaris. I do not think flash plug-in decision is something Sun
would have considered doing five years ago. I'll bet that back then they
would have ported a modern version of Gnome to Solaris 8 before hobbling
an important tool like the web browser. I doubt that the customers still
using Solaris 8 or 9 are happy to be stuck with a browser that won't
display over half of the flash video content on the web. At least that has
been my experience. In any case, I have no desire to argue this point.
Apparently the decision has been made and we must accept it.


I would argue the point in regards to security fixes.

It is easy to say just upgrade to Solaris 10.

However the total cost of doing so for many organization is such that
it is prohibitive to do just because a new OS release came out.

By total cost, I'm referring to everything involved, such as downtime,
validating existing applications on the new OS version, bare restore
backups, etc. on machines doing real work.



The cost of upgrading an O/S can be extreme; so extreme that it's done
only when utterly necessary! I can recall one upgrade that consumed
some 3000 man hours. The actual upgrade involved fewer than forty of
those man hours; the rest were expended on the preliminary testing and
planning. It turned out to be well worth it because of performance
improvements and new features in newer versions of applications that we
ran that were supported only on the new version of the O/S.


Not to mention the training costs to "upgrade" sys admins to Solaris 10
which is awfully different from Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 and 9.

--
John.


.

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